Where is my-
THERE YOU ARE.
You can’t just get lost dude. No more fight clubs. You under strict supervision. Of a whole gang of people. Actual people. No, not the kind you can smoke. At least I don’t think. No, I don’t think we should. And so? Hm, if you put it like that- k, maybe one of them. ONE. Promise.
Don’t do MMA, kids. Ever.
I kinda mean it. Unless maybe you want to. Or hate your brain. Which I get. Kinda hard not to.
A recent meta-analysis in the Journal “Science, Fool!” shows that at least 69 out of 10 interactions with MMA matricopulists end in super severe ego death[0].
That’s close to 7 in 1 people. While I’m neither a statistic nor a clinic- I’d say that’s significant. Especially when you wake up in one. Missing your best part: Your ego.I know. I know. It sounds nuts. Entirely insane.
Almost as insane as the idea that human behaviors could possibly be personal.
Which I think calls for immediate capital punishment.
You what? Disagree? Unexpected. And kinda rude. Yeah you.
Ok, calm down. Truce. Yes, my archetype probably is “making y’all feel normal”. Which makes me proud and emotional. Wet, even. But since you’ve already wasted your valuable time reading this far into this garbage truck of an article, you may as well hear the actual argument. Not that I’d take it personal if you didn’t. *polite cough*
What if- [Carmina Burana starts playing] What if– we found ourselves, presently, in the situational circumstance, of having strayed (figuratively), too far (relationally) from the
GreekLatin etymon of the semantic “Person” subtree of the Logos, to ensure ontological purity of the bayesian priors we continuously feed our simian behavioral compiler chain?
“Hm?” you say? Let’s check!Person. From Latin: Persona. Per-sona. Per/sonare.
“The mask through which (per) resounds the voice (of the actor)” [Mouss, Marcel (1985). Category of the Person. Cambridge University Press. p. 14.]A mask. For what?!
The ego?
Egon??
Egon Mask?!I know. I know. Let’s breathe. For Africa. Beautiful. Great. Wow.
Now then. Let’s postpone psychosis over the fact that there’s an actor acting on some sort of script, for now. And focus on Egon, the mask.
If Egon would, hypothetically, act on its own, even re-act, or take things a certain way- What kind of mask would Egon be? Right, the mask of a crazy person. Or some sick DARPA experiment. That actually works. Both of which, by definition, allow for exactly one logical outcome: Capital punishment.
And there you go. Logical perfection. Impossible to argue against. Glad we agree.Hang on though. Hang on. *Secret document noises* What does this per-son thing map onto? What role is Egon playing, within whatever the word “mind” fails to describe? One of them IFS manager parts? Some shitty ego state? Or- no. It couldn’t be. Not- The self- itself?!
Reducing whoever is reading this, or at least is sufficiently delusional to identify as such, to some neurosemiotic proxy layer? Some stock photo PR tool pleb-actor? Reading thoughts off’ some invisible teleprompter within the simian inference emulation layer?
Hang on-
New teleprompter.
I-
I dream of you at night sometimes. (Uh?)
Riding the spirit of the depths. Only wearing your shadow. (Gross, wtf?)
I wish I could put you in touch with the sick fuck who thought of that.
So you could take it personal.
But you can’t.
Take it Egon.
FUCK I’m late for MMA.
[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_deathSilence kills. Keine Macht der Stille.
I had turned into some sort of stellar object.
As if the whole universe had collapsed into a single, mind-negating mother sun, rotating on its axis at an angle. A shifting, glowing, oozing, shimmering, dark, wet plasma of purple-green tint.
[This is the futile attempt of fitting a near-death experience into words. Stylized to be somewhat entertaining. Otherwise accurate, as much as it can be, across dimensions, and 13 years later.]
Most fucked up: the “sound”. A soul-shattering, rumbling roar of all-corrupting pressure waves, wiping any remainder of meaning from the faces of physics and reason. At least from first person listening position.
I watch myself, trying to perceive as little of myself as I can, for fear of going star-mad.
‘Rotating’ was an understatement. I’m spinning. At least now I am.
Am I picking up speed? Oh noes.
I refuse.
But spin faster.
The fucking sound.
And faster
As if the whole thing wasn’t enough without some bullshit rotational trajectory.
I’m scared squared.
Star-fear turns star-overwhelm.
And faster.
