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Lion
Decadent Flower Magnate


Registered: 09/20/05
Posts: 8,775
Last seen: 3 days, 17 hours
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Re: Identifying your crutches and moving beyond them. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
#9665943 - 01/23/09 03:19 PM (15 years, 8 days ago) |
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Hey, OMR. Thanks for writing this. It is beautiful to see in your words a perfect map of my inner landscape when I'm stoned sometimes. These experiences are a crash back to earth and a chance to soften some perspectives. Whenever I experience such a fall, I always recognize that in the back of my mind I knew all along that such a fall was waiting to happen, because I was still clinging to old patterns under the surface even as I worked on opening up and letting go.
It's not wrong, it's just your karma, carrying you along. You are an inspirational individual, I really mean that...Reading about your experiences gives me courage to challenge my own rigid mental framework, because I see lucid expression in your words, the unfolding of life the way you see it, not the way some ideology or static perception of reality has caused you to see it.
It's all good. Eat a coconut or something.
-------------------- “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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WhiskeyClone
Not here


Registered: 06/25/01
Posts: 16,509
Loc: Longitudinal Center of Canada ...
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Re: Identifying your crutches and moving beyond them. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
#9666155 - 01/23/09 03:59 PM (15 years, 8 days ago) |
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Quote:
OneMoreRobot3021 said: One year later..
Wednesday I ended an incidental marijuana break that had come to last eighteen days, the longest such THC sabbatical I have taken in about a year. It originally came about simply as a function of my journey to Israel, where marijuana was nowhere to be found though some in the group did hunt hungrily for hashish. The night before departing for Tel Aviv, I'd gone to Ani's sister's apartment for some drinks and jubilation and there I had taken what I knew would likely be my last puffs of smoke for 10 days until I returned from the Holy Land. Looking back now, I can still taste the anxious feeling that crept over me as I rolled the delicious smoke over my tongue, savoring the feeling of getting high and dreading separating from it.
And then, in Israel, ah, how little thought I even gave it! It came up in conversation, sure, but not once did I find myself pining for it or missing it in the slightest. The trip was a clean break from certain aspects of my reality that were like crutches I daily leaned on - marijuana, the internet, even New York City - major centers of my identity. Walking free of these crutches I felt free as a gazelle on the open plains, running with abandon. My Self, surrounded by stimuli it had never known before, drew itself up to full height and stood proudly erect. The second-guessing I was used to suffering from all the time was nowhere to be found. This new sober self was awake, alive, and aware.
The first week of being back in New York City, I held on to that holy human high. I was on top of the world. And whereas smoking marijuana had once been almost - I'm a bit embarrassed to say - central to my sense of self, my personality, I found myself with no desire whatsoever to smoke. Even when my roommate Dave lit up a beautiful joint of his insanely good marijuana, the smell of the smoke wafted over me and it was acrid where once it had been aromatic; it tickled my nostrils like a stench and not a perfume. Strange, to be sure, but I decided to follow Kellie's timeless advice as I have been for the past seven six months - just roll with it.
I took my own stash out, buried my nose in it, and came away with the smell in my nostrils but no appetite for getting high. Strange. Much like it had the whole Birthright trip, my life seemed perfectly arranged,. Everything was lining up so well and my head felt like it was in a great space. I went to dinner with Kayla and Jared and we had the most wonderful time. My energy was coursing clearly. Everything was gravy. That night I wrote a drunken email to a friend, and it contained the line - "Sometimes you confuse me, you win me, you lose me. Maybe I'm silly, maybe my brain's willy-nilly, but the messages I hear in all the music in my ear just has me thinkin - also I've been drinkin' for seven hours at this point. I almost smoked a joint. But I'm not into getting high - these days...I don't know why. Maybe then I'd be back here, in new york which can be like hell instead of with my heart in Israel." That was Tuesday. All was well.
Wednesday - the entire day was a slow build-up to a concert I'd been looking forward to for months. Animal Collective, psychedelic freak folks extraordinaire, were going to rock the Bowery Ballroom, best-sounding room in the whole city. Smoking was in the back of my mind. After all, if I had been on my usual regimen of smoking every day, this would have been a show, an experience, that I would have been considering tripping for. So to be riding high on sobriety, even taking a puff of weed was a big deal that I was considering.
We were at Lucy;s apartment and Dave rolled a joint. I knew, in that moment, that I shouldn't partake, yet I did. Not just one small puff, either, but several long and deep tokes. As soon as the heavy coughs hit I knew I was in for a doozy. We set about walking to the show, all of us in our own stoned stratospheres. In mine, a full orchestra backed David Bowie as he sang Space Oddity in the arena in my mind. I was on cloud 9 for a moment.
And then we got to the Bowery and the entire rug was pulled out from underneath me. We met up with Jared, with Ani, and there was Lucy, and Dave, and all my worlds were colliding and I was well aware that I was the reason all these people were hanging out together. And yet I had absolutely no idea how to be myself, which was the antithesis of my experience in every moment in the three weeks prior. My entire existence became one unnerved and quivering question mark. This self-consciousness felt newfound though it was not entirely new. In a way I felt it each time I smoked, but when I smoked every day it was something I simply accepted and dealt with. Coming on the heels of an intense journey of self-discovery that ran concurrently with a period of sobriety, however, it was nearly unbearable. Instead of being glad to be stoned for such a trippy audio-visual dance-party of a show, I actually spent almost the entire time regretting my choice to get high and barely enjoying myself in the slightest while also worrying that everyone else wasn't having a good time.
At the end of the night when I got home with Dave and Ani, another joint was passed around, and I partook of that one too. Why? I'm not quite sure. But the regret stacked on, as I woke up the next day and still felt utterly stoned, pot-hangover style. I felt that way until about six or seven in the evening. My head was in an awful space. All day long I was down on myself, unsure of myself, melancholy without any real reason. Getting high had crashed me down to earth and now I was crawling on the ground.
So there has to be a way to stand back up right? I think I'm on to it. See, I didn't feel better until I cracked my journal open at night while working in the coat check, and wrote this all down. It didn't get better until i went through the catharsis of processing what was going on emotionally and mentally through writing. Now I know that I've learned something. That I don't want to be high all the time, that getting stoned every day isn't for me, and especially not getting stoned before going out in public to be sociable with people I care about. The next time I smoke (and I'm not thinking of quitting outright, you see) it will be because it feels just right, and not because everyone else is and not because I think I need it to enhance something that's probably going to be awesome on its own.
You live, you learn.
You know something's going right when not being high is better than being high 
Smells like... genuine growth
-------------------- 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"
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IllicitAlchemist
Becoming one.



