Saw your comment in State champs log about MT2. Was wondering if you wrote out the protocol you used in here…what you were useing it for and what the effects where. I am interested. Great progress BTW. I skimmed a lot of this. Amazing man.
[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:
Saw your comment in State champs log about MT2. Was wondering if you wrote out the protocol you used in here…what you were useing it for and what the effects where. I am interested. Great progress BTW. I skimmed a lot of this. Amazing man.[/quote]
Hell, man. I really wish I had better than info than what I’m going to give.
Melanotan II is a research chemical that allows fair-skinned people to be exposed to sunlight without their normal obvious risks. Clearly, it’s not only used for that. It makes you dark. And shmexy. For a LONG time, no less. Requires little maintenance. It also definitely has the capacity to stunt appetites, and IIRC has some kind of anabolic properties… to a small degree. Do not quote me on that, however.
Amounts? IDK, I think I used 10ml for front loading (also, don’t quote, I just can’t remember, lol,) each night after tanning. It can possibly make you a little nauseous/upset stomach the first few times so it’s wise to do it at night. Then, you’ll start getting tan. As fuck. At this point you can do 5ml before a tan/5ml after. This will allow for moles to not turn black (a legitimate and likely risk) and even birth marks can darken as well.
The cool thing is that you can stay tan for like… 4 months without even pinning after you get tan, no joke. I did it in the dead of winter and am really only pale-ish now again. This was like late Jan/early Feb I think. IDK for sure.
Today went well. Fasted training is getting better. I looked good today.
[u]Chest + Triceps (1)[/u]
Decline HS Press
3+40pps x 5
3+30pps x 6
3+15pps x 9-10?
Lying-Down Chest Press Machine (Not HS)
2pps x 12
2pps x 10
Incline DB Flyes
60s x 8
50s x 10?
35s x 12
Decline BB
135 x 23
DC Extreme Flat DB Stretch
55s x 65seconds
Seated Overhead DB Extensions
90lbs x 9
80lbs x 12
Overhead Extension Machine (Luv)
230 x 12
200 x 13
155 x 17
110 x 20
110 x 18
Seated Tricep Extension Machine (With elbow on pad.)
25ps x 13
10ps x 22
Standing DC Extreme Tricep Stretch - Behind the Head Cable Holds
140lbs x 65seconds
40 minutes stairclimbing
2 minutes warm-up
18 minutes @ Level 8
18 minutes @ Level 7
2 minutes cool-down
Really, might even lower cardio more. Not trying to kill it too hard near the beginning of the diet considering I’m already losing weight rather consistently… although a fair amount was still spill-over from the weekend. It’s really insane how poorly of an effect that dairy has on my body and the way it looks and feels.
I love reading your log, I have to decipher everything, so when I ‘get it’, I feel like a for real lifter. lol
I’m excited to see your ‘after’ pictures though. With all the work you put in, I know you’re going to look crazy impressive.
looking forward to this
[quote]Spidey22 wrote:
I love reading your log, I have to decipher everything, so when I ‘get it’, I feel like a for real lifter. lol
I’m excited to see your ‘after’ pictures though. With all the work you put in, I know you’re going to look crazy impressive. [/quote]
Haha… I’m paranoid. I don’t think there’s really any such thing as privacy on the internet (and if you didn’t ever know TribunalDude, just know, there is no such thing as privacy on the internet, lol!) but I try my best to use “Cover Your Ass Language.” Lol - you can see my job creeping into my personal life. FML. But thanks for the encouragement, man, I’m feeling great moving forward and I think this is going to be a sequence of events for me.
[quote]bignate wrote:
looking forward to this[/quote]
Similar to Spidey, me too man! Lol. I will definitely be as candid and up-front about everything as I can. FTR, if anyone ever has any kind of questions when I turn to the dark side, for some reason, I’d always be happy to answer those in a PM more so than here.
Today was a mid-carb today. “Mid” carb… lol. It’s probably like a “low” carb day for most people. Whatev.
Tired and dragging ass because I hadn’t slept for shit all week, but I still got it in and got it done. I kept the rest times WAY down today (seriously, like 30 seconds probably,) and also bumped down the workload, volume and overall weights a bit. Legs tomorrow, I’m likely doing a 14er on Saturday, and I am not as “lax” as I was with my diet before (lax being an extremely nit-picky word, lol.)
