flowboy

Nobody has tried it, you're at the cutting edge. Please try and post results. I will be following this topic closely Cocoa butter contains little to no theobromine or caffeine, so shouldn't mess with your trip. I'd be careful with chocolate for that reason.

Smoking = Pickup = Acceptance = Love I just saw a hot girl in the supermarket and was completely triggered. A simultaneous impulse to: Say hi, make conversation and remember/prove that I'm cool and likeable nowadays Hide, run away, knowing I am not showing up fully, and being ashamed of that. Everyone can see that I'm not showing up fully, and I'm ashamed, but but being comfortable in that. Suddenly I project this person as judging me, being above me, seeing how small and flawed I am. Usually when this strong trigger happens, I do either of these two things: I make conversation or I don't. The times where I make conversation, it doesn't matter whether it leads to anything, it's an experience that proves I was accepted, and I am so excited and proud of myself for breaking through, that my friends hear about it for days. This also happens when I have sex with a new person. It's proof that I was accepted by somebody who to me represents people from the past who didn't accept me, and I rave about it for days. Or, option number two, I don't make conversation, and I feel shitty about myself for the rest of the day. Which is also not normal. To see someone vaguely attractive, and then feel bad and ashamed for not approaching them for the rest of the day. When the opportunity is very clear, for example I have nothing urgent to do, and the person seems unoccupied, this shame spiral is very pronounced. When I see someone in passing, where there is not a clear opportunity, for example someone on a bicycle, I get a little hit of shame that affects me unconsciously. I didn't get an opportunity to prove that I would be accepted. Every attractive woman creates a tiny hit of shame and unacceptance. It happened in an instant. I chose to not say hi, as I usually don't nowadays, and I immediately felt such a strong impulse to smoke, that I asked two random people for a cigarette. As she's rolling it for me, I make conversation. I'm not bad at making conversation anymore, but it's still coming from an endlessly low place. I feel so low and lost talking to this person, it's like I'm standing at the bottom of a deep well, and she's at the top looking down. I fidget and hide, I don't make good eye contact. I want to escape. Upon lighting it, I realised why I do it: it's a patch over the feeling of being accepted, which I lost. When the chemical enters my bloodstream, for 30 minutes I now don't feel ashamed and inferior, and I have no problem saying hi to strangers and feeling comfortable talking to them.. I prove this to myself by saying hi to someone on the way home. No shame or anxiety. Just calm, happy, 'why not' type of feeling. Addiction is a compensation for something you lost. In people who have experienced a traumatic event or period, the serotonin system and/or dopamine system don't work so well. For me, it's the base sense of acceptance that I lost. This explains why making a short conversation with a hot girl caters to the same craving for me as smoking a cigarette, which otherwise makes no sense. But it provides me with the neurochemicals that someone without this kind of trauma has by default. For 30 minutes, it's all okay and I feel accepted, and I can talk to anyone without a problem. I've been bullied quite heavily and for a long time. I've been pushed down and beaten in primary school. One time, boys conspired to lock me in a closet for an hour, and after that I cried, and a girl in my class, the only girl I somewhat trusted, saw me crying and called out to my other classmates: "If you want to see Erik cry, come watch now!" I was alone and could trust no one. Accepted by no one. In high school, there was a girl I was madly in love with (crushing on hard, let's say, I was 13). I wrote her love letters and gave her roses, which were met with disgust and insults. She called me a nerd and started to be mean to me online, telling me I had no life, I had a boring life, I was a boring person yada yada. This same girl stood by and watched while I was beaten and abused by an older guy in school, he pushed me down and I tried to kick him, which didn't work. She stood there and laughed. It's really not that strange that I found a solution in smoking cigarettes: the nicotine made it bearable how alone and unaccepted I felt every day. It enabled me to talk to people while I smoked, because under the influence of nicotine, I didn't feel this pain temporarily. Suppose I would heal this somehow. And I didn't project a mean, unreachable, superior high school girl onto every attractive woman. And suppose I would not wonder about whether she'd accept me. Suppose I would just know that she probably would accept me. If I would just have this knowing, that she'd probably be delighted to have my attention. Then there would be no reason to prove that she would accept me, either by talking to me or by having sex with me. Probably there wouldn't be such a massive dopamine hit associated with it. Would I still crave sexual diversity? Would I still fantasize about living in a castle full of women who accepted and adored me? Would I still fantasize about orgies? Or anonymity? Orgies and anonymity are basically two ways to sweep the issue of acceptance off the table. When I think of an orgy, it becomes an acceptance orgy in my mind. There's no way to predict who I would be without this trauma.

