flowboy

So apparently now when I drink coffee, it doesn't even feel good anymore. I get a very anxious and chaotic energy for 3 hours, then I get SUPER depressed for some hours and without any willpower and focus. All the while being super chaotic, even when it's working. Today started with the embarassment of waking up an hour later than I should have started work. Having to tell my coworkers sorry, I messed up setting my alarm. Then not having the discipline to actually work in the time that I get paid for it, and the immense guilt and self hate that follows. What is wrong with me? I was doing so well, with the detox and the discipline. Tomorrow is psychedelic trip day. After that, dopamine detox is starting over! And I'm going to feel more positive about myself.

Coffee - The Unexpected End Boss My life is about proving that it is possible to function well without dependence on substances, for the type of person that typically gets the label 'ADD' this day and age now. I hate to admit it, but I still struggle a lot with distraction and inability to focus. This gets really bad when detoxing from caffeine (as I am now). I've decreased my intake by limiting myself to tea for the past 4 days. I feel like a dumb dumdum. I want to sleep a lot. I feel unable to feel normal motivation. I don't know what I'm saying half the time. It's making me depressed to change from a guy who excels at his job, to a guy who can't remember why he liked it, and is actually pretending to understand what he does. The other mode I have is overuse of caffeine. It works: I'm good at programming, I get stuff done. However my body hates it, I never get enough sleep and I burn out. I just read these quotes on a caffeine quitting subreddit, and they inspired me as well as shocked me: So, at my last caffeine quit, I lasted 30 days. Then, I PANICKED at work because I was fucking sick of feeling like an impostor who can't even do his job for one hour of the day. I drank decaf. It helped amazingly. Then I was sold and convinced myself that programming was just not possible without caffeine, and that I would just keep using it for that, only on work days. I saw no other solution. I did NOT know that the benefits of quitting take 40-70 DAYS to kick in. Not 30. I did not give it enough time. Also, I tried going cold turkey and did not place any value on tapering off first. This is a typical trap for me: ALL or NOTHING. If I switched to tea and chocolate, I hadn't achieved anything in my skewed view. Conversely, if I went back and drank a single cup of decaf, then I was back on. If I then drank 3 strong mugs the day after that, I would not perceive that as worse. I saw it way too binary. The way out of this last substance addiction is to go against my binary instincts and taper off until I can subsist on tea and 3 black cups a week only. Then, I need to cut out all caffeine and give it 90 DAYS. Oh, man did I underestimate this. Let's see: I taper off in the next two weeks, then I start my path of suffering in August, which means I'll have won the battle by the end of October, my 28th birthday! This is some serious shit. I regret my bitching about caffeine on here as much as this. Part of me believes it should be easy to stop. Part of me believes it doesn't matter, I should just leave this relatively innocent addiction alone and get on with my purpose. But the frustration, stress and frequent burnout-like states are a real problem. And reading these people's experiences on the internet convinced me, I'm on to something here. It apparently actually causes your thoughts to get messy and distract you! It also causes you to skip over half the things you read, be impatient and have a short attention span. Is caffeine an actual cause of AD(H)D? A contributing factor at least. I'm sure of it. If I truly want to stick it to Big Pharma and have better focus than I ever could with ritalin, then I better get rid of the black monster for good!

@Chakra Lion Alright, if it's strong enough to withstand my heckling, maybe it's for real. Congratulations. I responded like that because I went through a similar thing, only I was only convincing myself of it to shield myself from the pain of seeing that she was hurting me and did not respect my boundaries anymore. I guess I had an unconscious impulse to wake you up to my projection. But I suppose the projection was inaccurate, and if you indeed have no regrets or bitterness about this later, you had a stronger basis of self love than I had at the time.

I'm taking lion's mane fruiting bodies extract in capsules bought off Amazon - so far, not noticing anything major, so couldn't recommend for or against. I only know that products made from the fruiting bodies are better than those from the mycelium, so that is a thing to check. Never tried fresh or dried actual mushroom, if you get good results from that I'd be interested to know!

David Deida has many books on this subject - I'd start with The Way Of The Superior Man. As a person who has attended tantra workshops where the most practical parts of this theory are taught - have you considered going?