Around 220 now, I think. Also - Loving this 5-way split I’ve set up for myself. Feels GREAT. Will likely keep for all of the diet.
[u]Shoulders[/u]
Seated Military Press (Touch chest, no lockouts)
145 x 5 (Not failure)
125 x 9
105 x 16
Seated DB OHPs (For der pumpzz)
35s x 25
Front Delt Cable Raises
80 x 12
60 x 18
40 x 20 (Holy FUCK FUCKING BLOOD ERRWHERE IN MY GOTDAMN SHOULDERS KKZZZMMMHHHH)
Standing Lateral Machine
95 x 12
80 x 14
60 x 16
45 x 15
Reverse Pec-Dec Rear Delt Flyes
47.5 x 9 + 1
40 x 11
32.5 x 12 DROP SET 17.5 x 8
32.5 x 12 DROP SET 10 x 8-10
DC Extreme Stretch
x60 seconds
Stairclimbing
2 minutes warm-up
11 minutes @ Level 8
22 minutes @ Level 9
3 minutes @ Level 8
2 minutes cool-down
Made cardio fucking brutal today since tomorrow I’ll probably just walk briskly on a treadmill, after legs, to try and salvage what I can for the epic hike/climb on Saturday.
Also, will likely Skipload on Sunday mornings before/after my arm day. We’ll see, still figuring it out. If I continue to stop my… herbal habits, I’ll be able to do it fine. With that extra influence, however, I can never stop the binging after starting, lol. I think given what I’m investing into this diet I’ll be fine.
Okay, this is for record-keeping purposes and because I’m trying to waste time before the end of lunch.
My diet, as of now, is something like this:
5:15am - Wake up
~6:10am - 20mcgs Gwen on empty stomach(Dose will get higher)
~8:30am - 8 oz (or so) lean turkey or LGB + ~400-600 cal worth of almonds /OR\ 4 pieces Ezekiel + almond/PB
12:00pm - See above
4:20ishpm - 2 scoops HumaPro + 2 scoops Jack3d/Hemo, or whatever until it runs out 
Peri-Workout - 2 scoops HumaPro / 2 scoops Chain’d Out
Post-Workout/Post-Cardio - 2 scoops HumaPro
~20-30 minutes after workout - ~12 oz LGB or lean turkey
+1-2 hrs post workout - rest of pound of meat + some fats (almonds, almond butter, PB, cheese sometimes.)
And that’s about it. There’s an off-hand chance I may need to bump up cals a bit because I’m losing kind of quickly already… but I think that’s still recovering from last weekends’ spill over. IDK, we’ll see.
FMC may start at some point if need be.
Also, carbs will be rotated according to the day at hand.
Sunday - Will likely be Skipload pre-post workout with some meat intermittently
Monday - Mid Carbs… Back day is long and epic.
Tuesday - No Carb. Off-Day
Wednesday - “High” Carbs - Chest + Tris are priorities
Thursday - Mid Carb - Shoulders, meh.
Friday - High Carbs - Legs. Plus, I’ll likely be doing most of my hikes/climbs on Saturdays, so I’ll probably do some brown rice or something at night meal instead of fats.
Saturday - Moderate / Kind of whatever due to hikes.
Just FTR.
are you like a cracked out hamster at work from da Gwen
[quote]fr0IVIan wrote:
are you like a cracked out hamster at work from da Gwen [/quote]
Lol bro, don’t you know it. I hate it. Obvi my team members are in the know about my BB’ing lifestyle. I got asked about my “extra” jitteriness the other day (usually I’m good in the morning w/out any kind of stims at all,) and I simply told them I was on a fat-burner.
Whatever.
So, today was warm. No, no, fuck that. Today was HOT. Incredibly, profoundly, stupidly hot. Car thermometer said 95 when I arrived at Armbrust. The gym would prove to be 10 bajillion degrees hotter than that.
Just what I love to see on leg day.
LOL… just looked at the log book. I seriously didn’t even write down most of the workout I was so fucking hot / dead / exhausted / whatever.
[u]Legs… fuck[/u]
Leg Extensions (With various foam rolling segments sprinkled in between sets.)
