Introduction

Preface

This turned out to be a VERY LONG entry, and only will serve as an introduction. If you want to read it I'd suggest doing it in sections. I've bolded and italicized the titles of each section. Once I've got other entries this post will serve as a reference point. It won't be necessary to read this entry to understand my later entries. I just need this as a foundation for the rest of my posts. With that said, there are many things about my life that I've wanted to share with people for a long time. I'm going to start off describing my past in order to explain how I came to be the way I am. Here it goes.

The Early Years

Just to start off, I'm a white middle-class male born in 1987 in Los Angeles.

When I became aware of my death I was struck with incredible fear. I believe I was around 10-12 years old when it came to me. At that age I basically believed there was no afterlife, but it didn't think about the implications for myself. I was laying in bed one night when I came to the understanding that I was going to die. At that age I understood that death could mean the end of everything I knew. I started to get extremely hot and experienced a fear that I haven't encountered since. The emotion and terror I felt at that moment I cannot describe. I ran to my parents in the living room and began to cry, "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"

My parents tried to reassure me in various ways, but nothing helped. I just had to wait for the shock to wear off on its own. Eventually the hot feeling of terror left me, but I was still afraid. My fear of death was both emotional and logical. I would think about EVERYTHING being taken away from me in an instant, then I'd get hot again. The worst of it was at night when I had nothing to distract me. My thoughts would trail off and inevitably lead to my own mortality. A feeling of fear along with a hot sensation all down the back half of my body would grip me. The feeling was of course accompanied by the depressing, painful, awful thought that I was going to die someday.

Over the years the fearful, emotional response lessened, but the logical hatred remained. There were so many thoughts in my head during that time; it's hard to piece together my mental state. From the ages of 13-17 something was incubating within me. My fear and hatred of death drove me. Some of my thoughts included: There must be some way to keep my consciousness going...maybe there is an afterlife...maybe we're in a dream...what if there's nothing I can do...what can I do...maybe life expectancy will increase faster than I get old....

And so I continued on like this for years with the fear of death always in the back of my mind, and that paralyzing fear unexpectedly returning at night. I kept thinking, "I've got to live life. I can't let the fear of death bring me down. I just have to suck it up like everybody else and just get ready for the reaper..."

Summer 2005

At this point it's important that I mention I had been smoking weed relatively regularly for about 2 years by this time.

I was still worried about death. I didn't really know what else I could do except live life. I developed the philosophy that life was about enjoyment. I figured since my time was limited, I better make the best of it.

I graduated from high school with my head high. I did very well in my academic career and I was headed off to a great school (UC Berkeley) in the fall. I felt very confident in myself because of what I felt I had accomplished up until that point in my life. I felt I was ready to move on to college and begin the rest of my life away from home.

In the meantime I developed my Philosophy on life. Ever since I had the ability I have always tried to think deeply. I greatly enjoy the feeling of gained knowledge and so I have sought understanding my entire life. That's why I was so interested and did so well in school - especially the logical subjects like Science, Math, Psychology, and Computer Science. Throughout my life I prided myself in my logical approach to understanding the world. I continued to think deeply about all that I cared to think of, and eventually, in the Summer of 2005 I began to write my ideas down.

I still have much of what I've written over the years. Some of my writings have been lost because of reasons I may explain later. Below is my first attempt to sort of rationalize existence on paper in a couple of pages. Please note that I am not the same person I was when I wrote this. Also, please note that I wrote the paper mostly for my own sake. I'm posting it to give the reader a glimpse into my mental state at the time.

My First "Paper" - Written June 17, 2005
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The Basics:

God can do everything and anything that is possible. God has ultimate power to do anything that God chooses. Therefore, God creates everything that is possible – God universe. A collection of every possibility that is possible. We are just a part of that manifestation of God's desire. Not desire in a sense that God is a being with human traits and flaws. However, it is the best word I can choose to describe it. God does not exist in any way that we can truly describe it. God does not have mass, so in any sense of reality, God is not, in any way, shape or form, real. But, in essence, God exists as existence itself.

This explains existence – why there is anything at all. It also defines God. God, being all-powerful, chooses to experience every possible experience that is possible to experience. I know it sounds redundant, but this is the plainest way of putting it. God made all existence through his will. God did not exist until existence was created. God exists as existence. That is all there is to it.

Life and human existence, definition of (human) intelligence:

If you need me to explain us, life, human beings, people, etcetera; here it is… We are simply one of the possibilities. We as, humans, can explore and observe and interact with a limited piece of the universe with our limited abilities to observe and manipulate what exists. God, a being that is all existence, would therefore, be humanity, you, me, and everything that we know to exist – and everything that we do not know exists.

