Month: June 2015

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I Need to Dry Out

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My body and mind feel like mush.   I’m mentally and physically drained.  I think I may be getting an ulcer again.  But I’ve been having the best times.

That’s the crossroads of my life right now.  At 35, finding the work hard/play hard balance is an onerous experiment.  Moderation is not my best virtue.  I walk a very fine line between no play and overindulgence.  It’s a constant battle of checks and balances.

Summer time in Philly means pool parties, the shore and multitude of social events.  The spring and summer are my favorite times of the year.  Once it starts getting cold my Seasonal Affect Disorder kicks in and I want to hibernate.

I’ve been investing my time going out, being social and meeting new people. I have become more of an introvert over the past couple years.  Being comfortable allowing others into my life and growing my social circle is important to me.

However, I’m starting to tip the line of being a bad adult.  At times I am completely irresponsible.   For instance, last weekend I had planned to stay in Friday night.  I was relaxing on my couch trying to fall asleep when a friend texted me and asked me meet him for a cheesesteak.  It sounded completely innocuous so I obliged.  Next thing I knew it was 7 AM and I was pulling back up to my house. (more…)

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The ‘How-to” Guide For Disrupting Positive Flow

Lately I have completely lost my state of flow.  My schedule is a mess  and my productivity level is at nightmare status.  Not only has this been chaotic for my work life, but it has also taken a toll on my health and my body.  I fully believe that when someone is struggling mentally,  physical issues will manifest shortly there after. I’m having digestive issues, my body fat has increased while muscle mass decreased, I’m physically weak and have almost unbearable back pain.

I’ve seen countless articles on how to enter the flow state.  This post is the complete opposite.  I think it’s a helpful prophylactic to reverse engineer the process in order to see what behaviors caused the problem.  Especially when so many seem rather trivial.  But it’s a snowball effect that escalates quickly.  The list of actions below is  how I created the predicament I find myself in. (more…)

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The Greatest Drinking Game On Earth

“Just swipe right as fast as you can for a minute straight.”  These were the directions my friend gave me as we embarked upon the most fun 15 minutes I’ve had in a long time.

A few months ago my friend and I got drunk at a Mexican restaurant and she introduced me to my first  drinking game using Tinder.  The rules are simple: Open the app and swipe right for one minute as fast as humanly possible.  Whoever matches with the most people during that round is the winner.  The loser of the round must drink one second for every person the winner matched with (i.e. 15 matches, drink 15 seconds).  Pretty simple right?

After three rounds of swiping right the fun part of the game starts.  By then each player should have at least 15-20 matches.  The final challenge is to get one of the people you matched with to send you a picture of their boobs or genitals.  This is where the game usually devolves pretty quickly.  The lowest common denominator came out quickly for me. (more…)

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How I’m Dealing with Low T and ED….Naturally

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My hand reached into the fifth pocket on my jeans, praying I would find a little yellow pill inside. My Cialis, the only thing that could help.  Then the panic would set in.  Nothing was there!  I had a girl lined up ready to go and I was so fearful my dick just wouldn’t work.   Anxiety was the mental problem; Low T was the physical problem.

I wreaked havoc on my body and my hormones by playing “science experiment” on myself for a decade.  Now, At 35 with testosterone levels floating around 300 (A man my age should be around 500-600), I struggle with the side effects of Low T.  Including the most dreaded issue, erectile dysfunction.  Some of the other common side effects are:

  1. Low sex drive
  2. Lack of energy and fatigue
  3. Hair loss
  4. Muscle loss
  5. Increase in body fat
  6. Mood Changes

Normally, Low T can be easily treated with a low dose of testosterone (hormone replacement therapy).  However, in my case, that’s not an option.  During my years of using steroids I developed what are known as hepatic adenomas.  This is a rare side effect of steroid use.  A hepatic adenoma is an uncommon benign liver tumor that is hormone induced.  It is most commonly found in young women who are on an oral contraceptive pill.  Large hepatic adenomas have a tendency to rupture and bleed massively inside the abdomen. (more…)

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Grant Me The Serenity

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”

I’ve said the serenity prayer thousands of times in my life.  It was one of the first prayers I ever learned.   My Pop-Pop had it sitting in a frame on his desk when I was a child.  He was a recovering alcoholic and that was their mantra.

I’m a control freak.  I want everyone to act according to my plans and beliefs.  This never happens and only sets me up for disappointment and frustration.

