Questions to ask for intention (MDMA and shroom trip: 3/9/2024)

Write out a clear intention statement for your journey
I am exploring whatever comes to me during the trip

List any roadblocks that might keep you from achieving your intention
Reflex to fight the trip

Can you identify a period of your life that follows or resembles that of The Hero's Journey?
When I decided to follow this odd dream I had

Reflect on how a plant medicine journey might be similar to embarking on The Hero's Journey? How might they differ?
They call you first and then you make the choice to pursue it, then it takes you through hell

How could the concept of The Hero's Journey help you have a more successful plant medicine journey?
Give me an idea of what to expect

Think about what life will be like when you achieve your intention. How will you feel when you have achieved this intention?
I don’t know.

What would you like to build, create, or nurture in your life? How do you feel when you are your best and most peaceful self?
Better friendships and long term friendships/relationships with people, remove traumatic responses from my interactions with people. I do not feel as stressed or anxious when I am at my best.

What quality or energy do you need to embody to have the best journey possible?
Lack of anxiety and negative expectations due to traumatic learned behavior or learned helplessness.

What do you need/want more of?
Better relationships with people

What holds you back from realizing your dreams or goals?
Trauma and lack of social skills due to abnormal background

What are your core values? Do you feel as if your life is currently in alignment with these values? If not, which values need more nurturing?
Working towards a collective good. My life is not aligned with it, how can I help others if I am in a shitty position myself?

Who is someone that you admire? What qualities do you find more admirable about this person? What would you like to feel when you wake up in the morning?
I had a friend named Erin. I admire her because she is a good person and caring, and she survived a lot of things yet didn't let it twist her. It’s the goodness I admire. Also she is resourceful. I put her in my will. I don't intimately know them but I can respect some of the NCOs I had.
I want to feel the lack of chronic pain and tension in my body, which I believe is psychosomatic. I also have a feeling of "now what" and figuring out what to look forward to, which is not a good thing.

Supplements Needed for the Protocol:
Magnesium- 100-200mg
Na R ALA-100
Acetyl carnitine - 500mg
Grape seed extract
Green tea extract-400mg
Vit C - 500mg (already have)
Melatonin - 5-10 at bedtime 3-7 days (already have)
5-htp 100mg
NAC 600 mg

Post trip day 1:

No issue sleeping fortunately
No feeling or sensation of negativity or happiness for the next 24 hours after trip died down. Very neutral.
Sent an email to a therapist I was trying that I am firing her, and then observed my gut feeling to decide who I will open up to and who I will drop from my support network for my post-trip integration. There are three military chaplains I let know in advance that I am doing this, and I already sensed who I was going to talk to and who I will drop, but after the trip I am more firm in my decision. I realized I can't respect some of them, as men. Never accept guidance from a man you don't respect.
Already have desire to do another trip in the future, a stronger one now that I am more comfortable with trip sitter and tried low dose MDMA.
Desire to have a high-risk job that is thrilling, such as becoming a private military contractor, black hat hacker (not the boring white hats with a bunch of red tape), or a professional thief. You have to be fit to be a thief. I completely understand veterans, at least the Marines I met, who had an itch for another high risk or physically demanding job after leaving the services.
After 24 hours, started feeling irritation with some things: social anxiety and disappointment at work, anxiety over having to retake parts of certification test for work, wanting to quit job again, aspiring for more money
After thinking of a while, considering going active duty again. I don't like my civilian job. Maybe I am chickening out. I've been considering doing Reserves and having a civilian job in the fitness industry, but now I am considering going active and treating the fitness job as a temporary thing just to prepare me for the next part in life.
Re-reading analysis on why Don Vito Corleone became a mafia boss, though I already read analysis on it before

Post trip day 2:

Woke up early at 5am. Was browsing online and reading about Joseph Pilates and his raging ego and eccentricity. Then I thought to myself that you have to be sort of delusional and hold blind confidence in what you're doing to push through and make it big in life. You have to be what other, risk-averse people would call narcissistic. You have to be, in order to be able to swim with sharks.
I feel like I have more of a fight in me, but unsure if it's because of shrooms/MDMA or because I've been off metformin for a while
I was thinking about my granddad and how stubborn and aggressive he had to be to survive, and the risk taking he did. I started to think to myself that of all the kids, I probably resemble that part of him the most.
I was thinking, and I thought this yesterday too. There is a thrill to a hunt, of tracking people down and chasing people. And there is excitement to being hunted down. Having formidable enemies who care enough to want to assassinate you is one of the highest forms of flattery. Indifference is worse than being hated and living rent free in people's heads.
I want the material wealth and comfort of the civilian world, like it's a game, but want to invest my time and energy into troops. How do I have the best of both worlds? I want to use my GI bill to network at one of the better connected universities.

Post trip day 3:

Lots of vivid dreams the past couple days, even when napping.
There are certain types of mentors I want in my life, and I am focusing back on them. A true mentor is highly selective of who they bring into their circle of care, and is personally invested. It's a relationship that can't really be bought.
- A beautiful, charming mature woman past her 40s who rose up from a third world country, and has seen things. You can't be dumb to pull that off. This is a woman who probably knows a lot about the nature of people. This is a woman who were dealt shit cards in life but managed to play them up to get far in life beyond anyone else's expectations and wildest dreams. A winner. A true queen. I don't give a fuck if she's a gold digger or twice divorced, or "bad". I like "dangerous" women. How does a woman like this get hated more when she hasn't actually harmed anyone else, compared to people who are actually destructive to the people around them? But I am not sure why such a woman would be invested in me or what I can offer her though.

- An NCO with decades of experience and have put skin in the game who will be a resource of information and advice, and will challenge me (preferably male)

- Accountability person, supporter, and advisor for my art. Probably an NCO. My accountability person doesn't care about "art", they care about me. Why do I keep feeling that the accountability person for my art isn't an artist, but someone else outside of art? Because art isn't really about art, art is about something else.

- Unsure who this person is. He reminds me of Don Vito Corleone. Who is this? Is it my future boss? A formidable rival? Is it future me?
Perhaps I need to be more intentional about the people I want in my life, both the people who will help me and the people I will take under my care.

Post trip day 4:

Got a new phone and put that together and switched out the SIM card to an old phone, then used the new shitty phone for my art persona. Then cleaned house more. Went out to the store to buy new cleaning solution and was recognized by a client from work while walking around in my crocs at the local grocer
This is nothing new to me, but I was thinking again about how becoming established as an artist (not necessarily financially successful) will improve my chances of finding my people and even marriageability. What you put into physical reality in this world is more "you" than the actual you. My work, what I make, and how I cultivate in people are more "me" than just me as existing. I am not at a place where I want to be, and that is part of why I struggle to connect with people and people don't find me resonating.

Post trip day 5:

I don't trust people who think "all is one" and "we are all interconnected" from shrooms. I realized that only privileged people who never had their place in society challenged are the ones who come up that type of shit. Of course you think "we are all one" when that "one" you're picturing is you, and you're already in the center of society. When people talk like this, they're usually just picturing everyone and everything else as just an extension of themselves, with them at the center.

Me? No fuck no, we're absolutely "not all one". We are all different. Of course we have to cooperate and work as a team, you don't need fucking shrooms to figure that out though.

