meth
less seriously, factorio
I feel very lucky I was already sorta spooked by it when I was at the point where I was willing to try. Give no hecks about drawing blood or vaccines or whatever, but the moment I'm doing it without a professional around and the inherent risk of a bubble just made me unwilling to even try. I always used alone and I wasn't stupid enough to want to try it by myself without someone who knew what they were doing, of which I knew zero. But even with ket, where you just smash that into your muscle somewhere (ok, not like that, but you get it) I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It was like a line I could never cross. Not for anything. Boofing is my life.
I respect this post, but it seems naïve. It is a very naturalistic view of a chemical process. I find this post very profound but not in a way that is particularly appealing to me. I have gone as far as ayahuasca and the like (even as far as brewing it myself, the proper way, over 10 hours, and having to start over once, refraining from everything and meditating the entire time). Using proper ritualistic measures.
Did they have exceptional, incredible moments of exaltation in my thinking?
Yeah they totally did
Did they put me in situations I am glad i was in and made great choices (or bad ones) that turned my life in places I could never imagine?
sure they did
Did I make friends I never would have otherwise?
probably more real ones. probably some who just liked me because we both did stims and I they were attracted to me
Do I love your Daoist tendency that seems very oblique? Yes. It's great. I love you for that. Stay on that path. But there can be dark and light.. but you may be underestimating just how dark some of this can get, and how much light you are obscuring and calling technicalities on. Is a transparent screen shadow dark, or light? It's not stopping the light. But it is shading it to make it appear less light than it is. If you get my bad analogy.
but as the wise Flobots say, this is just what I wonder in contrary to your post;
(I see) "The shadow of another person living parallel,
(I see) A glimpse of somebody riding on a carousel
(I see) A vision of a better life than I chose today
(I remember) The time you told me that love never goes away"
But it seems like it did.
Your post is thoughtful and hits a few good points. Mainly I was drawn to what you said about naivety. I wouldn't call it naivety in my opinion. For me I had to choose between forever being defined by that darkness you talk about, or letting go of it. Its not that I don't recognise the darkness is real and it can get really dark because that would insult my own journey, one with severe childhood trauma and a very complicated backstory. I have been there. I just choose to see the light and view life in a way where the lens is not skewed towards the darkness as a projection of my own experiences. We project our past experiences onto the world and while this is natural and healthy in most cases, we also project what has happened to us onto the world as well and that is when things get complicated and we create the reinforcing effect that keeps us tangled up in our bullshit.
Take relationships as a good example. When you have been through a lot and if you're not careful to be aware of your baggage, you dump it onto your partner. Its no different with drugs or anything else. You dump your experiences onto whatever is at your current center of attention. You project and you inadvertently reinforce the narrative behind the past you project into the present and you can be sure the past repeats itself. You remain just a "druggie" or a "fucked up person" in the relationship, or in a more general sense, you remain inflexible and rigid in your capacity to see beyond these limiting belief systems and self constructs.
Why repeat the past? Why not reinvent a more beneficial way to see things you once were consumed by? They say in trauma therapy you have to first relive the trauma and then attempt to return a place before it happened in order to restore peace and relinquish a sense of self before the storm. You have to recognise there was a process where you were traumatized and then you clinging to the suffering of the trauma. It doesn't mean that life before the trauma never existed, because it did. You are so afflicted by the trauma you can't see life in any other way other than what happened to you. What about before what happened to you? Can you not return there?
In order to do that you have to regain a certain amount of innocence and perhaps even naivety. You have to return to a state in which you were not possessed by a particular dark period in your life. It might be before you chose to take drugs, might be before you chose to hook up with a psycho or when a family member abused you. Sure, our capacity to defend and protect ourselves creates armor but when that armor drowns us and all we can do is defend and protect ourselves, that's not living. You are simply waiting for the next bad thing to happen and for history to repeat itself. You become just a fighter. When you look at the implications of that and the psychology, you are anticipating a threat all of the time and your defense is all you have ever known - the darkness. And so you fight with the world, others, yourself in the hopes you win over the voices in your head and the graphical storyline that comes along with it. That's not living. You have to learn to stop fighting eventually and come home to yourself.
If you choose to focus your attention on undoing the damage and fixed belief systems and conditioning, you naturally gravitate to a life that does not revolve around the inner world you once knew. You start thinking differently, start acting differently, start feeling differently. Just like when you leave an abusive relationship or give up an addiction, you naturally gravitate to a more beneficial place. But where is that place? Its the place you've always known. Its the place that exists before the storm. Its the "you" you forgot about all those years ago. You have simply restored access to the vast inner resources that exist when you are integrated, open to experience and closer to the core of your being. That's where the riches are.
There is the journey. And then there is the return. At one point do we return? 20, 30, 50, 70, 80? It is the journey of life and eventually we must return to where it all started because eventually we have no other choice. Why not get the process of doing that out of the way as soon as possible so you are free as best as possible to see life in ways that do not obscure us from best living it? That is a choice we must make and we make it regardless. Or moreover, we are forced to make it when the time comes.
I'm not saying be a naive fool. That is dangerous. I dont prescribe to a Pollyanna view of the world either. I see the darkness and I have lived in it, and I still do. I was born in it. My life sent me to be forged in the fire. I have seen some shit! I see myself as a light and I try and embody peace and compassion and openness and acceptance. I seek to connect. I don't see the forging of myself in the fire as something I should cling to or use as the only thing I can associate to my identity and sense of self. It is me but it is not all of me. I am that but also I am this, this, that, this, etc. Likewise and with the darkness, I am indeed the darkness but I am also the light and everything in between. Neither one is who I am while both of them at the same time define me. I am strong but also weak. I am wise but also foolish. I am corrupted but also innocent. I am broken but also complete. I am all that destroyed me but I am also all that heals for both are within me.
And within that, endless possibility.
I can utilize the wisdom of my life experiences whilst also not being imprisoned by them. I can acknowledge the darkness and I'm not afraid of it but I also know the light is a state of mind away. Today I prefer to veer towards the light. You get a better view and its warmer and better shit tends to happen
