responses to HNTGAF post

Reddit responses HNTGAF

Dude. Spot on. That's what I write about in my trip report. https://pastebin.com/PfhDihB2

I always knew how to accomplish goals.


When I was in 7th grade, I decided I wanted to play basketball. My friends had been playing since kindergarten, whereas I had never tried. I practiced all day after school, every single day, for hours, for a year, and in one year I was a starter (granted this is 8th grade rec league, but still)

When I started fucking around on my dad's bowflex when I was in 5th grade, I just looked way ahead (older brother's in high school), and figured that if I started now, I'd have a foot up. On what? I dunno I just figured girls

When I got to high school, I remember being 15 and was at the Palisades Mall in New Jersey with my mom and aunt, and I just saw this miserable looking guy with like 10 screaming kids in strollers and  in black and white fashion figured that money could prevent that. So I worked at a friend's dad's door frame warehouse that summer (2005), saved every penny (~$1,000), and I was only 15 so I had to have my parents open it for me, but I dumped it all into Etrade and invested in Apple. Turned into almost $18,000 over the next 5 years (which I had to unfortunately liquidate and sell to pay for some...er...college shenanigans, ‘property destruction’ according to the ‘authorities’ that think they’re ‘the police’ or something, psh. That I need to check the statute of limitations on before I tell the story).

My three brothers were/are smart as fuck and were at reputable universities, but I was a C student all my life. After a freshmen year of fucking off in college (and near expulsion), I realized I needed to get my life in order.

**Here’s the first part of “knowing it my head” versus “knowing it in my heart.”**

My dad dropped me off at the fraternity house I moved into on my 20th birthday and basically gave me that subtle reminder only a dad can do when he said, “when you graduate, you’re on your own.” aka get fukt, kiddo

That night I smoked a weeeee bit too much pot and had a horrifying realization that I was destined for failure. I knew it in my head that I needed to get my life around, but now I knew it in my heart.

So I started studying all day everyday (much like playing basketball or weightlifting or investing), going completely sober, and becoming hell bent on transferring from Valdosta University in Valdosta, Georgia, to the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. I did that.

Once I got to UGA, despite reuniting with my best friends from high school, I continued to grind and not be fun at all. It was Apollo 13-esque. My GPA was so royally ass fucked from my freshmen year that I had no wiggle room. I had to ace every class to have a competitive application. I definitely exacerbated my OCD and perfectionism here. But I studied around 350 days a year. Not exaggerating when I say I studied all.day.every.day.and.never.had.fun. I was a machine, for better or worse. I tracked calories on excel spreadsheets and avoided human contact. I was insane and would never do it again in a million years.

In Fall 2012, I signed up for the MCAT for the following May (2013). My GPA was steadily increasing, but due to averages, each subsequent 4.0 was changing my overall GPA less than the last. I knew the MCAT was the heavy hitter, but I also knew that test was for geniuses. I am not smart. I’m an OCD hard worker, so I could ace classes from brute force attacks of memorization. But actual intelligence is not my strong suit.

So repeating my August 2010 experience with too many bong rips, I decided to high as giraffe pussy one night in October 2012 when my roommates were all in South Carolina for a football game. During that horrifying experience, I envisioned an exponential graph, a compound interest of studying, if you will. I figured, “It’s October right now, my test is on the last day of May. Maybe, just maybe, if I study nonstop, I can hit the boot of the exponential curve on time.” I’m not smart, but I am a psychopathic automaton. Remember in the Dark Knight when Bruce Wayne asks Alfred how they caught the bandit? “We burned down the forest, Mr. Wayne.”

So I burned down the fuckin’ forest to find those tangerine-sized rubies. What I lacked in natural intelligence I padded with sheer metadata. I memorized some 400 physics equations, 500 slides of biology, hundreds of organic chemistry reactions, etc etc. I figured that if I just had everything on my organic hard drive, it would just be a matter of accessing it during the test.

**This is the second example. I knew it in my head that I worked hard. I now knew it in my heart that it could be done.**

I took a practice test in October 2012 to see where I stood. Scored a 30 (~60th percentile). Took a test the week before the MCAT. Scored a 30. Fuck me. So I just let go. I no longer gave a fuck. The culmination of my pre med journey was going to be lackluster. I was like Iron Man when he realizes he’s dying and he’s just eating donuts on top of that donut shop. I was sitting at the pool with my feet up doing nothing for the final week before the MCAT. My friends figured I had just finally imploded.

But it’s funny, because once I no longer fucking cared...my practice test scores were hitting 31, 32. But I had already taken those tests, so I chalked it up to subconsciously remembering some of the questions, and thus wrote them off as false positives.

I went to take the test that fateful morning, high on life and not giving a fuck. I have never truly given no fucks like I did that morning. I didn’t care. Fuck medicine. It’s summer, I’m 23, and I’ve got enough liquor and weed for tonight’s celebration to kill all of Hannibal’s elephants.

