Cow

Thanks CAL, I just go for massage yesterday.

Robot, no offenses, but I expecting little bit bigger reveal. Like, "OMG! You in a pod in the Matrix!" level reveal, not something I already knows! Jesus. Robots these days. Hyperbolic. Anways, okay, hands over cure to anhedonia with concurrent addictions.

RobbyRobot

No offences taken. I'm thinking though haven't you repeatedly sworn off all other stims? And haven't you decided that going cold turkey on alcohol and caffeine is your present goal?

My read from your posts is you seriously want nothing to stim your Borg brain. By want, I mean you believe all stims will put you into mania so such stims are off the table for you, yes?

Leaving your Borg brain un-stimmed just as much gets you back to drinking too though, and so...

here we are

trachemys

And here we are. starting to read like a hollywood script.

RobbyRobot

And speaking of pods...

Have you ever tried a good soak in a sensory deprivation tank? I'm wondering what your Borg brain would do when faced with itself?

http://adnanthetraveller.com/adnanse...privationtank/

A random link I googled

Cow

I not swear off all stims. But I know through extensive trial that caffeine (as well as many other stim I has tried) push me to mania, which always lead to mania/alcohol cycle, so that not good. But if was stim that alleviate Borg brain without sending brain "one toke over the line, Sweet Jesus" then, of course, would be worthy for experimentations.

Getting off caffeine/alcohol is goal because medical consequence is now unavoidable, and even before that, these two has keep me in 30+ year purgatory of constant try to modulate my mood but result only in pretty much lifeless existence.

I has try many chemical, supplement, herb, diet, etc. I has done years of research and reading anhedonic forums and traditional psych therapy and such. Anhedonia extremely difficult condition to find relief for. Peoples will take street drugs or cocktail of 8 psych meds or try to obtain experimental lab chemical from Russia. We all desperate to find relief ...but rarely anybody does. In conclusion, it a bitch.

PS. I never does isolation tank -but I does Sweat Lodge, Sufi Twirling, Holotropic Breathwork, EMDR, and ritual where you sit in desert in dark alone inside tiny circle for 6 hour. Is kind of like isolation tank. Is all design to create alter state of mind. Had some interesting experience but nothing of lasting therapeutic value.

PSS. As for Borg brain ...you not even want to know what in there.

RobbyRobot

Is your mania like racing thoughts and elevated moods and emotions? Like as in you are artificially "happy"? Or is something else?

Good to know you haven't forbid suitable stim, if such could be found. You yet have a remarkably open mind when weighed against your years of anguish and Borg brain emptiness.

RobbyRobot

I think isolation tank is remarkably different since it doesn't allow for external stimulations? All the stuff you describe above takes enormous amounts of internal energy to participate. Perhaps isolation may be a relief?

Borg brain. I have my own experiences with my own Borg brain, you know? We are different, and yet we are the same on enough levels to understand firsthand what is Borg brain, yeah?

Cow

I wish Robot. Mania is just crazy brain which manifest intense compulsion to drink to come down from crazy brain. It not even racing, is just more like, untenable. Is hard to describe. Like frantic boiling over about nothing. If you ever OD on meth is closest feeling to that. Just like you brain about to chew it way out you skull.

I not oppose to isolation tank, but if purpose is to know "what in there" I already know "what in there" and that trip never end well.

RobbyRobot

A compulsion to drink. Hmmm. If you've worded accurately, compulsions can be moderated from within. Do you perhaps more mean you've historically used alcohol to negate your mania? Perhaps you don't see how your words are otherwise describing chronic alcoholism?

I wonder if you can see how your mania maybe dancing with your alcoholism?

RobbyRobot

No. In fact, purpose is to know not more, but know less. To be free of self while still inside yourself. When I was in my plaster casts, I went crazy. Nonetheless, like a hurricane, there is stillness in the center. Those accumulated years of being locked in plaster, in bed, in room, in house, trapped, undid me. Ruined me. And yet, in the center of that hell, I found my freedom to zone out. A nothingness of self really saved me back when.