A human being is something that can understand the previous paragraph (no, not language, the idea of it). If a being can understand this concept – that they are part of a "universe" or of an "everything." That is the line between intelligent life and not. Not ethics, emotion, or creativity. That's bullshit. I'm talking having the logical thought capacity and understanding of the universe in order to fucking know that there is a universe! That's a homo sapien. Now I'm getting political in my own way. Moving on…

Uniting God and Science:

My philosophy is a unique one. It is not an idea about the world or the way it should be. It is a sort of scientific philosophy that unites God and science. This "theory" could, in essence, be proven – at least the scientific aspect of it. This also implies a scientific philosophy – that the universe contains every possibility thing that can exist. This is the commonly held belief among most scientists however, so this shouldn't be a problem. Enough development to our intelligence, and our understanding of the universe through whatever means will bring us to this point. It should be our goal to fully understand existence. From the pieces smaller than atoms, to the pieces larger than galaxies, we must expand out understanding into infinity.

The Theory of Everything:

We can only achieve the "theory of everything" once we know everything there is to know. Once we have perfectly observed all existence, then can we know how everything in the universe works. How moronic could these scientists be? You have to observe in science in order to create and prove theories. You must have a theory that you can test and observe in the fullest extent. Until we can observe every possibility for existence, we will not be able to know and understand everything.
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Looking back on this piece of writing brings many things to mind. I have to say that today I still believe most of what I wrote. Like I said, I didn't really write it for other people, so it's not really put in a nice package with a bow. One thing is for certain: This original piece got my gears going. I enjoy thinking deeply and I got a new sense of enjoyment from writing my ideas down. I was continuing to think deeply about the universe, but didn't write anything else until months later when I was about to start college.

At this point in my life, I didn't really have a plan beyond college. Things had pretty much fallen into my lap for most of my life, and I was expecting the same trend to continue. I thought I would go to school, get my degree, and life would just happen for me the way it was supposed to. I thought either I'd figure out some new theory, or invent something, or just do really well in my field. So... I went through that summer having my fun, smoking pot, hanging out with friends. Besides that, I was beginning to think very deeply about life and the universe. As the summer came to an end I felt ready for anything. I discovered that I was very, very wrong.

Coricidin

I like drugs. Smoking marijuana for the first time was an unforgettably amazing experience. Besides alcohol I hadn't really tried any other drugs, so at the end of the 2005 summer, I decided to try a drug called DXM. You can get the drug in many ways, but the way we did it was by stealing cold medicine (Coricidin) from a supermarket. The group of us took quite a bit of pills and were having a great time - until we saw the cop. Because we were so high we couldn't figure out a way to get back to where we were staying without crossing the cops path. After who knows how long of walking around and debating what to do, we decided to walk by the cop. To our horror, the cop walk right over to us, flashed his light in our eyes, and questioned us.

I don't know how I appeared on the exterior, but inside I was terrified. I was thinking: "I'm a minor, I'm extremely high, I'm out past curfew, this cop is going to arrest me and then terrible things will happen." I was so afraid of what could happen to me and my future. I thought about all of my "plans" to go to Berkeley and become successful, and I thought all of that was about to go out the window.

It turns out the cop let us go and we went back to my friend's place, but my worries were far from over. I remember thinking about how close I came to the end of my future. The effect of the Coricidin on my body was changing as well. The room was very hot and poorly ventilated. That's when my high turned into a bad trip. First, I grew very fearful that I was going to die. I was hot, my heart was pounding, I thought about how many pills I actually took, and I genuinely feared for my life. After several minutes I couldn't take the silent torture and I reached out to my friends. I asked them to reassure me. I said, "Guys, tell me I'm not going to die tonight." Something to that extent. With their reassuring words, I started to feel better for a while. However, a few minutes later I would become incredibly fearful and depressed again. I went through cycles of being OK to being extremely low. I went up and down and up and down for hours. It was hell.

It took me many days to feel "normal" again, although I doubt I ever fully returned to how I was before. Coricidin was a horrible experience that I never wanted to repeat again.

End of Summer 2005

It was obvious that that smoking pot really brought out my "deep thinking." I'd enjoyed just thinking about and especially talking about the nature of the universe. The night before I moved to Berkeley a different kind of thinking came to me. I smoked pot with my friends the night before leaving and began engaging in deep thought. I remember not having the chance for deep conversation, so I ended up brooding to myself and trying to hang on to the thoughts that seemed important enough to remember. After hanging out with my friends and heading home, I was relieved to finally be alone so I could write down what I had been thinking about all night.