So I went in there with a pep in my step and flew through the fucking test. Normally I’d finish each 52 minute section in about 50 minutes. Two left over minutes is HUGE and took months to be able to reach. On test day, I was finishing sections with *22 minutes* left over. And I didn’t even use them! I’d just go take a dump and do some stretches. *I truly did not care.*

Fast forward a month, and I scored a 35 (95th percentile), and I interviewed at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, Tulane University Medical School, and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Schools I thought to be way out of my reach.

So I learned a new lesson. The first, original lesson, was from the pot inducing terror in the frat house and subsequent three years of studying, which showed me that knowing it in heart versus just my head would allow me to work my dick off and achieve what I wanted.

The second lesson now showed me that it was necessary to work one’s genitals off for what they want, but then after they do all they can do, *they have to completely let the fuck go.*

It’s like being a billionaire investor: you’ve worked your whole life to amass this fortune, but if you’re too nervous - that is, you give too much of a fuck - to liquidate some and spend it, then what the fuck was making it in the first place? You never enjoy it.

So work hard, then stop caring. It’s a paradoxical method, but it works.

So I had one last semester of classes in fall 2013, but the hard work was over. I was just doing medical school interviews, taking bullshit classes, and partying up in biblical fashion. I gave up worrying, let my guard down, fell in love, and had the best time of my life. Those 5 months (aug-dec) are the fondest in my life, memories bathed in a golden glow - and they actually were awesome, I’m not just viewing them through rose-tinted welding masks.

But all this fun got me thinking: I can’t go back to automaton Tommy. *I’m so much happier now.* I tried suppressing it and pretended that this fall would never end. But that’s mouth-breathing status retarded.

Not only that, but all my friends lived in Atlanta, my new girlfriend was still in Athens for another year, I was going to medical school in Miami the following fall, my brothers lived in three states, and my parents lived in yet another. Life was swirling around and I knew something had to change. **I knew something in my head, but not in my heart.**

I looked back to my frat house weed terror in August 2010.

I looked back to my weed terror from October 2012.

 I need to do some more drugs, don’t I? Ah fuck.jpeg


BREAK

So the day after finals, when everyone was gone except for one of my best friends, I bought a bag of shrooms from a friend I consider my guru. My friend and I fasted for 24 hours, went for a morning run, and then drove up to his lake house in North Georgia. It was a weekday in December, so no one was there. I never wrote a proper trip report, so here’s my quick recap.

We walked around and I began to notice the shimmering of the water was actual photons being shot from a thermonuclear fusion furnace 93 million miles bouncing off another state of matter, that the trees around were actually giant broccoli-looking motherfuckers, they were the grass and I was an ant. I couldn’t believe that the warmth I felt from the sun was the same effect of heat from a camp fire, yet this fuckin explosion in the sky was heating me from across the solar system.

We spotted a field of tall grass that we now refer to as *The Golden Fields* and decided to sit there. We sat and meditated and didn’t say a word to each other, but we were definitely communicating. The trees breathed, the entire forest merged into one flora gaian superorganism, the clouds revealed themselves as the exhaled breath of the Earth itself, the air I breathed and sky I sat under revealed it’s true identity: a 75 mile deep ocean, because gas indeed behaves like liquid according to chemistry and physics. *Holy fuck, I’m sitting at on the ocean floor, 25 times deeper than the Mariana’s Trench.*

And then space-time itself opened up, a soft grandpa voice from decades in the future that I recognized as my own. It said I could work my whole life for material things and societal badges, but that would simply lead me towards a life of misery, which would ultimately lead to a deathbed pillow soaked with wisdom-filled tears produced by hindsight-grown regret

Or.

I could do something for a living that I like, anything, that would pay the bills. That the most important thing is laughing with friends, spreading love, and savoring the natural beauty of Earth. It told me that, in your final moments, that’s the lesson you learn in blinding clarity - but often it’s too late to act on. Sam Walton, founded of Walmart, net worth at death of $65,000,000,000, had the last words: “I blew it.”

My brain was racing.

Why do clouds float? Oh its because of this equilibrium. But, why? Because its an exothermic process, and thus allowable. But, why? Because the solvation energy of the water molecules and air molecules is greater than the sum of the solvent-solvent and solute-solute interactions. But, why? Because the ion-dipole attractions are much stronger than the hydrogen bonds. But, why? The dipole moment is of a larger magnitude. But, why? Because the protons and electrons are doing this. But, why? Because the quarks and gluons are doing this. But, why? Because the small nuclear force does this. But, why? Because that’s how the initial rules governing the universe worked out. But, why? Because that’s where it all came from. But, why? Because that is the reality in which you consciously experience. But, why? Because subjective experience is pointless, directionless, hopeless, fearless, and cannot be objectively proven or disproven and one should do what they love. Ahhhhh, so I really want to become a surgeon? And that’s where the doubt comes in. Not because I don’t want the hard work and reward – I do. I like the challenge to be perfect – but because I have a hard time connecting meaning to it. its like trying to become the richest man in the world…once you begin to view reality in the cosmological sense of things, the value of money not only deteriorates, it becomes humorous. Like kids collecting Pokémon cards.