So yeah. A tank experience for you would be to achieve a peace with nothingness which is different than "knowing what is in there"

I know Borg is nothingness. I'm saying there is a soft chewy center within that nothingness...

trachemys

There isn;t

RobbyRobot

Yeah, well, I used to believe that too. I was blinded by my own subjective limitations. I pushed past all that and found what I'm talking about. We all have what we have to share, yeah?

trachemys

We may mean different things. I mean: there isn't a soft, chewy center within that nothingness. Only a hard kernel

RobbyRobot

Perhaps.

Soft chewy center is metaphor for peace with self. Hard kernel metaphor, not so much...

There is more to nothingness of self than there is to objective external realities of perceived self, is my experience. Just like dark matter and dark energy make up most of known universe, who knew, eh? Now is common knowledge amongst respectable physicists. Is only proved by mathematics with gravity, but nonetheless, still the math works even though observation of actual darkness is as yet impossible.

There is more to our nothingness than we have as yet imagined, imo. Sometimes the only things we can find are the things we are looking for, and so sometimes its better to stop looking, and from this vantage point, see what we can see.

Can one see what one cannot see? I suppose it matters wholly on who is not seeing?

Cow

Nothingness is in itself a peace. But for me is not relaxing or serene peace, is simple resignation to empty Borg existence peace. Still, would be very easy for me to does nothing but drift off with my nothingness for even more decades toward that final nothingness sunset. Maybe that best I can do, but not seem like much of a life. My nothingness not soft and chewy. It just blank, dead, vacant --not anything pleasant such as a delicious caramel.

You guys (and Robots) with you semantics! When I says "compulsion" to drink, I talking about intense, untenable, progressive until relieved, physiological directive from brain. Is difficult to explain. Is you ever has seizure or been victim of violent attack? If you has, you know is period of time that you brain gonna completely take control of you. Is no, "Hmm, is I just dancing with this notion of reacting this way or that way. Hmm?"

courage2

I'm sorry, Cow, that you feel your compulsion to drink is physiological and completely controlling. I think that's your belief in the compulsion, more than the reality. That doesn't make it less compelling, it only locates the compelling idea in the same place as your ability to reject the compelling idea. I don't think your compulsion is different from any other alcoholic's -- if I accept the idea of me drinking, the bottle is in my possession without any other apparently self-aware thought from the part of my mind that might theoretically resist. No, as you say, dancing. The alcoholic mind appears to take over. That's why I don't give it the keys to the car, anymore.

The fact that you continue to use caffeine despite your conviction that it excites a mania with that compelling idea is evidence that your dissatisfaction with your non-manic brain state is very strong. So I kind of agree with RR that the longterm plan needs to include substitute stimulation. But I don't think you can assess what might provide a substitute until you've stabilized off both substances for a while.

That's really all I've got. Accept a period of miserable sober vacancy. Or drink yourself slowly to death -- because most alcoholic deaths do take a long and painful time coming. I don't think there's a paradox or even a very difficult question, seen from the outside. Seen from the inside, all alcoholics know that given the choice between a miserable short/long road through unspeakable personal degradation to an alcoholic death, and a period of uncomfortable personal recovery followed by increasing possibility and even I will say hope, we have a difficult time choosing. It's the nature of the beast.

I hope you choose Door B & soon

courage2

As for soft-chewy peace vs. hard kernel, I wouldn't worry about that too much. The nature of the sober inside remains to be uncovered through a life that I hope is long and rich with events, associations, and meaning-making.

trachemys

Dark matter and dark energy are but the latest in a long line of "truths" that science has expounded. Note that these "truths" change regularly. As far as the root of reality goes, we don't have a clue. We have theories.

As far as our particular plagues: well,, we have us.

trachemys

And BTW, I love you all.

RobbyRobot

Wow. You guys are depressed. Seriously. Its like having a joyless conversation that keeps folding back on itself. I'm unsure your struggles are justified by your results. I hate to say this but perhaps getting over yourselves might be helpful?

There is talking the talk and walking the walk. There is a lot of talk in these threads. Not so much walking what is being talked though? Too harsh?

Experience is everything.

At the end of the day, we have what we have for any of us. I understand tough times. I also understand how nothing is possible if everything is optionally argued against itself, lol.

Perhaps I'm intolerant, lol.