None x 20
25 x 20
50 x 15
35 x 15
10 x 15
Power Squats (Facing In)
6+35pps x 8
6+35pps x 8
6+35pps x 8
—MEADOWS STYLE—5 second negative, no lockout
4pps x 12
3pps x 15 DROP SET
2pps x 8
DC Extreme Quad Stretch
x60 seconds (just horrendous today.)
Sumo HS Leg Press
8pps x 10
8pps x 10
8pps x 10
SLDL (Conservative today, keeping LB in check this week.)
185 x 15
DC Extreme Stretch
x140seconds per leg
DC Standing Calf Raises
3+12.5pps x 12 (OMG)
2pps x 8-10
1pps x 12?
Hanging Leg Raises
x30 lol
Stairmaster - Easy today due to 14’ing tomorrow.
2 minutes warm-up
13 minutes @ Level 7
10 minutes @ Level 6
8 minutes @ Level 5
2 minutes cool-down
Fantastico!
Well, yesterday was quite the day. Long post to follow.
Went and did a 14er, solo. “Woke up” at 2:30, left Denver by 3:30. What really sucks is I realistically got 1-2 hours, TOPS, of restless sleep. This was an omen.
The 14er itself was rougher, terrain-wise, than anything I had experienced before. My energy was great and I felt fine, but eventually I started to get some nasty effects of AMS… Acute Mountain Sickness. Basically, me being a weak flatlander my whole life, my body hasn’t had years of acclimatizing or w/e to high altitudes. There’s no excuse, but I definitely still felt the effects throughout the day today. Still a headache, sort of dehydrated. No bueno. Barely even remember the drive home, and passed out for like three hours afterwards without even eating. Also - no bueno.
So, moving forward I’ll be doing Skiploads on Saturday afternoon/nights/evenings. My baseline yesterday, pre-14er, was 219.2. Weight after the epic nap, and 14er, was 216.1. I’ll be going by my “pre-anything” weight on Saturday mornings for baseline. Weight today was just slightly north of 223, which I’m pumped about.
Um, yeah. As I alluded to, today was just not a very good day, overall. Didn’t really have that “Extra ferociousness” towards the end of a lot of the bicep work, which is strange, since my biceps are generally one of my easier-going and best body parts.
[u]Tris (2) and Bis[/u]
Dips
+15lb db x 8
+15lb db x 7
BW x 11
Super controlled Skullcrushers
100 lbs x 8
100 lbs x 7
Rope Pushdowns
160 x 17
140 x 13
DC One-Arm Seated Machine Curls
130 x 14 + 9 + 6 = 29 (-2 reps, +5 lbs)
Rope Curls (for brachi, etc.)
340 x 11 + 1
300 x 11 + 1
Straight Bar Cable Curls
300 x 9
280 x 9 + 1
Pinwheels
50lb dbs x 10
40lb dbs x 8-10
High Incline Finisher DB Curls
20lb dbs x 12
15lb dbs x 15?
K-Pipe DB Curls
20s x 10
15s x 10
STAIRCLIMBING
2 minutes warm-up
18 minutes HIIT - Level 11 for 30 seconds / Level 9 for 30 seconds
15 minutes @ Level 8
3 minutes @ Level 7
2 minutes cool-down
Whew, officially “Week 2” of the diet.
Okay, an update, mostly for StateChamp I suppose. Since he asked so nice and is just so cyoote too.
I’m pretty sure that along with the item I will be testing coming up, 1-2 months from now, I will likely also be riding a Mastodon and probably hanging out with the Terminator 3, along with my main bitch Gwen, who is already an acquaintance.
That’s it for now.
I think I need to cut back on training this week in general. Sunday’s workout wasn’t great, which I thought was due to the epic fail on Saturday.
Today didn’t go quite as hot, either… but I did also get a lack of sleep again, due to seeing Prometheus. (Fucking awesome.
So, I think on W/Th/Fr/Sunday I’m just going to play it cool a bit. Cut back volume a fair amount, keep all sets above 10 reps and not go to failure. Somewhat of a deload. Looking through my log, I hadn’t even deloaded since… well, hell. A long time. Lol. I don’t want to “putter out” in the thick of this diet, either, especially given the circumstances.
I won’t say today was terrible by any means and in fact, a lot of it went very well, but the long-term fatigue is starting to set in. The hunger for ‘heavy’ sets and mental strength just isn’t quite there. 