Do you care about fucking lots of girls, or do you just want to meet someone so that you're no longer distracted by the desire? If the latter, you might try the One Approach A Day approach - which is exactly what it sounds like. This way you're still improving, but not in huge chunks of time. Who knows, you might meet someone pretty quick. If there is self-esteem issues holding you back, there are more time-efficient ways to fix those than just massive going out.

Coaching - jokes and reality I joked to someone on the forum today that I offered a coaching program. Then it hit me - that might be worth a try. I've been told by multiple friends that I offer good insights and emotional intelligence, and I enjoy helping my friends with that. I always have. Of course I'm not allowed to promote myself doing that on this forum, but I think I actually will start something, as an experiment. Yes, I'm full of shadow, and a work in progress. But that's actually good, because I'll have to keep working on myself too while helping others. And that will allow me to stay humble and not get a big head about knowing everything. I might actually do this... it suits me much better than the latest business plan I was working on. Which was so far from my natural abilities, so why not try this first? I've dealt with ADD, depression, anxiety to talk to women, low self-esteem, lack of life purpose... overcome most of those, some I still struggle with, but I've been very aware of how the process works and why, every step of the way. I might be totally delusional, but there must be some gold nuggets I can share...

I do offer a coaching program - which you can PM me for Good luck on your journey!

Even though the last part is a disaster waiting to happen when doctors and physical therapists read it, I'm still saving this into my OneNote page with the best quotes related to dating... thank you Leo

@Vercingetorix No, I mean what I said. You can't teach what you don't master. See what I'm saying? As a therapist you have to be able to teach people how to have healthy boundaries and value themselves. But you yourself don't have them, or you would not be in this relationship. If you had healthy self-esteem, you wouldn't waste your time with a girl you weren't attracted to, and if you had healthy boundaries, she would have been out the door the first time she hit you. I have read your rationalisations for staying, and I call bullshit on them. You are just scared of being on your own again, or secretly think you don't deserve better. It's okay, you are human. I'm not judging nor trying to be mean. But these are the problems that a large chunk of people go to therapy for to fix. My point is that for the sake of not just you but also your clients, it is imperative that you do the work on yourself to the point where this situation could never happen again. So that then you can pass on this wisdom, from a place of having been there and overcome. (If I totally misread the situation and you are actually a physical therapist, or some other specialty where this doesn't apply, I apologize for my harshness - I took a shot)

It's all in The Way Of The Superior Man and other resources by David Deida. Go read them. It's all about deep intimacy, love, relationships and sex. Just go experience life man. Have a dozen more relationships. You're not ready to hear the answer to what you are asking.

A very common thing that therapy clients need to learn is valueing themselves and putting up healthy boundaries - and currently you are failing to do so.

Why? You don't even have a girl yet (I'm getting that impression, correct me if I'm wrong) When you're in a relationship, you can work with her on being better at intimacy. I know some great resources for that. Singing cheesy lovesongs to please her is definitely not the way, because it's dishonest as fuck. But you can't practice that alone, so if you're single, work on attracting a girl first. And the way to do that is what I mentioned. So actually what I said was very appropriate to your post. You may want to read Models by Mark Manson. And The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida.

What about this video is inspiring to you? It shouldn't be. Look, if this dude wants to sing for his girlfriend because he likes singing and he likes this music, that's great, let him. But if he did it purely for her, singing a song he doesn't really like but hopes she does, to "demonstrate his love" or something, this relationship is about to fall apart/only being kept alive for the likes on instagram. I'm not kidding when I say: I bet she doesn't blow him anymore, if they even have regular sex at all, which I doubt. In a relationship, you can get away with doing stuff like this sometimes, if you really want to. But don't be fooled: it actually hurts her attraction for him. While it's true that you see her emotions going up, what you don't see is that simultaneously her attraction is plummeting. After this, he better make sure to snap back into centered, grounded man-mode fast, or it's the beginning of the end. In my years of dating over 50 women, reading and researching a lot and asking women about the subjects during various workshops, my conclusion is this: no matter what they say, women don't want a man who changes himself for her. So if that was your plan, I'm advising you to reconsider. So what you're doing here is a very bad idea, because trying to become mr romantic like this so that women will like you, to women is the most cringy unattractive thing ever. Instead, ignore everything, ignore what women say they want, and just work on yourself and become firmly grounded in your life's purpose. Then you will just naturally attract the women that suit you. Don't ever worry about it. And of course, be decent to them. But that has nothing to do with attraction.

