ImmInst.org Forums Community Blog List http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?automodule=blog Community Blog List Syndication Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:56:45 -0500 support@imminst.org (ImmInst.org Forums) IP.Blog 60 <![CDATA[brokenportal's Blog - In response to the longevity dividend, draft]]>


Based on the Longevity Dividend and BBC article, interviews, and other pieces, I certainly got the impression that you were more for the compression of morbidity than indefinite life extension as well. That’s what the Longevity Dividend says. For example:

“This compression of mortality and morbidity would create financial gains not only because aging populations will have more years to contribute, but also because there will be more years during which age-entitlement and healthcare programs are not used.”

Compression of Morbidity isn’t a bad thing per say. Although it seems that portraying to the public that indefinite life extension is not in the cards is. It’s a thin line to draw because we know, like you expound on, we cant see it there in the cards either. When people like Aubrey say that the first person to live to 1,000 could be 60 years old now, I don’t think hes saying that the first person to live to 1,000 is alive now. At least that’s what I hear, and there’s a big difference. Allowing people to open their minds to the realities that things may be around any corner is important. We shouldn’t announce that they are around the corner, and I don’t think that most of us do. Im sure we may do so incidentally from time to time, but over all, from what I see, most if not all of our intentions are to say that there is a reality as to whether indefinite life extension is there in our biologies, in the cards for us, or not. The faster we go to get all of the world that will, to support its research, the faster we can get there, and if it is there, then we will be able to reap the benefits in time for more people who would have otherwise obliterated for eternity. If its not there, if we never find it, and along the way we realize a compression of morbidity by say, 7 years, or whatever, then great, that’s a great goal, and a much needed step, but 7 years should not be the goal in and of itself, and from what many of us can see, this seems to be another important distinction.

Its not the goal in and of itself in the same way that getting the “no coloreds allowed” signs removed wasn’t the goal of Civil Rights, or, performing 50 more space launches to orbit the earth wasn’t the goal in getting to the moon.

Martin Luther King Jr. stated in his I Have a Dream speech, the notion that this is no time for gradualism, that justice to long delayed is justice denied. To quote:

“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

It seems that its the same for this cause.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail he talks about those who would say slow down and wait.

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

It seems that it’s the same for this cause.

In John F. Kennedys Rice Stadium Moon Mission speech he spoke the following two excerpts:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

“…even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.”

It seems it’s the same for this cause.

We don’t have to know we can get there to go there, but we do have to go there to get there. Im reminded of another quote that goes, “If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock.” –Arthur Goldberg

Things like 7 year dividends, the removal of coloreds only signs, and orbits around the earth are/were parts of it, but Im not sure that causes like the latter two could have ever gotten to where they were going if they didn’t aim for them, if people didn’t prepare to go all the way, rather than prepare to go a portion of the way. Im reminded of the Wayne Gretsky quote: “100% of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.”

We have to plant the seed that we are undertaking the quest for indefinite life extension now, we have to take into consideration the fierce urgency of now, we have to have a dream, we have to shoot for the moon. We have to start now.

To quote Kennedy again:

“The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!’”

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, if people don’t think they need it, they are going to innovate at a much slower rate than if they did. Like MacArthur said, “It is fatal to enter any war with out the will to win it.” We may not be able to get there, but we have to believe we can if we are to put forth the amount of effort that is needed to get it done in time for us if it is there. Like Eden Phillpotts said, “the universe waits patiently for our wits to grow sharper.” we don’t intend to keep it waiting. By god, we may not get there, but we have to go there, and we have to do it like our lives depend on it.

I don’t think that people like the writers of the Longevity Dividend are necessarily against places that support indefinite life extension. I think there’s a balance to be struck, like many say about the over hype that sometimes slips out, it would also be nice to try to keep the underselling of this potential here from going to low. A lot of us support the Longevity Dividend. I do, and we continue to help spread it, but it would be nice if it could be adjusted so as to not dissuade the notion of indefinite life extension.

For example in the following segment, something similar to the part in brackets could be added:

"No one is suggesting that alteration of these genes in humans would be practical, useful, or ethical, [with out further research and discussion,] but it does seem likely that further investigation may yield important clues about intervening pharmacologically."

In this line “unrealistic” could be removed and it would still serve its purpose:

"What we have in mind is not the unrealistic pursuit of dramatic increases in life expectancy, let alone the kind of biological immortality best left to science fiction novels."

I know you guys want to appeal to conservative crowds, and that thats where a lot of the funds come from, and that you need to, and that shooting for the moon doesn’t appeal to the scientific method, but in addition to scientists, your also humans, and you know that pioneers have come a long way, through a lot of barriers to get us to where we are today. I think that appealing to the scientific method and conservative crowds can be done without shutting indefinite life extensionists out of the picture, and at the same time I think that we can continue to grow toward a movement in support of indefinite life extension with out over hyping it. I look forward to seeing both continue to evolve on into the future.
]]> Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:52:15 -0500 <![CDATA[nootrope's Blog - Nootrope's Update]]>
Anyway, as it's been a while, I should write an update. There are other corners of the web where I express myself, but I like the anonymity here, and the intersection of topics surrounding health and immortality and the future.

I'm a 42 year old male astrophysicist. Probably the most severe health problem I've had is bipolar disorder, which thankfully only impacts my life during infrequent episodes. For the past year I've been taking hardly any medication and have not had an episode. I've found some natural herbal remedies to be very helpful: ashwagandha and bacopa (from the ayurvedic tradition) in particular. Lately though I've taken a break from the bacopa. One study suggested that high doses in rodents could cause a temporary drop in fertility, which could be restored by stopping treatment. Though I'm not trying to father a child just now, that kind of side effect made me feel a little queasy about the stuff.

As the pseudonym nootrope suggests, I'm interested in improving the clarity of my thinking in general. When I started this blog I was between jobs, and that was a good time for tending to self-improvement. Now I'm burnt out by the daily routine, where I become unmotivated and sometimes make careless errors. When I get home from work I'm no longer so energetic that I want to improve my skills. The one region of my life I have been consistently improving myself in has been physical fitness. I've continued to work out at the gym, both cardio and weight lifting sessions. As studies and anecdotes attest, exercise can be a nootropic. Having a week off between Christmas and New Year's now allows me to take stock a bit and, perhaps if I feel rested enough, start some more self-improvement projects.

Nutrition: A couple of years ago, I was vegetarian. Now I am a healthy carnivore, trying to navigate between the healthiest traditions, incorporating meals from the Mediterranian diet, while often thinking along the lines of the paleo-dieters (i.e., what did we humans evolve to eat?) I've incorporated grass-fed beef into my diet, and some more obscure meats, and liver, while continuing to dine on lots of fatty fish (particularly those low in mercury, like anchovies), fresh fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds, olive and coconut oil, and some grains and beans. Now and then I'll have a pizza or a dessert. I still drink at least 10 cups of tea a day, usually green or white tea, but sometimes black or oolong. Now I sometimes have a cup or two of coffee as well, and a couple of days a week I'll have a chocolate bar (75% or higher). A couple of days a week I'll have a glass of red wine.

Supplements: still taking the ashwagandha. I find it most useful for when I've woken up early and want to sleep a few more hours. Then 1/4 teaspoon of 5% withanolides powder will put me back to sleep and I'll wake up rested. I'm glad to see there is a study in progress that will look at how bipolar patients respond to the sensoril brand of ashwagandha. I'm also taking cordyceps mushroom extract, zinc, magnesium, borage oil, vitamin D, sometimes gotu kola, sometimes ginkgo, sometimes drink some aloe juice, sometimes resveratrol, sometimes ALCAR, sometimes lecithin, sometimes echinaecia, sometimes schisandra, sometimes siberian or american ginseng. By "sometimes" I mean these are supplements I experiment with, or cycle, or take before going to the gym. Supplements I'm considering: CDP choline, considering adding back lion's mane mushroom, reishi mushroom.

Genetics: Following the discovery through 23andme.com that I'm a "slow methylator" I've been taking methylfolate and methylcoalbumin supplements. However, now I've added TMG (trimethylglycine) as a methyl donor.

