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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
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A letter I just wrote to my sister...
    #7641500 - 11/15/07 07:39 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

So I recently had a piece I wrote published in a publication I really revere, and it means a lot to me. It's just a 500-word essay, sandwiched amongst many others. But seeing my name there, and my words, all about why I take psychedelic drugs, means a lot to me.

I passed it along to loved ones and friends (except my mom...that's a can of worms for another day) and I got this response from my sister:

Quote:

Hi! Congrats again on them publishing your piece. Of course, I think it's beautifully, honestly, and vividly written. But you know how I feel about the content of it. And the key issue for me isn't even that these things are harmful to you (though that's important to me, too), but that you could actually replace "psychedelics" with "God" or "religion" or "the church" in any of those sentences. I know this stuff is important to you, but I know you probably also want my honest opinion and wouldn't want me to just write back some placating, superficial thing, but to actually respond. So, honestly, when it comes to any kind of external thing like that, it comes across like a crutch at best and a cult at worst. (Sorry if that was a little too blunt.) So when you say they are a tool for you, my question then becomes how are they different than any other tool? What is really the goal? And is a tool really necessary to achieve it?




My sister, I have two, but this one has always been very negative about my use of psychedelics. Over the last 3 days I've scribbled a letter to her in my journal and I just cobbled it all together. In a way it's a dress rehearsal, as is everything I write, a dress rehearsal for my staunch defense of the use of psychedelics safely and responsibly. I am trying, so hard, to defend but not attack. i want this person, this human being who is so close to me and means so much to me, to understand why i do what I do.

Anyway, here's what I wrote to her:

Nika,

I AM really appreciative of your honesty and one thing I love about you is that I know I can expect that from you. I hope you don’t ever feel that you have to bite your tongue with me.

Our parents raised us to be atheists. I don’t know if you’ve really spent time thinking about that but it’s true from where I stand. I can even remember a time leaving Garden after school with Mommy. I asked her about “God” and she told me that “we don’t believe in him.” Atheism and agnosticism don’t have the dogma and rituals that other religions do but they are still systems of belief – the active belief in a lack of something to believe in, insofar as something greater than we human beings is concerned. And being raised as an atheist doesn’t really fall too far from being raised a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim. You’re being indoctrinated with a way of thinking and of seeing the world. And just like someone raised in any other faith, an atheist develops a cynicism towards other faiths.

I was a fervent atheist. A card-carrying member of “American Atheists,” to whom I sent money, you know. Nietzsche’s biggest advocate at school. I wrote so much about it. About what? Nothing. My active belief in nothing. I called it non-belief but I see now that’s just belief of another color.

I’ve always been looking for meaning. But, I took mushrooms for the first time out of nothing but a desire to see things undulate, to watch the walls breathe. Instead I found myself undertaking an unexpected introspective journey through the contours of my mind. I searched myself, and found connection points to the rest of the world to all of humanity I found symbols rich with meaning and an intricate, self-weaving, evolving pattern that revealed to me the vast intelligence that I now believe lies behind the universe’s physical, impenetrable, seemingly cold and unconcerned face. I used to hate the world, and now I love it.

I’m not saying there’s a mind pulling strings and controlling our fates. But I am saying that life itself is alive and intelligent. The universe is a mind, and we’re nothing but synapses on the surface of that brain. We are part of that mind, not separate from it. Tim Leary used to tell people “you are God.” Easy to misconstrue that message but it’s spot-on in my view when you read it the right way.

As for the harm these psychedelics might do me, I’m quite aware that we know very little about the human brain and that I am, in a way, making of myself a psychedelic guinea pig. That’s fine by me. I have one life to live and one mind to experience life with before I reconnect to the ubermind, and while I am careful not to be careless with it; I won’t let fear guide the decisions I make. I look up to and communicate with the people older than myself who are veteran psychonauts and still ingesting psychedelics while remaining fully functioning, emotionally intact, tax-paying, decent and productive members of society. There are thousands of them. I aim to be, like them, and example of safe and responsible drug use.

The word is too loaded. Drugs. Ooh, drugs. Drugs. Bad. Right? If the issue were really that black and white, would it be such a complicated matter to deal with and discuss?

You ask if psychedelics serve as a crutch for me. I ask you if there is anyone who doesn’t have a crutch? Anyone who truly walks alone? No…because, really, we can’t. In a way that’s the message that mushrooms convey – you aren’t alone, and you can’t do this alone. Connection is all-important.

In my experiences and my opinion, psychedelics in a 21st century context redefine the whole notion of religion and deeply personalize and internalize it. While indigenous tribes have for thousands of years ingested psychedelic sacraments in an organized religious context, we can’t, in our age, hope to adopt their religions with psychedelics as our sacraments. Their religions are based on geographically and socially and temporally specific cultural values that don’t completely translate to our current situation.