[u]Back Attack[/u]
T-Bar Rows
4+25p x 13
4+25p x 10
V-Grip Cable Rows
215 x 10
195 x 11 + 1
180 x 14
V-Grip Pulldowns
160 x 10
155 x 9
Underhand Brutal Pulldown Machine
35ps x 14
35ps x 9
Dual-Handle Pulldowns (SKA-WHEEZE)
75 x 19
60 x 20 DROP SET
45 x 10
Bent-Over Rear Delt DB Flyes (Wow, body definitely not feeling these today, lol)
35 x 13
30 x 11
20 x 15
HS Shrug Machine (Also, just wasn’t feeling the DBs today.)
3pps x 6 (5 second holds, no rest)
2pps x 12? (5 second holds, no rest)
1pps x 16
Stairclimbing
2 minutes warm-up
31 minutes @ Level 8
2 minutes cool-down
In and out like Kevin Kline.
Not in a good spot right now.
De-loading because I feel like fucking shit every day. Stressed. Can’t sleep. I’m keeping it brief.
[u]“Chest and Tris” De-Load[/u]
Decline HS
3+35pps x 7 (+2 reps, not to failure, only intense set today.)
3pps x 15
2pps x 15
Low-Incline DB Flyes
35s x 15
35s x 10
Flat Press Machine
1pps x 25
Seated Overhead Tricep Extension Machine
255 x 15
195 x 15?
135 x 20ish or something
Seated Tricep Extension Machine
10pps x 20
10pps x 20
Seated Overhead DB Extension
30s x 25
30s x 15-20
45 minutes of LISS stair climbing. Felt terrible/nauseous the entire time.
hey man, whenever im in these states i like to just hit the elliptical for 20-40 min until i feel good and then just do a couple pump exercises for the muscle group i would normally do, you know, just something to get blood in the muscles. Also, if youre having trouble unwinding, i find a nice contrast shower with as intense cold sessions as u can handle really refreshes me in an easy 10 min. Also, i know ur trying to ‘diet’ but maybe eat a lil surplus here and there? Or just something tasty to spark your energy. Recover quick man!
one step back, two steps forward, dont forget that.
Prometheus was a maayyy zinggg and so hardcore
lol bro you totally lost me with your mastodon riding, FB msg me for clarification thx
[quote]bignate wrote:
hey man, whenever im in these states i like to just hit the elliptical for 20-40 min until i feel good and then just do a couple pump exercises for the muscle group i would normally do, you know, just something to get blood in the muscles. Also, if youre having trouble unwinding, i find a nice contrast shower with as intense cold sessions as u can handle really refreshes me in an easy 10 min. Also, i know ur trying to ‘diet’ but maybe eat a lil surplus here and there? Or just something tasty to spark your energy. Recover quick man!
one step back, two steps forward, dont forget that. [/quote]
First, I appreciate the feedback. I’ll be honest man, my state on Wednesday had little to do with actual physical durress and was more related to an incredibly, astoundingly high level of stress and anxiety compounded through various factors, mostly work-related. I’ll also be honest, I ate really “well” the last day and a half. I’m using a shitty excuse, as it’s my birthday weekend, but yeah, I’m definitely getting things right before next week when I get back into the thick of things, and can move forward without having to worry about a de-load. I’ll address more of this in the post below, though, if you care.
[quote]fr0IVIan wrote:
Prometheus was a maayyy zinggg and so hardcore
lol bro you totally lost me with your mastodon riding, FB msg me for clarification thx
[/quote]
Done and done, sir. And agreed about Prometheus. Just don’t, for the love of God, innocently start looking for theories/opinions about the movie and what things mean. You will want to blow your brains out due to all the ambiguity. I heard that Ridley said there will be two more movies connecting Prometheus and the Alien series, but you know how reliable the internet actually is for stuff. Still, all in all, I thought it was an amazing and ethereal movie that will not receive the respect it deserves because people go in with the mentality of “Alien movie!” Tsk, tsk, tsk.
So, I’m writing this more so I know what was happening at this period of my life when I look back on this, but there’s info regardless.
On Wednesday, before I left work, my stress level had reached an all-time level. For me, I’m a really “easy-living” guy and although I can get agitated and annoyed easily, my actual stress levels are things that do not take control of my life. This job, and everything that it entails, has been starting to eat away at my soul. I did a lot of searching and realize that it’s probably not something I can sustainably keep doing, given the money, circumstances, and everything else that goes into it. I’ll just leave it at that for the sake of convenience of typing.
