Conspiracy Theories Destroyed My Brain

[Tristan Clemons]

*WARNING*. Below is a detailed analysis of someone who has been indulging in a kind of weed induced psychosis and is seeking out anyone who has had or is having a similar experience. This involves topics that may be distressing to some people and could even be damaging if you are someone who deals with any kind of religious trauma. Please read with the understanding that this is a personal story and not in any way a conspiracy theory in of itself or a religious sermon of any kind. I am not here to prophesize or spread any kind of propaganda. Read with a mature level of understanding. Thank you.


Back in 2016 there was a lot of confusion and madness which was very substantial for me because I was fresh out of high school and thrown into community college without any idea where I wanted to go in life.  I grew up in a moderately Christian environment, and throughout high school I started to become more liberal minded and less of a 'moral orel' like I was in middle school. My mother during my junior and senior year went through a huge mid-life crisis after giving birth to my half brother and became a hardcore fundamentalist Christian. Every Sunday she would bring me to church with her and I slowly began to sink back into the comfortability of being a Christian. By the time I graduated and started to question my direction in life I was recommended a video on YouTube with some title along the lines of 'FINAL WARNING! SATAN'S NEW WORLD ORDER PLOT'. Of course being as naïve as I was, I watched it... And it changed my life.. For the worst. 

It did not help that I would smoke weed and indulge in this satanic panic rabbit hole because the weed made it seem much more 'real' and 'alarming' than it would ever be sober. It got to a point where my brain would automatically start forging conspiracy theories in my head about the world around me to the point of putting me in states of psychosis many times. Everything was satanic. Everything.... This scared the absolute living shit out of me and forced me into becoming the most Christian I could possibly be.. It was absolutely miserable. I felt this sense of guilt that weighed down on me like pillars of sand. My mom would always tell me to just 'trust in god's plan' and 'stop worrying, it's all under his control.' After a while the whole idea of it being a part of some 'divine' plan sickened me to my core, and I began to question the very foundation of this blind faith I had. I started asking myself 'is this actually how the world is, or is this just me believing this is how the world is because it would be the only way to justify the Christian god's existence?' 

That question led me on an epistemological journey that changed my life.. For the better. I cannot believe how much more control I had of  my life after questioning my beliefs and opening my mind to the possibilities. I felt like I was mentally free. And I was not destined to be subservient to some magical tyrant in the sky. I was in control of destiny and my future. In 2017 at the age of 20 I publicly denounced Christianity and entered some kind of renaissance of art exploration and learning more about the world around me instead of fearing it all the time. I became fascinated by psychedelics but there was something that held me back from experimenting with them.. And that same thing is what haunts me to this very day.. It's a fear that is so deep and so primal and every single time I smoke weed it will almost indefinitely take me to that place... This is how I know I am not ready for a real psych and probably never will be. 

When I smoke weed my mind floods my body once again with a feeling of GUILT... And SHAME.. A feeling that 'I have made a grave mistake' but for some odd reason.. I keep going back to it. I'm sure a large part of this guilt has to do with the fact that my mother, the woman who I looked up to the entirety of my youth believes that I may be destined for damnation. The fact that she so vehemently urges me to rethink everything and full heartedly believes that there is an external creator who is opposed to the advancement of human knowledge. My high brain does whatever it can to try and convince myself that this is true.. And man does it go DEEP.. It goes so insanely deep that i'm scared to even share it. It is just so incredible to me how insistent this kind of ego backlash is. It's like an annoying little pest on my shoulder that just won't go away. My pique for my interest in spirituality came and went in 2019 because my fear was too great. After obsessing throughout all of 2016 about Satanism and the Occult when I actually started learning about what the occult actually was in 2019, it gave that pest on my shoulder an even louder voice than before and lately it seems like the algorithms online have pandered to this same pest for a lot of people who are perusing spiritual enlightenment.

The whole Info Wars Alex Jones space of the internet is praying on people of faith by latching onto this fear of hell and the antichrist. They have molded a big picture narrative so vague that it offers the listeners permission to 'fill in the gaps' so they come up with all kinds of inconsistent 'reasoning' behind these conspiracy theories. Learning about my own mind has kinda helped me see why people like Alex Jones and David Icke are so popular. It's like the dogmatic nature of the conservative mind corrupts almost any and all insight it gets upon arrival. I feel horrible for these people because in a way I am one of them. I insist on all of this conspiracy shit to be nonsense, but when I am high that rational flies out the window. My sober mind would look at the concept of the Christian god and think 'if he knows all than why pray? Do we have a destiny or do we have free will? Why would he create Satan? Why can't god just snap and fix everything?' but my high mind will say 'it's so complex, no human mind can ever comprehend nor understand.'