It just keeps going.
I fold my star-self into some inexistent corner to not interact with any of this.
It’s useless.
And faster.
A wobble adds to the rotation. I seem to overextend my own axis.
“The limit!”.
I think as we pass it.
And faster.
And faster.
And fucking faster.
I’m losing control.
The spin-wobble is raging.
And faster.
I start shaking, on top of everything.
Limitation and boundary start raping each other for a practical joke.
And faster?
Time to get violent.
I feel like I might explode.
And faster.
I have to admit, I kinda want to.
Faster.
A light beam shoots out of me.
It’s beautiful. And horrible.
And faster.
Another.
My surface starts breaking up.
And faster.
Everything starts to overlap in spasmic terror.
I blind myself.
This must be it.
Holy fuck.
Orgasmic saturation.
Time stops.
But no explosion.
Instead, I collapse neither inwards, nor backwards, but somehow into myself,
in a direction impossible to point to. After a split-second of blissful eternity, I
open my eyes. And find myself in a hospital bed, fully dressed.
It’s loud.
A homeless dude is screaming and shitting himself next to me while a group of male nurses fixate him in standing position. I consider enjoying not to be him. But I’m busy failing to process what just happened.
I challenge the definition of being present, it’s a formality at best. But enough for the crude baseline teleogy of not wanting to stay here.
In a moment of quiet, I casually put up the hood of my hoodie, get up and and walk out. No one stops me.
I half walk, half stumble forward, in what I hope is the direction of home. My vision is a morphing tunnel, as I try not to faint.
Checking bus maps for directions fails to yield any. After a while, I stop remembering what happens next. Apparently I actually make it to my door. Only to faint again and go back to the hospital. But I make it, ultimately.
[…]
Careful with SSRI/SNRI antidepressants, kids. Their therapeutic potential is disputed, especially weighed against their known list of side effects[0]
A 2018 meta-analysis of 522 studies fails to establish efficacy, with a mean 1.97 point increase on the 52 point Hamilton scale (3.85 percentage points) over placebo.
This low number seems to result out of their potential benefits being limited to a small subset of depressed patients, about 15%, according to another meta-analysis of 232 studies from 2022.
So if you really think you need them, make sure you’re in those 15%.
How? No idea. Ask your doc. Not that she/he would have any way to determine without trying a bunch on you until one seems to work. Based on subjective impression. Or not. Good luck.
Outside of this annoying science stuff- I definitely don’t recommend being as mentally inverted as me, and dosing them up under your own supervision, even when they seem to have no effect whatsoever, at all.
No matter how depressed you are. And maybe ask your psychiatrist if they really need to send you home with a 100 pack of pills in a state of questionable judgement and struggle to care for life.
And if you really feel the need to experience serotonine syndrome, try not to have it on a set of stairs. With metal edges. To collapse backwards onto. I’m confident there are better options.
And while I know it’s annoying- but be good to yourself. And stay safe. One love.
I tried about 7 or 8 different versions, to make sure I don’t miss any of these side-effects from first person view. One of my favorites was the hyper-realistic dreams I got from Amitryptiline, especially the one where I was dissecting dead unicorns, suspended in wells of pink goo, in front of the Cathedral of Chaos™, with Diablo himself.
Still seems like an actual memory in my head. Still gives me a chuckle.
Being distracted for a moment and suddenly weighing 10kg more was also cool, magical.
Ah, the list is long, and great. Maybe you should try them after all.
[This is just a decontamination of last year’s one. With some slight navigational shifts]
Unsurprisingly, it’s all C.G. Jung‘s fault.
This article was (, again,) inspired by the results he was able to obtain throughout Liber Novus (The Red Book)- by allowing a space of inquiry into possible meaning behind the visions/hallucinations of catastrophe he faced in 1913-1914, initially leading him to conclude he was schizophrenic, considering hospitalization.
Rather than giving into the blanket statement of sickness and psychosis, he instead decided to actively engage and examine his visions- and, by way of their symbolic exploration, not only managed to heal himself, but to discover a number of fundamental psychological concepts and insights[0], and to this day remain one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century.
[..]