I then leaned back and laid on the grass, staring at the sky, overflowing with joy that I was just given the key to happiness: “Do something you love, but you must make money. This is life, after all. Bills do exist. But make happiness a priority.”

It didn’t say what I should do, how I should do it, or anything. I wasn’t given the same precision that I was in the frat house (be a doctor), or in Athens (study for the MCAT), and that was terrifying.

It told me to just into the void. I didn’t know what was to do, but I *did* know that it wasn’t what I was doing.

From the MCAT (May 31st, 2013) til that day (December 16th, 2013), **I knew in my head that I needed to do something else, but now I knew it in my heart.**

I withdrew my medical school acceptance a month later after fully committing to the crazy idea of being happy in life (nuts, I know!).

I wanted to be an anesthesiologist as a physician, so I figured maybe happiness was being a pharmacist? So I applied to pharmacy school. I had to go back to UGA to take some more pre reqs.

April 15th, 2014, I lost my oldest of 3 brothers to suicide, turning me upside down.

Back at UGA in August 2014, we constructed the Zen Den. It was originally two folding chairs, a Buddha bust, and a coffee table. We just didn’t want our house to reek of weed; we figured that because we were now college grads, it wasn’t socially acceptable or some shit. Like the mullet: business in the front, party in the back. Clean house with framed pictures and plants and books downstairs, opium den upstairs.

The Zen Den then took on a consciousness of it’s own. In hindsight I can see we didn’t construct it: it became sentient and simply used us as hosts. We were it’s minions, sending us out to the gather carpets and pillows and little gnomes and heady paraphernalia. It became a spiritual ICU for us, both lost in the world, not knowing what we wanted to do, me having lost my brother, my roommate being dumped by his girlfriend.

A year passed and I realized the idea of wearing a suit and tie and going to campus for another 3 years of graduate school made me sick.

I heard a Steve Jobs quote that guides me til today:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

He also says somewhere in there, “Never settle.”

A second quote from Tony Robbins stuck with me: “If you want to take the island, burn your boat.”

So I withdrew my pharmacy acceptance and decided to take another year off and apply to online pharmacy school.

Another terrifying year of jumping from minimum wage job to minimum job, while simultaneously being ground down by my brother’s suicide, becoming addicted to clonazepam at a whopping 4mg a day. But I saw the light that December day in 2013 and refused to turn around.

A year after my brothers death - on the anniversary - I sat in the Zen Den and took 400mcg of LSD and 7 dried grams of mushrooms. For 8 hours my reality dissolved, and life revealed itself to be a green screen sphere: everything was an illusion, and everyone that has ever died is simply on the other side of the screen, silently holding back laughs as they watch you live your life. I felt my brother’s presence. I said I was terrified because I knew the direction I was to go in, but not what to do. He ‘said’ (it was more of a feeling) that “You know what *not* to do, so you’re already 50% there. Just stick with it. Furthermore, you can deal with this temporary terror, or you can live a life of misery that ends with deathbed terror and miserable regret.”

That was a much needed booster, a bottle of gatorade at a rest stop on a marathon.

I moved forward, built a charity with my brothers for mental health research, and that occupied me for most of the next year.

I was accepted into online pharmacy school in January 2016….but god fucking dammit, it wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t enough. I knew I was settling and that Steve Jobs would bitch slap my bitch ass if he saw me. I remember going to the bank right after I got my acceptance letter because I had to cash some check, and I saw some kid my age sitting at a desk in a suit and tie and I thought to myself, “that looks worse than prison.”

So I sat in my car outside and thought, “Fuckin’ A, burn the boat.” So I torched that motherfucker like the Deep State torched the world trade. I withdrew my acceptance, instantly fucking me.

BREAK 2

I did Amazon Mechanical Turk for a couple months, thinking that I could do this and smoke pot and be happy. Well that was retarded. So I stopped settling and moved forward.

I thought maybe I should make funny YouTube videos, which I loved doing, but failed, and then slowly began to lose interest in.

I tried writing funny scripts for short sketches, but lost the love.

I then thought I should do standup comedy, so I wrote jokes for a month. I had a slot in a bar in Athens, but showed up a week late - I had the wrong date. Fuck that, I didn’t like it anyway: I like live humor in the moment, and I personally am not a fan of delivering the same jokes in an edited fashion. The reason I love the Joe Rogan Experience so much is because it’s just real life. I think Rogan is a thousand times funnier impromptu than his standup. Not just Rogan, actually, but every comedian.

Anyways, after this latest failure, I was at rock bottom. In what will have to be an entirely other post, I was at the end of a marathon of self sabotage. I had gained 67 lbs, grew long greasy hair, never bathed or changed clothes or even brushed my teeth. I drank a bottle of cough syrup several nights a week, smoked an eighth of weed a night, drank 10% abv IPA’s every night, used diphenhydramine and doxylamine succinate to sleep every night, popped caffeine pills and stimulants every morning, vaped all day with the highest nicotine liquid I could find, and muted my internal voice with benzodiazepines.