I found Leo in early 2018, and his practical stuff helped me to a degree that no other self help guru or YouTuber has before. I found his philosophy to be captivating and encouraging, but his audience to be mind numbingly stupid and cultish. His video 'The Sneaky Psychology Behind Conspiracy Theories' is one of my favorites, but the comments just make me gag... There carries with a lot of psychonauts this arrogance and passion for 'exploring the human mind' but the mental virus that keeps me from ever experiencing these realms is ever present when I smoke weed or take a microdosage of shrooms, so it's safe for me to say that if I took acid or DMT with that lingering thought in my head.. It's over for me. I would probably lose my mind and wind up in a psych ward. The reason I keep smoking weed is because I get a LOT from it without losing touch with reality (at least in a physical sense), especially when I make music. It gives me this feeling of being a super creative genius, even though in reality i'm just pulling out things that were already in me to begin with. So, in an epistemological sense, my subconscious is always drawing corrupt 'insights' from all these different places. For example when you play a song for me high, I will draw some kind of 'satanic' messaging from it and think that it's a premeditated message to brain wash people and although that sounds silly, my high mind will actually make it convincing.. or when I watch a movie I will see esoteric symbolism and draw from it it's occult origins which will bring me down the rabbit hole once more.. Basically anything and everything will hold some kind of 'satanic' eccentricity behind it which is just.. fucking nuts to say the least.. 

And the most corrupt insight I have gathered is this... 'what exists beyond human knowledge is the forbidden knowledge and he who seeks it will only be met by unimaginable suffering.' This right here.. Is what keeps me from doing any kind of spiritual work. The fear of this one idea alone.. It's not that I believe in it.. It's that I am utterly horrified by it's possibility.. My mind will do ANYTHING.. ANYTHING... To make this seem true.. And I have yet to find anyone perusing spiritual work who will entertain this possibility because it's the most frightening of all the possibilities that could exist in the universe.. What if by some cosmic mind fuck we couldn't understand, the Christian god is real and is protecting us from the pursuit of wisdom because humans were not created to handle such wisdom? I believe this theory was entertained in the song 'Right in Two' by Tool. So all of this could just be a derivative of other ideas such as that or hell.. Listen to any Alex Jones clip and he will tell you some BS similar to this. 

Anyways.. I am thankful that I am only freaking out about shit like this when I smoke weed, and most of the time I spend high is spent making art to distract myself. There are people out there who deal with this kind of psychotic shit all the time and I do not envy them in the slightest. I wish more people would understand how dangerous the world of conspiracy theories truly is. I hope there is someone out there who can relate and has dealt with this shit themselves.. Because Religious indoctrination is just so unfathomably strong. It's almost in a sense a self fulfilling prophecy because I do not think there is any greater fear out there than the fear of hell. It's the unholy mother of all fears.. 
 

Edited December 22, 2022 by Tristan Clemons
Inaccurate header information.

[Osaid]

I could always intuitively sense as a child that the religious dogma being taught to me was BS. Probably because I was an introvert who was always contemplating philosophy. Religion just didn't make sense to me, and I could sense the fear and confusion from the religious people around me. I was always questioning their authority. You could say I was born with a very grounded epistemological framework, because I wasn't afraid to ask questions and contemplate things for myself. Making sure my ideas about the world were correct was a top priority for me.

I think that the problem of being sucked into religious and conspiratorial dogma fundamentally comes to a lack of proper epistemology and a careless delegation of authority. The latter reason can probably be related to the former, but I think it's helpful to separate it in order to highlight it.

Like for example, if you were to ask some hard-nosed conspiracy theorist "What is the difference between real and unreal?", they probably wouldn't even be able to give you a good answer. How are you going to believe some random ideology without first even knowing the answer to that? That's a very fundamental thing you've skipped over. If you don't know that, then of course your perception and ideologies are going to be corrupted and warped later down the line. Epistemology is analogous to a firewall on a computer, and the computer is analogous to your mind. If you don't have solid epistemology, all sorts of mind viruses are going to sneak in undetected. You're gonna have no standards for the ideas that go in your mind, and so all sorts of things will start to infest it.

And then, what happens when you don't have good epistemology is that you start to rely on authority. More technically, you start delegating your own authority onto other people. Because ultimately, all authority is decided by you. Authority becomes your crutch without proper epistemology. If you can't think for yourself, let other people think for you. Your religious leader said it. Your teacher said it. Your parents said it. And so, it must be true. Who am I to question them? Well, you probably aren't even able to question them. Most people don't even contemplate questioning them, because their epistemological framework is so uncoordinated.

Quote

What exists beyond human knowledge is the forbidden knowledge and he who seeks it will only be met by unimaginable suffering.

In your instance, for example, the fear of this quote is an example of an appeal to authority. 

You are unable to discern whether the quote is true or false, so you are forced to give it authority and take what your mind perceives to be the safest route, which is avoiding anything beyond human knowledge. So, by default, the quote gains authority out of your fear, because you are unable to discern how truthful it is with your current epistemological framework.

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by Osaid

[Shane Hanlon]

Hey man, I'm sorry you had to go through all that. <3 

On the positive side, it seems like the worst is behind you!!

Thank you for sharing. It is helpful to understand what is going on in the minds of conspiracy theorists. And it makes me so grateful for my ability to decipher them. And that I grew up in a family that didn't force religion on me. I am lucky enough to have a mother that doesn't think I am going to be punished for eternity because I am not involved in her religion.

 

I love you and I am so happy that you are on the path toward a happier existence. One step at a time <3

[Tristan Clemons]

This is the first time I ever shared this online so already I am loving the engagement. Thank you Osaid for that amazing breakdown and thank you Shane for the support man. I am using this as an opportunity to create amazing art.