Now, Wednesday night I had the real turd of a workout. Got home, didn’t eat… took 2 Tylenol PMs at 7 pm and tried to hit the hay to clear my mind and sleep it off. By the time 12:30-1am rolled around and I still wasn’t asleep, it was clear that my mind really needed a mid-week break. So, I called in yesterday to take a day to collect myself.
I ate. I ate cookies. I ate Ezekiel + PB and some other good stuff. I definitely didn’t binge, per se, but I added some stupid weight mostly due to stress and weak character, IMO. Last night I did sprints at the end of the night, with a jog following, and have been fasting up until this point.
I’ll break the fast at some point later on this evening, so that’ll be good. But I really needed to drop off those retarded extra pounds gained yesterday.
Tomorrow is my birthday, not quite sure how it’s going to go. I’m 50/50 on trying for a 14er, although I’m leaning towards “no” due to my incessant need for sleep at this point. I am half-thinking about finding an arcade in Denver and just hitting DDR HARD for a while, just for fun. It’s great exercise, makes me feel good, and would just be kind of a fun thing to do to celebrate. We’ll see.
I do know tomorrow night, however, will be a treat all in itself. As Kid Cudi/Jackie Chain once said, “Rollin,’ rollin,’ rollin,’ we ain’t slept in weeks…” will be applicable to me tomorrow night. For those who still don’t get it, I’m going to a huge electronic dance club, getting extremely “weird” but buying water all night and NOT alcohol. That’s all I’m really going to say. It will be great fun, however. Going out in some baller gear… getting suspenders, a bow-tie, the whole shindig. Four of us are going to roll up in that bitch looking fly and being weird, and it should be great fun. None of us are particularly bad-looking, either. I’m pretty damn excite and hope nothing goes awry before then.
So, yeah, that’s where I’m at. I’m basically just straight taking these days off to get my body/mind right, while doing cardio or fasting things here and there. I should back up and good to go next Wednesday full into the routine again, but I did want to make sure I gave myself enough time to enjoy myself and get some of this stress off my back.
So, damn. Fucking cool story, bro.
so…i have terrible sleep issues as well, and they stem from anxiety, which feeds upon itself because the less you sleep the harder it is to maintain control on said thoughts and stress levels. Not saying this is what you should do, but this is what i did and so far it seems to be working quite well, first i went to therapy. For a year. it helped, but it wasnt quite enough.
just recently i started taking zoloft and am still in the low doses, i.e next week will be the first time actually going beyond baseline doses to try and target just the anxiety itself. In combination with continue the talk therapy, i think the drugs have made a large difference already in how i am able to handle myself and my thooughts. In turn ive noticed that even though everything else is the same, as in still drinking caffine sometimes late in the day etc… my sleep has been so much better, much more quality and i fall asleep infainitely faster than before.
All i can say is that if you leave this shit unchecked, which ive done, the anxiety as you know will only feed upon itself, making normal stressors impossible to deal with, causing even worse sleep, resulting in depression and lack of motivation for just about anything. It fucking sucks dude. I spent all last smester sleeping maybe 6 hours a night, most of which i spent lying in my bed wishing i wasnt waking up every 30 min etc… and i stopped going to classes cuz thats the only place i could sleep. Nothing helped until i really decided to help myself.
I really needed to dig deep and figure out what the hell went wrong and why.
I tend to blame myself for everything, and im not sure where your anxtiety stems from, but if its anything remotely similar, half the battle is just working on accepting the stress, but not letting it overtake you. Accept it, realize why its there, then begin to pick apart why its not as big of a deal as you initally make it out to be.
For a while i kept track of the negative thoughts i would have thorughout the day, and what i felt like when they happened, and recorded if they were actually for real or not, or i guess a better way of saying it would be i would look at them an hour or so later and realize ‘o i completely overreacted here’ or something along those lines.
another big thing for me is taking other peoples actions as a reflection upon myself, which is fucking stupid. Idk if you do this, but ithink we all do at somepoint, im just really bad with it, but no one else actions/responses are your problem. It may seem like they are, but really you can only control yourself. understanding that and really beleiving it, practicing it has made a huge difference for me, i no longer seek to satisfy unreasonable expecataitons i put on myself because im think ’ o this is what mr x does or blah blah blah’
you gotta live life for you man, and sometimes the hardest thing is finding out what you want, and what you need.