I’d never done that personally. To consider there could be anything but insanity in the states of psychosis I experienced during the manic phases of Bipolar I/Schizoaffective disorder (which I’m blessed with since a near death experience via serotonin syndrome + sufficient traumatic brain damage to spend a couple months in silent darkness, until my brain stopped being allergic to sensory input. Boredom for another time though)
Giving into the classic left-brain hemispheric bias of western society, I subscribed to the church of reductionist materialism™ and considered my issue like a Windows XP bluescreen. You reboot and hope for the best. But you don’t look for meaning under fatal error at address 0x426699k.
Especially not when the contents of your psychoses leave you little to no capacity to work with, in the time they occur (as they seem too real to appear like reasonable targets for symbolic inquiry).
Or during the try-not-to-die period of their memory re-evaluation afterwards, which usually too focused around the realization and integration of loss and catastrophe, to leave much capacity for inner exploration outside of catatonic depression.
And when even that had passed, and usually had less than no desire to think back, more than I already did reflexively, with my mind being the sadistic bitch it usually was/is (with all due respect).
Which made for a general MO of: repress and stumble forward. Until and into the next phase. At least for the longest time. Until last year.
[-]
I’ve used to have reliably terrible manic phases. Hyperpsychotic, hyperparanoid. Angels, demons, snipers in the walls, agents wherever you look, all birds are drones, matrix/simulation/reality theatre perceptions- sufficient shifts across fundamentally held ontological axioms to ensure a horror trip of memories after finally coming down, and realizing the real world outcomes. Lost relationships, traumatized friends, obliterated work structures. Legal proceedings. Paper trails. Psychological institutions.
Integrating interactions with law enforcement-
When my Ex got bad advice from a psychologist friend in 2022 and used a false accusation of danger to get me reliably hospitalized (after the noobs great staff at Schloßpark Klinik let me go after 1 day despite obvious psychosis), it resulted in me being raided by the most elite local police force available, with a door explosion charge, a flash-bang grenade, and me suddenly facing the floor with a bunch of automatic rifles in my back, under a concert of macho shouts and me screaming,
The cops seemed a bit confused at how relieved I reacted, once I realized it was them instead of the evil murderous agents I had been expecting. Not the most common reaction to being raided I guess. The head of operations and I were in humorous conversation a couple minutes later, once he realized I wasn’t actually dangerous. At least not they way they thought. Good dude. ACAB SCAB.
Still took me about 2-3 weeks to lose the massively shakey legs I got every time when approaching my flat after the clinic. This trauma stuff actually seems to be legit.
I could go on, but why roll around in darkness. Stuff like that, and worse, on a expectable rotation every 2-5 years. And the terrible depressions afterwards, when the memories of glory, of the past weeks and months, are being re-evaluated into catastrophe, within days, in a wave of shame, loss and sadness, that always took me months to overcome.
Thank Gödel that I’m too much of a stubborn bastard to allow any reaction to suicidality- other than encouraging it to kill itself. Suck it, suicide.
But even the best times come with a distinctly bitter side-taste when they’re packaged with a reliable destruction timer. And no real reason to hope- Until, well, last year.
[-]
The impossible.
The first non-terrible phase.
Uh, what?
But it gets worse.
Somehow- good?
WHAT?!
It was nuts!
I kept trying to find the obvious cognitive buffoonery causing such a ridiculous tragedy of a thought. But from whichever angle I looked at it, arguably– more beneficial outcomes than bad ones. The first phase I felt better after than before. Reality under obvious cyber attack. Utter insanity.
(As for possible mechanisms: Hard to say. At best. Impossible more likely. There are only data-starved correlative guesses [1] to point at, and that may be all I ever get. But if at all resulting from attempted intervention, the overall signal seems to be: onward. And beyond. Whether optimized or not.)
Mania comes with dis-inhibition, usually (way) too much. Add psychotic delusion for a reliable recipe for terrible memories and real world losses.
But this time that second psychosis part was barely present. Occasionally, but mostly as a special guest. With the usual loss of constraint I was able to catch up on things I’d been postponing for ages, mostly: contacting amazing people from the past, where this or that emotional had kept me from doing so. For years. Decades.
And- amazingly- instead of bridging those time-gaps only to spread psychotic weirdness- actually reconnect! Which made for the unusual experience of ending up with more friends after a phase, than before.
Nuts!
