ArtFriend

Goodnight all...long day and many emotional issues.

Everyone, please take care

RobbyRobot

Thanks so much Stephen for your personal appreciations of and your continuing contributions to the outstanding richness and collective civility of mutual respect and compassionate shares inked into these threads. We're for sure doing sumthin' right! I'm so very satisfied and amazed with our ongoing successes.

I'm okay with Robert or Robby or Rob. Even Robbie works well enough. I'll likely continue to call to you by EndGame. I think the nickname is way cool.

I'm in total agreement that whatever creates our most stubborn obstacles in life are also advanced opportunities to eventually become reworked into a whole new lifestyle of just being happy to be alive for the sheer joy of being. It takes some time and effort to change up our challenges, and it is not accomplished without sacrifice. Nonetheless, the journey now and ahead is so much better than the journey into oblivion I once so earnestly and hurtfully walked. How sweet it is.

RobbyRobot

I'm of a mind to suggest you're not misunderstanding. We don't seek any conditional benefits when making amends. We do realize how benefits can manifest and such outcomes are welcomed. We do best with the process of amends by keeping to the singular purpose of taking responsibility for the fault, and coming to terms with any further obligations so as to be free thereafter from whatever consequences. Its the ending of the responsibility to the original harm done. Great care must be taken to not create new obligations which in turn would create new harms. We make amends to end the suffering for ourselves. We hope our owning up to our amends helps those we have harmed. We do our best to ensure no further harm occurs. The rest is really out of our hands, and rightly so.

Aellyce

(1) DOC: LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT (ayahuasca...)
(2) Addiction problem: alcohol

Unfortunately, I am still not sure whether (1) and (2) are mutually exclusive, overlapping, or wtf?! I know that they are related though

RobbyRobot

I think whatever is anybody's DOC is very much a subjective experience. Sure enough we have general commonalities for alcohol and common prescription drugs, as these have the most exposure to everyday people across societies. Street drugs less so.

Myself, I abused alcohol and drugs for the effect, be it joyful or hurtful. I unfortunately had great success in years of abusing and self-medicating.

I did plenty of LSD back in the '70's. Used alcohol to bring me down and acid to bring me up. I would go on trips lasting weeks. Needless to say, I didn't have any kind of a reasonable life. No job. No family. Just living on the streets crashing at one party or the next. Not something I'm proud about. Looking back, I was clearly headed for an early death.

Did I learn from my LSD trips? Yeah, I did. Could I have learned exactly what I know today without such trips? I doubt I could. Was it worth it? Well yeah, since I eventually quit and recovered. And if I had not recovered?? Well, I wouldn't be here that much is certain.

Nonetheless, I paid dearly for those past experiences. When the awareness geni is let out, there is no return to what was. An open mind is a wonderful thing and yet the most wisdom I have learned is that I actually know very little, and the more I learn, the more I realize just how little I know. I'm okay with all that, lol.

courage2

Haennie, I would be cautious if I were you about playing around with that distinction. It almost sounds like you're toying with telling yourself, hey, I never got addicted to my real DOC, maybe it's "safe" for me.

A couple of times in that bad old year 2013, I actually made overtures to procure drugs -- once coke, once ecstasy -- that I'd persuaded myself could be a safe outlet.

That is transparent idiocy.

I have no safe outlet in the form of a drug. Precisely because what I want from a drug is to blow my mind and I will use any drug to the extent that I physically can if it will do that for me, and I'll use it until it harms me and keep using it if I physically can. I would have kept using speed if I'd had money and access until it did more damage to me than it did; I would have kept drinking if I could have felt drunk even once anymore instead of feeling worse than dead and I drank even then for a long time. At this point as old and bitter as I am, I'd do heroin which was the one thing I just barely escaped, if I decided to start up again I might very well start there.

My point is, I don't know about you, but I'm not to be trusted with a drug, whether it's top choice or bottom of the barrel. I'm not even to be trusted thinking about it. That is a form of madness I can reject.

RobbyRobot

Psychoactive drugs are not usually themselves a prime causation for the kind of physical addiction which alcohol the drug so often creates. Certainly psychotropic drugs can create emotional and mental dependencies which are troublesome relative to the users quality of life.

