I was raised super charismatic Christian and went atheist for a while. I became agnostic when I just stopped caring one way or the other. If there’s a god or not I still gotta be me. I’m agnostic indifferent

Ah yes, the famed pyramids of Visalia and its historic Spanish mission

Boredom. I’m an only child and sucked at all sports. I grew up in the late 80s through the 90s and early 2000s and was over medicated on Ritalin so I’d play for 4-10 hours a day. Also didn’t hurt that my dad is a guitarist as well. My grandpa and great grandpa also played

You look like you can’t handle ketchup because it’s too spicy

Beefy boi! He lick, he quick but most of all he thic

My dog’s name is Flea

Answers to the following:

Pooper, Cuddle pup, Flea biscuit, Beef boi, Mr Poopers

As a musician of almost 30 years, loud bars and excessively loud music

I’d switch to vape or edibles. It’s way more discreet

Could the reverse be done? Develop a malevolent AI and figure out how to make it behave well or serve up wholesome content?

Since about the end of high school (2003)I dealt with really intense OCD. It was a subtype known as pure O. Initially I had developed noticeable tics from having intrusive thoughts but learned how to hide them really well and at a certain point was able to control them. What I couldn’t control was a barrage of graphic intrusive thoughts that made it unbearable to be around people. It really affected my social life and relationships with friends and family. I was constantly checking physical sensations and for about 8 years I suffered like this. Finally one day while at a bar a few blocks from my apartment in SE Portland, I was reading a book on spirituality when a guy with a southern accent asked me, “what the hell are you doing reading a book on spirituality in a bar?” -Me “I just left Christianity and I’m trying to figure some things out” We conversed a bit and he said he lived around the corner and had something he thought might help. I thought, “well, either this is gonna be good or I’m gonna end up in pieces in a freezer in the basement, let’s roll the dice” Upon entering his house I was greeted with the sweet dank bouquet of Flying Dutchman’s Pot of Gold. He grabbed some capsules containing ground up psilocybin from his freezer and handed them to me with a few choice nugs from his bountiful harvest. He gave me some idea of what to expect and really emphasized that the shrooms are to be treated with respect as they are a medicine of sorts. I waited a while (almost a month) before taking them. On my first experience I chose a low dose to get my feet wet and get and get a sense of what I’d be dealing with. The next dose was was a little more but very blissful and with open eye visuals in the form of spiral galaxies and geometric patterns overlaid on the environment around me. In the weeks that followed I decided to really up the dosage. I felt the need to go deeper to confront the root causes of my OCD. The experience consisted of intense vivid pattern hallucinations then a certain crossing over into what for me was a vision/trance state where with eyes closed or open I was in another realm. I encountered what I perceived to be consciousnesses other than my own communicating with me. Some of them looked like living neon mandalas that were interlocked and rotating and pulsating with such colors I had never seen. These beings communicated a desire to help. Each one had their role. Always in the beginning of a journey I’d be greeted by a divine feminine being of sorts. Like a divine mother or goddess. She would always welcome me with bliss and beautiful patterns would emerge from her. Then she would inform me that in order to treat my illness she would have to pass me off to another spirit. The second phase was always confrontational. This spirit, I called it the spirit of the buffalo, the divine masculine, really made me relive some serious traumatic shit I experienced as a child and in my youth. He really drove home that I needed to relive those things in order to purge them. That because I had shoved those experiences down so far I was in fact hanging on to them. I was hanging on to these traumas when I refused to forgive the transgressor, but most of all when I refused to forgive myself. This was a consistent unfolding of my journeys for about six months, taking it at one trip a week. Interspersed with these types of trips I had about three significant ego death experiences and another experience with Ganesha who seemed to have a gentler approach than the Buffalo spirit. Up until my experience with Ganesha I was feeling a bit confused about the nature of the beings I was encountering. At the end of my time with Ganesha I asked, “Are you real?” To which he responded “What does it matter? You learned to forgive yourself and others. Your heart is light again like a child’s. It doesn’t matter if I’m real or just in your head. What matters is the message, the healing”. After all these experiences I would say it took another four years to be completely OCD and anxiety free but even immediately after those six months of intense journeys I noticed a tremendous difference in my overall mental health and a steep decline in intrusive thoughts. While I certainly wouldn’t recommend this route for everyone, I would say the experiences were invaluable to me and wouldn’t trade them for the world.

It’s definitely not something I’d recommend for everyone. After years of suffering from OCD, it was not a choice I made lightly. I took a lot of time to really research and understand the risk and made the leap. Fortunately for me the pay off was more than worth it. I’ve been OCD free and anxiety free since 2015

I would have taken psychedelics. I could have overcome mental illness 7 years sooner