I've stopped playing the "n-back" test though perhaps this vacation I'll get started again.

Overall, knock on wood, I'm in good shape: good mental health, muscular yet not overweight, all my hair on my head in its original color (though a few gray hairs creep into my beard). My life itself could use some improvement: more time to myself away from work to be creative, more self-direction at work, the independence and motivation and support to make some major accomplishments in life, the search for a girlfriend or life-long mate. I could probably use some involvement in something like yoga or meditation.

These are all only personal aspects of my life, and all intertwined with extending healthy human lifespan for myself... As for the movement itself, I will probably discuss that in later entries on this blog.]]> Fri, 25 Dec 2009 01:18:04 -0500 <![CDATA[brokenportal's Blog - There is a key to your wildest dreams buried someplace, and it can be yours. ]]>
There is a key, buried someplace in the world. It unlocks a door to the rest of the universe, and all of the mysteries that abound. The space behind that door contains the answer to the nature of infinity. It contains the answer to whether there truly is a god, gods, no god or something else. It holds the secrets to how we got here, and how this universe got here. It offers the opportunity to achieve every dream you can ever fathom. It gives you the opportunity to know what all an infinity of possible combinations and scenerios offers. Such as, perhaps virtual reality, star flight, dimensions, and aliens. It allows you the chance to know every pleasure, and the extent of each one. Do you really think that resting your feet after a hard days work is it? That the pinnacles of sex are the greatest pleasure that the universe offers? That the taste of a glass of water after going thirsty for days has no superiors? This door also holds the ability to achieve universal elimination of fallacy, which is an existence hitting on all cylinders, alive with atomic explosions of incredible intensity, glory, and mind blowing wonder that we cant even begin to imagine, that the combined imaginations of everybody through out history hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of.

It’s the key to the inside of your casket, lets find it, prop it open and break it off in the lock of that bastard. Carrying balls across imaginary lines, hooking some random fish in the mouth, and getting brown shoes will avail you nothing. The key, it’s the search for that key. Its the meaning of life, thats the driving force, the reason, where its at, the search for the key, that’s where it is at. Help us search.

Forget about all that other garbage. Lets find that key.
]]> Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:23:17 -0400 <![CDATA[Vgamer1's Blog - ...]]> Did you know?

Watch the video before reading:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDLIwlzkgY

The world is changing faster than we know. And that rate of change is increasing. Fantastic technologies of "the future" already exist today. I'm talking about:

nanotechnology:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/art...-kills-cance...

http://nanotechwire.com/news.asp?nid=8476

solar panels:
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_13275569

regenerative medicine:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...;videoid=565...

bionic organs:
http://www.jarvikheart.com/basic.asp?section=Jarvik+2000

gene therapy:
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/sep/02-se...of-gene-therapy

I could go on, but I think I'll let someone smarter than me explain it all... According to Stephen Hawking, "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution" -
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/...-the-planet-...
__________________________________________________________________

Darwinian evolution has taken a backseat to technological evolution. We are beginning to direct our own evolution as a species by modifying ourselves like never before. To quote Hawking:

"...these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression."

What does it all mean?

It means that humanity is beginning to change - to evolve. It means that we should be aware of our changing world, or else be left behind. Staying educated about current technolgy can help you make informed decisions and even save your life. Stay on top of current developments and spread the word about exciting new finds. This stuff is awesome and powerful, but not without risks and ethical dilemas.

We can direct the change that is happening around us. First by being informed, and second though action. The action part is much more difficult, but possible. In coming posts I'll talk about opportunities for action - to affect change in the world in meaningful ways. To all of the undergrads reading this: We are the future. We are the ones who will guide the changing world. We only have to realize that we can.]]> Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:43:26 -0400 <![CDATA[Vgamer1's Blog - ...]]> Where I Am

So, this entry will both wrap up my autobiography and tell the reader a bit about my current views and beliefs.

I spend the weekdays working for my father. He runs a wholesale meat company. My main job right now is to computerize the inventory/invoices for the whole company since we currently do handwritten invoices. I basically do this in between checking the imminst forums and doing related things on the web.

I'm majoring in Cognitive Science at UCLA. I've got one quarter left, which I will complete in the winter. I'm not sure exactly what I "want to do in life." It's very difficult for me since I believe in this cause so much. I'm constantly thinking of ways to contribute meaningfully from big to small.

I figure the are a couple "fast tracks" to success. One would be to come up with an idea that would make lots of money. I actually think I have some pretty decent ideas if anyone is willing to hear them out and I trust them enough. Many of my ideas are inventions. Some are pretty bad, but I think I have a couple gems where if I hooked up with the right people (electricians/electrical engineers), we could make some money. Or at least I could find out if the ideas are worthwhile. My other ideas have been about theoretical science. I've always been interested in physical science, Philosophy, Psychology, Computer Science, etc. For years I have been trying to come up with something that will have a meaningful impact on a field. I have been much less successful in that area than with my invention ideas.

Right now the "medium track" is me working for my dad. The company is already very successful and if I can improve its efficiency with this new computerized invoice system, the business can grow even more. I can bring my father's business into the age of technology, which is actually very exciting to me.

The other option is to go into my field and do research. This only appeals to me because it could lead to me discovering some great new theory in Psychology and/or Computer Science. Maybe I could design the first AGI? Who knows?

So that's where I am in life. That basically wraps up my little autobiography, so my next entry will be more about my specific beliefs and ideas.]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:30:42 -0400 <![CDATA[Vgamer1's Blog - Trying to explain what crazy is]]> On the border of sane and crazy

Ever since I had a really intense drug trip in 2005 (See "The Night" section of my first entry), I've been straddling the fence between sanity and lunacy. I've been institutionalized twice and had at least one other close call since 2005. My two hospitalizations happened both because of my lost sense of reality combined with the reaction of the people in my life. I don't really blame my friends and family for what happened to me, although I can't help but have some resentment towards them. It's not their fault, but if the world were a perfect place I would have never "gone crazy." I think that the approach society takes towards "crazy people" is ineffective. It may have "worked" on me in their eyes, but not in mine. I'm still just as crazy now as I was 4 years ago, I just know how to deal with my craziness better now.

When in the worst of my craziness I believed that the most incredible, unbelievable things were true. At best I can forget my craziness for a few minutes or, if I'm lucky, a few hours at a time. The truth is that at this point in my life I can't ever see my thoughts returning to "normal." That is because it is impossible for me to forget what I realized back in 2005. What I've been trying to do ever since then is explain to people what I realized. I have yet to succeed as far as I know.

I have been able to partially explain myself to some people, but they never seem to get the full effect of what I'm saying. It's been a bit easier with the imminst crowd since a major tenant of my Philosophy is that death is evil and should be defeated, but that doesn't cover it entirely. The idea of the singularity does also resonate with my thoughts, but there are obviously many problems with the concept. People can't even decide on a definition.

Part of the problem is that I don't entirely understand my thoughts myself. I feel that having people to communicate with and get feedback from helps me realize what's what. I'm sure the reader has experienced the frustration that comes with the inability to describe something to someone else. I feel like I've been dealing with that frustration about the same concept for the last 4 years - maybe longer. I feel like I'm getting close though. Writing this blog has helped a lot. I realize that I may actually just be crazy and the idea sitting in my head may be nothing, and that I'm just thinking it's something because I'm crazy. That is a definite possibility. Either way I would very much like to know.

If the idea is "real," then either I haven't explained it well enough, or everyone around me lacks the ability to understand it, or some of both. I think it's some of both. Now, you may be wondering what the hell I'm talking about, which is understandable. You may be thinking "Why doesn't he just say it?" Well, I've been trying to "just say it" for 4 years now and it hasn't worked. If I ever expect to get the idea out into the world or to even discover that it's complete B.S., it will take a lot of explaining. It will take a great deal of communication between me and at least one other person. It will take great patience on both our parts. It will take time. It will take energy. It won't be easy.

I am 100% certain of at least one thing: I can't figure it out by myself. It took me a while to figure that out, but now I am certain of it. Let me explain. Actually, I don't know if I can explain. I just know that it will require discussion, and discussion requires at least 2 people. It's a raw idea that needs to be refined into a finished product. I've tried to do it on my own countless times, but how can I explain something to someone else if I'm alone in my room writing in a notebook?