It doesn't take shrooms to figure out that we are all interconnected. How dense and lacking self awareness do you have to be to need shrooms to figure out that your behavior affects other people, that unchecked capitalism harms people, or that pollution is bad? Like where was your head the past 20 years to not figure that out already?

https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastpsychiatrist/comments/7mlz3y/how_have_you_changed_since_before_you_read_tlp/

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/07/social_welfare_is_a_red_herrin.html

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/we_are_all_mercantilists_now.html

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/power-crime-and-mystification

Post trip day 9:

Someone who has never been punched or beaten up should never become a military officer, or someone who has a high chance of being deployed to a combat zone. A woman who has never been punched by a man should never become a Marine officer. Because she doesn't understand what men are capable of, and how much they can hurt her. Men are utterly brutal on eachother, at a higher rate than they are towards women. And a man can fuck you up. Especially an enemy. Especially if we're potentially fighting people like the slavs. The slavs don't fuck around. My grandfather dealt with them during the Soviet occupation, though he seemed fine because he learned to swim with the sharks. Other countries don't have that sense of chivalry and politeness that anglos and westerners have. They don't give a fuck. The Law of War? It's all bullshit. Everyone fights dirty. The slavs fight dirty. Americans don't follow it either, we just delegate the interrogating job to a non-American. Being a military officer seems more like a ceremonial position in the west at this point. If it actually had any real authority, real power, even at the General ranks - they wouldn't let so many women and minorities become officers.
Makes me laugh that American whites are so scared of black people when they got fucking SLAVS walking around among them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/1116s63/in_russian_prison_8_prisoners_are_given_2_options/
We hate weakness more than we hate evil. People tolerate and even admire evil men if they are at least strong and capable.
I don't like fighting, I am not good at it, I am not some tough guy. But I still had to fight and I have to keep fighting. I hate it so much. I fear death. But the alternative is worse.
We all contribute to the war machine. I don't hate civilians and neverserveds, I only hate the ones who think they're completely uninvolved and innocent in all of this - which is still a lot of them. It's always ironic when someone goes "what did the military do for my freedom?" while they fill up their SUVs at the gas station. It's like a child who cries and whines about butchers being bad when they see farm animals getting slaughtered, and then turn around to have no problem eating sausages and burger patties a few hours later. Yeah you're not the one who had to kill, but you still benefit from it. There would be no war in the middle east for oil, if civilians didn't demand oil. A lot of these neverserveds have contempt for the poor too. A lot of contempt towards the military is just contempt for poor people. It's the Vietnam draftees, who didn't have a choice, who didn't have the money or the connections to dodge the draft, who were ostracized. Similar to comfort women in Korea - these were girls from poor villages who got drafted into those prostitution camps, and they came back to be rejected by their own countrymen. These weren't rich girls who got forced into prostitution, it was the poor girls.
The war machine is going to continue running, continue consuming people, continue chewing and spitting people out. There is no point sitting around philosophizing about how society could be better, what a non-war society looks like, society without inequality. A lot of this armchair philosophizing from the comfort and distance of an ivory tower is just another way to continue not doing anything substantial. The most I can do is go in and try to catch people coming in through the gates in a wide net so they don't fall through the cracks, protect them, and keep them in one piece as they come out the other end. I decided it's better to have real people to love and take care of, and get inspiration from.

Post trip day 12:

Starting to feel down and slightly suicidal again.
Now that there is a group of people, though small, to be accountable to and to love and protect and to provide for, my priorities are changing and I am considering doing things that I haven't really taken seriously before. I need to marry into wealth.
Willingness to fight, and take risks.
There is an underlying thing I am avoiding, and I have to figure out how to consistently face it other it will slowly eat away at me. I need to do that thing and keep doing it if I want to make some real changes in my life. Everything else is distraction. Figure out what the thing you’re avoiding is and start failing at it.
Being a military officer is something that's worth doing for it's own sake, in my mind.