Psychedelics for the 21st century human being can be a sort of way of rediscovering religion in the spectrum of one’s own life and personality. They say, “here. Here is the constantly fluctuating, eternally transient nature of the universe. Here are a million disparate elements of existence all coexisting and commonly but unconsciously connected. Find your place.”

Part of you is probably thinking, “Fine. But why keep taking them?” You might even think that I’m addicted, even though physiologically no member of the psychedelic class of drugs is addictive. I keep taking them because everything is changing, myself included. For me, a psychedelic experience is like defragmenting my mental hard drive. My brain is so inundated, especially in NYC 2K7, bombarded with information and data and meaningless symbols endlessly paraded in the form of advertising. My experiences filter out the dross and allow me to access a quietness of mind that I can take back with me into the everyday routines of my life. The idealism and the sense of peace that I express and feel at the peaks of my doses, carrying those back with me is my eternal struggle and desire. And it is important work.

There’s one vision I’ve seen that sticks with me. I won’t describe it visually but tell you what it taught me. That the ideal state of being, that we could all strive to attain, is prismatic. Clear and open to external stimuli, taking it all in, and each of us is a uniquely formed prism who must then radiate outwards what we’ve made of what we’ve taken in. Psychedelics help me remain prismatic. And then, there’s pleasure.

I won’t deny there’s an element of pleasure in each of my experiences that I seek and am excited by. Should I be guilty of that? I don’t think so. Our lives are largely pleasureless. We fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way, and give a bulk of our energy to external forces that demand it of us. But to think that we could ingest a chemical and experience ecstatic bliss, is that so wrong?

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that tripping is all play and no work. In the end, and after the fact, they are all joyous experiences. But in the thick of it, they can be extensively, extremely difficult. It can be harrowing and hard to close one’s eyes and see oneself reflected there, the soul with all its dimples and imperfections nude and honest. Some of the hardest moments of my life have taken place entirely inside my mind.


I know this doesn't wrap anything up definitively. I know that no matter how much I try to explain my passion for the psychedelic experience to you there will probably always be a part of you that remains concerned and skeptical. But I just hope that, above all things, we can always keep this dialogue open. I appreciate the opportunity to spell out my reasons for doing what I do to you. Because it helps me remember them myself.

Love,
-my real name, yo-


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis


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Invisibleeeso
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7641561 - 11/15/07 07:51 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Lucid and heartfelt.


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OfflineLion
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7641581 - 11/15/07 07:56 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

:thumbup:


--------------------
“Strengthened by contemplation and study,
I will not fear my passions like a coward.
My body I will give to pleasures,
to diversions that I’ve dreamed of,
to the most daring erotic desires,
to the lustful impulses of my blood, without
any fear at all, for whenever I will—
and I will have the will, strengthened
as I’ll be with contemplation and study—
at the crucial moments I’ll recover
my spirit as was before: ascetic.”


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InvisibleGGreatOne234
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7641751 - 11/15/07 08:43 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Sounds to me like you could write a 200 page email to her and still not convince her your choices are worthwhile decisions. She sounds too caught up in religious studies that forbid the use of drugs. Probably the only way she would ever understand is by dosing herself, and it doesnt sound like that would ever happen. But nice write-up once again.


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Invisiblepaulie_walnuts1
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7642213 - 11/15/07 10:27 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Slip her a mickey.


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InvisibleCameron
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: paulie_walnuts1]
    #7642977 - 11/16/07 04:36 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I'm impressed. Do you have a link to that essay you had published?


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Invisibledemiu5
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7643078 - 11/16/07 06:22 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

my poetry teacher said something interesting one day. "When someone uses to word 'honesty' or 'truthfully', etc. they usually are not being honest or truthful.

Quote:

So, honestly, when it comes to any kind of external thing like that, it comes across like a crutch at best and a cult at worst. (Sorry if that was a little too blunt.) So when you say they are a tool for you, my question then becomes how are they different than any other tool? What is really the goal? And is a tool really necessary to achieve it?




just something to think about.

Also, regarding the last few lines here, make sure mention or ask her about the church being a tool to reach her god, or the bible being a tool to reach her god, because after all, a map is still a tool.

(I didn't read your response to her)


--------------------
channel your inner Larry David


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Invisiblebadchad
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: demiu5]
    #7643089 - 11/16/07 06:28 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

The first time I published something I felt the same way :smile:.

nice letter.


--------------------
...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge.  It is an indellible experience; it is forever known.  I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did.

Smith, P.  Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27.

...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely.

Osmond, H.  Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436


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OfflineLion
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: demiu5]
    #7643164 - 11/16/07 07:30 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Also, regarding the last few lines here, make sure mention or ask her about the church being a tool to reach her god, or the bible being a tool to reach her god, because after all, a map is still a tool.