This moment was a turning point in my life. I don't know if it was for better or worse, but that night set a precedent for the rest of my life. Let me explain. I was beginning to prefer pondering and writing down my deep thoughts instead of spending time with people. I believed it very important to write down the things I thought were meaningful, so I did. However, I couldn't always make sense out of what I was writing. I didn't know it yet, but I was beginning to deteriorate mentally. This is what I wrote:

Written August 19/20, 2005
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moose
pavlov

unite all minds?

andy - return the house key and receive a reward!! it's a quest! - called him, (next line)
check in to make sure
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I can't remember what "moose" and "pavolv" were about exactly. I know I was thinking about Psychology and myself. I was also thinking about the universe in general, like I usually do. I can't remember how or why, but the phrase "unite all minds" popped into my head. Not only that, but it was accompanied by a very strong feeling that I should remember the phrase. I had an inkling as to what it meant, but I think I didn't want to believe it. It meant/means many things to me now: A path to peace, a way of life, a goal, but also a problem without an obvious answer.

Taken to the extreme it would mean to plug everyone into a computer and create a "collective consciousness." Don't ask me how it would work, because I don't know. In a less extreme light, the phrase is more about people gaining understanding of each other in order to resolve conflicts and create peace. I believe that all conflicts a born from misunderstanding, and that revealing the misunderstanding leads to a resolution of the conflict. I'll get more into this in later posts.

Such was my mental state at the time. I would think deeply about things and if something seemed important enough, I would record it on my computer or on paper. This habit gave me great satisfaction and comfort, but it also turned out to be a source of my downfall.

Getting to Berkeley (Late August, 2005)

I had been talking to a girl via facebook for a few weeks. We were both about to start school at Berkeley. We seemed to make a very strong connection very quickly. The day before move-in day we stayed up most of the night chatting online. We planned to meet up the next day after we had both settled into our dorms.

So, as planned, my mom and I drove up to Berkeley and set up my dorm. I said goodbye to my mother, and for the first time in my life I was alone.

It turns out there was some complications with the Internet when I first got there, so I wasn't able to contact the girl yet. Now, let's go into fast forward mode for a few weeks...

-The girl became completely cold-hearted soon after arriving in Berkeley. I'm assuming she met somebody else, but she never did tell me what happened.
-I was finding the classes much more difficult than I expected, but I didn't want to admit it to anyone - even myself. This was causing me much distress.
-I was spending much of my time hanging out with frat guys in AEPi (the Jewish frat). They wanted me to join, but I didn't. This was making me feel guilty for using their facilities and even for being their friends.
-I don't think I realized it, but I missed my friends and family back at home very much.

Back to regular speed...

"The Night"

One night I was feeling a bit of an illness (cold/cough) coming on, and I had some Robitussin handy. The marks on the measuring cup were faded so I just guessed on the dosage. It turns out I took about 2 times a normal dose, which isn't much - on its own. If the reader doesn't know, Robitussin also contains DXM just like Coricidin. After taking my improvised dose, I took a trip down the hall to my dormmate's room. The group of guys that lived at the dorm on the end of the hall were major stoners. They smoked the best weed out of the best pieces all day every day. I was going to join them for a few hits from their nice bong.

I got in the "smoking room" and greeted the group. I waited my turn for the bong and packed myself a hit. I started to feel high like normal, but soon that changed. My "deep thoughts" began to pervade my mind and it became very hard to sit in the room and socialize. It was difficult for me to follow conversation, and soon my high completely took over. I went entirely into my own head. I don't remember where the thought train started or where it was going, but I remember that it derailed very quickly.

The best way I can describe what was happening inside my head is this: I would follow one thought, which would spawn a new thought, which I would follow. Then the new thought would spawn two more new thoughts, both of which I would follow, then each of those two new thoughts would spawn their own set of thoughts. I would feel as if each train of thought was equally important to follow to the end, so that's what my brain tried to do. Eventually I couldn't comprehend what I was thinking. My heart started pounding, I wasn't paying attention to anything going on in the room, I was trying to understand my own thoughts, but I was just lost in a mess of ever-expanding lines of thought which didn't seem to end. At a point the sensation got so intense that I began to see something - an image. The only way I can describe it is as an empty grid of infinite dimensions. From any point in the "space" you could go in any direction. So there wasn't just an x, y, and z direction. There were infinite directions. I believe what I was seeing were my thoughts. They had become so expansive and intertwined that I couldn't think about them in any kind of normal way, so instead my brain showed me the grid. My thoughts were branching off into so many directions, I kept "zooming out" on the image to try to see the whole thing, but the grid kept expanding. The grid kept growing faster and faster as my scope kept growing to try to keep up with it. At one point, like an intense flash of light, the grid filled my vision and my brain. It was like a kind of climax. I saw a kind of "end point" to the grid. I saw it expand to infinity - beyond understanding. And when it reached infinity I glimpsed it's nature. At that moment, when the grid broke my brain, a thought came into my head. The thought was vivid and intense and was just as difficult to comprehend as the grid itself, but it was the only clear thought that remained from the chaos that took place in those few seconds. The thought was "my disbelief in logic."