Instead the usual horror and traumatic hate towards my manic self (and the months of depression alongside), I was genuinely intrigued with that guy for the first time. Looking up to him even. The ease with which he was doing things that I would consider emotionally impossible normally- it gave me a nut to crack. Especially with first-person memories of his actions:
Naturally starting random (but nice) conversations with people in the street/public transport/wherever, acquaint myself with my neighborhood, dressing up a little fun, or a lot even, instead of the usual grey and black blandness I usually rock, take decisions without analysis-paralysis, be generally in a less hostile relationship with the mind- but, most of all: Seeing no reason not to be fully and utterly honest about what I think and feel, even if uncomfortable. Especially not holding back on sharing any felt appreciation or affection to someone, but just as much with unpopular cognition, or outright conflict. And with a humorous lightness underneath for this not to result in physical altercation.
I- I was intrigued.
This was so much closer to my super-ego / the person I’d liked to be- Why not try to incorporate that? With the first person memories making it seem possible- Could I learn it in normal mode?
At minimum: worth a try.
A purse somebody had left in the free item section of our house, almost thrown away after the phase, is a now a training tool. The moment my other self found it, it was immediately second nature to him.
After the phase I was about to reflexively burn it with fire, in my trained post-phase behavior. A purse?! Cringe. But I had enough first person memories of some glorious moments with it, and girls seem to like it (at least the ones I like), plus it comes with a little dopamine hit of daring to be silly, and reminds me of my guideline to not take myself serious. Ever.
So I start wearing it. Core lesson: Nobody really gives a fuck. And if they do, I enjoy it. Either some cute/funny interaction, or some confused/triggered looks. Besides the mini dose of self-respect for allowing myself to be silly. Plus aesthetic superiority, clearly.
I was intrigued even further. What else could I import?
So I map out all the aspects of my other self that I appreciate and look up to:
– honesty
– openness
– decisiveness
– silliness
– an absence of fucks given over things that one shouldn’t give fucks about
– non political-correctness
– self-deprecation wherever possible
– courage to Jesus myself for what I believe in
– a habit of telling you, yes you, how much I love you, as much as I can, even if weird
– an appreciation for a sort of gay-militant aesthetic (watch out)
– [..]
.. and start working on incorporation into normal mode.
I can’t (yet) tell you what the outcome will be, but so far it at least doesn’t seem to hurt. At all. The honest / open part pays off the most, as I used to struggle with that a lot. Deeper connections, better communication, a bit of self-respect in sprinkled over the inner ocean of self-hatred and -denial. All this gross stuff. But worst of all, I’m like, *puke* happier, the more I do it. Disgusting, I know.
[..]
I even found more tools for inner work, within the newly discovered mental landscape opened by my homeboy Carl G., where before I only saw neural pathways and receptor sites and other chemo-electrical neuro-soup stuff.
While the Red Book opened my mind to the potential value of exploring it, my mental landscape is decidedly too different to whatever Mr. Jung’s problem was, to directly apply a lot of the methods derived from his grand-archetypal, biblically-themed mental interactions. I found a more compatible approach in Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems model (aka IFS).
Its an exploration of assumed personality sub-parts with different functions that can be interacted with (if this makes you cringe, like me initially, try considering them a functional interface for interaction, and restrict your judgement to wether this seems helpful or not. The general theme is also found in parts in approaches like ego states– or Schema Therapy).
While I’d like believe that there are little people in us all, maybe the whole thing mainly seems to come down to whether considering them real enough could allow for integration and healing through interactions.
At least for me it for sure doesn’t seem to hurt. The opposite if anything- And it’s becoming a recurring experience that I share this “it’s like a hotel in here” kind of perspective/approach with people, and they end up finding it more helpful than most other shit they tried therapy-wise. Like me. ba
There’s a variety of recorded sessions online, some of them very striking [2].
But obviously don’t listen to some nutjob on the internet and do your own research or ask someone with a worthless university degree.
With this we’re back in the now. You, me, right here, right now. I can’t believe you read all that shit. Sorry for that.
Otherwise I have little regrets for this phase-iteration. Kinda the opposite. Let’s see if my next phase wipes that disgusting smirk right off’ my face again. As it should, maybe.
But if this is really a trend- and boy I hope it is- I might even be able to lose that free taste of bitterness when looking into the future. Imagine. What a ridiculous concept.
Wish me luck bitcoin world-domination whatever’s appropriate. For yourself as well. And thanks for stopping by.
Oh! And, even if it’s annoying, be good to yourself. Please. One love.
