I’m going to Stop Self Medicating…tomorrow.

January 4, 2013 by My Experiments with Sanity

Hola crew! You down with my blogging crew? Yeah, you know me! Ok, some throw back to start it off. I’m cheesy, I’m well aware and loving it.

I’m going to keep running with the what worked for me. I’m so stoked someone found value in my last blog and will probably rock her world. Stoked, for sure. I’m honored to be of service and I intend to help as many people as I can. Stop thrashing through the thorns and pay heed to the ones who have already, almost, made it out. You never really do. Make it out. The foliage just thins out, sometimes to where it’s barely even there.

I’m going to try and start my blog with a review. They say if you don’t review material after learning about it, you forget pretty soon after. If you review something, you smoosh it a little deeper into the crevices of your brain, make it so it doesn’t blow away as easily. So much blows away. But we already know everything, so fuck it if it does.

I’m in a strange mood, as you may be able to tell. Way too wound up and really need to stop and take ten breaths. The real deal deep breaths where you fill and unfill every nook and cranny of your body. Suck it all in and spit it all back out. Do it with me…..

Damn, what did you have for lunch?

Better. Calmer. I think my heart rate may have dropped a few points. Ok, so what’s worked.

1) Control your thoughts, control your world. Easiest way to tell what your thinking is to stop and analyze what emotions you’re experiencing. Good? Keep at it. Bad? Reframe it to be good.

2) Believe in something bigger than yourself not for religion but so you can realize that the world does not revolve around you and that you’re just some dust speck, so stop being a useless dust speck, wake up…and believe in something greater than yourself so you can find your true calling and make your soul sing every day. Instead of a sickly soul. They were designed to sing.

3) Address physical and/or emotional pain. Emotional pain, you have to work thru. Get a therapist yesterday. Physical pain, you’d be amazed what you can learn with just a little curiosity. Google is my best friend. I’ve been the hot mess sprawled in the tall dusty stacks of whatever town library I may find myself in, piles of books strewn around me. I’ve been an avid gorger of information all my life and I just credit being really curious about almost everything. Some shit I don’t want to know about. Like shit. Don’t want to think about it. What worked. Focusing here…

4) Self-medication may be immediately gratifying but portion control for my fellow travelers is an elusive pipe dream. Plus different strains, if you blaze like me, have different effects. Like the dooky shit I have now that just makes me want to sleep. But of course I can’t.

Can’t nap anymore. Not bitching, just observing. It’s been months since I’ve napped. I used to nap daily, no joke. Daily for like years and years, and pretty much my entire life. But now, no naps. Sleep awesome every night, don’t hate. Eyes usually heavy as hell when I crawl into bed and when I hit that pillow I’m out in milliseconds. I totally get that I’m lucky as hell I sleep as well as I do. I think it’s because I have a pretty clear conscious, I try to live in communion with my fellow travelers and say what I’m thinking instead of short stepping around what’s bothering me. And my meds are working good.

Much easier just to swallow 2 purple pills, ½ a yellow pill, ½ a white pill, throughout the day. And my vitamins. Don’t forget your vitamins! Fish oil and 1 a day multi-vitamin. Good combo. It’s legal and I don’t have to go the exact speed limit so I don’t get popped for blazing in the car.

Today’s lesson? Stop self medicating. I will when I run out of this last bag of pot. I really think my new meds, maybe slightly increased, will make me better…for now. Ahhh, the gift of being bipolar and the cocktail of pills that is our reality.

I am so grateful to all of you out there who are reading this and all of you that are writing about your travels as well. Because that’s what life is, one big long trip. I’m stoked to be travelling in good company,

Sincerely Yours,

B. Wright

Believe Pain is a thing of the Past

January 3, 2013 by My Experiments with Sanity

Pain is a huge factor in self-medication. Emotional pain, you have to work through. No way around it. Physical pain can be removed. This is pretty obvious, but we’d all be shocked how many out there do nothing about pain. They just accept and move on. Deal with it every day instead of intensely for a period until it is resolved. Often times a pain somewhere can be treated.

I grew up with scoliosis, a crooked spine. It was in my hips so you couldn’t tell but it was about 25-30 degrees tilted with a rotary aspect. I learned about it by happenstance in a clinic in the Carolinas. Most of my life has been spent making drinks, serving food, and hustling to make that money. Well, scoliosis and kegs don’t mix well. I used to have daily chronic pain in my lower back, where my main curvature was. To look back and see how long it took me to get better is shocking. Why I just dealt with it is beyond me. But I think a lot of people do. We’re told life is hard, you have to struggle and so we do. We struggle to go beyond our small bubble consumed with an omnipresent aura of pain.

But you say your pain isn’t curable? I heard a man speak who fell from the sky and crashed a plane. He was a vegetable. All he could do was blink his eyes. The docs said no hope. But he had his mind, sharp as it ever was. He made up his mind he would walk out of that hospital by Christmas. So in no more than a year, a man rebuilt his crumpled smashed body back to life, walking and talking and most important of all, living in a much better state of being. All you have to do is believe.

I got an x-ray to see how my spine was crooked about 8 years after learning I had scoliosis and living in pain for most of that time. I saw and understood how I could correct the curvature. I continue to correct myself, especially when I’m tired. I just completely slump over. But in doing this, I get compliments on my posture. I even grew just under an inch.