I think she is an atheist, and her point in comparing entheogens to church and god is that they're all crutches.


--------------------
“Strengthened by contemplation and study,
I will not fear my passions like a coward.
My body I will give to pleasures,
to diversions that I’ve dreamed of,
to the most daring erotic desires,
to the lustful impulses of my blood, without
any fear at all, for whenever I will—
and I will have the will, strengthened
as I’ll be with contemplation and study—
at the crucial moments I’ll recover
my spirit as was before: ascetic.”


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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: Lion]
    #7643494 - 11/16/07 09:50 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

bug said:
Quote:

Also, regarding the last few lines here, make sure mention or ask her about the church being a tool to reach her god, or the bible being a tool to reach her god, because after all, a map is still a tool.


I think she is an atheist, and her point in comparing entheogens to church and god is that they're all crutches.




Yes, any notion of "spirituality" makes her extremely uncomfortable. She's really inherited my mother's distaste for any religious/spiritual sensibility whatsoever.


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis


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InvisibleWhiskeyClone
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7643585 - 11/16/07 10:24 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

You said your piece. I don't know what else you can do. No matter how eloquent or explicit your words are, it is not always possible to get people to understand. Her mind appears to be made up; reason makes no difference when one's mind is closed. C'est la vie.

I remember you making a post a few months ago about "coming out of the psychedelic closet." Admirable, to be sure. Honesty is a virtue. I have not done the same thing. As open-minded as my family is, and as thoughtful as they know me to be, I doubt they would interpret my use of psychedelic drugs as anything but troublesome. Though the response I would get would certainly be an ignorant one, I want to spare them the worry that might result from their stereotype-based opinions of these substances. Admittedly, I want to spare myself the effort of explaining my actions (which to my mind are quite personal anyway.)

Good on you for being upfront; you're making it easier for others to do the same.


--------------------
Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.  For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.  Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it.

~ R.W. Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

:heartpump:


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7643892 - 11/16/07 12:05 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

That's an awesome letter.:thumbup: You stated my beliefs about the use of shrooms etc. pretty damn well.

I think although your parents had their programs/beliefs that they passed on to you, from the sound of you and your sister, they certainly did something right.:sun:


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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OfflineOrganic
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7647574 - 11/17/07 01:11 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Well Done. Very well written.


--------------------


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Invisiblelukeboots
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7648434 - 11/17/07 06:05 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

That was a very well-written letter, omar. I wanted to quote one part:

Quote:

There’s one vision I’ve seen that sticks with me. I won’t describe it visually but tell you what it taught me. That the ideal state of being, that we could all strive to attain, is prismatic. Clear and open to external stimuli, taking it all in, and each of us is a uniquely formed prism who must then radiate outwards what we’ve made of what we’ve taken in. Psychedelics help me remain prismatic. And then, there’s pleasure.




That's a very vivid way of painting the picture that psychedelics teach so many of us. You're like our own NYC jewy sage. :wink:


--------------------

funky ass music: Planet of Dinosaurs // Rich Whiskey


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OfflineJustice_Fish
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: lukeboots]
    #7649206 - 11/17/07 09:48 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

You shaved your mind/heart. Didn't you?


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Invisibleelbisivni
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7650458 - 11/18/07 10:12 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I enjoyed reading that, I'd like to read her reply.. Like someone said above, her mind is probably made up - but so is yours - you may have to eventually settle for that.

I wrote a 20 page letter to the one person I've ever truly loved, coming out of the psychedelic closet. She accepted it without anything to ask and nothing really to expand upon. Left me disappointed to have such a limited response after I poured so much into that letter. I was hoping at least that it would open a route for discussion so that I could discuss with her my experiences in full detail without feeling as if I were being persecuted. Too bad.

Congratulations on the publication.


--------------------
From dust you are made and to dust you shall return.


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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #8401859 - 05/14/08 05:36 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

Hi, for anyone who is interested in how this exchange between my sister and myself is going...We last left off about 5+ months ago and I had written this letter to my sister, after she wrote some things to me that really hurt me after I got my essay on the psychedelic experience published. She read the letter, said it gave her a lot to think about it, and then requested we table the discussion until her final semester of her PhD study was over and her General exams were over.

Well, that was late January. Then other things started stacking up. We never did have a conversation, and I felt like more and more we were growing apart. It's not just that we were both busy, and living in different cities it was that I really felt like I was a low priority to her. I'd call her and rather than get a call back, it was a G-Chat message next time she and I were on gmail at the same time. Or an email answering a voicemail. As much as I love text I'm a huge fan of human-to-human contact...I hate the phone but when you don't live close to someone and it's all you got, there's so much to be said for real conversation, not paced by seeing that the other person is typing...
I voiced this to her over the phone a few weeks ago. Then this past weekend she mentioned she was coming to the city and she would like to have dinner on Saturday night.

