Greetings and brain damage

[vend3r]

Hello there people, I have been looking for a place like this for quite some time, but I had forgotten to look.

Well I guess its my fault for not being proactive, but thats just the beginning of my flaws.

I suppose I should give a bit of background info, and a disclaimer, I have no idea if i'm "genius" or not, in fact most of the time I seem to portray myself as an idiot for some reason, anyway I think I may have a few or more mental disorders and or defects including but not limited to autism, schizophrenia, denial, physical brain damage due to overdose on dissociative narcotics, and copious amounts of alcohol, i seem to trick myself into believing that when i'm drinking and completely out of my mind that I can ascend normal thought and thus be able to create things I normally could not, It seems that this used to be the case however as I progressively sink farther into alcohol dependency I feel i'm losing whatever mental capacity for creation i ever had, but sometimes its the flip side and I create things that are amazing, but lets go back deeper, before the drugs and alcohol, back to my sheltered childhood, I was very secluded and my half brother always picked on me and cut me down, I was very overweight and thus did not want to be in social situations, so I'd exploit the skills i picked up from my grandma to make myself sick "hypochondria" where I would not have to go to school, I did so untill I was too old to get into the grade I was susposed to be in and then just got my ged, you could say i'm just about completely self taught, but one thing i'v never been able to wrap my head around is simple math calculation, in kindergarten we learned whats called touch math were each number is associated with said number of dots on them, which you count up and this has hindered my math skills to the point of uselessness, I can understand more complex formula but when it comes to basics i'm screwed, i'm also very dyslexic numbers and letters reposition thereself and flip without me even noticing, I'd like to try and overcome some of my problems, and was curious if anyone had anything similar, or could help diagnose my brain. also happy new year, I'll stop my rambiling now.

[Carl G]

Hi vend3r,

We've got a few posters here who compose -- and read -- monster paragraphs, like yourself. So you should feel right at home here.

Welcome to the board!

[Pincho Paxton]

If I analyse anyone taking drugs they will not be a genius for long that's for sure. Seems a waste of a good brain. I wont even use a mobile phone just to be on the safe side.

[Animus]

Constraint Induced Therapy

[Animus]

Let's try to intellectualize this way. The you we are talking about is a metapsychological phenomena. That is it is a composite of smaller parts. They all have their properties to them. They are all patterns of thought or behavior. You've given a map to the pertinent patterns in your introduction. Overlaying all this presumably is the you that is observing it and narrating to us. All this too can be broken down to various processes or patterns of activity. You can further develop metacognitive awareness of lower psychological processes by attentive meditation on the content of your own mind. You can develop further sub-routines which serve to modulate or annihilate existing patterns of thought and behavior. Here of course you appears again as the doer of these activities. But I do not refer to a sub-routine or pattern of activation, I refer to the totality of all routines or patterns of activations that constitutes the entire mind. Then I say truthfully that you can change your mind in many ways. Personally I find that becoming introspectively aware of thought processes has automated modulatory consequences. That is, from within my conscious experience, simply bringing into awareness an otherwise subconscious process serves to modulate or annihilate that process without further mental effort. But to bring it into awareness is not to conceptualize it using linguistic symbolism. Its to generate a new pattern of activation which feeds back on the one in question, bringing it into awareness. This is difficult to achieve because how is one to know what they are looking for if they can't know it by any other means? The language or other symbolism serves as pointers to the phenomena being spoken of, and to that extent serves to direct inward attention, but from that point on it depends entirely on the mind to do its thing.