Back from vacation Whilst I did not see fit to travel abroad, I did enjoy a two-week period of letting go of the rules and discipline, going to bed and waking up when I want to. Smoked some changa with a friend and got a nice reminder of how lovely low doses of DMT are. Also got high on weed on a couple occasions. Did it by myself and then spontaneously followed along with a half hour yoga video. Turns out it does indeed combine very well. I'm used to weed making me uncomfortable, insecure and paranoid. Lots of uncomfortable body sensations too, that usually make me wish it's over. This time the focus on body and breath grounded me, my breathing didn't feel restricted. I even felt the footstep that I have felt on my heart area got lifted. Also I kept the dose low. I'm thinking maybe I'm growing out of the habit of taking too much of everything. That would be a cool development. Who knows, maybe in a few weeks I'll be able to keep a chocolate bar half-eaten in my cupboard for days. It would surely be nice to keep coffee in the house and not drink it. Or beer, for that matter. There is even a pack of tobacco I bought to roll the joints with, in my room. And I'm not even obsessively thinking about it! Sure it's a little bit seductive, but also I remember how gross and dirty I always feel, smelling my hands, knowing I inhaled all that nonsense just for a nicotine buzz. It makes me feel weak. I know that if I roll one cigarette from it, I'll have to then throw it out, along with any chocolate and alcohol [tbh, probably consume it all at once], and go back to being a person who has to empty his house of anything unhealthy, because he might consume anything in excess that is around. But for now, I'm good. We'll see

Looking forward to more trip reports!

@Red-White-Light That sounds hot. What's that feel like, though, to be psychically communicated with/at? Someone's voice in between your thoughts? Looking in her eyes and hearing words? I am curious what to imagine.

Favorited. Very cool, thank you for sharing!

I did it for 2 weeks. Starting with a fast really made the rest seem easy by comparison. I succeeded at cutting out everything except for text messaging, which I felt I needed to do a couple times, because you can't always call people. During that time, it became a lot easier and more rewarding to read books, it was the high point of my day! Much more valuable than watching random videos in my opinion. I also felt calm and present. Balanced. Got clear on what I value: real human contact, creation and learning. After a couple weeks and some stress, the pendulum swung the other way and I had an ego backlash involving food and tv binges. Now I'm somewhere in between, very addicted again to my phone and coffee and thinking I have to start another detox again.

You covered it in a lot of lofty words that make it sound beautiful, but I see through it because I've been through this myself. If a woman leaves you for someone else, it means that you have work to do on yourself as a man. Patting yourself on the back for being okay with it, thinking you're so spiritual for loving her unconditionally, is a distraction. Why did she leave you? Are you aimless, without passion and clear purpose? Do you have trauma that you should be processing? Do you deeply love yourself?

Sure you can Just like people stop smoking. They keep saying it's hard, until they decide to just not do it - then it's easy. Treat it like an addiction. I recently got lucky because no one on Tinder wanted to meet due to social distancing. Also the bars were closed here. I used that to make it easier to accept a period of celibacy. And you know what, it's actually pretty nice and calm to just not worry about it. I never want to go back to the frantic text-message-checking. You may have to quit porn for a while too, though. That helps quiet the mental addiction. I threw away everything and blocked all the sites. Turns out if you don't have the constant visual reminders anymore, you forget about women quicker than you think.

@BornToBoil Borderline is like a demon that transmits from person to person through relationships. People who start an intimate relationship with a borderline personality think at first that they are helping the other person feel better, but then inevitably get dragged down with them in their pit of darkness. Most of them come to hate themselves long after the relationship is finished, many even are driven to suicide. The guilt you feel is part of the evil spell, it's not real. Just be glad you got out when you did, and that she lived so far away. She could have ruined you.

Apparently under anesthesia, one's consciousness goes to a rave. This is a less well-documented effect. I've learnt something, thank you

So I've been in my self-declared vacation for a week now, and I'm already at the point where I'm longing for structure and discipline again. I suppose I tricked myself into thinking that sleeping late, being lax with routines and watching movies would be relaxing. It's not. Time is slipping through my fingers and I'm not able to focus on anything because there's no plan. Plans are vital. Happiness is a byproduct of a good plan. So I suppose I'm grateful for this opportunity to be reminded of why I meditate, why I work out and why I deprive myself of overly stimulating activities. It's a damn necessity for me to not go crazy.

Nice!