Registered: 12/24/04
Posts: 395
Loc: The hara.
Last seen: 11 years, 9 months
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Re: Identifying your crutches and moving beyond them. [Re: Polyrhythmanaut]
#9667783 - 01/23/09 08:49 PM (15 years, 8 days ago) |
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Not that I buy into all that astrology bullshit, but are you a Scorpio. Your experience this month sounds strikingly similar to mine. I have given up many of my crutches and just started to focus on the little things that matter such as eating right, learning(feeding the mind), and just generally being quiet in my mind. Let me know, I'd be interested in knowing if we share the same astrological sign, even is neither of us really buy into that crap.
Peace.Love.Respect.
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OneMoreRobot3021



Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,024
Loc: the sky
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Re: Identifying your crutches and moving beyond them. [Re: IllicitAlchemist]
#9669263 - 01/24/09 01:06 AM (15 years, 8 days ago) |
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I'm a Gemini. Whatever that means.
-------------------- 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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JacquesCousteau
Being.


Registered: 06/10/03
Posts: 7,825
Loc: Everywhere, Everytime.
Last seen: 1 year, 8 months
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Re: Identifying your crutches and moving beyond them. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
#9670083 - 01/24/09 09:11 AM (15 years, 7 days ago) |
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Quote:
OneMoreRobot3021 said: I'm a Gemini. Whatever that means.
Hah. I didn't know, but I am not surprised. :geminihifive:
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Shnezbit
Psycho-naught



Registered: 09/30/04
Posts: 1,202
Loc: The Threshold.
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Re: Identifying your crutches and moving beyond them. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
#9670533 - 01/24/09 11:23 AM (15 years, 7 days ago) |
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Hey Robot I find your initial post in this thread inspiring.
What you say about letting go of crutches and finding and truly experiencing our true potential resonates with me and I know it to be the truth.
I'm 37 today actually and I have found what you are writing about a few times in my life for periods of time. Unfortunately like a wheel spinning I eventually have drifted back into the numbness of forgetfulness of this truth.
The thing we have to do is constantly remind ourselves of this. It's not easy but when we are in the light of our full potential there true happiness is felt.
I appreciate your post cause it has reminded me, thanks.
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