The mind will tend to settle into patterns rather than establish new ones. New ones develop generally out of a need in regard to these matters of self-awareness. The cost in terms of personal discomfort or gross consumption of energy are much greater than sticking with the current architecture. It also costs more physiologically to maintain a denser neural architecture. So the phenomena in question will prove to be fairly elusive. I mentioned Constraint Induced Therapy which is a method of treating motor dysfunction. In this therapy if a subject is suffering from coordination difficulties with their right hand and not with their left hand, even if they were otherwise right handed they will probably favor use of the left hand. In other words, they will tend to use their left hand more because it is easier. This leads to learned non use, the physiological and behavioral consequences of which are even more dysfunction of the affected limb. For this same reason people are encouraged to exercise. This principle applies well to a lot of things. In regards to certain cognitive deficits its often easier to rely on someone else or a trinket of technology, but as a matter of learned non use the cognitive faculty that would genuinely understand the phenomenea remains absent or dysfunctional. Perhaps an individual might develop a mental pattern or faculty that attempted to apply this principle of constraint over mental processes themselves. If a person can learn to challenge their mental faculty to such and extreme there is the potential for change. In terms of motor therapy, constraint induced therapy is the most effective therapy. The physiological changes are generally not in the arm's muscle tissue or nerves in these cases, that occurs too, but I'm speaking of people who suffer neurological dysfunction. Apply this principle of constraint over your thoughts and behaviors. I try to think about what I'm thinking and asking myself if its rational in every moment, but I probably get it about 2% of the time. Still I think its pretty effective.

[Animus]

I find, and this may be obvious, when I approach something I don't understand it is a nebulous mess that I feel completely ungrounded in. Its difficult to make heads or tails out of anything and I feel like I'm on a quest for my own ignorance unable to see that I'm swimming in it. But I always find that through sheer determination and practice I come around to seeing it clearly. Its like punching through a veil of ignorance and distortion. And its deliberate through the denial of the desire to do otherwise, through bearing the psychological discomfort of standing within ignorance. Its so much easier to differ to someone else or just concied defeat.

Then again, maybe, there is nothing you can do. Perhaps some things once lost are gone forever and perhaps other things were never possible to begin with. All that can be done is doing.

[vend3r]

Well i'v been doing research and it seems a lot of great people were alcoholics such as myself Hunter S. Thompson. Raymond Chandler, John Cheever, O. Henry,Tennessee Williams, Dylan Thomas, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, William Faulkner, Charles Bukowski, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allen Poe, and Stephen King.

[Carl G]

How were any of those people great?

[IJesusChrist]

Hola buddy.

First of all I want you to know this, but I cannot make you realize it, that there is no such thing as 'crazy'. Your negativity towards your own thoughts is a self-fulfilling prophecy and you are doomed to become it's narrative if you so choose. However, the brain can always learn. Always.

Your brain has just identified a natural occuring communicator as foreign, which is a hard fix.

Dissasociatives gain you nothing.

[Alex T. Jacob]

A close reading of Kerouac, and an examination of his milieu, reveals a group of people who recognized themselves as products (you could say 'logical outcomes') of a sort of societal madness especially intensified in the post-war era. Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder---and quite a group of people who, through their activities and investigations, put in motion a huge part of what defines so many of us now. Snyder, Kerouac, Ginsberg set their focus on the question of what is spirituality...what is the alternative to the mad world that has come into being. I don't think it would be innacurate to say that the Buddhism that is now discussed on this forum, and the general valuing and seeking after a total solution to the human problem has roots in the explorations of these people.

I think each of those people could be described as having made great contributions to important processes, or new ways to understand life in modernity, but each of them lived with a certain personal tragedy. I don't think any of them died 'happily'. But in the end, who dies happily, really?

(Excuse me for talking in the 3rd person as if about you Vend3r...)

What is interesting is Vend3r as a fractured person, a person in need of a solid core of self, a clear path to reintigration of self, to wholesome self. Ginsberg wrote in Howl "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness/ starving hysterical naked..." Kerouac, in his crazy, drunken, youthful, spiritual way, went seeking in the 'crazy American night' for the elixors of health and integration...and he did discover some pretty potent things, some possibilities, out there on the landscape...but by his own admission his life was a failure (in his own eyes I guess). That was also true for Neil Cassady, his travel and adventure pal. He told people 'Don't live like I did'. He saw his errors. But they also opened up many, many horizons for many people. I suggest we are outcomes of that.

It is still in so many ways exactly the same game: we moderns are literally attacked by forces that can and would tear us apart, split us, fracture us. It seems to be getting worse, not better. Now, they are trying to reintegrate disintegrated persons through chemical therapy---the only 'solution' 'they' really have to offer.

While it is possible to see some of these writers and artists as 'failures' (I don't know if you actually meant that Carl) that is just one possible perspective. But you could also see them as casualties and sacrifices on a long and difficult road toward reintegration. A new, wholesome realationship to the self, life, existence, the 'cosmos'.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Was it something I said?