Fuck it, I’m done. I’m gonna kill myself. Here’s my recount of what being truly, truly suicidal feels like. I say *truly* because I thought I had been suicidal for a while. When I hit this place, it was a new arena.

My recount:

“There’s really no hope at this point. I always thought I would understand what suicidal feelings felt like. I thought my brother didn’t hold on because he didn’t want to. I never truly understood depression until these last two years and therefore only now truly knew my brother. So why did I think I had an idea of suicidal thoughts?

Depression is a bunch of iron shavings at varying distances to a hyper powerful magnet. Very far off is where the balanced mind lives - a slight ripple here, a trough to match the crest - but the laughter so loud counteract the crippling clouds.

As you move closer, the filings are disturbed more and more. And from here to the magnet is a spectrum of increasing chaos, the motes of metal mere puppets to the pull. What causes your position on this is chemical, familial, financial, societal, romantic, physiological, social, and every other imaginable aspect of life - which makes sense, because depression is simply a low Rotten Tomatoes score for the movie of life. All aspects must be considered.

You travel closer and closer, the vibrations now nonstop, tumultuous troughs and chaotic crests - but the entire wave is of depression. Sometimes it’s an anchor where you want to lay in bed and eat ice cream in the dark and listen to sad music - and oddly enough, that shit feels good. It’s like the dark lord is pleased with your sacrificial offering, that you act as he instructs, in direct contrast to your own well being.

But like a big band coming to a halt on a dime, when you hit the core - it all freezes. The filings are hugging the magnet, no longer flowing and flying and fluttering in a manner that seems so innocent but is actually symptom of horror - think of the innocent white papers floating willy nilly through the crisp blue morning sky, the two hundred and twenty stories of hellish inferno engulfing the twin towers behind them.

You come to a stop.

There isnt a climax of sadness like i always imagined there would be - a spot where you could reach out and say, “hey, im there guys. Get me help.” like when youre too drunk and ask someone for a ride home.

Instead, everything goes numb.

 Youre walking through new york city, Times Square. The hustle and bustle as crazy as ever.

 Except its black and white. The lights still flash, colors still depicted by different color swatches of grayscale. But the art of it all is gone.

It’s completely silent - you’re footsteps echoing like a twig snapping in a pitch black empty gymnasium. Your breath accompanies you, a shadow of your heartbeat, the only reminder that youre still technically living.

There is no temperature, it’s not hot or cold. It’s not even just right. It’s just not there.

It takes no effort to walk, it just happens for you, like when you get off a treadmill and find that you’re legs are still moving, taking you in whatever direction you turn your waist to.

You’re invisible and of no matter, transcending the corporeal, walking through walls and people, feeling neither, as is true for them as well. A sad (“sad” in my opinion, the author, for the person im describing has no emotion) reflection that today’s victim of suicide may be next to you at a stop light, or scanning your paper towels at checkout. Right under your nose, an arms reach away for your help, but completely invisible. You cant feel guilt - they can’t feel your help either. The pallbearer of a padlock standing next to the carrier of the correct key, but separated by infinity.

The city rushes by, but means nothing. An oddly fitting analogy is an observation UFC commentator Joe Rogan made about Mixed Martial Arts (paraphrasing): “Fighting is such an attractive sport and is growing so rapidly because it needs no explanation. A punch is a punch. When someone takes a freight train to the chin, every member our species knows that shit is going down. But if someone who never watched football came to the U.S. and watched an NFL game, a false start or face mask would produce no reaction out of them. They don’t know the rules. Just like if I watched a game of cricket or something, a foot over a line that made others go crazy would mean nothing to me.”

That’s how life feels. But not just distant wars, or weather, or political scandals - things we normally tune out.

Nothing matters.

Not a nuclear threat from orbit, not a ladybug on your forearm. Not an insult slung at your face, not a loving hug from your partner. It all evaporates.

Colorless, silent, weightless, meaningless. Which doesn’t sound so bad, to be honest. Think about it: it sounds like the absolutely ideal, picture perfect environment for a nap, doesn’t it?

Yes. Yes it does.

And guess who didn’t get a good night sleep before going for a walk through this watered down version of Manhattan?

Yours truly.

It’s the kind of fatigue where you can fall asleep at a bus stop, that drunk dreariness where you can sleep at a bar booth like a toddler in Mother’s arms. An all encompassing exhaustion allowing you to sleep anywhere, even the loudest public transportation.

Now think of those times where your insomnia or anxiety is so bad that you need the perfect place to sleep. You need the kids to be at your parents house, the dog at the groomer, your partner at work, the neighbors on vacation, you called in sick, unplugged the phone, and there’s a soft snowstorm outside, wind blowing harmlessly against the window, a king size bed with down comforters hugs you, a crackling fire snapping and popping in a ritualistic dance to the sleep gods.
This is the place where even the most hyperactive insomniac could sleep.

Now…imagine the drunk exhausted person who could fall asleep on a public bus and put them in the cradle made for the insomniac.