I hope the reader is not frustrated by this entry, but instead will hear me out. I don't know when exactly I will be able to fully explain what I'm talking about, but trust me, I'm trying - constantly. Trust me when I say that this set-up has been necessary. I'm not sure when or in what form the idea will come, or if it will ever come at all. I just know that I won't quit until I either explain it satisfactorily to somebody or realize that it's nothing.

I guess I should at least give the reader something besides complete vagueness. If I had to describe the concept in one sentence it would be something like this: "There is no truth, there is only what people believe to be true." That doesn't entail the whole thing, but actually I think it's pretty good.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm reaching out to my readers. Do you like deep discussion? Are you extremely patient? Are you smart? Maybe you can help me figure out my craziness...

Well, until next time....]]> Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:55:26 -0400 <![CDATA[ImmInst's Blog - Laser Ablation Grant... Success!]]>
In addition, all research funds donated to SENSF are matched 50% by Peter Theil, so SENSF will receive an additional $9,000 for general research.

Great job everyone!

Read more here.]]> Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:11:46 -0400 <![CDATA[Vgamer1's Blog - Introduction]]> Preface

This turned out to be a VERY LONG entry, and only will serve as an introduction. If you want to read it I'd suggest doing it in sections. I've bolded and italicized the titles of each section. Once I've got other entries this post will serve as a reference point. It won't be necessary to read this entry to understand my later entries. I just need this as a foundation for the rest of my posts. With that said, there are many things about my life that I've wanted to share with people for a long time. I'm going to start off describing my past in order to explain how I came to be the way I am. Here it goes.

The Early Years

Just to start off, I'm a white middle-class male born in 1987 in Los Angeles.

When I became aware of my death I was struck with incredible fear. I believe I was around 10-12 years old when it came to me. At that age I basically believed there was no afterlife, but it didn't think about the implications for myself. I was laying in bed one night when I came to the understanding that I was going to die. At that age I understood that death could mean the end of everything I knew. I started to get extremely hot and experienced a fear that I haven't encountered since. The emotion and terror I felt at that moment I cannot describe. I ran to my parents in the living room and began to cry, "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"

My parents tried to reassure me in various ways, but nothing helped. I just had to wait for the shock to wear off on its own. Eventually the hot feeling of terror left me, but I was still afraid. My fear of death was both emotional and logical. I would think about EVERYTHING being taken away from me in an instant, then I'd get hot again. The worst of it was at night when I had nothing to distract me. My thoughts would trail off and inevitably lead to my own mortality. A feeling of fear along with a hot sensation all down the back half of my body would grip me. The feeling was of course accompanied by the depressing, painful, awful thought that I was going to die someday.

Over the years the fearful, emotional response lessened, but the logical hatred remained. There were so many thoughts in my head during that time; it's hard to piece together my mental state. From the ages of 13-17 something was incubating within me. My fear and hatred of death drove me. Some of my thoughts included: There must be some way to keep my consciousness going...maybe there is an afterlife...maybe we're in a dream...what if there's nothing I can do...what can I do...maybe life expectancy will increase faster than I get old....

And so I continued on like this for years with the fear of death always in the back of my mind, and that paralyzing fear unexpectedly returning at night. I kept thinking, "I've got to live life. I can't let the fear of death bring me down. I just have to suck it up like everybody else and just get ready for the reaper..."

Summer 2005

At this point it's important that I mention I had been smoking weed relatively regularly for about 2 years by this time.

I was still worried about death. I didn't really know what else I could do except live life. I developed the philosophy that life was about enjoyment. I figured since my time was limited, I better make the best of it.

I graduated from high school with my head high. I did very well in my academic career and I was headed off to a great school (UC Berkeley) in the fall. I felt very confident in myself because of what I felt I had accomplished up until that point in my life. I felt I was ready to move on to college and begin the rest of my life away from home.

In the meantime I developed my Philosophy on life. Ever since I had the ability I have always tried to think deeply. I greatly enjoy the feeling of gained knowledge and so I have sought understanding my entire life. That's why I was so interested and did so well in school - especially the logical subjects like Science, Math, Psychology, and Computer Science. Throughout my life I prided myself in my logical approach to understanding the world. I continued to think deeply about all that I cared to think of, and eventually, in the Summer of 2005 I began to write my ideas down.

I still have much of what I've written over the years. Some of my writings have been lost because of reasons I may explain later. Below is my first attempt to sort of rationalize existence on paper in a couple of pages. Please note that I am not the same person I was when I wrote this. Also, please note that I wrote the paper mostly for my own sake. I'm posting it to give the reader a glimpse into my mental state at the time.

My First "Paper" - Written June 17, 2005
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The Basics:

God can do everything and anything that is possible. God has ultimate power to do anything that God chooses. Therefore, God creates everything that is possible – God universe. A collection of every possibility that is possible. We are just a part of that manifestation of God's desire. Not desire in a sense that God is a being with human traits and flaws. However, it is the best word I can choose to describe it. God does not exist in any way that we can truly describe it. God does not have mass, so in any sense of reality, God is not, in any way, shape or form, real. But, in essence, God exists as existence itself.

This explains existence – why there is anything at all. It also defines God. God, being all-powerful, chooses to experience every possible experience that is possible to experience. I know it sounds redundant, but this is the plainest way of putting it. God made all existence through his will. God did not exist until existence was created. God exists as existence. That is all there is to it.

Life and human existence, definition of (human) intelligence:

If you need me to explain us, life, human beings, people, etcetera; here it is… We are simply one of the possibilities. We as, humans, can explore and observe and interact with a limited piece of the universe with our limited abilities to observe and manipulate what exists. God, a being that is all existence, would therefore, be humanity, you, me, and everything that we know to exist – and everything that we do not know exists.

A human being is something that can understand the previous paragraph (no, not language, the idea of it). If a being can understand this concept – that they are part of a "universe" or of an "everything." That is the line between intelligent life and not. Not ethics, emotion, or creativity. That's bullshit. I'm talking having the logical thought capacity and understanding of the universe in order to fucking know that there is a universe! That's a homo sapien. Now I'm getting political in my own way. Moving on…

Uniting God and Science:

My philosophy is a unique one. It is not an idea about the world or the way it should be. It is a sort of scientific philosophy that unites God and science. This "theory" could, in essence, be proven – at least the scientific aspect of it. This also implies a scientific philosophy – that the universe contains every possibility thing that can exist. This is the commonly held belief among most scientists however, so this shouldn't be a problem. Enough development to our intelligence, and our understanding of the universe through whatever means will bring us to this point. It should be our goal to fully understand existence. From the pieces smaller than atoms, to the pieces larger than galaxies, we must expand out understanding into infinity.

The Theory of Everything:

We can only achieve the "theory of everything" once we know everything there is to know. Once we have perfectly observed all existence, then can we know how everything in the universe works. How moronic could these scientists be? You have to observe in science in order to create and prove theories. You must have a theory that you can test and observe in the fullest extent. Until we can observe every possibility for existence, we will not be able to know and understand everything.
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Looking back on this piece of writing brings many things to mind. I have to say that today I still believe most of what I wrote. Like I said, I didn't really write it for other people, so it's not really put in a nice package with a bow. One thing is for certain: This original piece got my gears going. I enjoy thinking deeply and I got a new sense of enjoyment from writing my ideas down. I was continuing to think deeply about the universe, but didn't write anything else until months later when I was about to start college.

At this point in my life, I didn't really have a plan beyond college. Things had pretty much fallen into my lap for most of my life, and I was expecting the same trend to continue. I thought I would go to school, get my degree, and life would just happen for me the way it was supposed to. I thought either I'd figure out some new theory, or invent something, or just do really well in my field. So... I went through that summer having my fun, smoking pot, hanging out with friends. Besides that, I was beginning to think very deeply about life and the universe. As the summer came to an end I felt ready for anything. I discovered that I was very, very wrong.