Post trip day 13:

Got into two verbal altercations this week. Today and yesterday. Getting jaded with the city. There's a sheer volume of people so you run into more crazies and entitled people.
Getting Oscillopsia, wondering if its just rage or something else physiological going on
Wondering why I am so angry this past week and seeing where it comes from. I think it's due to the fact that I will never have the life I really want. And I don't like the dynamic between me and other people, and the feedback that I get.
If your problems are caused by the unfulfillment of your normal human needs due to the fucked up sociosexual dynamics of your culture, then youre just fucked because an individual therapy treatment isnt going to fix a systemic problem, and you cant gaslight yourself into not wanting what you want, not needing what you need.
The only dignifying way to redeem myself is to work for myself and do high risk high reward things, or cultivate my own team of men and young people who are hungry and risk taking. Probably both.
I need to fight and win, I need to challenge and beat someone formidable. Who is my opponent?
Is it really yuppies that I dislike, or is it something else? Is it actually anger and disappointment toward my own family and not seeing them as men?
Anger is almost always a secondary emotion to something more vulnerable underneath the surface (fear, heartbreak, hurt, loneliness, abandonment).
I realized I was neglecting the supplementing routine the past couple days thinking I don't need it. Maybe that's why I am so angry.

Post trip day 14:

Highly considering moving back to California. I am so homesick and I was the happiest there and had the most friends there. I have been becoming so angry, resentful, and jaded since moving back to my hometown. It's reminding me of why I left in the first place. I don't even think it's the hometown itself necessarily, though it does seem to have more hostile people than California. I think I just have too many bad memories here and even being in proximity to toxic childhood home and around old former friends and petty relatives is painting the place in a bad light. I think my hometown is a nice place to visit occassionally, but not the right place for me to live long term. I think there is a reason why I've held off on buying a home here using my GI bill, because deep inside I felt like this isn't the place for me long term.
I tried to stay here because I want to establish root somewhere and stop wandering around so much, but this place ain't it. This isn't the first time I thought of moving back to California or Hawaii since I've been here. I kept thinking about it the past 3 years and kept fighting it thinking it's just wanderlust. I think this is also why I haven't put effort into dating or trying to make more friends here. Something just wasn't right. I also want to move to California to have a better chance of finding a partner of my preferred cultural groups. I can meet more Asians/Polynesians, Latinos, and black and whites who are more chill compared to my current city where everyone is so aggressive to each other.
Looking at my schedule and commitments, the right time to leave town would be mid-August.
I will ask my company if they have a spot to transfer me to in California
I need to pack light so everything fits in my car and I can go straight to California after drill
Just give all my furniture away. I spent like $1500 total for furniture. It's not much in the big scheme. I already get so much good free shit, trying to sell it is a PITA and waste of time and energy, someone else will really appreciate the free shit, and I can always make more money.
I am taking in my car: art supplies, sketchbooks, electronics, legal documents, some clothes.

I am considering getting a master's (free for me, and I get a stipend) at the best school I can get into, just to get to meet more people and have an extra credential. I know that having a bachelor's, even in something that doesn't translate into a "good job", is something that's expected as default in certain social classes - even simply for social signalling.

I have a bachelor's, but from a no-name school and never got to network with it. It's a "me too" degree.

I know this sounds mercenary and horrible, but I noticed that people really do treat you differently based on school and education level, and even just having that extra credential to my name might open gates and make me seem more legitimate.

The problem is, every master's degree that I am considering isn't considered a "practical" degree. But then neither were a lot of the rich people I know of. But then, maybe they got those degrees because they didn't have to worry about money and was coasting off the connections they were born into. They have degrees in like: sociology, political science, history, international affairs.

I feel like middle and upper middle class people go for STEM degrees, finance, law, medicine, and things considered practical with a high financial ROI. Yet I look at the really wealthy (at least to my standard) and they seem to go for more liberal arts type of degrees that the middle/UMC seem to scoff at as "useless".

I have a feeling that going for the liberal art "useless" degrees at the elite well connected universities will be the best way to meet people. The high ROI "practical" degrees are degrees for worker bees who only know how to work and "produce" (hence a cult of productivity), while the liberal arts are where the real decision-makers go who affect the lives of everyone else. I have a worker bee degree.