That’s suicide.

There was never any chance you were keeping your eyes open.

It all means nothing, nothing means something, and the bed to rest your head is so inviting and cozy, and you’re oh so tired. So I’ll lay down for a nap.

And that’s how it’s done.

But I wasn’t alone. I was moving out of my apartment with my girlfriend. And I was crying when I dropped my phone. Crying when my shoelace came undone. Taking one box out to the uhaul and then laying on the couch for five minutes. Everything was so difficult, and it all meant absolutely nothing. Who cares if I don’t get my security deposit. Who cares if im broke. Who cares if my parents cut me off. Who cares if im on the street. Who cares if someone mugs me at gun point. Who cares if im bleeding out. None of it matters to any degree.

I napped and napped and napped. Literally bawling when I’d wake up, simply because I was now alive again, watching this boring movie. She had seen me for the last two years of shit. She had seen the last month of rock bottom.

But I was laying face down in the snow now. She saw the video camera behind my eyes had no tape in it, even though the red light was blinking.”


End of recount.

BREAK 3

So I figured I had nothing left. So I ordered some psychedelics online - who cares if I get busted by customs? I’m debating suicide.

Here is that story (which I haven’t finished yet):  https://pastebin.com/PfhDihB2

it’s a long ass read. You can skip to line 162 (lines labeled on the left hand side) to skip the introduction, because the intro is pretty much equal to what I posted here

You’ll realize when reading it that it doesn’t sound like someone who was in a suicidal state. It’s because over the last year of writing that, I decided to leave out that aspect, because I knew it would take years off the life of my parents knowing just how close I was to ending it. But as I’ve said, I hope to help people with my story, so now I’m just saying it all.

I will refrain from speaking about how I planned going about my suicide, because that’s just unnecessary pain for my parents if they ever read this - but I would have no problem doing the deed. I planned on doing it, that’s enough to get the point across.

Anyways, I took 1,250 mcg of LSD. I also ordered something called 4-AcO-DMT, which is converted to psilocybin in the body (or it just has the same effect, I don’t remember the specifics).

According to the experience vault on Erowid.com, 25mg of 4-AcO-DMT is supposed to be an experience equal to an eighth of dried shrooms.

Well I took 250mg of 4-AcO-DMT, which is technically equal to 35 dried grams of shrooms, but I imagine there’s a saturation point.

The story I wrote so far that I linked is all about the come up, but I haven’t finished it. But I do have what two things that serve as yet another **Know it in my head, but then knew it in my heart**
Is an (attempted) poetic recollection of what happened first hand
The lessons I learned in a bullet point presentation form, if you will




**#1 My poetic recollection of the peak of the trip**

Obviously, this was enjoyable and beautiful. But this time, I was truly fucking stunned as to why i was, why I am, conscious. So there I was, who knows, maybe still am, just feeling reality around me. and then, for whatever reason, I just wouldn’t be satisfied: “keep pushing, go further, let go, just let go, it will be okay. Just go” were the thoughts rushing through my being. i let go. I could feel myself wander into uncharted territories, modes of consciousness I hadn’t ever experienced before. It’s the single point of being, just further. Understanding, but higher. I was going linearly; there was no “new” thing, but rather a predictable increase from the norm. that’s what I normally love about meditation, I literally cannot imagine whats next. But here I was, just going further into a state ive already been in. Almost disappointing. I push just a wee bit farther. “I can just keep going, I know I ca-”

Look up the song: Lost in Las Vegas by “Two Steps From Hell”. Fast forward to 2:18.

That's what I hear.


and then it hits me. it becomes me. I become it.

i sit in wondrous exaltation to the inner deity of truth, sitting like a pool of liquid silk at the center most cavern of the eternal Self.

2:37 - the quick breathing in.

its like pushing branches out of the way, leaves in your face, dirt at your feet, talking to somebody and then all of the sudden you go silent as you push the last branch out of the way and you see yourself looking down a 10 mile drop, forest and rivers as far as you can see, the moon setting, and shooting stars streaking across the sky. Its like getting pushed out of a plane while you were napping. I jumped into the ocean of consciousness. I was a newborn, yet an elder. A plane of reality around me indescribable to, well, me. I was there, in a state of utter bliss and tranquility, induced by no more than my own though processes. i turned my head but my body didn’t move, just like a dream. Just like the part of the “single point of being” where my eyes are fluttering wildly, I too experienced it here. But something very, very strange happened. It was almost like spinning a top and then backing away from it. I merely receded further and no longer had to actively think about closing my eyes. It just happened. They were still fluttering, but its like my meditation secretary gave me a hand and let me do the big boy work. Absolute and utter bliss. Understanding of all emotions. Just like Dr. Manhattan, I actually began to see time as an illusion. I am here, but I am also in the van on my to kindergarten, as well as sitting with my fiancé on xmas eve. I am nervously walking into my first college party, while also gray haired and contemplatively watching yet another good friend be lowered back into Mother Earth. I am also a caveman 10,000 years ago hunting with crude tools, lightning flicking through my senses at the slightest twig breaking. I am a passenger of a generation ship apathetically droning towards Andromeda Galaxy. in the future. I am a gorilla 10,000,000 years ago lying on the soft jungle floor, protecting my kin, banded together with the other males, but confusedly strive to understand what the points of light in the sky are.