Coricidin

I like drugs. Smoking marijuana for the first time was an unforgettably amazing experience. Besides alcohol I hadn't really tried any other drugs, so at the end of the 2005 summer, I decided to try a drug called DXM. You can get the drug in many ways, but the way we did it was by stealing cold medicine (Coricidin) from a supermarket. The group of us took quite a bit of pills and were having a great time - until we saw the cop. Because we were so high we couldn't figure out a way to get back to where we were staying without crossing the cops path. After who knows how long of walking around and debating what to do, we decided to walk by the cop. To our horror, the cop walk right over to us, flashed his light in our eyes, and questioned us.

I don't know how I appeared on the exterior, but inside I was terrified. I was thinking: "I'm a minor, I'm extremely high, I'm out past curfew, this cop is going to arrest me and then terrible things will happen." I was so afraid of what could happen to me and my future. I thought about all of my "plans" to go to Berkeley and become successful, and I thought all of that was about to go out the window.

It turns out the cop let us go and we went back to my friend's place, but my worries were far from over. I remember thinking about how close I came to the end of my future. The effect of the Coricidin on my body was changing as well. The room was very hot and poorly ventilated. That's when my high turned into a bad trip. First, I grew very fearful that I was going to die. I was hot, my heart was pounding, I thought about how many pills I actually took, and I genuinely feared for my life. After several minutes I couldn't take the silent torture and I reached out to my friends. I asked them to reassure me. I said, "Guys, tell me I'm not going to die tonight." Something to that extent. With their reassuring words, I started to feel better for a while. However, a few minutes later I would become incredibly fearful and depressed again. I went through cycles of being OK to being extremely low. I went up and down and up and down for hours. It was hell.

It took me many days to feel "normal" again, although I doubt I ever fully returned to how I was before. Coricidin was a horrible experience that I never wanted to repeat again.

End of Summer 2005

It was obvious that that smoking pot really brought out my "deep thinking." I'd enjoyed just thinking about and especially talking about the nature of the universe. The night before I moved to Berkeley a different kind of thinking came to me. I smoked pot with my friends the night before leaving and began engaging in deep thought. I remember not having the chance for deep conversation, so I ended up brooding to myself and trying to hang on to the thoughts that seemed important enough to remember. After hanging out with my friends and heading home, I was relieved to finally be alone so I could write down what I had been thinking about all night.

This moment was a turning point in my life. I don't know if it was for better or worse, but that night set a precedent for the rest of my life. Let me explain. I was beginning to prefer pondering and writing down my deep thoughts instead of spending time with people. I believed it very important to write down the things I thought were meaningful, so I did. However, I couldn't always make sense out of what I was writing. I didn't know it yet, but I was beginning to deteriorate mentally. This is what I wrote:

Written August 19/20, 2005
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moose
pavlov

unite all minds?

andy - return the house key and receive a reward!! it's a quest! - called him, (next line)
check in to make sure
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I can't remember what "moose" and "pavolv" were about exactly. I know I was thinking about Psychology and myself. I was also thinking about the universe in general, like I usually do. I can't remember how or why, but the phrase "unite all minds" popped into my head. Not only that, but it was accompanied by a very strong feeling that I should remember the phrase. I had an inkling as to what it meant, but I think I didn't want to believe it. It meant/means many things to me now: A path to peace, a way of life, a goal, but also a problem without an obvious answer.

Taken to the extreme it would mean to plug everyone into a computer and create a "collective consciousness." Don't ask me how it would work, because I don't know. In a less extreme light, the phrase is more about people gaining understanding of each other in order to resolve conflicts and create peace. I believe that all conflicts a born from misunderstanding, and that revealing the misunderstanding leads to a resolution of the conflict. I'll get more into this in later posts.

Such was my mental state at the time. I would think deeply about things and if something seemed important enough, I would record it on my computer or on paper. This habit gave me great satisfaction and comfort, but it also turned out to be a source of my downfall.

Getting to Berkeley (Late August, 2005)

I had been talking to a girl via facebook for a few weeks. We were both about to start school at Berkeley. We seemed to make a very strong connection very quickly. The day before move-in day we stayed up most of the night chatting online. We planned to meet up the next day after we had both settled into our dorms.

So, as planned, my mom and I drove up to Berkeley and set up my dorm. I said goodbye to my mother, and for the first time in my life I was alone.

It turns out there was some complications with the Internet when I first got there, so I wasn't able to contact the girl yet. Now, let's go into fast forward mode for a few weeks...

-The girl became completely cold-hearted soon after arriving in Berkeley. I'm assuming she met somebody else, but she never did tell me what happened.
-I was finding the classes much more difficult than I expected, but I didn't want to admit it to anyone - even myself. This was causing me much distress.
-I was spending much of my time hanging out with frat guys in AEPi (the Jewish frat). They wanted me to join, but I didn't. This was making me feel guilty for using their facilities and even for being their friends.
-I don't think I realized it, but I missed my friends and family back at home very much.

Back to regular speed...

"The Night"

One night I was feeling a bit of an illness (cold/cough) coming on, and I had some Robitussin handy. The marks on the measuring cup were faded so I just guessed on the dosage. It turns out I took about 2 times a normal dose, which isn't much - on its own. If the reader doesn't know, Robitussin also contains DXM just like Coricidin. After taking my improvised dose, I took a trip down the hall to my dormmate's room. The group of guys that lived at the dorm on the end of the hall were major stoners. They smoked the best weed out of the best pieces all day every day. I was going to join them for a few hits from their nice bong.

I got in the "smoking room" and greeted the group. I waited my turn for the bong and packed myself a hit. I started to feel high like normal, but soon that changed. My "deep thoughts" began to pervade my mind and it became very hard to sit in the room and socialize. It was difficult for me to follow conversation, and soon my high completely took over. I went entirely into my own head. I don't remember where the thought train started or where it was going, but I remember that it derailed very quickly.

The best way I can describe what was happening inside my head is this: I would follow one thought, which would spawn a new thought, which I would follow. Then the new thought would spawn two more new thoughts, both of which I would follow, then each of those two new thoughts would spawn their own set of thoughts. I would feel as if each train of thought was equally important to follow to the end, so that's what my brain tried to do. Eventually I couldn't comprehend what I was thinking. My heart started pounding, I wasn't paying attention to anything going on in the room, I was trying to understand my own thoughts, but I was just lost in a mess of ever-expanding lines of thought which didn't seem to end. At a point the sensation got so intense that I began to see something - an image. The only way I can describe it is as an empty grid of infinite dimensions. From any point in the "space" you could go in any direction. So there wasn't just an x, y, and z direction. There were infinite directions. I believe what I was seeing were my thoughts. They had become so expansive and intertwined that I couldn't think about them in any kind of normal way, so instead my brain showed me the grid. My thoughts were branching off into so many directions, I kept "zooming out" on the image to try to see the whole thing, but the grid kept expanding. The grid kept growing faster and faster as my scope kept growing to try to keep up with it. At one point, like an intense flash of light, the grid filled my vision and my brain. It was like a kind of climax. I saw a kind of "end point" to the grid. I saw it expand to infinity - beyond understanding. And when it reached infinity I glimpsed it's nature. At that moment, when the grid broke my brain, a thought came into my head. The thought was vivid and intense and was just as difficult to comprehend as the grid itself, but it was the only clear thought that remained from the chaos that took place in those few seconds. The thought was "my disbelief in logic."

As I came out of my trance I started to become aware of the room I was in. I felt that I had just been told a great secret that was of utmost importance to remember. I became very anxious and nervous. I didn't want to be in a room with people. I wanted to be alone so I could write down what I was thinking. It felt like I had a rush of inspiration and I needed to capitalize on it as soon as possible. I nervously and unexpectedly told the people I was hanging out with that I had to go.