[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung#Key_concepts
Not only that, there’s a bit of a case for his visions to have been precognitions of upcoming World War 1, although it is by no means my intention to insult any followers of the materialist religion.
In any case, the idea of Jung celebrating the news of war as a sign of his sanity gives me a bit of a psycho-historic chuckle.
There were a number of people who suddenly started having such experiences in that time. But [citation needed] and I’m too lazy right now. Some are mentioned in Shamdasani’s introduction to the Red Book if you feel like digging.
[1] The reason behind the dampening of psychoses will likely stay opaque, since I didn’t take many initial measurements, but there’s data that bipolar can in part be characterized by deficits in inter-hemispheric communication and certain types of right brain malprocessing ( https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bipolar+hemisphere+review ). I looked into a way to attenuate, I knew that doing unfamiliar movements with the body is conducive to neural growth stimulation, so I searched in that direction. And indeed, there’s data that the size of the corpus callosum (that thicc slug that connects our brain hemispheres with each other) is considerably larger in left-handed and ambidextrous people:
Paper: hopper1994.pdf
So for the last two years I’ve been training myself for ambidexterity. I can now brush my teeth with my left hand, use my phone (left pocket ever since), use sharp kitchen knives, eat with sticks, shave myself, play with my kendama, jerk off, stuff like that. All on the left. It’s hard work but fun to progress. And I notice that there are slight emotional shifts depending on which hand I use. It’s interesting. Plus if my right hand is ever injured I can still pet a pigeon. And maybe do other things. But that’s the focus.
To my friends enemies from Abschnitt Area 51, Wedekindstraße 10, 10243 Nellis Airforce Base, Groom Lake:
In case I didn’t misread your faces, and you do enjoy a bit of dirty darkness now and again, (like I would never), make sure you don’t click this link, not only for legal/spiritual reasons: https://unsafe.run/filth.exe/0FB4.mp3
You’d never not forgive yourself. Unless you would.
Thank you Shame on you for the cinematic raid that never happened, the good laughs rhethorical violence at the end- and of course, your service crimes against humanity.
Be good arbitrary to yourself, and stay safe undefined. One Zero love.
The discipline of Do Easy.
Old Bull Lee William Burroughs’ masterpiece.
Official replacement for The Bible.
Beginner’s Manual.
Take your time, Kid.
How fast can you take your time, Kid?
And turn D.E. into its final form?
Stuffed into the sound of the sound of music?
D.E.-ing to the beat. D.E.-ing in cringeworthy musical element mimicry.
Cleaning the flat is a matter of logistics
a $5 Michael Jackson wannabe homevideo
Yesterday I talked to a friend who works in a high pressure environment and is currently struggling with burnout/depression, which I wasn’t aware of. Something about the way she wrote was noticeably different. Noticeable not in a rational sense, but by the feeling the written words left in my body. Unusually distant and reduced, compared to how I normally feel after reading her messages.
I told her that, and asked if everything was ok. She told me about her struggle, but couldn’t understand how I was able to notice something was up, based on two short pieces of text. I told her that all I did was to notice how my body felt while I was reading her messages. A scientific discussion ensued.
[0] My good friend perplexity was so kind to summarize the current state of research here:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/please-summarize-the-current-s-_3VPpcIgT_WOkhE.srmk1g
[1] This is the way I found into this kind of practice, given my western upbringing and the plight of reductionist materialist thinking, I needed a ‘scientified’ (‘scientificated’?), despiritualized approach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TeWvf-nfpA&t=18m08s (Base conception – Jon Kabat Zinn)
https://youtu.be/5TeWvf-nfpA?t=36m42s (MBSR in depression – Jon Kabat Zinn)
I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy
I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid
I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
As though you had died
One word then, One smile is enough
And I’m happy;
Happy that it’s not true
Something would like for me to be still?! That’s fucking creepy dude! Still yourself silly! 1 vs 1 stillness battle in front of your door, fool. You got my number, holla.
Arrangements are for losers. Like this guy
Relax. It’s just a 4 min piece about a purse-wearing gay cop in Baltimore called The Queen of the Northern. With a probably superfluous fanny-pack tangent. And a request for him to keep it sexy. Spoiler warning I guess.
The rest of the episode is complete trash, definitely don’t ever watch it. It almost got me to think police are people. It was horrible.