Recently I have come to understand what the serenity to accept the things cannot change means.  Serenity comes from letting go of expectations and allowing people and things to be whatever they are going to be.  Being in control of myself and not letting other’s actions affect my life and happiness.

When certain people enter my life I feel my anxiety build.  I lose focus and have difficulty sleeping at night.  I want so much better for them than they want for themselves.  I have codependency issues.  I feel the need to save them.

I’ve struggled to accept others for who they are.  I want to change them and mold them into someone I feel is better.  In the end the person usually resents me for my actions.

Serenity does not come easy for  me.  It is incredibly difficult for me to accept the world will act as it chooses and not allow that to impact my happiness.  Especially when it involves the behavior of someone I love and care for.

Things I cannot change have taken up too much real estate in my mind.  Learning to cope with anxiety and let go of these thoughts has been crucial.  I’ve distanced myself from people and learned to love them from a far.  I’ve come to terms with the fact I can only influence others to make changes if they are ready and willing.

I’ve wasted years worrying about how others choose to live their lives.  Looking down upon their choices and placing my expectations upon them.  I’ve been condescending when I should have been focusing more energy on how I  live my life.  Trusting that no matter what someone else does, I have enough confidence in the life I have built for myself that my world will not collapse.

Serenity is knowing I cannot change anyone.  People are going to be who they are going to be and will live the way they way want to live .  Not everyone will be willing to put in the hard work and effort its takes to be the best they can be.  The sooner I accept that fact the sooner I can have my serenity back.

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Hustling – From the Streets to the Boardroom

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“Read this and maybe you will be someone one day”

Those were the words my dad spoke as he handed me a book on the Mafia.  I was 12 years old and very impressionable.  I would stay with my dad during the weekends.  He would rent gangster movies for me to watch while he was away at work.  He was obsessed with the lifestyle.

During my childhood my dad was involved in criminal activities that ranged  from selling drugs to running numbers.  He tried to hide it from me, but I knew.  He hung around with low level, wannabe mafia types.  They sat in diners all night long drinking coffee, breaking each others balls about women and how “rich” the next guy was.   The fact of the matter was none of them were rich.

They told stories about the past while laughing obnoxiously loud in public places, creating a scene.  The majority of what came out of their mouths were either lies or half-truths.  It was like watching a bad episode of the Sopranos 20 years before it was a show.

As a kid I loved it.  I couldn’t wait to be around his friends.  I thought they were the greatest.  I idolized them.  They had nice cars, which my father never had.  Some wore gaudy jewelry and always carried big wads of cash.

They were always excited to see me and treated me like royalty.  Unlike my father who usually put me down and made me feel less than.  When I grew up I wanted to be like them.  I had become obsessed with that lifestyle.

At 13 I started selling weed to my friends.  At first, I stole it from my brother and my friend’s dad until I found my own source to buy it.  I bagged it up in little dime bags and sold it to friends for $10 a piece.

Even back then I remember wanting to make sure I always gave people a great deal.  I packed the bags I sold nice and full, removing the stems from the buds.  When I bought weed from other people it was mainly stems and seeds.  I hated that and wanted to be different, even it meant I made less money.

As I got a littler older and progressed from selling weed to coke, my mentality on making a profit changed.  I cut my product, but tried to maintain a certain quality standard.  I found that if I added seven grams of cut to an ounce of quality coke and mixed it well people rarely complained.  To stretch my profits further I would make half grams weigh .4 instead of .5 and my grams weigh .8 instead of 1.  These two tricks net me an additional $500 in profit if I didn’t use too much of it myself. (more…)

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On Resentments…

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“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. ”

Resentments undermine progress and wreak havoc on my life.   They serve no purpose other than to drain my emotional health and positivity.  Resentments keep me in the past.  They handcuff me and stifle my ability to move forward.

Resentments have very little to do with what another person has done to me.  They are about the injustice I feel I have suffered and find unacceptable.  I hold onto these toxic feelings because they are comfortable and familiar.  I don’t have to think much to process them.  I can simply feel the anger and indignation fester inside of me and know that I’m alive.

12 step programs thoroughly discuss and address resentments in their literature.  One of the most powerful statements that I have read on the subject comes from the Big Book of AA:

“This mental habit extracts tremendous costs. After all, resentment does nothing to change the person we resent. Nor does it resolve conflict. Instead of freeing us from the wrongs of others, resentment allows those people to dominate our thinking — a kind of emotional bondage.”