We went to this little French spot I know, really quiet and quaint with only room for about twelve people. We had our own little corner and eventually the conversation got where I hoped it would, though it was good just catching up. The thing about my sister Nika is that she doesn't really like having heavy talks...whereas I don't really see any conversations more important to have with people I love than ones dealing with what things mean to each of us and who we are and how we understand each other.

I had sent her an email the other day just about life, and mentioned that I met Alex and Allyson Grey at a memorial service for Dr. Albert Hofmann and about how I had gotten up and spoken in front of a group of 50 or so people, and how that was going to be great practice because I have a fear of public speaking and I have to perform a wedding in a year...I was very excited, and she responded about how she was suspicious of Alex Grey and skeptical about him.

Which was obviously tied completely into the drug thing...because he talks so openly about his LSD use.

So she asked at dinner if I wanted to talk about the email. And I said which one? She said the Alex Grey one but I said well we never talked about the big email I sent you, and we got into it. Essentially I felt as if she was the plaintiff and I was the defendant and I was really just having to defend everything about my entire lifestyle. Not just my drug use but my job, my increasing sense of spirituality and interest in exploring it, my attitude towards life. Everything.

She said that to her it seemed that I had 'lost something' I once had. When I asked what it was, she said it was a sense of drive or ambition. Listening to her say something like that I was forced to say that she doesn't even keep in touch with me enough to know what kind of level of drive or ambition I have right now. While I do have long-term goals of a sort, she finds it very hard to accept that right now I am entirely focused on paying my rent while learning how to Be Here Now. That my focus right now is getting to know myself as a being in a body. That every day is an unbelievably aware awakening to how I function, how the universe functions, how we interrelate.

That all sounds well and good to her but for her, "success" is the only true measure of a person's life. She said to me, what if 10 years go by and you're still a barback who takes LSD and calls himself a writer but doesn't have anything published? She's obsessed with the idea of me getting things published. Look, not all writers work that way. I write fragments and I know that what's in my future are great big works...I'm still learning about myself as a writer and a person, and what if I don't want to share that with the world? That's nobody's business but my own.

She said that this was oversimplifying things, but that she could boil it down to one of two things, when it came to the LSD and other psychedelics: That there was something to the experience, I'm right, and she's wrong, or that her mistrust of the experience is correct and she's right and I'm wrong. I literally did a double-take. I asked her if she could seriously think it was such a simple thing as that, of one of us being right and the other one wrong?

I said...this isn't academia, we aren't proving theories...this is LIFE. And you and I live differently. At this point she was crying a bit and I asked why she was so upset and she asked why I wasn't. I said you have no idea how happy I am that we are having this conversation. You're trying to convince me of something but all I want is for us to understand each other. This is a dialogue, one that will go on our entire lives. Who are you, who am I, how are we going to lives our lives differently but still coexist? That's fucking LIFE right there!

The conversation never ended. It just sort of died. Then we went and had a cool-down drink, and talked about..you know. Everything else.

I'm glad we talked but I was still left so disappointed in the way she approached the whole thing. I value her opinion and I value her taking on the role of "concerned older sister" and understand that she is very rules-oriented and safety-conscious and academic but I just wish she wouldn't talk down, or try to convince. It's highly upsetting. Psychedelics are a huge part of my life. I asked her what about my interest in them was any less valid than her studying Art History? I'm reading about the chemistry of them, the pharmacology, the biological effects on the body, the history of drug use, the philosophy of drug use, delving into art that has been affected by the experience. I approach it almost academically, except one thing that separates me from her is that I dive right into it too. She said flat out she thinks it's better to have an objective view of things and stand back and watch them. I didn't even know what to say about that.

At least things got talked about. But there's a lot of work to do..


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis


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OfflineLion
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #8401908 - 05/14/08 05:48 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

She said to me, what if 10 years go by and you're still a barback who takes LSD and calls himself a writer but doesn't have anything published?


That quote stung me personally. Words really have the power to sculpt an entire false reality in the mind, and these ones are particularly constrictive and narrow IMO.

Glad to hear you're conversing with her and letting her know how you feel. I am very open about psychedelics with my family and they're supportive and curious. I also have problems connecting with my sister, but she's just beginning college so I don't expect her to understand my life experience and world-view, just as I know I struggle to understand where she's coming from.


--------------------
“Strengthened by contemplation and study,
I will not fear my passions like a coward.
My body I will give to pleasures,
to diversions that I’ve dreamed of,
to the most daring erotic desires,
to the lustful impulses of my blood, without
any fear at all, for whenever I will—
and I will have the will, strengthened
as I’ll be with contemplation and study—
at the crucial moments I’ll recover
my spirit as was before: ascetic.”