I headed down the hall to my dorm and went inside to the comfort of my notebook. The first thing I wrote down was "my disbelief in logic," as it seemed vital to my existence that I write down that phrase. I felt that every idea in my head was incredibly important. I was under the impression that I had all the answers, so I wrote down just about every thought that came to me. It came out as independent phrases that made little or no sense. I would write a few lines, read them over, and then realize they weren't even remotely profound. That would frustrate me greatly because I believed I had something in my head that was very important that I needed to get out into the world, but no matter how hard I tried, the words I wrote didn't seem to have any meaning once they were on paper. I wrote several pages of these one-line phrases and started to become hysterical. I felt afraid - that something terrible would happen to me if I didn't keep writing. If I didn't get the idea from my mind onto the paper then all would be lost. And in a way, it started to make sense to me. Originally the idea was just a jumbled mess that seemed to just spur me to write random nonsense that was only reasonable in my head before it was written down. But eventually I started to understand what my brain was trying to tell me. It was trying to tell me many things, but two main things occurred to me in my frenzy.

The first... well I don't know which one was first. They seemed simultaneous. So one of my realizations was that my mortal soul is in danger. In a sense I had known this since the "early years," but this was a different kind of understanding. It was not only the understanding and fear of death that I had before, but it was the new understanding the something could potentially be done about it. It was the beginning of my genuine belief that death is the ultimate enemy of humanity. All of a sudden I wanted to fight death and I wanted everyone else in the world to want it too. In an instant it became my purpose, my desire, my everything. This new found purpose led me to other possibilities. I thought about the unlimited potential of the human species. I thought not only that death was beatable, but that we could do even more. We could do anything given enough time. And since death was now beatable in my eyes, those other amazing possibilities revealed themselves to me.

The other thought that accompanied the great feeling of potential, was the opposite reaction of fear and doubt. As wonderful and amazing I imagined the possibilities, I was made equally depressed by the thought that we may not win the fight. I realized that the challenge to defeat death and unlock the potential of humanity was not an easy task. I had no idea where to begin, what to do, or who to talk to.

I was still writing furiously in my notebook trying to get these thoughts in my head out on to paper, but it wasn't coming out. And when I had basically given up I realized another thing - I was still uncontrollably high. Something was wrong. I couldn't simply calm down and get over what was in my head. It seemed too important, too vital to humanity to just let it sit in my head. And yet that is exactly what I did because I didn't know what else to do. From my experience in life nobody on Earth thought the way I did. Nobody was going to join me to fight death. I was alone and unable to calm myself. I felt that it was imperative to do what I had imagined yet impossible to accomplish.

Eventually I was able to get to a more relaxed state, but I was never the same after that night. Since then I've struggled with this conflict. Death needed to die, but nobody else in the world realized it could and should be defeated.

Berkeley after "The Night"

Although I hadn't realized it, I began to spiral into a deep depression. My experience at school, with people, smoking pot was not the same. As the weeks went on things that used to be fun were no longer fun. I constantly had that night on my mind, and I had no idea what to do. I continued to write when I felt I needed to. Smoking pot was fun at times, but usually served to bring my deep thoughts about life and death to the forefront of my mind. I met a girl and we dated for a while, but I was so depressed at that point that I couldn't enjoy myself. I wanted somebody to hold and make me feel better, but nothing could help. I broke up with her just because I felt so low. The frat guys offered me membership, which I rejected. I think I would have said no regardless of my depression, but I felt so guilty for not accepting their offer that I became even more down.

One weekend my friends drove all the way up from LA to Berkeley to pick me up to go to a concert. I was so happy to be with my friends again that it almost turned my depression around. But when I got back to school I became just as sad all over again. I didn't tell anybody how I was feeling because I didn't realize the state I was in. It wasn't until I returned home to my parents that others became aware of my depression, but at that point I was FUBAR.

I continued to write in a obsessive way. Whenever I got back to my dorm from school, whenever I smoked pot, whenever I felt uncomfortable, I would write. Sometimes it would be in a sort of essay form, but usually it was small spurts of "insight" that I'd jot down in a sentence or two. It was the worst when I smoked pot. Not only would smoking make more thoughts come to me faster than I wanted, but it would make me think a meaningless phrase like, "try to go down" as the key to the meaning of life. Like I said before, it was imperative in my mind that humanity strive to defeat death and create peace, but it seemed like an impossible feat.

In order to cope with this struggle, I created fantasies for myself. I would often imagine scenarios in which I could possibly move on from this world to another "better" one (without killing myself obviously). I thought about different possibilities like that we're trapped in "the matrix," or that we're actually aliens in virtual reality who are just trying out the lives of lesser beings, or that God or gods exist and that they wouldn't let me suffer like this if they had the power to save me, or I could just "think" my way out. I actually attempted this. I thought that if I genuinely believed I could leave this world, then I could. On more than one occasion I smoked pot (to open my mind to the possibility of leaving this world), and then tried to make myself believe I was transcending this dimension. It was a crazy feeling. I would be in my dorm looking straight up with my eyes closed. Then I would think "Take me away! I want to go! Get me out of here! I believe it!" Things like that. When I first did it I fooled myself into thinking I was "close" to getting out. I would feel a strange sensation of upward motion. It was like I was in an elevator that kept accelerating upward. I would keep this up for a while and when I felt I had "escaped" I would open my eyes to find myself still in my dorm room more depressed than before. I was convinced that I was "doing it wrong" or "didn't believe enough" so I kept trying. Literally for weeks I attempted this. I was probably the biggest moron alive, but I wanted to get the fuck out of this world so badly I would do anything.

Back home - Winter 2005

I completed my first semester at Berkeley and returned home for winter break. I was hoping to have a good break and return to school refreshed. My mind and body had other plans. I had some fun at first. It was exciting to be home again and see all of my friend and family, but soon I started to go downhill. I felt like nothing we did was enjoyable and slowly my "deep thinking" began to interfere with my life. This is difficult to explain. It's not just that I would be thinking about life and death when other activities were going on, its that the other activities somehow translated into my thoughts and affected my thinking directly. I would relate what someone was saying, the words in a song, or the plot of a movie to what was going on in my head. And instead of being aware of the thing I was "paying attention" to, I was only aware of how it affected my thinking.

Let me give an example. Below is a few verses from a song I used to listen to a lot. When I was in this strange mental state that I'm trying to explain, the song seems to have a hidden meaning that reveals itself. It's almost as if the song is speaking to me or about me. To me every line of the song related back to my ideas of life and death. When I was in the worst of it, this would apply to every song, every movie, and every spoken word. I'm going to try to give an example of how this worked in my head. Here's some of that song by She Wants Revenge with my "interpretations" under each line:

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It's cute in a way, till you cannot speak
(The thoughts I had of life and death were originally just "cute" ideas, then they grew up and literally I could not speak)

And you leave to have a cigarett, knees get weak
(I would often leave situations when my mind couldn't get off the subject of death, and take a "cigarette break" by writing)

escape was just a nod and a casual wave
(This is my ability to escape reality. My ability to escape came so casually that it would happen without my intention)

Obsess about it, heavy for the next two days
(This is definitely referring to "The Night." I was obsessed with the subject and it didn't leave me for days)

It's only just a crush, it'll go away
(This is speaking of death. It's like death is teasing me - "The pain will just last a second and then it will all be over")

It's just like all the others it'll go away
(Again, death. "Just like all the others" meaning pain. Death is just another pain followed by nothing, hence "it'll go away")

Or maybe this is danger and you just don't know
(Here's where it gets scary. The above two lines are saying how harmless death is and this line contradicts that)

You pray it all away but it continues to grow
(Yes, I pray that my fear, depression, craziness will go away, but it only continues to grow)

I want to hold you close
Skin pressed against me tight
Lie still, and close your eyes girl
So lovely, it feels so right
(This is death speaking to me directly. Death wants me)
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I used to be able to do this with almost any song, movie, written piece of work, or spoken word. It's a trip and a half because it's not like I'm taking effort to interpret these songs. I'm simply listening to the songs and hearing something else. This state of mind began to dominate my thinking. It was becoming harder and harder to focus on reality when everything coming in was translating into "You're going to die and there's probably nothing you can do about it even though you know what needs to be done." It's a little more complicated than that. I'm kind of avoiding going off on too many tangents for the sake of my readers, so I may explain it more in a later entry or the reader can just ask me about it.