As I came out of my trance I started to become aware of the room I was in. I felt that I had just been told a great secret that was of utmost importance to remember. I became very anxious and nervous. I didn't want to be in a room with people. I wanted to be alone so I could write down what I was thinking. It felt like I had a rush of inspiration and I needed to capitalize on it as soon as possible. I nervously and unexpectedly told the people I was hanging out with that I had to go.

I headed down the hall to my dorm and went inside to the comfort of my notebook. The first thing I wrote down was "my disbelief in logic," as it seemed vital to my existence that I write down that phrase. I felt that every idea in my head was incredibly important. I was under the impression that I had all the answers, so I wrote down just about every thought that came to me. It came out as independent phrases that made little or no sense. I would write a few lines, read them over, and then realize they weren't even remotely profound. That would frustrate me greatly because I believed I had something in my head that was very important that I needed to get out into the world, but no matter how hard I tried, the words I wrote didn't seem to have any meaning once they were on paper. I wrote several pages of these one-line phrases and started to become hysterical. I felt afraid - that something terrible would happen to me if I didn't keep writing. If I didn't get the idea from my mind onto the paper then all would be lost. And in a way, it started to make sense to me. Originally the idea was just a jumbled mess that seemed to just spur me to write random nonsense that was only reasonable in my head before it was written down. But eventually I started to understand what my brain was trying to tell me. It was trying to tell me many things, but two main things occurred to me in my frenzy.

The first... well I don't know which one was first. They seemed simultaneous. So one of my realizations was that my mortal soul is in danger. In a sense I had known this since the "early years," but this was a different kind of understanding. It was not only the understanding and fear of death that I had before, but it was the new understanding the something could potentially be done about it. It was the beginning of my genuine belief that death is the ultimate enemy of humanity. All of a sudden I wanted to fight death and I wanted everyone else in the world to want it too. In an instant it became my purpose, my desire, my everything. This new found purpose led me to other possibilities. I thought about the unlimited potential of the human species. I thought not only that death was beatable, but that we could do even more. We could do anything given enough time. And since death was now beatable in my eyes, those other amazing possibilities revealed themselves to me.

The other thought that accompanied the great feeling of potential, was the opposite reaction of fear and doubt. As wonderful and amazing I imagined the possibilities, I was made equally depressed by the thought that we may not win the fight. I realized that the challenge to defeat death and unlock the potential of humanity was not an easy task. I had no idea where to begin, what to do, or who to talk to.

I was still writing furiously in my notebook trying to get these thoughts in my head out on to paper, but it wasn't coming out. And when I had basically given up I realized another thing - I was still uncontrollably high. Something was wrong. I couldn't simply calm down and get over what was in my head. It seemed too important, too vital to humanity to just let it sit in my head. And yet that is exactly what I did because I didn't know what else to do. From my experience in life nobody on Earth thought the way I did. Nobody was going to join me to fight death. I was alone and unable to calm myself. I felt that it was imperative to do what I had imagined yet impossible to accomplish.

Eventually I was able to get to a more relaxed state, but I was never the same after that night. Since then I've struggled with this conflict. Death needed to die, but nobody else in the world realized it could and should be defeated.

Berkeley after "The Night"

Although I hadn't realized it, I began to spiral into a deep depression. My experience at school, with people, smoking pot was not the same. As the weeks went on things that used to be fun were no longer fun. I constantly had that night on my mind, and I had no idea what to do. I continued to write when I felt I needed to. Smoking pot was fun at times, but usually served to bring my deep thoughts about life and death to the forefront of my mind. I met a girl and we dated for a while, but I was so depressed at that point that I couldn't enjoy myself. I wanted somebody to hold and make me feel better, but nothing could help. I broke up with her just because I felt so low. The frat guys offered me membership, which I rejected. I think I would have said no regardless of my depression, but I felt so guilty for not accepting their offer that I became even more down.

One weekend my friends drove all the way up from LA to Berkeley to pick me up to go to a concert. I was so happy to be with my friends again that it almost turned my depression around. But when I got back to school I became just as sad all over again. I didn't tell anybody how I was feeling because I didn't realize the state I was in. It wasn't until I returned home to my parents that others became aware of my depression, but at that point I was FUBAR.