I hope i didnt sound like i know what youre rpoblems are, cuz i dont, i only know what ive been thorugh, and i hope some of this sheds some light to the other side of the problem, yes there is a greener grass on the other side of the fence!
Its hard to take that external view of things once you slip into the state of not being well, but i know youll be able to figure shit out man, in due time.
Keep lifting strong, and dont stress the little things dude! Theres always a nother year to lose weight or lift big, but theres never a time better than now to fix ourselves in the head. Where our head goes, the rest will follow. Once you get back on track, lifting dieting and everything else will fall into line no problem, im sure of it.
Keep us posted man.
Wow bignate, thanks for the sentiments, man! Good on you for getting through all of that shit, for reals.
The stress… oh, the stress comes and goes. I won’t lie, when I do have stress in my life I honestly don’t handle it too well, due to my relatively easy-going nature and legitimate passiveness on most things. My boss actually caught wind of some of the issues I was having… and the way the company I work for is set up, I work really closely with my boss most of the time. Like, all of the time.
So he called me in to talk about it and we just kinda hashed some things out. I told him I’d been stressed, which is something that did.not.happen. to me when working at a job, and why. We’re going to figure some things out next week and I know that’s going to make a concerted effort towards making things better for all, and he said he had been kind of letting the job get to him. It’s really easy, given the nature of what we do.
When you mentioned dealing with negative thoughts, that’s still my biggest issue… and has always been. I can go from completely satisfied to completely unpleasant on about .000083 seconds due to some random off-hand side comment with an innocuous nature. But then I just harp on it and manifest it into something worse. That’s been something I’ve been dealing with proactively for the last few months. It’s gotten much better but HELL if it isn’t hard to control.
Zoloft… lol, (not at you!) but I was prescribed some due to some heart things/vasodilation some months ago here in Colorado. It turned out to actually kind of fuck me up even worse since I really didn’t need for its anti-depressive properties, so I just flat-out stopped taking it without really consulting my physician… stupid. But, I never quite felt like “me,” and I’m just not a big fan of RX Nation. I’ve really wanted to see a therapist for a while now, because it really can’t hurt, but the whole $$$ aspect has kind of prevented me from acting on that seriously. Until then, I just try to keep it all in front of me best I can, most of the time. 98% of the time I do really, really well! lol
As far as sleep goes - This is just an issue I’ll never shake, man. My whole life it’s been a problem. I remember my mom telling me stories of when I was like, a toddler, she would stay in my room until I fell asleep and the majority of the time, she’d fall asleep before me… AS A TODDLER! fml, haha.
Well, shameless plug for Happy Birthday me… 
After Thursday’s “off” day (in more ways than one,) where I ate a bag of cookies and other miscellaneous things (again, not really a binge per se,) I was 224.2 when I weighed myself yesterday morning.
Thursday night I did sprints and a jog, and haven’t eaten one.single.bite. since before then. So, as of 6:24am, it’s been approximately 34 hours since I last ate. The fast did fucking wonders and right now I’m sitting at a nice 216. At some point today I will start to enjoy my birthday, though. I’ll still probably keep it pretty controlled and low-key if I want to maybe still be able to Skipload tomorrow… we’ll see!
Yesterday I had a BIG scare with Clen. Since I was fasting all day, shit was nuts. In the morning I actually barely felt the dose (40mcgs,) but I also still have a few random pills that I mixed up with my new batch from last time. I’m guessing I accidentally took those so it didn’t do much. But then at lunch - BAM, I took 40mcgs more and shit got real. I’ve tripped on a lot drugs, historically speaking, and this was seriously damn near a legitimate trip. My vision got “tunneled,” so to speak, and everything I saw looked extremely warped. My heart beat felt insane (but was actually really low,) and I got some other weird things. To be honest, at one point I was taking a piss and I noticed two things… first, my D had gotten quite shrunken after it started to take effect. That was weird. And my ENTIRE body was shaking/convulsing fairly violently from head-to-toe while I was pissing. A guy, in the bathroom, even asked if I was okay. WTF.
So yeah, that was intense and kinda spooky. I was fairly sure that I had accidentally dosed 80mcgs (which is still theoretically possible,) but I have a feeling it had more to do with the prolonged fast and likely stronger batch of this newer stuff. YIKEZZZ.