[IJesusChrist]

The man is just going to make his own destiny.

He obviously has a fine brain, yet it is convinced it is damaged, thus the self-fulfilling prophecy as with so many others begins!!!

[vend3r]

IJesusChrist, if I had done that I would not be here looking for answers, I'm fairly sure that I do in fact have brain damage, i'v had many instances that i'm peaking on various drugs mostly being DXM (Dextromethorphan) where I can feel and hear my brain fucking frying at the peak, which was done before I knew what the drug was or what it could do, now that I know this I will never again do it ever in my life.

[Tomas]

IJesusChrist, if I had done that I would not be here looking for answers, I'm fairly sure that I do in fact have brain damage, i'v had many instances that i'm peaking on various drugs mostly being DXM (Dextromethorphan) where I can feel and hear my brain fucking frying at the peak, which was done before I knew what the drug was or what it could do, now that I know this I will never again do it ever in my life.

I see "meth" is in the concoction (DXM) no wonder you are (were) flying.

[vend3r]

IJesusChrist, if I had done that I would not be here looking for answers, I'm fairly sure that I do in fact have brain damage, i'v had many instances that i'm peaking on various drugs mostly being DXM (Dextromethorphan) where I can feel and hear my brain fucking frying at the peak, which was done before I knew what the drug was or what it could do, now that I know this I will never again do it ever in my life.

I see "meth" is in the concoction (DXM) no wonder you are (were) flying.

no meth does not have anything to do with DXM, or true DXM, I'v never done meth and never will.

I suggest you check out erowid.org

[Tomas]

IJesusChrist, if I had done that I would not be here looking for answers, I'm fairly sure that I do in fact have brain damage, i'v had many instances that i'm peaking on various drugs mostly being DXM (Dextromethorphan) where I can feel and hear my brain fucking frying at the peak, which was done before I knew what the drug was or what it could do, now that I know this I will never again do it ever in my life.

I see "meth" is in the concoction (DXM) no wonder you are (were) flying.

no meth does not have anything to do with DXM, or true DXM, I'v never done meth and never will.

I suggest you check out erowid.org

So why is meth in the name (Dextromethorphan)?

I'm familiar with DXM, it was around when I was a kid. I tend to go to drugs.com

[vend3r]

well just because a drug name is part of the entire name of a drug does not mean its in the fucking name,

Dextromethorphan (DXM or DM) is an antitussive or cough suppressant drug. It is one of the active ingredients used to prevent coughs in many over-the-counter cold and cough medicines, such as Robitussin, Vicks 44, Coricidin, NyQuil, Dimetapp, and Delsym, among others. Dextromethorphan has also found other uses in medicine, ranging from pain relief to psychological applications. It is sold in syrup, tablet, spray, and lozenge forms manufactured under several different brand names and generic labels. In its pure form, dextromethorphan occurs as a white

see there, no fucking meth what so ever, its in your fucking cough syrup you give to your kids when they are sick even, it has nothing to do with meth at all. please at least do some research before you reply.

[IJesusChrist]

Thomas, get some highschool chemistry you idiot. Is methane composed of METH?! So they are getting the methamphetamines from the COWS! OH the conspiracy!!! Dear god!

Meth is a functional group in organic chemistry, it consists of a carbon with 3 hydrogens, it possibly one of the most prevelent functional groups in life in general. Meth is just short for methamphetamines, which are amphetamines with a characteristic methyl group attached to them


AND back on subject;

I did mushrooms for the first time when I was 15, I went home alone, thinking it was over. I had 6 more hours of horror which would have ended in suicide had a gun been available. The next 2 weeks I was convinced I was brain dead. I was convinced I would never come out of this experience normal. I had felt my brain actually shutting off and going into dis-repair. I felt as if I was watching myself being destroyed from the inside.

It was all the trip of course, it took me about a year to realize that, and being 20 now, I STILL gain wisdom from that experience to this day. It spurred my realizations in psychology and neurology, it shot me off to college (not to educate myself but to get the fuck away from everything I was associated with) and now I'm enjoying a much more beautiful life.

Sometimes those experiences are needed. Time cures all ails.