I continued to write in a obsessive way. Whenever I got back to my dorm from school, whenever I smoked pot, whenever I felt uncomfortable, I would write. Sometimes it would be in a sort of essay form, but usually it was small spurts of "insight" that I'd jot down in a sentence or two. It was the worst when I smoked pot. Not only would smoking make more thoughts come to me faster than I wanted, but it would make me think a meaningless phrase like, "try to go down" as the key to the meaning of life. Like I said before, it was imperative in my mind that humanity strive to defeat death and create peace, but it seemed like an impossible feat.

In order to cope with this struggle, I created fantasies for myself. I would often imagine scenarios in which I could possibly move on from this world to another "better" one (without killing myself obviously). I thought about different possibilities like that we're trapped in "the matrix," or that we're actually aliens in virtual reality who are just trying out the lives of lesser beings, or that God or gods exist and that they wouldn't let me suffer like this if they had the power to save me, or I could just "think" my way out. I actually attempted this. I thought that if I genuinely believed I could leave this world, then I could. On more than one occasion I smoked pot (to open my mind to the possibility of leaving this world), and then tried to make myself believe I was transcending this dimension. It was a crazy feeling. I would be in my dorm looking straight up with my eyes closed. Then I would think "Take me away! I want to go! Get me out of here! I believe it!" Things like that. When I first did it I fooled myself into thinking I was "close" to getting out. I would feel a strange sensation of upward motion. It was like I was in an elevator that kept accelerating upward. I would keep this up for a while and when I felt I had "escaped" I would open my eyes to find myself still in my dorm room more depressed than before. I was convinced that I was "doing it wrong" or "didn't believe enough" so I kept trying. Literally for weeks I attempted this. I was probably the biggest moron alive, but I wanted to get the fuck out of this world so badly I would do anything.

Back home - Winter 2005

I completed my first semester at Berkeley and returned home for winter break. I was hoping to have a good break and return to school refreshed. My mind and body had other plans. I had some fun at first. It was exciting to be home again and see all of my friend and family, but soon I started to go downhill. I felt like nothing we did was enjoyable and slowly my "deep thinking" began to interfere with my life. This is difficult to explain. It's not just that I would be thinking about life and death when other activities were going on, its that the other activities somehow translated into my thoughts and affected my thinking directly. I would relate what someone was saying, the words in a song, or the plot of a movie to what was going on in my head. And instead of being aware of the thing I was "paying attention" to, I was only aware of how it affected my thinking.

Let me give an example. Below is a few verses from a song I used to listen to a lot. When I was in this strange mental state that I'm trying to explain, the song seems to have a hidden meaning that reveals itself. It's almost as if the song is speaking to me or about me. To me every line of the song related back to my ideas of life and death. When I was in the worst of it, this would apply to every song, every movie, and every spoken word. I'm going to try to give an example of how this worked in my head. Here's some of that song by She Wants Revenge with my "interpretations" under each line:

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It's cute in a way, till you cannot speak
(The thoughts I had of life and death were originally just "cute" ideas, then they grew up and literally I could not speak)

And you leave to have a cigarett, knees get weak
(I would often leave situations when my mind couldn't get off the subject of death, and take a "cigarette break" by writing)

escape was just a nod and a casual wave
(This is my ability to escape reality. My ability to escape came so casually that it would happen without my intention)

Obsess about it, heavy for the next two days
(This is definitely referring to "The Night." I was obsessed with the subject and it didn't leave me for days)

It's only just a crush, it'll go away
(This is speaking of death. It's like death is teasing me - "The pain will just last a second and then it will all be over")

It's just like all the others it'll go away
(Again, death. "Just like all the others" meaning pain. Death is just another pain followed by nothing, hence "it'll go away")

Or maybe this is danger and you just don't know
(Here's where it gets scary. The above two lines are saying how harmless death is and this line contradicts that)

You pray it all away but it continues to grow
(Yes, I pray that my fear, depression, craziness will go away, but it only continues to grow)

I want to hold you close
Skin pressed against me tight
Lie still, and close your eyes girl
So lovely, it feels so right
(This is death speaking to me directly. Death wants me)
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I used to be able to do this with almost any song, movie, written piece of work, or spoken word. It's a trip and a half because it's not like I'm taking effort to interpret these songs. I'm simply listening to the songs and hearing something else. This state of mind began to dominate my thinking. It was becoming harder and harder to focus on reality when everything coming in was translating into "You're going to die and there's probably nothing you can do about it even though you know what needs to be done." It's a little more complicated than that. I'm kind of avoiding going off on too many tangents for the sake of my readers, so I may explain it more in a later entry or the reader can just ask me about it.

Eventually my parents noticed something was wrong and my mom asked me how I was feeling. I told her I was feeling depressed, but when my parents offered to take me to see a therapist or a psychiatrist, I refused. There were many reasons in my head why I didn't want to go down that road: I didn't really believe I was depressed, I didn't want take psychiatric drugs, I didn't want to have the therapy stigma, I still thought I could deal with my issues on my own. So my parents now knew I was in some kind of trouble, but since I refused their advice, they probably didn't know how else to help me.