Eventually my parents noticed something was wrong and my mom asked me how I was feeling. I told her I was feeling depressed, but when my parents offered to take me to see a therapist or a psychiatrist, I refused. There were many reasons in my head why I didn't want to go down that road: I didn't really believe I was depressed, I didn't want take psychiatric drugs, I didn't want to have the therapy stigma, I still thought I could deal with my issues on my own. So my parents now knew I was in some kind of trouble, but since I refused their advice, they probably didn't know how else to help me.

During the day my thoughts were occupied by death and existentialism, and the nighttime soon followed suit. I started having trouble sleeping. It would take me longer than usually to go to sleep at first and then one night I just stopped being able to sleep. My mind would be so filled with thought that I couldn't shut it off. Every day that I went without sleep took its toll on me. It became even harder to focus and pay attention and enjoy myself. Several nights passed without me getting a wink of sleep. I was probably running on 3 or 4 days without sleep as 2006 approached.

January 2006

New Year's Eve was another sleepless night. The night before was also a depressing, uneventful "party." A couple friends and I played Mario Party on N64 for a couple hours and then we parted ways. Then I laid in bed all night staring at my ceiling until the morning. It was the worst New Year's Eve experience of my life.

At this point I was noticeably depressed and the people around me knew it. I was so low at this point that I had basically stopped caring about anything. I wouldn't eat unless someone asked me to eat with them. I wouldn't go out unless someone asked me to hang out. I wouldn't say anything unless someone spoke to me first. I was completely indifferent to the entire world. I had become numb to the pain. I was in a haze that I couldn't escape. I thought I would never escape.

The next few weeks are kind of a fog to me. I'll try to recreate what happened to the best of my knowledge from what I remember and from what people have told me happened. I believe it was January 1 when I really started to deteriorate. I remember hanging out with my dad. We talked about life, family, friends, death. We got food, we went to the bookstore - all by his suggestion. At some point I remember telling my dad that I hated him :(

Then it was either that day or the next day when I went to see my first Psychiatrist. Basically nothing was accomplished. She asked me some questions, I answered, I left. I think I again refused to be prescribed medication. Some time went by and this time my mom was around. One morning she found me in the floor doing strange hand motions. I actually remember this pretty vividly. I remember feeling compelled to go to that spot, drop to the floor, and the the hand movements I was talking about. My mom called an ambulance. Literally the time between me dropping to the floor and the time the ambulance came felt like seconds. I was taken to some hospital in the ambulance where I was given a bed. For the next several hours I laid in bed while various doctors ran various tests on my. From what I remember I at least had a drug/toxin screening, some Psychological questioning (although I was barely coherent), and a brain scan.

Later on I found out I was what's called "catatonic schizophrenic." I would barely move, speak, or do much of anything. I was acting strange in various other ways as well I'm sure. So eventually I was released from the hospital and was prescribed medication. I'm not sure what I was on at first as my meds changed a lot at the beginning. Basically I stayed at home for a while (a few days or so) while my parents attempted to treat me. They were not successful. I know I was making it difficult for them by refusing medication, but I was extremely confused and paranoid. I would refuse to take the meds, spit them out, etc.

My parents were left with one option - institutionalization. I'm not going to go into the details here, but basically I "got better" after a few weeks, and then I was released back into society smile.gif

Most of the "adults" in my life (parents, psychiatrists, etc.) told me that smoking pot may have triggered or aggravated my situation. Well, I didn't know what to believe, but long story short I kept smoking...

The rest of 2006

So I was out of the hospital, but I wasn't entirely "better." I started going to therapy and I was now officially on psychiatric drugs. The same issues that drove me crazy in the first place still existed. However, I was "sane" for the time being, which was good enough. What I really wanted was for life to go back to the way it was before I ever thought about fighting death, but I knew that was impossible. My mind had already been opened and there was no way of closing it back up. Once again I tried not to let it get me down. Now that I was back on my feet I wanted to start enjoying life again. My answer to that was to smoke lots of weed!

I decided not to go back to Berkeley and instead attend a local community college to transfer somewhere later. This was fine with my parents. I also wanted to move out again, so plans for that started happening. I ended up moving into a house with 4 other friends. That actually ended up being a lot of fun. My four roommates and I spent most of our time together doing things that 20-year-olds do like partying, drinking, and smoking. We also did some harder drugs like mushrooms, painkillers, a little coke, and some of the roommates did extacy.

The hallucinogens I took (weed and shrooms) had interesting effects. Weed affected me kind of similarly to how it did before - by making my abstract thinking more powerful. The really crazy trips were on mushrooms. I'm not going to get into full details right now because describing my mushroom trips could each take several pages. Instead I'll give a little snippet of some of my thought processes while on mushrooms.

First my mind would being to wander. I would imagine some of the most incredible things that would be possible if humanity would only wake up. My thoughts would get blown way out of proportion and I would start believing that crazy things were true. For example, I have believed that I could read minds, that my mind could be read, that I was being tested by God, that I was God, etc. When it got to the point that I could believe I was God, anything was possible. My friends became angels and demons. I could speak with the dead. I could perform magic. I created and destroyed the world many times over. I judged people. I went to down to hell, up to heaven, and back again.

For a while logic was still with me. I could understand that the thoughts were brought on by the drugs, although in the moment the ideas felt very real. I still had very similar ideas about life and death. When I would come back to reality after a shroom trip I would invariably be depressed. I found that my experiences on shrooms were much more interesting than what reality could offer. Not only that, but in coming down I would realize that my fantasies were false, that I wasn't God, and that I was going to die. Going from the extreme high of feeling God-like to the extreme low of realizing my mortality took its toll on me.

Eventually I lost touch with reality once again. I wouldn't have to be on shrooms to believe crazy thoughts, and soon I didn't have to be on weed either. Once again I stopped sleeping and became very depressed. Several days went by and guess what? It was almost the New Year. On December 31, 2006 I got up with the sun after a sleepless night, wandered around the house for a bit, and then locked myself in the bathroom. It's not that I wouldn't come out, it's that I didn't see a point to coming out. Really I wanted to be left alone, but my friends were worried about me. Most of them knew my history and they were watching me deteriorate over the last few days. I guess when I locked myself in the bathroom my friends thought they had run out of options so they called my parents.

My parents came by a little while later and honestly I am surprised at the reaction I had. I really shouldn't have come out of that bathroom and gone with my parents, but I did. I think I opened the door for them because I was so lost and so surpirsed that my parents were there, that I kinda "tripped out." After talking for just a few seconds I opened the door for my parents. I hugged my mom, told her I was happy to see her, and then I kinda snapped. My parents told me to put on my shoes and come with them. I was in a trance and didn't realize what was happening. They were taking me to the hospital. There I was Psychiatrically evaluated and it was determined that I would be institutionalized again. I know exactly the question that damned me thinking back on it. The question was, "Have you thought of harming yourself or others." I answered "yes" to that question, although I know I was misunderstood. If you're ever in a situation like I was in, and they ask you that question, and you're coherent enough to answer, then say "No, I haven't thought of harming myself or others." It's pretty much bullshit, but I'm not going to get into it at this moment.

January - December 2007

So I was hospitalized for a few more weeks after which I recovered again. It was January. I was told this time that the drugs definitely contributed to my mental deterioration, which I could understand at this point. I continued therapy and taking meds, but I started something new called CDRP (Chemical Dependency Recover Program). It's like rehab, but you're only there for a few hours a day. I hated it. It was the most boring, worthless waste of time I ever encountered. Since I was in CDRP and I had been hospitalized twice already, I planned to stay away from drugs.

I actually was released in time so that I didn't miss the semester at my community college. I was still on track to transferring. I applied to UCLA and got in, which my parents and I were happy about. I basically hadn't missed any school time as a result of my hospitalizations.

For most of the year I hung out mostly by myself sober. I wasn't going crazy, I wasn't "depressed" to the point of mental break down, but I wasn't happy either. I felt pretty much numb for most of the year not doing much of anything except going to school and CDRP. Towards the end of the year I started spending more time with my old friends, but I wasn't smoking anymore so a lot of the time I was excluded. Drinking, however, was a lot of fun - but I still missed pot.