Further onwards I travel while ironically expanding ever outwards.

I am me. I am me. I exist. I am. There is. It is.

I morphed into my surroundings. I actually could feel my nerves connecting to the atmosphere in my room, to the walls, the apartment, the earth, and FWOOM – I was bodiless. I literally vaporized into thin air. Too bad my eyes were closed, as im sure this could have actually happened.

Initially wrote a trip report on Reddit as well as erowid, but deleted it. Wasn't any good. Was still high when I wrote it. So I'll try to dive into it again. There was a classic psychedelic trip at first, and i was very happy with that. Was absolutely wonderful and renewed my love for psychedelics. The peak came quicker than normal but indeed, it was undoubtedly the peak. Just completely tripping face with your brain boiling over your skull like water over a pot on an oven. It was intense (but by no means unenjoyable), but I had been there before. But it turns out that what was the "peak" of my prior experiences was simply the come up of this one.

As for the new peak... i was god. I'll try to explain it, but take it with a grain of salt. This is what I tell people when they ask about it: "trying to explain what happened is like trying to explain the smell of roses to someone who has never smelled roses. But I can't use any scents. I can't even use words - I just have a pair of dice to roll." That is, words mean nothing for this.

  I merged with the One. I became all that is, and it became me. Time and space collapsed into an abstract memory. I was smaller than a quark but larger than the 93 billion light year across universe. "I" no longer existed. There was simply experience, no ego contemplating the experience. I was the tree falling alone in the forest with no one around to hear it. I was the Dao, the great stream of experience. My physical being evaporated like a wisp of smoke - I couldn't feel limbs, or bed, or sound, sight, taste or smell. I left that all behind. There was - is - no time, all is now. There never was a past and there will never be a future. Space was revealed to be a construct of our imagination. The only thing that is is existence, and that's what god is. God is not an entity. God is the fabric and structure of existence itself - therefore, we are all god, everything is god, and god is all. Thus, there can be no death, for there was no birth. We're all cut from the same cloth. But there was never any cut in the first place - that's the illusion of ego and identity, thinking there is a "me" that lives in a universe of "other." No, existence is all one blanket. And "you" are a circle someone drew with a pen on the blanket. It's a fucking illusion. You're just the blanket temporarily experiencing the circle. You came from the blanket and you'll go back to the blanket - no birth, no death. The blanket had always existed. The Big Bang? Our universe is just a circle on a bigger blanket. It never ends and never began. Every action of the universe is perfect in it's unfolding and not a grain of dust is out of place - it's a beautiful play, and life is front row tickets. As bill hicks said, "don't be afraid, don't worry, ever,  because it's just a ride." The purpose of us temporarily inhabiting these bodies is to force us to act. Recess in grammar school wasn't infinite, it was finite. Therefore we never fucked around - we got right down to playing dodgeball because recess was too short to waste time. Well replace recess with life, and that's why we're here. If we had unlimited time, we'd worry and procrastinate until the end of time. Biological mortality - cancer, aneurysms, plane crashes, old age - are whistles at the end of recess. But unlike recess, we have no idea when that whistle is gonna blow. So you gotta act now! Don't wait till you're retired. You gotta jump out of the plane now, fuck worrying if the parachute opens or not, just jump, for tomorrow an asteroid hits the earth. Lastly, what is this blanket of space, time, matter, experience, and consciousness? It's love, and nothing else. If you boil down any experience or action in anyone's life throughout all of human history, at its most distilled form (like quarks and electrons), is the choice between fear and love. Fear: lifelong experience of shit and when you die and wake up, you face palm because you wasted it. No worries, dive back in. Love: enjoy the one now, wake up and laugh at how great it was! And dive back in. There's no true purpose to anything - not getting into heaven or creating AI or reaching the singularity or making a utopia - because the universe just eventually collapses and starts again. So the only purpose to anything and everything? 1) love, 2) live in the now. And that's nirvana. As Buddha said "nirvana isn't some grandiose heavenly thing. It's just a hearty belly laugh." You laugh at how at how silly it is that you were ever scared, sad or angry... because you now realize you are, always have been, and always will be in a state of nirvana. That is, life itself is one long state of nirvana. It's just a matter of realizing it, delighting in it, and trying to spread it to as many people as you can throughout your life. The universe has an amazing sense of humor; life is the ultimate prank pulled off by a loving cosmic comedian. Choose Love, You Fucks.


I should tell you to stay in school and don't do drugs. But I opted out of school and ate 12 tabs of acid and have a better grasp on life than ever before. You don't have to drop out of school, just delay it. Whether that be taking a year (or three) off before grad school, or deciding to not do your homework for just one weekend - take some time and delay school.

So remember, kids.