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InvisibleWhiskeyClone
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #8401946 - 05/14/08 06:03 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

She sounds pretty attached to her opinions :shrug:

I'm sure it would be nice if she wasn't, hey?

OMR, I think it's clear that you're well on your way to living a life that is utterly true to yourself.  You seem to know intuitively what's good for you in a way most people probably don't.  I don't know how important it is to you for your sister to approve of your lifestyle; maybe it makes sense to let go of that hope completely.  But a few years down the road it should be clear to even her that your life is far more fulfilling and promising than any career or portfolio ever could be.

You're the wise one here.


--------------------
Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.  For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.  Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it.

~ R.W. Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

:heartpump:


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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #8402131 - 05/14/08 07:00 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

Suspicious of Alex Grey?  :wtf:

So what if he took drugs, look at what he got PUBLISHED!  :smile:


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OfflineGinseng1
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: Penguarky Tunguin]
    #8403164 - 05/14/08 10:46 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

Great stuff man. Your beliefs about psychedelics coincide with mine almost identically (especially what you wrote about atheism).

Having intense talks like that with family members takes alot of strength.

Your sister seems to preach 'objectiveness', yet does not practice it herself. Must be very tedious! Hopefully in due time she might get out of that hollow 'atheist' trap.


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Invisiblememes
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: Ginseng1]
    #8403317 - 05/14/08 11:14 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

When I read your original letter to her I knew the kind of response you would get. Not because it was written badly, or portrayed an inaccurate message - but because she doesn't have the mindset to understand or appreciate it.

When i was in highschool, I was the straight edge kid. I wasn't Hardcore, with Xs on my hands or anything - i just chose to abstain from drugs and alcohol. Nobody could convince me otherwise, but I didn't judge others for their choices. Your original letter explained everything just as perfectly as a fan of psychiedelics could, but she doens't speak the language. She hasn't had her perception opened up - hasn't seen the world the way we do - doesn't understand what is to be truly in your own head. And until her mind's inner eye is opened, she will remain ignorant to your viewpoints.

The sad part is that she can't just accept that you have chose this path. It's obvious from your speech you are well aware of your actions, your choices, and your goals. Inherently, people who are truly knowledgable of their choices and the consequences of those choices have it in their self-interest to choose those that will make them happy. I can tell from the text you type online that you're happy with where you are, and the path you're traveling down. If she can't percieve that same message in direct conversation, and accept that you are where you want to be - then I don't think there is much more you can do.

Perhaps someday she will realize there is more to life than one person's subjective measurements of success. I wish you the best in your endeavor - but I have faith that you will finally get through to her somehow.

I want to say "Show her this thread" - but I don't think it would do too much good. I'm sure we're all just a forum full of "misdirected" people in her eyes.

I wish I could offer more (any) help.


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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #8403584 - 05/15/08 12:16 AM (15 years, 8 months ago)

Your sense of peace about your life is what's important.  :hug:

Sorry she doesn't understand that.  Maybe she will one day.


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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #8406673 - 05/15/08 07:43 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

I am very impressed with your letter and course of action.

I guess the only thing I could suggest, although it is too late now, is to first mention the psychological benefits and therapeutic uses, clinical trials, etc. I would try to keep it scientific; the spiritual stuff is definitely a sensitive topic for most people. Sometimes the 'spiritual' language can be substituted by descriptors such as 'enthusiasm', 'introspection', 'layered mind-states', 'plasticity', and 'openness'. Then again, you don't want to modify your speech so much that it becomes dishonest.

How do you think it will it be different if she changes her mind?


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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: Epigallo]
    #8413029 - 05/17/08 02:10 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

OMR, that was an extremely well written letter, as good as any could be regarding the subject matter. It just goes to show that no matter how compelling an argument you present, people will cling to their beliefs and assumptions like liferafts.

I relate to your positions to a striking degree, I feel I could have written that letter myself (thought it probably wouldn't have been as good). I grew up a devout atheist and also took mushrooms for the first time seeking more of an interesting high than a transcendental experience, which it ended up being. I 'came out of the psychedelic closet' with my family a few years later and it went very, very badly, beginning with an argument like your sister's coming from them, turning into extreme self-righteousness which was impossible to reason with and which eventually became extremely disrespectful to myself (at this point I stopped caring entirely what they thought, which only furthered their certainty that I had lost touch with reality) and climaxing with my parents, having cosigned on my apartment at the time, leading the cops through while I was out of town in an effort compile evidence of DMT manufacturing to 'scare me' into going to rehab, which failed and ended me up with

-felony manufacturing charges that were reduced because of lack of evidence to
-felony possession charges that were reduced, being a first time offender and eligible for conditional discharge, to
-a 1.5 year probation sentence which included mandatory rehab, community service, fines, etc which I am still in the midst of, plus a tremendous deal of anger, frustration, and depression which I am still sorting out.