Then I met a girl. It must have been sometime in October. Long story short I lost my virginity and continued to go out with her for a few months. We were never "a couple," but we basically acted like one.

On December 31, 2007 I smoked pot after almost exactly a 1-year break. I had been planning it for a while now. I missed it way too much to stay off it forever. I'll tell you that after not smoking for so long, it really took me for a spin. I'll explain what I mean by that in the next section.

January - December 2008

January rolled around again and I was happy. I was out of the hospital for almost a year. I was smoking pot, drinking, and partying again, and I basically had a girlfriend.

In February my "girlfriend" broke up with me, which hurt a lot. To this day I don't really know what happened. It seemed that one day everything was going great, the next day she became completely cold to me, and the next day she broke up with me. She started dating somebody else soon after, so I'm assuming she was seeing this guy even before we broke up. I'll probably never know

Just to mention a couple things that happened during the year... In September I turned 21, which I consider a big milestone. Also, in November, I found imminst and joined. This place is basically exactly the kind of community I had been looking for since 2005. I'll talk more about my feelings towards imminst later.

Let's see... fast forward to December. Life's been good so far, but my depression was starting to come back. Smoking would almost invariably set off a strange reaction in my brain, and it was getting worse over time. It was similar to how it was before with smoking forcing me to think deeply and lose focus on reality. The differences from how it was before are hard to explain. I may try to do it in a later entry. Anyway, long story short I had what I describe as a "near-break."

I was playing a board game with three of my friends when I became confused over something that happened in the game. I freaked out. I was shaking and had a quivering voice as I tried to explain what I was experiencing to my friends. I can't remember exactly what was going through my head, but I remember thinking I was talking to God for part of the time. Once again, I won't go into detail here right now.

My friends immediately wanted to call my parents, but I knew what would happen if they did - I'd go back to the hospital, which I wanted to avoid at all costs. Luckily I was coherent enough to plead with my friends not to call my parents. Instead they called my sister who helped me calm down further. I took an anti-anxiety pill and was eventually calm and coherent enough to go home and face my parents. I was in a strange state when I talked to them, trying to explain what was going on in my head. I was much more coherent than the previous times I "broke down," but still I was having trouble communicating. I was a bit fragile at this point. I felt very close to the edge, but I managed to stay enough with reality that I wasn't hospitalized again.

The next day my parents and I met with my therapist and we talked. My parents probably had incredibly mixed emotions at this time. I'd say they were scared, but also disappointed that I didn't stay away from drugs after what had happened to me the first two times. In my mind, however, this situation was a definite sign that I was "improving." Instead of completely breaking down and ending up in the hospital again, I was able to maintain and at least partially explain myself. Anyway, I knew that my parents were not going to be able to trust me to go out and see my friends again without getting back into drugs. The idea came to be that I should be drug tested as proof to my parents that I was staying away from drugs. My parents were very happy with this plan, so we set up for me to be drug tested every two weeks for all of 2009.

January 2009 - Present

I still a bit out of sorts for a while. Having a near mental break down can make it difficult to function for a little while after. I stopped showing up at imminst for a while because of this. I didn't feel confident/happy enough to be a contributing member of the cause. I apologize for my lack of participation, but you would understand if you were in my shoes.

I stayed away from pot for a few months according to the plan. Then, March rolled around. It was St. Patrick's Day and I was hanging out with an old friend who knew most of my situation except for some of the more recent news such as my being drug tested. I did end up telling him that I was being drug tested, but I fell to temptation and I smoked. Honestly, it was a great experience. We went to a bar/restaurant where we ate, drank, and listened to live music. I felt on top of the world and I was also having a bit of a good trip from the pot as well. The next day I wrote down my experiences of that night in a notebook. I'll either edit this post or type it in a later entry when I expand more on my drug trips.

St. Patrick's Day was actually the first time I had seen that old friend in over a year. I had a bit of a re-connection with him, which was nice. This friend is the person who in the past I would have very deep conversations with. We chatted and caught up. I tried to steer the conversation towards "singularity talk," but he didn't seem very interested. I thought that out of all my friends this one would be the easiest to convince that our cause is the greatest cause of them all. However, I was wrong. He wouldn't have it - he had become too anti-technology to understand. When I realized I couldn't get through to him it saddened me. I had no luck getting through to my other friends and then someone who I thought for sure would join the cause completely rejected the idea. I stopped calling that friend and went through another phase of depression. Once again nobody I knew was interested in the thing I considered to be the most important in the world.

I came by imminst a couple times, but felt embarrased for leaving so abruptly without a word. I was too down to contribute or even spend much time on the forums. I felt that the cause wasn't going anywhere so I didn't do anything for it.

I continued to smoke pot and drink. I cheated on my drug tests so my parents wouldn't find out about the pot. I was going through ups and down, but overall I'd say I was improving. Overall the past few months have been a great time of growth for me. I've started to really think about my past and my life in a more "down to earth" way. I've been feeling my confidence return slowly to the level it was before my fist hospitalization. Each time I was hospitalized or had a near break, I'd lose confidence again. It has been almost 3 years since my last hospitalization and almost 1 year since my last "near break," so I can say that overall I've been improving. I returned to imminst a little while ago with the return of my confidence and hapiness smile.gif

Today (August 28, 2009) I am a pretty happy person. I am taking my meds consistently (right now I'm on Welbutrin and Abilify), and monitoring myself better, especially when I smoke. I'm actually planning to take a break from smoking starting Monday, so we'll see how that goes. I haven't been to therapy or seen my Psychiatrist in a few months. I definitely should see my Psychiatrist again, but I'm not too excited to schedule another appointment with my therapist. At first I found it interesting and theraputic, but I started to realize that it wasn't really getting me anywhere and sometimes it would create more problems than it would fix. I can talk more about my therapy another time. Anyway, I'm gonna wrap up this first entry... It's gone on a bit longer than I thought and I still have much more to say, but I guess it can wait until later posts.

So that's my condensed autobiography. It felt good to get that all out, but trust me when I say that I have much more to write, which I will do as soon as I figure out where to begin.]]> Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:12:29 -0400 <![CDATA[RickCampos' Blog - Immortality Through Electronically Stabilized Free Radicals]]> http://stores.lulu.com/rickcampos biggrin.gif]]> Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:58:34 -0400 <![CDATA[brokenportal's Blog - There is no mountain that stands in the way of the human will. Only mountains yet to be climbed. ]]>
With out all of your ingenuous, perspective imbued, daring dreaming souls, with out your will power and ambition, to really dare to extend yourself against the odds, against the daunting scale of it and the nay sayers, with out the stretch of pushing forth in such an unknown territory, against the draw to focus your time on your own lives, the cause couldn’t have taken all the steps it has. In the style of a pioneering quote, to paraphrase - ‘these are steps that are small for humans, but truely definitive leaps for man kind.’

You all continues to inspire me and many others, and not just inspire in the imagination, but inspire to help build upon this foundation, a foundation from which, when complete, mighty armies of reaper slayers and aging ignorance slayers will be rallied and equipped to fight as one. Concepts like “Crowdsourcing” point out, “the many can do much better what the one or two kings could not do nearly as well.” or in other words diversity trumps ability. Carried on up through the ice, stone, dark, renaissance, industry, tech and other ages and eras, on the backs of our sisters and brothers, in the wombs and on the bosoms of our mothers, to the brink of the coming transhuman era, we have been crowdsourced to this point so to speak, uniting for our common dreams. The clans, the farming, the common language, to industry, nation wide systems of schools and opportunity, capital and exponentially compounding dreams, we continue on, doing many of humanities most incredible and greatest of things together.

Like determined climbers at a precarious impasse, the members, leaders, directors and founders of imminst continue to come through like die hards at front lines. And whether we ultimately get indefinite healthy life extension or not does not matter. What matters is that we do whatever it takes to get there and see for ourselves. If the human will can conceive it, then the human will can achieve it. There is no person that can declare what conceivable thing is impossible, and so we must scale this mountain.

