Mystical Science
Family Thanksgiving
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Navigating Holiday’s in the First Year of Recovery

Addiction

My first trip back for a big holiday with the family was filled with anxiety and a constant concern over how best to act. I am a 5 hour flight from them and so there are large gaps of time between family gatherings and outside of occasional phone calls the progress and changes not just in my life but in my thinking aren’t apparent to my immediate family. So, showing up all reformed may come off as showy and coming back with little changed in my demeanor or how I act would beg the question, “what is he doing?”. This is the kind of things that go through my head. I made the mistake of thinking there’d be a ticker tape parade the first time I came back this summer and that was a huge disappointment that actually regressed some of the progress I had made to date. Giving up…

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Plant The Seed
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Plant The Seed

Addiction

10 years ago after a particularly bad bender I reached out to a friend who I knew was in Alcoholics Anonymous and could help talk me through how to get out of the predicament I had gotten myself into. After missing several days of work and feelings of shame, guilt, and depression were setting in, my friend Will came and picked me up. He took me to my first AA meeting and talked to me about why I was doing what I was doing. I was ready for help and I knew I needed it. I was 30 at the time. I went to AA for a few months, never got a sponsor, didn’t read a page of the book but still liked that I was taking some sort of action. Unfortunately, that was not enough and ultimately, I was not ready. Will didn’t beg, plead, or try to convince…

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Entheogens and Addiction Hero Image
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Entheogens & Recovery From My Addiction

Everything

You will hear me use the terms Psychedelics and Entheogens interchangeably. Most will relate closer to Psychedelics as that term was coined by Dr. Humphrey Osmond in the 50’s and let’s be honest, it really defined the 60’s. In an effort to distance the movement from the recreational use of psychedelics a new term arose in the late 70’s by Carl A. P. Ruck, a mythology scholar, called Entheogens derived from the greek en (within) theo (divine) and gen (creates). Put more simply, divine medicine. A much more fitting term for the maturity with which these plant medicines are being studied and used to treat a multitude of mental and physical health disorders/trauma. While it may be confusing to most how the use of Entheogens can help with addiction recovery but that’s more about your perception of these plants and how they’ve been portrayed in the news and media. Is it weird to you that…

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instant-gratification
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Instant Gratification

Addiction

This post is a little all over the place but the topic and the mission remain the same. Our world is getting bigger and smaller at the same time. We have access to more then we ever did but increasingly feel closed off from the world. The more we’re connected the farther we seem apart and there’s consequences to this if we, as human beings, don’t become aware of what’s actually happening. I start with alcohol because it’s most convincing and relatable. It’s also the most extreme of my examples. Alcohol…It’s everywhere. I drank for four main reason that all spawned from a need for instant gratification. #1: For fun and to fit in You can call it fun, lowering of inhibitions, letting your freak flag fly, etc. Whatever the reason it was under the guise of fun that I seek out instant gratification. It takes a lot of work…

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