Amazingly I actually have a functioning, if shallow, relationship with my family again, which ironically if it weren't for transforming psychedelic experiences of my life would never happen; my old self would have held onto that anger forever and it would have surely consumed me by now. This hardly the whole story either -- it is much more expansive. You just never know how people will react when they are afraid.


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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: Grok]
    #8415714 - 05/18/08 08:20 AM (15 years, 8 months ago)

OMR, I know it's a little late, but I have to say that I think it's wonderfull that you can write such a heart felt letter to your sister and expect honest feedback. My sister's a great person, one of the kindest people I know, but I could never be this honest with her and expect a discussion back. Maybe I'm not giving her enough credit, but that's the impression that I get.

It seems to me that you have to chalk up the differences you two have. She seems concerned with success, while you are concerned with life. Neither of you are correct, you just need to remain on that common ground and maybe just ignore the rest, since you've already made your views perfectly clear.

Sorry if I misjudged you in any way.

Now I'm thinking of corresponding with my family in letter form, I can never seem to say things right the first time.


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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: WhiskeyClone]
    #8415823 - 05/18/08 09:34 AM (15 years, 8 months ago)

I think its a good thing your sister is so concerned with your well-being.

It seems to be the prevailing view that self-discovery, personal growth etc. are mutually exclusive with "success". Why can't you do both at the same time?


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...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge.  It is an indellible experience; it is forever known.  I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did.

Smith, P.  Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27.

...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely.

Osmond, H.  Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436


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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: badchad]
    #8488101 - 06/05/08 12:01 PM (15 years, 7 months ago)

I won the Ban Lottery a couple of times and never responded to everyone's kind responses.


chad I do agree with you, on both counts...I mean it's good she's concerned fo me, and also I agree that success and happiness are not mutually exclusive.


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Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis


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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #12244014 - 03/21/10 06:16 PM (13 years, 10 months ago)

Greetings folks!  For those of you who have chimed in here or followed my other thread dealing more with my relationship with my mother (found here) I want to first off express my deep thanks.  Sometimes I think I am being overly naked "look at me" by posting these things, but I have received ratings and private messages that encourage me to continue sharing my personal and interpersonal travails with you; people have told me that my own openness with my family inspires them to be more honest with their own loved ones about who they are and what is most important to them, whether that is the psychedelic experience or something else completely.

The last time I posted in this thread it was 2008. My sister and I did not discuss this topic again until the fall of 2009 when I decided that I was going to focus on graduate school, and was researching both schools to apply to and a focus for my studies. I knew I wanted to study psychedelics, but in what context? Anthropology? Sociology? Psychopharmacology? Creative Writing? Religious Studies? I could take any tack.

My sister, whose letters are reprinted in this thread, is a PhD student at an Ivy League university. I wanted her advice. I traveled to see her and spend the weekend and with her and during the afternoon on Saturday, I laid it out on the table. The conversation went incredibly well, with her providing excellent advice not just for searching for a school or a teacher with whom to study but also helping me phrase my questions and my approach to psychedelics. She helped me formulate some very simple questions to answer to myself. I felt we'd really taken a step forward; in seeing that my interest in psychedelics was taking a turn for the academic, she seemed to offer me a bit more respect.

After this, my life took a very sharp turn. My boss and friend and mentor Margaret, whose cancer had been facing what seemed like certain defeat, took a turn for the worse at the end of September. By the first week in December, she was dead, and much more work was on my hands. I don't have time for graduate school right now; my job is my family and my home and the businesses for which I work are near and dear to my heart. Right now, I have to do a good job for Margaret.

But I also need to flex my individualistic muscle. I need to be who I am. So I have been looking for and striving for ways to contribute to the psychedelic community any way I can. I knew about the MAPS Conference coming up in April, and I bought a ticket and a flight.

If you have not read the other thread earlier linked, "Paths of the Heart/Coming out of the Psychedelic Closet," the events that followed that can be found in this post within that thread, where I detail a conversation where I "come out" to my mother as someone who uses psychedelic substances.

In the wake of that revelation, each of my two sisters had similar but different reactions. My oldest sister, who has been much more understanding of my lifestyle all throughout my life (I have long been, in many ways, the black sheep of the family), wished I had not told my mother but understood why I did it.

