Category: Life Experiences

I don’t know how to qualify the way I viewed myself. Days I knew I was too thin and others where I viewed myself as in need of losing weight. Small things, skin roll when sitting, bloating, skin pinching, that made me obsessed over every ounce of fat.

I don’t think I viewed myself as fat or obese, necessarily. I was aware and unaware of being thin. I knew my ribs sticked, I knew I looked I’ll. But the need, the will, the absolute triumph I felt when my weight dropped trumped everything else. This feeling mattered more to me than the consequences, I felt important, I felt good and in control.

“Euphoria and insight,” as Roger Sterling said in Mad Men, but while the ‘visuals’ are what’s publicized, they really only make up a very small portion of the experience.

The #1 thing psychedelics do is make you unable to rationalize how important events and emotions are supposed to be, similar to the way a child thinks. In other words, it makes EVERYTHING seem incredibly significant, in a way it’s almost impossible to experience otherwise. You are INCREDIBLY attuned to small emotional / mood / vibe changes, and are in a heightened, much more “raw” state of being. This can be incredibly enlightening (or terrifying, depending on how your trip goes).

When I was a little kid, and I asked my parents a non-obvious question about the human body or biology, their answer would be “Ask your uncle Paulo next time we see him. He’s a doctor”. Other questions about various topics would get “Let’s call up grandma and ask her; She’s a teacher”, or “Let’s see if the encyclopedia has anything about this”, or “Ask your teacher if, during recess, you can go ask the librarian at school”.

What movies are playing? Let’s check the newspaper.

1. When they say Americans are stupid. If you knew anything about engineering or natural sciences you would know the US has by far the most spectacular advances in STEM.

In fact, the smartest people from all around the world come to the US to study, research, and work. The US won 2/3 of all Nobel prizes. If you generalize 330 million people based on a heavily edited pedestrian interview on Hollywood Boulevard, you are the dumb one.

1. I spent around 7 years in the U.S. Marine Corps as an infantry man and I deployed to Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2008 and saw quite a bit of combat on those two tours. I was diagnosed with PTSD/TBI and discharged in 2012 for those two illnesses and I was having a pretty hard time until I found BJJ.

I was taking up to 12 pills a day for my treatment while I was active duty on top of therapy a few times a week. I got out and my life was starting a slow downward spiral until a friend I served with got me to check out my current gym and the rest is history. I have lost about 30 pounds and keep losing more, I haven’t had to go to therapy or use any medication for my PTSD.

1. Taking a good shit. You know the one. Where you feel the relief even an hour after the deed was done. The one which is neither hard nor soft. Comes out in one long piece without breaking. Slides like someone lubes your ass all night long. Enters the water like an Olympic diver.

The morning mist lay heavy over the trenches, a shroud of damp earth and despair. Men stood silent, huddled against the chill, faces etched with lines of fear and fatigue. The whistle had not yet blown, but its shrill call hung in the air, an unspoken promise of what was to come.

He stood among them, rifle clutched in hands that trembled despite his best efforts. The mud was thick, clinging to his boots, a testament to the endless days of rain and shellfire. Overhead, the sky was a bleak expanse of gray, indifferent to the suffering below.

The first thing to understand about people suffering from BPD is that they experience emotions on a nuclear level.

Sometimes, this is beautiful – because when they feel love, they feel an extraordinary amount of it.

I didn’t steal because I was destitute. I stole because I had different emotions — fear, anger, frustration, and desperation — all banging up against one another. Shoplifting became the release, and the release became an addiction. I felt entitled to shoplift because I felt that I had suffered unfairly in my life and that stealing redressed these wrongs. Let someone else be the victim.

1. She’s the strongest pillar in my foundation, she genuinely supports me and makes my life happy—really simple things that are hard to find. Without her I wouldn’t know how I’d be able to stand on my own.