During the day my thoughts were occupied by death and existentialism, and the nighttime soon followed suit. I started having trouble sleeping. It would take me longer than usually to go to sleep at first and then one night I just stopped being able to sleep. My mind would be so filled with thought that I couldn't shut it off. Every day that I went without sleep took its toll on me. It became even harder to focus and pay attention and enjoy myself. Several nights passed without me getting a wink of sleep. I was probably running on 3 or 4 days without sleep as 2006 approached.

January 2006

New Year's Eve was another sleepless night. The night before was also a depressing, uneventful "party." A couple friends and I played Mario Party on N64 for a couple hours and then we parted ways. Then I laid in bed all night staring at my ceiling until the morning. It was the worst New Year's Eve experience of my life.

At this point I was noticeably depressed and the people around me knew it. I was so low at this point that I had basically stopped caring about anything. I wouldn't eat unless someone asked me to eat with them. I wouldn't go out unless someone asked me to hang out. I wouldn't say anything unless someone spoke to me first. I was completely indifferent to the entire world. I had become numb to the pain. I was in a haze that I couldn't escape. I thought I would never escape.

The next few weeks are kind of a fog to me. I'll try to recreate what happened to the best of my knowledge from what I remember and from what people have told me happened. I believe it was January 1 when I really started to deteriorate. I remember hanging out with my dad. We talked about life, family, friends, death. We got food, we went to the bookstore - all by his suggestion. At some point I remember telling my dad that I hated him :(

Then it was either that day or the next day when I went to see my first Psychiatrist. Basically nothing was accomplished. She asked me some questions, I answered, I left. I think I again refused to be prescribed medication. Some time went by and this time my mom was around. One morning she found me in the floor doing strange hand motions. I actually remember this pretty vividly. I remember feeling compelled to go to that spot, drop to the floor, and the the hand movements I was talking about. My mom called an ambulance. Literally the time between me dropping to the floor and the time the ambulance came felt like seconds. I was taken to some hospital in the ambulance where I was given a bed. For the next several hours I laid in bed while various doctors ran various tests on my. From what I remember I at least had a drug/toxin screening, some Psychological questioning (although I was barely coherent), and a brain scan.

Later on I found out I was what's called "catatonic schizophrenic." I would barely move, speak, or do much of anything. I was acting strange in various other ways as well I'm sure. So eventually I was released from the hospital and was prescribed medication. I'm not sure what I was on at first as my meds changed a lot at the beginning. Basically I stayed at home for a while (a few days or so) while my parents attempted to treat me. They were not successful. I know I was making it difficult for them by refusing medication, but I was extremely confused and paranoid. I would refuse to take the meds, spit them out, etc.

My parents were left with one option - institutionalization. I'm not going to go into the details here, but basically I "got better" after a few weeks, and then I was released back into society

Most of the "adults" in my life (parents, psychiatrists, etc.) told me that smoking pot may have triggered or aggravated my situation. Well, I didn't know what to believe, but long story short I kept smoking...

The rest of 2006

So I was out of the hospital, but I wasn't entirely "better." I started going to therapy and I was now officially on psychiatric drugs. The same issues that drove me crazy in the first place still existed. However, I was "sane" for the time being, which was good enough. What I really wanted was for life to go back to the way it was before I ever thought about fighting death, but I knew that was impossible. My mind had already been opened and there was no way of closing it back up. Once again I tried not to let it get me down. Now that I was back on my feet I wanted to start enjoying life again. My answer to that was to smoke lots of weed!

I decided not to go back to Berkeley and instead attend a local community college to transfer somewhere later. This was fine with my parents. I also wanted to move out again, so plans for that started happening. I ended up moving into a house with 4 other friends. That actually ended up being a lot of fun. My four roommates and I spent most of our time together doing things that 20-year-olds do like partying, drinking, and smoking. We also did some harder drugs like mushrooms, painkillers, a little coke, and some of the roommates did extacy.

The hallucinogens I took (weed and shrooms) had interesting effects. Weed affected me kind of similarly to how it did before - by making my abstract thinking more powerful. The really crazy trips were on mushrooms. I'm not going to get into full details right now because describing my mushroom trips could each take several pages. Instead I'll give a little snippet of some of my thought processes while on mushrooms.