[Tomas]

well just because a drug name is part of the entire name of a drug does not mean its in the fucking name,

Right here: http://www.drugs.com/alpha/d7.html and continues to page 8. Scroll down where it begins dextroamphetamine
My mom gave it to me when I was a kid, it's been around since 1958, I was around then..

I read your opener that you take drugs for your stated reason(s). I'm not condemning you for that.

Other than a morphine drip when I was in VietNam, I've never had anything stronger than aspirin and ibuprofen, get it?

PS - Save weed, peyote and lsd :-)

[vend3r]

Thomas, get some highschool chemistry you idiot. Is methane composed of METH?! So they are getting the methamphetamines from the COWS! OH the conspiracy!!! Dear god!

Meth is a functional group in organic chemistry, it consists of a carbon with 3 hydrogens, it possibly one of the most prevelent functional groups in life in general. Meth is just short for methamphetamines, which are amphetamines with a characteristic methyl group attached to them


AND back on subject;

I did mushrooms for the first time when I was 15, I went home alone, thinking it was over. I had 6 more hours of horror which would have ended in suicide had a gun been available. The next 2 weeks I was convinced I was brain dead. I was convinced I would never come out of this experience normal. I had felt my brain actually shutting off and going into dis-repair. I felt as if I was watching myself being destroyed from the inside.

It was all the trip of course, it took me about a year to realize that, and being 20 now, I STILL gain wisdom from that experience to this day. It spurred my realizations in psychology and neurology, it shot me off to college (not to educate myself but to get the fuck away from everything I was associated with) and now I'm enjoying a much more beautiful life.

Sometimes those experiences are needed. Time cures all ails.

i think he thinks that, that is the problem tho, he has no idea what a dxm trip can lead one too

[IJesusChrist]

Are you speaking about yourself, or me?

Why third person.

Don't try and compare trips with me. That is not what I am looking for, I have been off the edge. Its sobreity that gets me, the 'bad trips' aren't anything to what I've experienced with my natural chemicals.

When you're done trying to tell everyone how bad your trip was, and how deep you went, and how no one has gone as deep as you, you should let me know. That's when you start realizations.

Edit; sorry I thought you were talking about me in third person or something weird.

[Tomas]

.


-IJesusChrist-
Thomas,

-tomas-
There is no "h" in my name. It's old Swede, Tomas...


IJC-
Sometimes those experiences are needed. Time cures all ails.

-tomas-
Wow, all of 8 years of "time" (pre-tween) have passed you by .. now you're tween-tee (20). You are still a punk.

[vend3r]

Are you speaking about yourself, or me?

Why third person.

Don't try and compare trips with me. That is not what I am looking for, I have been off the edge. Its sobreity that gets me, the 'bad trips' aren't anything to what I've experienced with my natural chemicals.

When you're done trying to tell everyone how bad your trip was, and how deep you went, and how no one has gone as deep as you, you should let me know. That's when you start realizations.

Edit; sorry I thought you were talking about me in third person or something weird.

i'm not talking about anyone in particular , and i'm not trying to compare trips with anyone, i know i'm fucked up, do you?

[Tomas]

i think he thinks that, that is the problem tho, he has no idea what a dxm trip can lead one too

PS - Forgot to add some ass-kicking hashish. Lebanese when I was there. Some black hash when I was in Iraq in the late 1980s before Bush 41 went ballistic. Some decent hash in VietNam. And best of all, the hashish that flows down from Canada all those years later .. to present. God Save The Queen! Don't bogart that joint, my friend.

PS - I've no interest in man-made dxm drugs. Get it ;-)

[IJesusChrist]

Tomas, was that suppose to insult, discourage, or enlighten me on my age?

I am half way to fourty and have had a midlife crisis already. I have pondered marriage, children, career, retirement, and death. Do you know what I have learned? I have alot to learn.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious, are you becoming bitter in your age?

You're only fucked up if you think you're fucked up buddy. Psychology is now your heaven and hell, and you are God.

You are to blame that you feel negative, yet you are to blame with controlling this. You can steer your horizons, you are still in control. It is not brain damage, what you are feeling is one of the most intense realizations you will probably ever have. I can not get into your head and explain to you exactly what happened, but what most likely happened is you have stripped apart of reality away. Not physically - mentally. That is why I'm talking to you. From now on you will be learning how to relearn and heal.


That post sounded WAY too fucking serious.