My chronic alcoholism was in itself a fatal illness. My use of LSD and what else, an entirely different kind of threat to my well-being. I quit my use of LSD years before I quit my abuse of alcohol.

RobbyRobot

Beautifully said courage.

Aellyce

Yeah... thank you so much, Robby and courage. I have not done any psychedelics for.... 7 years or so? The very last one was in a lab, when I participated in a DMT study.I do crave DMT every now and then though. I did it as a lab subject a few years ago, and .......... I think I also mentioned here that I had a NDE at 19 yo, why they took me in the DMT study

It's nothing like the cravings for alcohol... and it's not addictive; just comes up every now and then. And it's not crazy at all.

EndGameNYC

Hi Robby.

I wasn't requesting that people here address me with my given name, just comparing my own experience to what you wrote about your name in a previous comment, repeated here.

For the sake of at least a semblance of anonymity on SR, I prefer EndGame.

RobbyRobot

It's been a great day for Melissa and I. Sherry, her mom is over for a few days. We've had a lovely evening sitting outside chatting and later enjoying huge slices of lemon meringue pie with included tiny white plastic forks. What fun, lol.

Love to you all and good night!

sleepie

As usual this is all way over my head, you all are so deep here.
Sorry I haven't much to say but
Robby and Ajax just wishing you well and every happiness in every moment together.

trachemys

Funny what you said about doing LSD with alcohol. I used to drink mescal with LSD or psylociben. Those days got really weird. I once lost contact with my body. I had sight, speech and hearing. That was it. No body.

I don't think anyone on these forums would deny that whatever we did, it was "fire for effect". If the effect was addictive, we became addicts.

Jeni26

I was really a lightweight...alcohol was my thing, plus some diazepam on occasions. I truly believe that if heroin was available to me, I'd be dead now.

But, I am addicted to ANYTHING that changes the way I feel, this has, and still does in some instances, include food (sugar), relationships that are potentially damaging for me, work, drama, caffeine, pain meds, smoking, the Internet, shopping....

I am constantly reevaluating my lifestyle to ensure I am the healthiest I can be. That way I stay one step ahead of my addictions.

Good morning and happy Sunday to you all ❤️

Aellyce

Sorry about this psychedelics talk, guys... but it got kinda funny. When I personally quit using was after a night my then-bf and I killed our brains overnight with a large dosage of shrooms in London during the period when they were legal there (I lived there during that time). My friend and I had to get up at ~4 am to go to a conference in another town, and we both had to give talks on that same day. It was brutal, but we did it.

That same evening, we were at a bar with all the other conference participants, talking science and other things. I got totally paranoid, ran back to my hotel room, my bf after me, he tried to calm me down, to no avail, I just fought with him and yelled that I wanted to be alone. So he left me alone and slept in his room that night.

Even two days after the conference, when we went back to London together, I was still out of my mind. We went out to a nice ethnic restaurant (something middle eastern, don't remember exactly), and I was still feeling weird. We went back to my place after, had two beers, and all hell broke lose for me. I wanted to throw him out of my place, was very angry, yelling, and then ended up crying uncontrollably for like 2 hours. Thankfully my bf tolerated all that very well, I guess he found it interesting. Anyhow, that was my last recreational psychedelic use, never did anything on my own afterward. I told the story to a few of my mental health professional friends later, and that was when I was first suggested to do psychoanalysis (without drugs of course). I did shrooms one more on my own a few weeks after, I think. Bad trip again.

Bottomline is that psychedelics never cured me from alcoholism. In fact, I slid into heavy drinking right after I gave up the psychedelics. This story was in 2004 I think. I only did the lab DMT experiment years after, but nothing since.

RobbyRobot

Morning y'all Sunny and warm 80F feels hotter. Likely rain overnight. Awesome.

No need for any us to apologize for sharing our stoned/drunken experiences. Its not like anyone here is promoting drug use. And it's not as if taking certain drugs be they themselves tolerable is a green light to get back to the days of daze. I'm all stocked up on artificially flying high. Besides, I'm already high enough on living clean n' sober on the back of my life experiences. Any of my old choices for drugs would really just bring me crashing down into a world of hurt and insanity real quick.