First my mind would being to wander. I would imagine some of the most incredible things that would be possible if humanity would only wake up. My thoughts would get blown way out of proportion and I would start believing that crazy things were true. For example, I have believed that I could read minds, that my mind could be read, that I was being tested by God, that I was God, etc. When it got to the point that I could believe I was God, anything was possible. My friends became angels and demons. I could speak with the dead. I could perform magic. I created and destroyed the world many times over. I judged people. I went to down to hell, up to heaven, and back again.

For a while logic was still with me. I could understand that the thoughts were brought on by the drugs, although in the moment the ideas felt very real. I still had very similar ideas about life and death. When I would come back to reality after a shroom trip I would invariably be depressed. I found that my experiences on shrooms were much more interesting than what reality could offer. Not only that, but in coming down I would realize that my fantasies were false, that I wasn't God, and that I was going to die. Going from the extreme high of feeling God-like to the extreme low of realizing my mortality took its toll on me.

Eventually I lost touch with reality once again. I wouldn't have to be on shrooms to believe crazy thoughts, and soon I didn't have to be on weed either. Once again I stopped sleeping and became very depressed. Several days went by and guess what? It was almost the New Year. On December 31, 2006 I got up with the sun after a sleepless night, wandered around the house for a bit, and then locked myself in the bathroom. It's not that I wouldn't come out, it's that I didn't see a point to coming out. Really I wanted to be left alone, but my friends were worried about me. Most of them knew my history and they were watching me deteriorate over the last few days. I guess when I locked myself in the bathroom my friends thought they had run out of options so they called my parents.

My parents came by a little while later and honestly I am surprised at the reaction I had. I really shouldn't have come out of that bathroom and gone with my parents, but I did. I think I opened the door for them because I was so lost and so surpirsed that my parents were there, that I kinda "tripped out." After talking for just a few seconds I opened the door for my parents. I hugged my mom, told her I was happy to see her, and then I kinda snapped. My parents told me to put on my shoes and come with them. I was in a trance and didn't realize what was happening. They were taking me to the hospital. There I was Psychiatrically evaluated and it was determined that I would be institutionalized again. I know exactly the question that damned me thinking back on it. The question was, "Have you thought of harming yourself or others." I answered "yes" to that question, although I know I was misunderstood. If you're ever in a situation like I was in, and they ask you that question, and you're coherent enough to answer, then say "No, I haven't thought of harming myself or others." It's pretty much bullshit, but I'm not going to get into it at this moment.

January - December 2007

So I was hospitalized for a few more weeks after which I recovered again. It was January. I was told this time that the drugs definitely contributed to my mental deterioration, which I could understand at this point. I continued therapy and taking meds, but I started something new called CDRP (Chemical Dependency Recover Program). It's like rehab, but you're only there for a few hours a day. I hated it. It was the most boring, worthless waste of time I ever encountered. Since I was in CDRP and I had been hospitalized twice already, I planned to stay away from drugs.

I actually was released in time so that I didn't miss the semester at my community college. I was still on track to transferring. I applied to UCLA and got in, which my parents and I were happy about. I basically hadn't missed any school time as a result of my hospitalizations.

For most of the year I hung out mostly by myself sober. I wasn't going crazy, I wasn't "depressed" to the point of mental break down, but I wasn't happy either. I felt pretty much numb for most of the year not doing much of anything except going to school and CDRP. Towards the end of the year I started spending more time with my old friends, but I wasn't smoking anymore so a lot of the time I was excluded. Drinking, however, was a lot of fun - but I still missed pot.

Then I met a girl. It must have been sometime in October. Long story short I lost my virginity and continued to go out with her for a few months. We were never "a couple," but we basically acted like one.

On December 31, 2007 I smoked pot after almost exactly a 1-year break. I had been planning it for a while now. I missed it way too much to stay off it forever. I'll tell you that after not smoking for so long, it really took me for a spin. I'll explain what I mean by that in the next section.

January - December 2008

January rolled around again and I was happy. I was out of the hospital for almost a year. I was smoking pot, drinking, and partying again, and I basically had a girlfriend.

In February my "girlfriend" broke up with me, which hurt a lot. To this day I don't really know what happened. It seemed that one day everything was going great, the next day she became completely cold to me, and the next day she broke up with me. She started dating somebody else soon after, so I'm assuming she was seeing this guy even before we broke up. I'll probably never know

Just to mention a couple things that happened during the year... In September I turned 21, which I consider a big milestone. Also, in November, I found imminst and joined. This place is basically exactly the kind of community I had been looking for since 2005. I'll talk more about my feelings towards imminst later.

Let's see... fast forward to December. Life's been good so far, but my depression was starting to come back. Smoking would almost invariably set off a strange reaction in my brain, and it was getting worse over time. It was similar to how it was before with smoking forcing me to think deeply and lose focus on reality. The differences from how it was before are hard to explain. I may try to do it in a later entry. Anyway, long story short I had what I describe as a "near-break."