Working through resentment is an arduous task.  It takes the ability to truly let go and not only forgive someone else, but yourself as well.  In every resentment usually lies shame, embarrassment, guilt, sadness and anger (the list extends far past that).  I feel that my actions have played a role in creating all of my resentments .  There is a part of me that questions what I could have done differently in order to avoid these feelings.

In order for me to relinquish my resentments I need to get passed my fragile ego and accept things for how they are.  That is the starting point.  From there, there are others processes that I have been taught, or learned on my own, to create a resentment free life.

I have been told to pray for the people I resent.   Asking God to give these people all that I would want for myself.  It takes the power away from the resentment.  If you are able to pray for someone you have such ill will towards you can overcome your feelings.  At first it may feel like just words.  That’s fine; go through the motions anyway.  I have done this for several years and it has helped me.

The other day I tried a powerful exercise.  I wrote a list of everyone that I was resentful towards.  Then next to each persons name I made a very detailed list of each reason I had to resent them.  Some of these reasons seemed silly and foolish, but it was important that I write them down.  It got all my feelings out of my head and made them real and concrete.

I had to be willing to be uncomfortably honest with myself about why I harbored each resentment.  Sometimes those feelings were embarrassing even to admit to myself.  However, it was important for me not to be judgmental about what I wrote as that could keep me from being completely forthcoming.

I started the list with the most obvious person that I harbor the most resentment toward, myself.  This list was by far the longest.  There are just so many things I have done that I resent.

Then I added my family, my ex girlfriend and people from my past that tormented me.  I added anyone to my list if I dwelled upon their “unacceptable” actions towards me.

By the end of the exercise I had 10 people on that list.  That seems like a lot of people to have resentments against.  I have struggled to let go of this poison.

After the list was completed I reread what I had written.  That sparked some more ideas of what I was resentful about and I added to the list again.  Once I had emptied my tank and my list was complete I folded the papers, said goodbye and burned them it my sink.

I watched as the flames grew larger and smoke emanated from the paper.  The words turned black and slowly disappeared in front of me until eventually the list was nothing but ash.

The process of writing them down on paper,  facing them and then burning them  was cathartic.  I felt a sense of relief.  The burden of all the resentments I had carried round with me for far too long seemed lighter and less intense.

Resentments can only live inside of our hearts and minds.  They do not exist anywhere else.  The more they are ignored the stronger they become.  Learning to resolve resentment gives us mental and emotion freedom, as well as the ability to become more confident, happy and cognizant of the world around us.

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That Wasn’t Water

As soon as I swallowed it was already too late.  I had grabbed the wrong water bottle and taken a large gulp.  I started to sweat.  I was nodding in and out of consciousness.  I knew I needed to get off at the next exit before I passed out behind the wheel.

I was leaving Philly on a Saturday morning driving to Reading, Pennsylvania to visit friends.  It’s about an hour drive if traffic isn’t too bad.  But, traffic is always bad driving on route 76.   I sat there in gridlock.  I was thirsty and reached into my backpack to grab my bottle of water.

hqdefaultI made a big mistake forgetting that I had two water bottles in my bag.  One filled with water, the other filled with GHB.  There’s a huge difference between a sip of each.  I drank a mouthful.  I needed to get off the road quickly.

I took the first exit I saw.  I made my way to a more secluded location between an industrial area and  a small patch of woods next to the Schuylkill river.   I parked my car and put the keys under my wheel well in case a cop came by.  I felt myself about to vomit.

I flung open my car door and violently threw up.  The vomit splattered off the ground and little chunks of it made its way into my car and onto my clothes.  The putrid smell made me gag and I threw up again.

I closed the door and laid back in my seat.  It was spring time and it was rather warm in my car.  I was sweating profusely.  I fell asleep for maybe 30 minutes when the uncontrollable urge to shit woke me up.

pooping-in-the-woods-300x169I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but if I didn’t act soon I was going to shit my pants.  I sprung out of my car and raced into the woods.  I found a stump and anchored myself against it.  I pulled down my pants and let loose.  It was awful. The equivalent of soft serve spewing out of my ass.

I was so relieved that I was able to safely clear my bowels that I didn’t think about how I was going to clean up.  I looked around for leaves I could use.  I’m not much of an outdoorsman so I was afraid that I may wipe my ass with something poisonous.

I had a nice shirt on so I didn’t want to use that.  Then it hit me.  Why don’t I use my wife beater?  I was standing on the side of the Schuylkill River with limited coverage from traffic, naked with my pants around my ankles, wiping my ass with a wife beater.