I also have been getting Rolfed. Rolfing is structural integration, which realigns your body if it is out of whack. If you, or someone you know suffers from scoliosis, seek a Rolfer. Or hell, just because if you’re like me, you’ll try anything to make it better, go get Rolfed. It just might change your whole world.

My body will over time return to it’s curved state if I don’t remain mindful and get Rolfed. What’s all this got to do with your pain? I’m just saying that if you seek, ye shall find. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And you can start right now by Believing that life can be better. Once freed from pain, the soul is able to look up, out and around, becoming part of the we over the me, me, me.

Sit back, relax, breathe into your body. Scan and find what ails you. Recognize instead of ignore and mask with whatever your poison may be. Acknowledge and then learn. This is it. One body is all we get. Maybe we come back, luckily are born human again, but all we have is Now. YOLO. I’m going to change that to YOLON, you only live once now. Why not make this now the best it possibly can be by removing pain so our spirits can look up higher. Don’t be limited another moment. Let the healing begin right now. Only you can truly heal yourself, but of course you already know that. Find that little light inside you, dust it off and watch it glow brighter and brighter, sending healing energy all through every cell of your body. And then flowing out of you, into the chair, into the floor, into the ground, out into the room, into your fellow travelers, up above your head connecting to source. Once you make that source connection, you’ve tapped into an infinite abundance of love, yours for the taking. Make pain a thing of the past, now. Find peace, enjoyment and ease in life. We need you to so you can open to the world. Pain keeps you closed and the world needs you open, shinning, beaming, loving.

Sincerely Yours,

B. Wright

Best Year Ever…BYE!!

January 3, 2013 by My Experiments with Sanity

It’s 2013. We’re here. And we’re stronger than ever. This is gonna be the Best Year Ever; B.Y.E.! Happy BYE! I just want to send a big loud shout out to the entire blog community for being exactly who you are. I feel like I found a crew, a sailing crew, to sail the seas of what we call normal. Not normal for most people, but normal for us. Choppy fucking water and hungry sharks lurking around kind of set up. But you know what? I realized it’s all in how you see it.

The number one hands down thing I have worked on, and will continue to work on, is my mindset. What are the Gerbils doing? Are they calm, chilaxin, and coming up with genius? Good, let ‘em be. Are they all in a tizzy, yanking on their hair and running into each other? Let’s reevaluate what I’m thinking and learn how to reframe it. That’s the ticket. Observe and reframe if necessary. Change the show the Gerbils are putting on to one of joy, bliss and abundance. Peace within to spread peace infinitely.

Back in 2009, I was at an all time low. Homeless, flat broke, my sternum severely bruised, (I heard a pop and then couldn’t breathe. Worst part? It hurt to laugh.). Here I am, 29 years old, living in my mother’s basement. I felt awful and got into a real dark place. But out of that dark shit I was able to make the Dapper Program.

At the time, I wanted to go be a peace soldier. A real one. Not what people call Peace Soldiers today. Peace and fighting don’t go together. Peace Soldiers walk around with certain kinds of people who are being harassed or terrorized by other kinds of people. The effect of having an outsider watching makes the harassers refrain. I loved it and I so wanted to do it.

But then I started looking at the requirements, reading the literature. My heart sank. You had to be at peace within to be able to serve. At peace with myself? After the volcano I let erupt all over my life in Jackson Hole and send me crawling home to Mommy? No debate here; I was far from at peace with myself.

So I set about finding peace within. And now after 4 years, I am so stoked at how far I’ve come. Not to say that I’m finished. Dapperdom is a state one lives in practicing until the last dying breath. Always walking the path to being the best you ever. Always knowing that change and growth go hand in hand.

My struggles began long before 2009 and I have been searching for the middle way for a long time. It has been an amazing ride and I am so grateful for the shit I got drug through. Yeah, I stunk, but once I washed it off, it’s got some magic exfoliator in it or something, cause damn if I didn’t glow brighter.

So mindset. It’s all about your mindset. Pay attention to your Gerbils, or whatever the hell you call those guys doing their thing up there. Make them put on the show you want to see. Peace. Bliss. Joy. Abundance.

Something else I learned is that you have to have something greater than yourself. I learned that when quitting cocaine. White guy with a beard just feels so limiting to me. I see it as a big giant energy force, vibrating around and pulsing with life. I like to think about that giant web, blowing ever so slightly back and forth in a dark, dark, night. Stretching out infinitely into that dark space. Connected ever so delicately yet so fundamentally the same already. The same like how at the end of the day every single thing we see, real or not, is part of us. And we are part of…it all!

A study was done on cells and the people they came from. When the people were shown good things, the cells reacted in a positive way…even outside of the body over 300 miles away. The same if they saw something negative, the cells reacted into a negative state. Take charge of all those cells running around in you and make the show positive. Love. Happiness.

Lean back into life knowing that there is a force out there greater than us alone. It’s us together. And the power of us together is infinitely magical. If you struggle, let’s walk together. Over the years I’ve become so much stronger. I’m freaking diesel now so lean on me and the rest of those who have walked the path you’ve found yourself upon. We’ve seen the thorns and thickets. And now we can only see the roses. Join us, because it’s going to be BYE!!

Happy BYE!

Eternally Yours,

B. Wright