I was playing a board game with three of my friends when I became confused over something that happened in the game. I freaked out. I was shaking and had a quivering voice as I tried to explain what I was experiencing to my friends. I can't remember exactly what was going through my head, but I remember thinking I was talking to God for part of the time. Once again, I won't go into detail here right now.

My friends immediately wanted to call my parents, but I knew what would happen if they did - I'd go back to the hospital, which I wanted to avoid at all costs. Luckily I was coherent enough to plead with my friends not to call my parents. Instead they called my sister who helped me calm down further. I took an anti-anxiety pill and was eventually calm and coherent enough to go home and face my parents. I was in a strange state when I talked to them, trying to explain what was going on in my head. I was much more coherent than the previous times I "broke down," but still I was having trouble communicating. I was a bit fragile at this point. I felt very close to the edge, but I managed to stay enough with reality that I wasn't hospitalized again.

The next day my parents and I met with my therapist and we talked. My parents probably had incredibly mixed emotions at this time. I'd say they were scared, but also disappointed that I didn't stay away from drugs after what had happened to me the first two times. In my mind, however, this situation was a definite sign that I was "improving." Instead of completely breaking down and ending up in the hospital again, I was able to maintain and at least partially explain myself. Anyway, I knew that my parents were not going to be able to trust me to go out and see my friends again without getting back into drugs. The idea came to be that I should be drug tested as proof to my parents that I was staying away from drugs. My parents were very happy with this plan, so we set up for me to be drug tested every two weeks for all of 2009.

January 2009 - Present

I still a bit out of sorts for a while. Having a near mental break down can make it difficult to function for a little while after. I stopped showing up at imminst for a while because of this. I didn't feel confident/happy enough to be a contributing member of the cause. I apologize for my lack of participation, but you would understand if you were in my shoes.

I stayed away from pot for a few months according to the plan. Then, March rolled around. It was St. Patrick's Day and I was hanging out with an old friend who knew most of my situation except for some of the more recent news such as my being drug tested. I did end up telling him that I was being drug tested, but I fell to temptation and I smoked. Honestly, it was a great experience. We went to a bar/restaurant where we ate, drank, and listened to live music. I felt on top of the world and I was also having a bit of a good trip from the pot as well. The next day I wrote down my experiences of that night in a notebook. I'll either edit this post or type it in a later entry when I expand more on my drug trips.

St. Patrick's Day was actually the first time I had seen that old friend in over a year. I had a bit of a re-connection with him, which was nice. This friend is the person who in the past I would have very deep conversations with. We chatted and caught up. I tried to steer the conversation towards "singularity talk," but he didn't seem very interested. I thought that out of all my friends this one would be the easiest to convince that our cause is the greatest cause of them all. However, I was wrong. He wouldn't have it - he had become too anti-technology to understand. When I realized I couldn't get through to him it saddened me. I had no luck getting through to my other friends and then someone who I thought for sure would join the cause completely rejected the idea. I stopped calling that friend and went through another phase of depression. Once again nobody I knew was interested in the thing I considered to be the most important in the world.

I came by imminst a couple times, but felt embarrased for leaving so abruptly without a word. I was too down to contribute or even spend much time on the forums. I felt that the cause wasn't going anywhere so I didn't do anything for it.

I continued to smoke pot and drink. I cheated on my drug tests so my parents wouldn't find out about the pot. I was going through ups and down, but overall I'd say I was improving. Overall the past few months have been a great time of growth for me. I've started to really think about my past and my life in a more "down to earth" way. I've been feeling my confidence return slowly to the level it was before my fist hospitalization. Each time I was hospitalized or had a near break, I'd lose confidence again. It has been almost 3 years since my last hospitalization and almost 1 year since my last "near break," so I can say that overall I've been improving. I returned to imminst a little while ago with the return of my confidence and hapiness

Today (August 28, 2009) I am a pretty happy person. I am taking my meds consistently (right now I'm on Welbutrin and Abilify), and monitoring myself better, especially when I smoke. I'm actually planning to take a break from smoking starting Monday, so we'll see how that goes. I haven't been to therapy or seen my Psychiatrist in a few months. I definitely should see my Psychiatrist again, but I'm not too excited to schedule another appointment with my therapist. At first I found it interesting and theraputic, but I started to realize that it wasn't really getting me anywhere and sometimes it would create more problems than it would fix. I can talk more about my therapy another time. Anyway, I'm gonna wrap up this first entry... It's gone on a bit longer than I thought and I still have much more to say, but I guess it can wait until later posts.

So that's my condensed autobiography. It felt good to get that all out, but trust me when I say that I have much more to write, which I will do as soon as I figure out where to begin.