I was careful to clean the shit particles that had attached to my legs and balls and threw the wife beater on the ground.  I stumbled back to my car and passed out for a couple of hours.  When I woke up I continued on my journey to visit my friends, unphased from the mornings activities.

 

 

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Is Hindsight Really 20/20

“You were too busy sticking steak knives in your pee hole”

I had totally forgotten about some of the odd shit I did in college.   Until an old teammate decided to post that comment for the world to see on Facebook.  Maybe I suppressed those memories or maybe I really had forgotten them.  I used to do a lot of drugs and took several blows to the head, so it’s possible.

It’s amazing to think that I used to stick objects in my pee hole in front of numerous people.  Whats even more mind blowing is that there was always a girl who would witness my ridiculous actions and still say to herself, “Yeah, Im going to fuck that guy tonight.”

Looking back on my bizarre and almost unfathomable behaviors in the past I cringe.  Occasionally I laugh.  Knowing I shoved things in my pee hole is still pretty amusing to me today.  I wouldn’t want to do it again, but I still giggle a bit.

I’ve talked to so many people who say, “If I only could do it over things would be different.”  I’ve said that same statement more times than I can count.  But I’m not sure its necessarily true.  I don’t know that if give then chance I would do anything different.

I made my decisions based on the information and life skills I was equipped with at the time.  Many of my actions didn’t, and still don’t, feel like they were right.  Some have caused me a great deal of pain and suffering.   Other choices felt wrong at the time, but have paid off many times over.

Eight  years ago I left my career in Corporate America to be a full time drug dealer.  I  wonder what my life would look like had I chosen a different route.  Where would I be right now?  What type of career would I have?  Would I be more successful?

Then I realize it doesn’t matter.  The exercise of looking back and wondering is futile.   More than likely, even armed with the information I know now, I still would make the same decisions.

The reason being is I know where my life has gone and I’m happy with the majority of it.  If I made different choices I fear I wouldn’t have had the same life experiences, fallen in love, or lived in the manner I have for so many years.

Who knows were I would be or what my life would look like if I had made different choices.  Maybe my life would be better.  But maybe I wouldn’t have met the people I met or learned the lesson I’ve learned.

Life is about experiences and my life has been rich with them.  I treasure my experiences, even the really shitty ones.  For better or for worse they created the person I am today.

Love and embrace who you are today.  Don’t hate and regret your past.  Instead use it as a road map to build a better future.

 

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Sometimes You Gotta Clean the Pipes

pipe-cleaningAs soon as I came everything was so much clearer.

All day I moped around and struggled to deal with my feelings.   My body felt like it was shutting down from all the partying these past few weekends.  I couldn’t think straight.  I went back and forth in my mind hemming and hawing over decisions I wasn’t ready to make.

I made a trip to Baltimore this weekend to attend a friend’s birthday dinner.   I used that as an excuse to text my ex-girlfriend and ask her if we could get a drink and talk.  She told me she wasn’t sure.  Then immediately said she would meet me.

Now I know damn well this wasn’t the best idea.  But I wanted to do it, so I did.  It wasn’t a horrible experience.  I hadn’t seen her for the better part of six months.  Feelings came back that I was pretty sure weren’t there anymore.  My anxiety and inability to stay present rose to incredibly high levels.

I tried writing today with very little success.  I managed to jot down a couple sloppy paragraphs.  But, my mind was being hi-jacked by my thoughts.

To get my mind off of things I made plans with a girl I see occasionally.  She was supposed to come over at 8 PM to hang out and have sex.  I received a text around 5:45 with her excuse of why she couldn’t make it.  She prefaced the text with, “please don’t hate me.”  This made me hate her a little bit more.

She wants to be my girlfriend, that’s the real problem.  I feel bad because she’s a good girl that deserves a good guy who wants to be with her.  I know I should cut this off before it ends poorly.  I also know that sometimes I want to be selfish.

I was annoyed and horny.  I hadn’t masturbated in over a week.  With my booty call flaking on me I knew I had to take matters into my own hands.  I went to work and It was glorious.  As I finished I asked myself why I don’t make time to do this more often anymore.

Two minutes after I finished it was like a cleaning service went to work on my mind.  All the clutter was removed and I could suddenly see things more clearly.  I realized I need to make clear cut decisions about what I want and go after it in a direct manner.  I need to be confident enough in myself to know that I can make it through whatever happens and stay on my path.  That’s more important to me than the actual outcome.

A friend once told me years ago that before I make a rash decision, masturbate first.  If I still want to do it afterwards, go for it.  That’s some pretty sound advice.