I really think our own personal experiences make all the differences we need if we have a mind and a purpose to move forward. Its not about how bad was it, its more about it was bad enough. Bad enough to quit and get on with living a life worth living.

My worst problem wasn't alcohol and drugs. And it wasn't even being addicted and all that goes with that horror. My worst problem was me doing whatever it took to not be me. Going out of my way to be anything but myself. Me fooling myself. Me refusing to standup and own who I was in my own eyes. Me not being me has always been my most challenging "problem" and of course, this still dogs me as my present challenges are forcing me to once again life a newly created lifestyle which preserves my inner life even while my physical life is now time-stamped. Hmmm. I seem to have acquired a best-before-date, lol.

Whatever. I still have fire in my eyes and a wry smile on my face. I'm still living the good life day after day just like I've always wanted to for so many years now. I don't "do problems" as they come up. I do better to just change my opportunities into solutions which position me into a lifestyle which simply surpasses "my problems" as if they don't even cost me anymore. Its awesome how a well lived life can often times chew up even the most dire problems and just spit them out like they just don't matter anymore.

In a lot of ways, I'm more free now within myself then I was before incurable cancer came to town to play the "Game of Life" with me back in April. Winner winner chicken dinner comes to mind.

Aellyce

Can you tell us about this more, only if you want of course.

Dee74

Your post resonated with me too Rob. I spent decades wanting desperately not to be me.

Anything I drank, smoked, sniffed or shot up was some attempt at escaping the terrible burden of being me.

D

RobbyRobot

You'll have to be more specific haennie. We have entire threads filled with devoted posts as to the process of one being authentic with ones self, and of not being, and of the qualified differences. I've been telling more for several threads now, yes?!

Alcohol and drugs gave me an out of being me. I took that out at 12 years old and *knowingly* destroyed myself in the bargain. Eventually, I didn't want to die all drunk and FUBAR. Sobriety gave me a new kind of out, altogether different than what I had when using, and altogether different than what I had before the consequences of my using. I was a completely defeated man both in the external world and more importantly in my own internal world. Nonetheless, I took that new out in 1981. I've always since been a good student of change and actions taken are better than no actions taken. I no longer want to be someone other than myself, and this responsibility to myself is my bottom line. My anchor in any storm. My true north. My inner tough inner core always solid and yet always in fluid change. I now refuse to not be me. I refuse to give up no matter the consequences of my responsibilities to myself.

This same responsibility will come up tomorrow meeting with my chemotherapy oncologist when I refuse to keep my PICC, request an installation of a port into my upper chest, and refuse to accept chemotherapy merely to extend my physical life by a few months here or there. I fully expect my oncologist to not support my actions. I also fully expect me to not be intimidated. She'll work with me or she will be replaced with an oncologist who does work with me. Its my life after all. I'm the gatekeeper and at the end of the day I'm responsible for my own life.

My oncologist is duty bound to remind me my expected life span is shortened should I refuse chemotherapy. I mindful of the science involved here. Its also true though that those who make use of chemotherapy risk dire side effects along with their cancer effects.

Chemotherapy makes good sense to me when the cancer is curable. Incurable cancer, by its own definition, can't be cured. Yes, my flesh can be treated to resist cancer for a time, but even then, eventually chemotherapy will fail me, and I will have also horribly failed myself for agreeing to make use of a strategy which cannot succeed in preserving my quality of life responsibilities and obligations. So in many ways, using chemotherapy for me is really just another way to not be me. Hmmm. This gives me pause, yeah?

I'm all for dealing with symptoms as they manifest moving forward. With this though we will target each symptom as best we can. No way I'm going to sign on for lets just shotgun my tumors and hope for the best. I'm not refusing chemical and medical help. I'm refusing to just be another generalized recipient of chemotherapy. If I don't stay responsible to me, I am headed to a place far worse than whatever cancer thinks it can do to me, you know?

Hey friend. Thank you for asking.

RobbyRobot

Nailed it. We're forever birds of a feather, mate.