MacArthur said, “It is fatal to enter any war with out the will to win it.” We fight this with everything we’ve got until victory or we die trying. We leave no room for second guesses and time biding and half heart in there. Like somebody around here quoted, “Make no small plans for they have no power to stir the soul.” You get what you expect to get. You don’t get what you don’t expect to get. We know that’s not to say that our dreams will automatically come true. It is no secret, to be sure, that there are many tough times ahead, but boat hulls weren’t meant to flatten, but to roll with the waves. Sure, ships in harbor are safe, but we know that is not what ships are made for. It would be easy to search through our great history books and find that almost all great victors have encountered crushing blows before victory. But still, we expect to win. Like Einstein said, “He who isn’t failing isn’t trying.” Like Churchill said, “Success is going from failure to failure with out loss of enthusiasm.” Like Wayne Gretsky said, "100% of the shots you don’t take don’t go in." Like Henry David Thoreau said, “In the long run, men only hit what they aim at.”

The successes will, do, and continue to abound. Don’t hesitate to lock in, stay locked in, hands steady. We are the 101rst imminst army division, continuing to recruit and notify and equip and inform, and maybe you could say even “draft”, the rest of this world army, continuing to prepare for our role in the coming D-Day on aging, opening the way for all the world to have this opportunity. We can, do, and continue to scale this aging beast, this great barrier to indefinity, this appalling horrible crusher of dreams, this giant dragon tyrant, this challenge to the wills and hearts of our dear priceless lives. We will scale this mountain. This mountain that makes Mount Everest look like a mole hill, together we can see its summit.

Im reminded in some ways, of a short piece of prose I found some where that I have hanging in my house. It goes, “In the land of Oden, there stands a mountain, a thousand miles in the air. Once every million years, a little bird comes winging, to sharpen its beak on that mountain. And when that mountain is just a valley, this to eternity shall be, one single day.” Well along that line of reasoning, keep bringing on this life extension mountain, it can be as big as it wants to be. Here come swarms of birds, armies, the greatest this earth has ever seen, maybe even the greatest that this universe and all of existence have ever seen. There is not much that I can think of that can even step up to the force of the combined will of human kind. This mountain can be our valley. We march by the blood sweat and tears in the blood of all of our ancestors in all of our veins, we can do this.

Because of founders like Bruce, Annisomov, Lazarus Long, Caliban, Mind, Aegist, The First Immortal and others, I, and many others are now equipped and ready to move on to the next level, the next summit. Im a very grateful soldier and I feel privileged to have this chance to fight under the command of my heros, and to have the chance to fight along side my heroes, in their battalions, helping secure their supply lines, recruit, equip, reload. It’s a great honor, privilege and duty. I salute you all.



"We will stomp to the top with the wind in our teeth." George Mallory, 1924

I don’t see failure, I don’t think about failure. To paraphrase a quote of Pattons, “It is not our duty to die for our cause, it is our job to make the enemy die for theirs.” Of course, those enemies are the products and diseases of aging, and the aging ignorance that resides in people. We don’t let them cause us to die for our cause. We don’t even think in terms of dying for our cause. We know that if a person isn’t completely preparing to win, then they are at least partially preparing to lose and that when the ship is going down, its all hands on deck. There is no time to put on your suit and tie so that you will look good if you die. Would a soldier on the beaches of Omaha been well off to finish reading a book he was reading before storming the beach? We know this is not to say that we should not also live our lives. Soldiers lived their lives even in the trenches, playing cards, writing their family etc… We live our lives around the war, we don’t fight the war around our lives. We know this situation is not anybodies fault but realities. This is the hand we have been dealt. We have been awoken in the middle of a battle field, christened General's by default.

Although this can seem harsh to all the incoming recruits, there is some very, very good news. Rather than having to live our lives in the trenches like the soldiers did, our trenches are in our homes and communities. Our fellows in arms are our families, friends and people all over the world, and we don’t even need the 20 hour days of those trench soldiers, a few hours a week from everybody is all this war needs. This is something we all can do and want to do but couldnt do nearly as well or fluently with out places like ImmInst. We look forward to helping continue to facilitate more and more people and fight along side them.



"We encourage young people to go out and exceed thier goals. Everest is an icon of that" Neil Beidleman

This rapidly evolving, rapidly advancing dynasty that is humanity has mastered, even Everest, and moved on now to such great mountains as this, such great mountains as the quest for indefinity.
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"All the winds of Asia seemed to be trying to blow us from the ridge." Peter Boardman, 1975, about the South Summit

Many of us dont even notice these winds anymore on this march to the top, and we hope to help light the way for more. This reminds me of the MLK Jr. quote, “If you cant run, walk, if you cant walk, crawl, but by all means move forward.” Screw that wind, one foot in front of the other, an inch gained is a million fold victories. Eternity will not release the last to die before these breakthroughs get here, from the abyss. That inch gained is a million fold victory in the most real fashion, at the very least.

"We agreed that this was going to be no ordinary climb. For the time being, Everest was rather more than a mountain." John Hunt, leader of the '53 expedition

Its the same with this journey. This journey to the top is also more than a mountain of a challenge at this time. Most life extensionists think this, but some don’t, or forget. In the future the end of aging will be a common occurrence. I forget how the quote goes exactly but there is a common thought along the lines of, “Once the extraordinary becomes reality, it is then most often times discounted as commonplace.” Just as the trailblazers who went west across America were more than explorers, people like John Glenn and Neil Armstrong more than just people flying, Edison, more than a tinkerer, and Watson and Crick more than just scientists, the soldiers of the unlimited lifespans cause are embarking on far more than just a “mountain.” This is the evolution of the ages, that our ancestry has battled up through for us all, on through to destiny. Its not a job, not a hobby, not a science, not a cause. To be certain, as the majority of indefinite life extensionists know, and greater and greater numbers of the aging uninformed’s are coming to know, its so very much more than an ordinary climb. Life, the big picture, the meaning of life, the requisite 8, all of the universe and all of existence is at stake.

Unlimited lifespans is echoed again here in a sentiment about Everest:

"Everest for me, and I believe for the world, is the physical and symbolic manifestation of overcoming odds to achieve a dream." - Tom Whittaker


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"You've climbed the highest mountain in the world. What's left ? It's all downhill from there. You've got to set your sights on something higher than Everest." Willi Unsoeld

We have Willi. Thank you, thank life, thank the human spirit for inspiration like yours. And in keeping with your motto, yes even ending aging can be dreamt past, can be exceeded by higher aims. Ending aging is not the ends in itself, it’s the indefinity of endless dream inspiring mountains that it unlocks in concepts like the requisite 8 that we have embarked on this cause for. We dare to dream big because there are no bounds to our dreams. There are no constraints on our ambitions. People like you have helped push us on to the vast fields of dream mountains. There is no limit, there truly is none. Screw Hayflick, as long as human will continues to be free to shine on, it will continue to show us the way.

"Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top; it is the willpower that is the most important. This willpower you cannot buy with money or be given by others..it rises from your heart" Junko Tabei-1975 after becoming first woman to climb Everest

Of course, there will always be those people around every thing that continue to say things like:

"I can't understand why men make all this fuss about Everest--it's only a mountain" Junko Tabei



Like George Mallory answered when asked, “why do you want to climb Mount Everest?”

“Because its there.” So also, we reach for indefinity because it is there.

Reach on my friends. This is just another mountain,

"Don't forget it's really just a big pile of rocks" David Breashears


We are the great human race. There is nothing that can stop us. Onward march. United force of will, barreling through the universe, illuminating an ancient and mind blowingly perplexing, endlessly fascinating, dynamic resource that we call the universe and existence. Its ours. Lifes speed to you my friends. The ultimate fruit of human endeavor is nearing closer with our every step. That’s what your “little” contributions mean to this cause.


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The requisite 8.

To know:
- the nature of infinity
- if there is a god, gods, no god, or something else
- how we got here
- how the universe got here
- what all else is out there like hover ability, light speed, aliens, populated galaxies, dimensions or whatever there may be.
- to know the all forms and extents of all pleasures current and undiscovered.
- to fulfill all goals that time brings you to want, restaurant owner, pro football, climbing mountains etc..
- universal elimination of fallacy (which causes a bunch of things, philosophy to work its self out, the best good for all etc..)
Senesce]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:53:18 -0400