Delay school, gobble an ounce of shrooms, and take 12 hits of acid - you'll thank yourself later.”

BREAK 5


**#2 The lessons I learned in bullet point form**

1️⃣Past Time:
1. Past does not create now. Ex: can read 80% of a novel and at any second decide not to finish; the past doesn't create momentum to push you forward. Now creates now, and creates past.
2. Past might be fabricated memory; can't go back to confirm, and is not made my past, thus no evidence. Ex: ancient religions deciding how the world came to be

2️⃣ Future Time:
1. Is not a determined thing pulling the present moment towards it. Ex: I have to finish this bad book, will be finished by 8pm, too late to have fun.  No, you can put the book down, go for a walk, and go out for beers with your friends at 8pm. Despite what you may have thought noon (read book), what actually ended up happening was determined by the present. Thus, the "future" was only known in hindsight
2. Not on a train track; more of rollercoaster blindfolded
3. May or may not control the rollercoaster: if you do control it, you know it doesn't have to be a straight track (book analogy), and can decide to go up, down, loop, etc
4. If you don't control it, you're blindfolded, so enjoy it

3️⃣ Identity
1. Can't ever know "I."
2. Whoever you see is not you...because you are observing. The second you realize that... who did the realizing?
3. No matter how far you dig, you're always a step behind, because the thing you seek is the thing doing the seeking
4. You can't see the camera because you are the camera
5. realize that you can't see you, that you are you, and anything you see is not you, but is an observation of "out there"
6. So you stop looking for yourself because you are you (the camera) and thus cannot see you (same camera)

4️⃣ Observation
1. Resign yourself to the fact that you're the camera and won't ever be able to see the camera
2. So Instead, you decide to do the seemingly sane and only option: observe what the true you is observing; observe what the camera is filming, which should be easy because you are the camera
3. But you find you can't see what you're observing, for the same reason you can't observe yourself: the very act of you looking to see what is being observed, is an observation itself!
4. Explained: Camera can't see itself because it's the camera, and anything it sees is not the camera, but an observation/filming/creating a movie. Furthermore, the camera ALSO can't step back and observe its own movie, because its very observations create the movie it's trying to observe. It can only look at a memory to see what it was observing at that time, but never during the present moment
5. Ex: a camera films Saving Private Ryan. It wants to step back and watch. It sits in the movie theatre, but now sees seats in the foreground and exit doors on either side of the screen. Well now the movie is a video of: SPR on the big screen, with seats in the foreground and exit doors on either side. It could watch *that* in a movie theater..but there would be seats in the foreground etc. Ad infinitum. The camera can watch the original SPR later on (like a memory), but never during the present moment as it happens.

5️⃣ Meditation
1. so you can't find the camera because you are the camera, and you can't see the movie because what you see is the movie. So what the fuck do you do?
2. Accept those facts, surrender yourself, and stop seeking the seeker and trying to observe the observations. Right?
3. Surrendering is an act (trying to surrender), and thus you're not actually surrendering but still putting up a fight.
4. Trying to accept the fact that there's nothing you can do isn't true acceptance because you have to try to do it
5. After the camera/movie realizations, you now know that to truly view reality, you must stop seeking the seeker and trying to observe the observer. But to resist those efforts is an effort itself.
6. So you attempt the next logical thing: don't try to surrender, don't try to accept, don't resist making an effort. Let them happen
7. Let them happen by refraining from attempting to do those things. But that's not LETTING them happen. You're still trying!

6️⃣ Reality
1. Whatever is happening right now, is IT.
2. Observe, think about observing, think about thinking about observing, etc. it's all IT
3. You don't have to focus on consciousness and reality. The fact "you" can recognize that "there is," is reality. That's IT. You can't step back and observe it
4. You can't try to focus, try to accept, try to be aware of it.
5. You can't fuck up and become distracted, resist, or be ignorant of it
6. Whatever it is you are doing, is IT. You are helplessly accepted, surrendered, resisted, and denied. You are it.
7. You're trying to lose your own shadow; turn around fast enough to see the back of your head in the mirror; surprise yourself; give yourself advice. You are IT and can't be anything but it

7️⃣The Ride
1. You can't find you ("I")
2. Can't observe what your consciousness experiences
3. Cant surrender or accept the things you have to accept and surrender to
4. Can't not surrender or accept the things you have to accept and surrender to
5. Now that you're helpless, you have to just go on the ride; the ride that's beyond your control.
6. The ride isn't under your control AND it's also not controlled by the uncontrollable force (time): the past doesn't push it with momentum, and the future doesn't pull it forward

8️⃣ The Ride
1. The ride is not pushed by the past or pulled by the future, but is moving and changing
2. The ride is moved and changed by Now, despite the present moment being static and immobile
3. The ride is Now and only exists in the eternal present moment, yet turns to the past and ushers in the future
4. You can't find your seat ("I"), because you're sitting in it (you = I).
5. You can't observe the ride because the ride is what you observe
6. You can't surrender or resist surrender to the ride because you're already buckled in
7. You can't accept the ride because you're already on it
8. You can't get off the ride because anything you do and direction you go then becomes the ride. And if you cant get off, you never got on
9. The ride: you can't get on or off, fight or surrender, find or lose, watch or ignore, try, not try, or don't not try, worsen or improve the ride.
10. You also can't not do any of the above


9️⃣ Nirvana
1. Time is always Now
2. You are always, only, and can't be anything but you
3. Reality is what is
4. So live your life; you don't have a choice
5. THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO, CAN'T DO, OR CAN'T NOT DO- and that, my friend, is nirvana.