Why I like cleaning: It teaches me to focus on the process instead of the result, because the result is never satisfying or good or lasting more than a few moments anyway It allows me to listen to podcasts while still doing something useful It teaches me humility, because it's one of the most basic jobs, yet I can't do it well It invites me to talk to this pain body that feels frustrated, disadvantaged, enraged It makes me uncomfortable. It's good to do uncomfortable work every day.

Why I hate cleaning: I can never do it to a level I'm satisfied with. Some stains just stay. What's the point then. It costs a lot of time It's not exactly playing to my strengths, in fact it's a waste of my time I'm not efficient at it It makes me wet and uncomfortable and feel incompetent The first person I'm going to hire is a cleaner. Specialists are so much better at it. Stupid wasting many hours on it and doing it wrong anyway.

Stuck to the no smoking. Watched youtube early in the day though. That was a mistake. Also had one coffee. Don't give up too many things at once. Tomorrow: video free day and entering day 3 of the smoking quit. After day 3 I expect to be fine. I/we need some plant medicine.

First stage of quitting smoking: a very, very fuzzy mind. Second stage: intermittent moments of sadness without a reason

How can the absence of kids or family be experienced as not free? Could you elaborate on how they view that? I don't see how having a family would make someone more free to do anything.

Thank you, that was satisfying to read

Yes, mescaline did this for me too. Quite shocking. The nasal passage was so open, that I felt like I had a giant hole in the middle of my head, that wind was flowing through. It was connected to a sense of strength and purpose, though. How old were you when that happened? Sounds like that was a traumatic moment, and conditioning was created that manifested psychosomatically. I'm sorry to hear that. That is not a right way to treat a child. They should have been loving and understanding towards you in that moment, but instead they were cold, unloving, and made you ignore your feelings and disown your experience. Whenever a child is being made to reject part of its own experience (in this case: you parents telling you that your lack of appetite is wrong), it creates a split. The part of you that experienced that which was deemed not okay, is now pushed into the shadow. And any experience it has, is also pushed down. When we push down something we are not allowing ourselves to experience, it can cause a blockage in the body. Numbness, pain, inability to experience pleasure in that area, or a literal blockage. Maybe that's how your nose got stuffed. It's just a theory, but it seems reasonable to me that you should treat this as childhood conditioning, incurred by this moment that was experienced as traumatic at the time. (Be careful not to minimize it. It doesn't matter what you as an adult consider traumatic. It only matters how it was experienced at that time) If that's what it is, then when you go through the process of releasing that conditioning, it could very well clear up your nose too. You won't find a medical cause in that case. Some avenues to consider: Primal therapy (I had great experience with this) Ayahuasca Body work Regression hypnosis Any therapist or healer who you trust and who specializes in childhood conditioning (not just any psychologist)

I love his podcasts. They often make me emotional to the point of tearing up. Taught me some good things too.

These interviews make it seem less scary: To answer the question: my fear of death is a 2/10 But I'm sure that should I be in danger, it will jump up quite a bit in the moment

Being on dependency creating drugs - mild or not - every day, means having detox symptoms in the morning. This goes for caffeine too. Amount doesn't matter as much as the regularity of it. If it's a daily habit, there will be a dependency. Apart from that: it's September. Do you have a pattern of feeling worse during the last 4 months of the year? In that case, you might have seasonal affective disorder. I have it. It's basically mild depression with anxiety that creeps up on you when the days get shorter and cloudier.

Following!

Committing to a video free day made me feel much better yesterday. I got work done and felt calmer. Today I feel even more stable, so I decided to do it again. Just got rid of cigarettes and coffee, don't need them anymore. I'll keep drinking some green tea over the next couple of days.

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@EntheogenTruthSeeker Good move! If you really want a calm and optimistic mind, try giving all politics related content a rest, too. Maybe even quit talking politics. Or even holding political opinions. Any political opinion is ultimately untenable, anyway.