The sister with whom this thread largely deals, N, was extremely angry with me.  We had a phone call a week after I told my mother, and what happened was not a conversation. I was put on the defensive about my entire life, and N spent about two hours picking apart every thing about the way I live my life. It was incredibly painful for me; I had never known she could have such a closed mind.  Alas, I wrote her this email after a short cooling down period:

Quote:

I know you don't want to think about any of this at all. But I'm going to write this to you anyway, and you can read it at your leisure, whenever you want. I know you are very busy.  We've "tabled" this discussion before at your request, and I always defer to you on that and let you take whatever time you need before talking about it, no matter how much doing that really upsets me, which isn't something I think you take into account at all.  It makes me feel like the state of our relationship isn't as important to you as your studies and other pursuits, and like you don't really take me and my own interests seriously even though I have the deepest respect for how you spend your time, even if it's not what I would choose for myself. You want everything to be okay between us, but you don't give me any rope to work with. Perhaps I'm short-sighted, or delusional - really, tell me - but I feel that I try much harder than you do to reach a middle ground in our differing perspectives.

There's a real lack of mutuality between us in terms of respect and understanding, and I'm not being melodramatic at all when I say it breaks my heart.  That conversation we had on the phone a few Sundays ago, well it wasn't a conversation at all, not from where I was standing. You spent so much time attacking my choices, my way of life, my beliefs, and I don't know how to react to that.  Hence so much silence on my part towards the end. You said some incredibly hurtful things to me that I keep playing over again in my head and they never sting any less.

I always tell people about the strong women in my life who so inspire me, and you and Mommy and Miriam are the foremost among them, so this inability we have to have a dialogue as opposed to talking at each other, it really wounds me.  And again, I feel I make a great effort when we do talk about this to invite dialogue, but you are incredibly closed-minded about seeing my side of things. I am perpetually perplexed by the fact that you, a brilliant PhD student at an Ivy League University, have not even the slightest inclination to challenge your preconceived notions about something - in this case drugs, drug use, drug abuse, and the possible benefits and dangers of the things in which I'm interested.  You told me as much, and I quote it verbatim, "I don't think I'll ever be able to see things from your perspective."  That sounds a lot like, "I'm never going to try."

You think I've been brainwashed, and I don't know if that insults or upsets me more. If you could simply accept that I have a passion that sprang organically and that I have pursued that passion as one of many I have in this life, I think that would be a huge step in helping us understand one another. I had an experience, and this felt, present, direct experience impacted my life positively, and I feel other people deserve the opportunity to explore their consciousness - a natural, innate human drive found in almost every single culture in human history - without fear of legal reprisal. And I feel very passionately that people's irrational fears of what they don't know should not be a roadblock to medicinal research and prescription of substances that could help people immeasurably.  I believe billions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted on a war that calls itself the war on drugs but is a war on personal freedom and whose data clearly shows it unfairly targets minorities while whites have higher rates of drug use across the board.  These are not things I pulled out of the air, or that someone said to me and that I am regurgitating, these are conclusions I have come to via three routes - personal experience, conversation with hundreds of other people, and extensive reading of scientific/academic research and a wide array of literature on the subject.

I have no interest in converting you to my viewpoint, at all. I don't need you to agree with me. We could spend our entire lives in disagreement on these issues and I would be sad about it but I would accept it.  What I can't accept is your not even trying at all to understand where I'm coming from, and just looking for reasons that are more comfortable for you than just accepting that I am sincerely passionate about this - i.e., that I'm "fulfilling some psychological need to embrace something controversial."


I think you're holding out hope, always, that this "phase" will end.  But, Nika, I'm not an adolescent boy going through a fad - I'm a man with passionate feelings about a subject that happens to be taboo to some people.  This dialogue, as I see it, has to be an ongoing one, because it strikes right to the heart of our relationship as brother and sister. I love you unconditionally, and I know you love me the same, but as a friend of mine once said years ago, "Love is not enough."  Love is all you need, but it's not enough to make the world go around. It's a three-pronged fork - peace, love, and understanding. We have the love, but we're not going to have peace until we try and understand one another. I am always trying to understand and accept what it is that scares and upsets you (and society at large) about psychedelics, and I hope you can one day understand and accept why it is that I feel so strongly as I do about them.

Love,
[my real name]




She responded with this monolithic paragraph, which I have not broken up for you so that it can retain its original character.  In the construction of this unbroken stream of thought, I see an impenetrability...