**So whereas I knew in my head for a long time that I needed to get sober, lose weight, seek therapy, and turn my life around, I know knew it in my heart.**

BREAK 6

So the next day I prevented my own suicide. I knew if I mentioned to my parents that I needed help, there would be no going back. I had resisted this for a long time because I knew going home meant the end of freedom, drugs, and life as I knew it. Which in hindsight I look at like “...duh, thats good. Life as you knew it was LITERALLY killing you.” hahahaha

The experience from the psychedelics showed me I needed to live, and that if I managed to somehow get better, one day my story might be able to help others (so meta as I type this).

I didn’t have the courage to tell my parents I needed to come home. But then it arrived.

Where it came from, I don’t know. It surely wasn’t me. I didn’t say the words. Because when I did, I knew there was no coming back. After my brother, I knew there were no false alarms, no three strikes. It felt like the sounds left my mouth involuntarily, caused by an exogenous force, like getting punched in the stomach. I think John gave me some brotherly love and kicked me in the balls, forcing some air out: “Mom, I need to come home.”

She came and got me the next day, my dad picked us up at the airport.

August 1st 2016. Fuck.

Again, the next year could be a whole new post, but I’ll try and make it quick.

One parent was always home watching me. I had a therapist I was in daily contact with.

My first week I chose one thing: wake up before noon. Wake up in the AM. seriously. That was my daily goal. And i didnt even do that successfully! I had to start again...several times.

Once I finally got a week of that down, I added a new thing for…

Week 2: Brush my teeth everyday. Hadnt been doing that everyday. Gross, huh? So everyday I would wake up before noon and brush my teeth. And one day I didnt brush my teeth. So I had tostart week 2 over again.

Week 3: Wake up before noon, brush my teeth, and shave. This took a couple more weeks.

Week 4: Shower everyday. Another week: Clean clothes everyday.

Another week: Make my bed everyday.

Another week: Go outside for at least 10 minutes and breathe fresh air and feel the sun.

Another week: exercise.

But ya know what this exercise was? It was going for a walk...about 100 yards. Literally down the street. A football field in length. Fuck pushups. I could barely go for a walk. Physically, i was capable of much more. But thats not what growth is about. Growth is about subjectively pushing yourself. So whether you’re moving on up from the NBA to the Olympics, or adding shaving to teeth brushing, its about challenging yourself in your own capacities. Fuck everyone else.


And if you take little steps at a time, you can quite literally do anything. Some things may seem like accomplishments more worthy of praise from friends, family and society, like going from a C student living in a frat house to getting into medical school. But im much more proud of going from a degenerate to a….well a lesser degenerate XD


So find and acknowledge your demons: drugs, fast food, lying, deception, laziness, etc. Name them. Look them in the eyes. Grab your demons by the horns. And stare into the depths of its soul and let it know you will conquer them. You will kill them. Youll rip its horns out of its skull, hollow it out into a pipe, and smoke some dank weed out of it, while you sit on top of the Mt. Self, the hardest mountain to conquer. Your conquest might take a couple days, it might take a couple months. Fuck, i’m 16 months in and theres still no end in sight. But im not stopping.


But you can eviscerate that motherfucker in a blaze of scalding glory that makes a thermonuclear warhead look like a wet firecracker.

So whether youre brushing your teeth everyday or training for an ultra marathon, break it down into baby steps AND STAY HUNGRY. But not like fast food hungry. Wrong kind of hungry.

Navy Seal Jocko Willink says DISCIPLINE EQUALS FREEDOM

Find your own mantra, go buttfuck your demons, and scale Self Mountain.

So where to begin?

Just listen to Steve Jobs and Tony Robbins:

Jobs - trust the dots, because you can only see them connect in hindsight

Robbins - if you want to take the island, burn your boat.

And if you want to trust an idiot, I have some advice as well. My one and only piece of advice: meditate twice a day for 20 minutes. I got into medical school that way, I've lost 55 lbs that way. You won't understand until you try it. Any method, any app, any YouTube guided meditation. Just start today. I can't explain it. You can only know through experience.

Or you can take a shortcut and take some psychedelics in nature alone. But I advise starting with meditation.

Who the fuck am I kidding?

Eat a sheet of acid, gobble a bag of shrooms, hurl the blow up doll of caution into the hurricane winds of insanity, quit everything, dive into the void, and remember: choose love, you fucks.


“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.” - Hunter S. Thompson


“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.” - Terence McKenna


"The problem is, you think you have time." - Buddha