How come you can't, and I can? My YouTube recommendations are mostly videos about cute animals, functional medicine, health, psychedelics, and interesting speakers like Terence McKenna and Ram Dass. It sounds like you're a willing victim of the algorithm. Simple fix: only click on what makes you feel good and relaxed. Anything that is recommended which makes you feel anxious or otherwise bad, click "not interested". The algorithm will learn that you don't care about being scared or depressed anymore. Do that for a week and see what that does for you. But Erik, don't you think it's important to know what's going on in the world? Aren't you sticking your head in the sand? There is infinite bad things going on, and infinite wholesome, hopeful things going on. My capacity to take in information is limited. So I have to filter. Why not set your filters to relaxed and healthy? No one is being helped by anonymous people feeling bad about their suffering, for a second, before clicking away, anyway. People directly around you are being helped by you radiating gratitude and hope, though. So choose your content consciously.

I was exactly in that position when I was 19. Then again when I was 24. Making a huge list of all the possible degrees to go for. Analyzing them and trying to optimize for the best choice. So afraid of making the wrong choice. It's wasted energy though, because life doesn't work that way. Trying to use reason to logically optimize for the best choice, doesn't work, because you're reasoning based on assumptions you can't know. Especially if you're 30 or younger, you can expect to be an entirely different person within 5 years. Different likes and dislikes, different worldview, different friends, different passions, different life purpose. So good luck making the perfect choice. What will you be passionate about in 5 years? How will your personality have changed in 5 years? How will the job market have changed in 5 years? What will you feel that your life purpose is in 5 years? Is a degree useful for that? If so, which one? It's impossible to know these things. I would have told my younger self to just do what feels most interesting. The rest is useless overthinking. Life success is not determined by "events", as most people think. Events being: graduating, getting a degree, making that one investment, starting that business that day. It's determined by how you life your life every day. See also my reply here:

I think meeting people in real life is a much more reliable way of researching this topic, than looking at statistics or the sources you've been citing from. If you're really interested in this, then nothing beats meeting people and seeing what's actually up.

I heard flowboy also does that In my pickup days I would have loved to be an intern for Tyler, I think. At least that's what I was dreaming about. Following a successful entrepreneur's every move, whilst going out with him and helping him film the videos. Like Max Tornow did. Who runs a business coaching venture now that is under investigation now for unethical practices I don't know what it is with these guys. They're so good on video, and at what they do, but they can't seem to install a company culture of ethical practice.

Okay for one: these surveys don't mean a lot, because they select for the type of person that would take a survey like that. Inherent problem with global surveys. But let's assume it does. You can see men are overreporting lack of sex compared to women. Their graph is related to women's graph, it's just a bit of an exaggeration of it. Women's reporting lack of sex also jumped up. Correspondingly, men's reported lack of sex jumped up. I don't think this shows anything related to women getting laid more. It's just that men complain about it more than women. Between 2008 and 2018, more people were sexless. The difference in reporting has always been there, I think that's a bias related to sex. Women don't view lack of sex as as big of a problem as men, which is nothing new. It also makes sense that the relation is not linear. Men are just more inclined to complain about this, because sex is higher on their priority list typically. What happened? Well, perhaps people got less shy about reporting their lack of sex. Perhaps the culture changed, and so there was less shame around it. People felt more entitled, and so were more inclined to see their sexless marriage as a problem? Keep in mind that these stats could very well be people in a relationship. Bottom line: all this shows, is that this is what people who like to take surveys said in surveys. I don't even know anybody who takes these surveys. Why would you? I've certainly got better things to do than fill out General Social Surveys. So this really selects for people who have nothing better to do, and like to waste time with stuff like that. Which is probably not most people, and could correlate heavily with lack of initiative to go out and meet people. This makes the data basically worthless. Maybe social media is making people more lonely. Somehow. But even that is just a guess. Correlation does not imply causation.

@zazen I can see your intentions are good, but you haven't questioned your base assumptions enough. This is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist in reality. Yes, also the stuff about "evolutionary biology and how it drives our behavior" and how we have to "accept these hard truths" - are part of the mirage. Part of the myth that is crafted in order to draw in more hurt and bitter men, and selling them books and content instead of helping them heal. In reality, any emotionally healthy man who has his life reasonably together can find more than enough attractive women - and if he wants the attention of hundreds or thousands of twenty year olds, he can go play in a band or do something else cool that he gets recognition for. People who believe that that is false, usually do so because their emotional health and/or life is not together, and they don't want to do the work to fix it.

We should totally start that.

This is great! Thanks for posting something healthy and action-based Much needed around here

So how to move from there into solving it at scale... not easy. Perhaps a marketing effort that appeals to the bitter people, meets them where they are at, but then coaxes them through a journey of healing, forgiveness and integration. Bit of a bait-and-switch, but it could work.