Quote:

Oy, I do not know where to begin with this. First of all, I never wanted to table this discussion because I don't have time for you or because our relationship isn't one of my top priorities (I think you know that you're one of the most important people in my life). I wanted to table this discussion because I find this topic an endless source of frustration and upsettedness. And I want to try to find a way to articulate why that is. I think you really do believe that you're being open-minded and that you want to hear my perspective and address my concerns, but that's almost the problem--you've already decided that I'm wrong and that my perspective is not valid. And I appreciate that you want to make me feel better about what you're doing--but, again, that's the problem: you want to assuage me, you don't want to listen to me. You do not hear what I am saying. Further, I think you probably want to say that to me: that I'm not hearing you, and I'm not listening to your perspective. But, Danny, I hear your perspective. I get what you're saying. I know that you really, whole-heartedly believe in the power of psychedelics to open your consciousness and make you aware of yourself and of others. But, to me, it is a false consciousness. (And I'm so sorry that I'm so blunt, but this is the way I write and speak because it's the only way I know to articulate my thoughts.) Bear with me for a minute here: I think all people in careers that they really love pursue them because it teaches them about themselves and the world. I know that is the case for both me and for Miriam. I love art, but I also love how studying the history of art helps me understand how the world works, how societies determine their values, and, well, how people think (what determines our interests, and how that finds expression in the weirdest possible ways). And this isn't something that I can just find in a book, it's why I work the hours that I do; it's because I have to research and think and write for weeks on end to even get at one little point--and it's not something I'll have worked out when I finish my dissertation, it's a process and an interest and a quest even that will drive my whole career. It's really, really hard, and it's a struggle. (Imagine the mental version of the most grueling physical exercise you can ever think of.) And that, to me, is how you get to know yourself and the world: through constant challenge and struggle and work. That is why I am skeptical of religion, of psychedlics, of anything that promises that you can tap into yourself as if yourself is something just there waiting to be found and that you can get at just by asking yourself certain questions within narrowly defined parameters. It should be something you construct your whole life, and I just adamantly believe that it can't be done in the abstract--which is what I think religion and psychedelics, for example, are premised upon. I do not believe that you can truly learn about yourself by removing yourself from reality, by putting yourself in a headspace that is elsewhere (which is what both religion and psychedelics do) even if those "practices" then ask you to apply what you've learned there to your daily life. If you want to learn about yourself and about the world, you can only do that as yourself in the world. This is the drive behind all great art: Michelangelo may paint God, van Gogh may paint flowers, and Christo may put up gates in Central Park, but they are all using art as a medium to figure something out about the world and humanity's place within it. And this is why I am so insistent about you tending to your writing. Because I don't know that you've learned yet how to harness it as a medium that will allow you to learn about yourself and the world. I think if you find your subject, your question, your inspiration, you'll see how writing can be more than a release, it can be, well, a medium--something that allows you to work out ideas and issues and concerns that you didn't even know that you had. And maybe you already feel this way about it; I'm just going on the past few conversations we've had in which it didn't sound to me like you did. I'm not pushing you towards writing because I think it could get you a "good job." I'm pushing you towards writing because I think it can give you a career that allows you to find yourself and understand the world, like art history does for me. Because, basically, I don't think you need psychedelics to do what you want to do; and, in fact, for the reasons I've stated above, I think they actually drive you further away from what you want--which, again, seems to be knowledge of yourself and happiness with the world. My overall issue with psychedelics (in addition to that you never know what people can put in shit, and that there are terrible consequences if you're ever caught) is that: that they actually withhold from you exactly what it is that they promise and, further, that by doing so (through this false fulfillment or knowledge) they distract you from actually exploring yourself, the world, and the other means that can get you to that. In fact, I think they dangerously teeter on making people self-centered and self-righteous in the process. Are there medicinal uses for it? Maybe. Does it suck and is it perhaps unwarranted how harsh drug laws are? Yeah, probably. But these are totally separate issues from whether it's the path to enlightenment, which (for the reasons stated above) I don't think it is. So, it's not that I don't recognize that governments have agendas and that policies can be skewed, and it's not that I don't see that one day they might find medicinal merit in certain chemicals or whatever in psychedelics. I just do not see psychedelics as the path to self/world-knowledge, and I would feel that way even if they were legal. The question isn't: are drugs bad, or are they good and misunderstood? Either way, they function in the same way--and that's what I disagree with. I'm sorry if any of this comes across as harsh; I really don't mean it that way--any vehemence in my voice when we speak or when I write is me trying to find a way, somehow, to get out words that even remotely express what I'm thinking. I love you more than you can possibly imagine--which is why I get so frustrated and so upset when it comes to this topic. I just want to help you find the way to get what you want: to be truly engaged in the world and happy with yourself within it.

Love,
N




And now that I have shared that with you, I am off to draft my response...


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis


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InvisiblePenguarky Tunguin
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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #12244761 - 03/21/10 08:04 PM (13 years, 10 months ago)

You're lucky your family members are intelligent...


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Re: A letter I just wrote to my sister... [Re: Penguarky Tunguin]
    #12265045 - 03/24/10 06:55 PM (13 years, 10 months ago)

your threads just leave me in awe.. and i agree with the poster above, you are very lucky to have intelligent family members!

you keep trying to get your point across, but i dont see someone whos never done a psychedelic, understand the experience and what it means to us.

i greatly look forward to the tale as it unfolds, please keep us updated. :thumbup:


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