Sorry to hear about all the stress in your life. I know I handle anxiety in a similar fashion, and I’ve a family history of depression (including 2 uncles who committed suicide along with my Dad). I know at a certain level, it’s just kind of how your brain works, especially how Nate talked about blaming himself and you talking about a innocent, off-hand comment switching your mood in an instant.
I’ll say the last few months of my life have gotten tremendously better, after I had a legit religious experience. Right now I’m dealing with struggles that beforehand, would have buried me, but this time, I’m staying strong. I still get the thoughts, the doubts, the fear, but honestly I can now pray and know that, if I do everything in my power to make what’s bothering me better, then it’ll work out. I know to most people that would seem to not be that hard to do, but I think you’ll understand that even successfully developing a mindset like that is a big move and difficult just because it opposes your own nature.
I’m not saying you need to find God or anything, but I think something like meditation, self-reflection, anything really, can really help if you give it a legit shot. When I just started to pray, literally nothing happened for a month, and it just pissed me off more (and being an atheist I was already mad that it had come to this), but now life is over 9000 times better. If this all sounds like BS I’m sorry, because I’m definitely not a Bible-thumper or anything like that. I just know sometimes, people like us lack any real faith, like really in anything, but mostly ourselves. I think if you can find something to help develop that faith, that it could really be beneficial.
Damn Spidey, thanks for the thoughts man. Sorry to hear about the family issues man.
I’ll try to keep this brief, although I tend to be long-winded, but I use to be a man of faith. I was raised Catholic, but not the “in-your-face-so-fucking-hard-you-grow-to-resent-it” type of Catholic. I mean, my mom insisted that we went to church essentially every week (despite my incessant pleas and attempts not to,) said our prayers before dinner every night and was reminded to pray before I went to sleep. Nothing too crazy, though.
Then, I got to college. I started doing a lot of introspection and reflection about life, who I was, etc. I’m sure most people in college go through something similar. This all happened in lieu of the weight loss thing that I obviously went through. I definitely examined myself and others hard, became very intrinsically-aware but extroverted at the same time.
Eventually, I started finding a connection between things that I did myself, and didn’t need to ask an ethereal being to give me the power to do so. As this happened, my faith dwindled quickly. At first it was taboo for me to think about, and I felt cautious about warding off my belief. But then, I started to wonder if I was only scared to accept that we may be alone because I had been conditioned to believe that this was the case - and believing anything else would buy me a one-way ticket to eternal suffering for all of eternity. Then, as I came to this conclusion, I started to resent a God, and that if I lived my life trying to be as philanthropic, kind and courteous towards others as I could but without committing myself to a sermon for an hour out of every week but still went to Hell, then that was a God I wanted nothing to do with.
This was also, for the record, about the time I became very interested in philosophy.
Anyway, to this day my views and emphatic “Anti-anything” mentality has chilled out quite a bit. I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy, and I don’t like to shove my view points down others’ throat, as I know no one likes that. (NOT saying you’re doing that Spidey, lol, for real.) To this day, I’m under the mentality that there’s truly nothing we can know and I’m open to anything, including flying Spaghetti monsters in the sky. Nothing is more implausible/less realistic/more realistic than anything else, as far as I’m concerned. If I ever have kids, I plan on letting them go to whatever churches they want to (with friends, if I have a wife who’s religious, etc.,) and discovering things for themselves. I know how happy religion makes people and I envy it, I’m jealous of it. I just can’t, however, force myself to believe in something that I systemically deconstructed over a long period of time, ya know? Not trying to “point/counterpoint” you, but just giving perspective to where my mentality is at with God and religion.
That being said, I’m still very much into philosophy and try to let that help dictate my understanding of consciousness, life, and a lot of irrelevant and silly things. It’s not always easy to bypass the menial things that set us off, though, and I think it’ll always be an uphill battle.
Thanks for stopping in Spidey. You should know I’m down to talk shop about deep stuff ANY TIME, any place, period.
damn, y’all got problems.
been there, still kinda there sometimes at the worst time (@ sexytime, I shit you not). I’ve gone to see a hypnotherapist to try and get it under control but I guess I didn’t practice what he taught me. what’s helped recently is that I tell that inner voice wheedling away in my head to stfu. I may or may not be developing a split personality occasionally, but it’s working so far.