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"Kaizen" Options
 
compulsimple
#1 Posted : 2/12/2023 5:38:19 PM
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Age: 27. Male. Timing of dosing is doing this whole ordeal at the end of a saturday and experienced through the night until morning the next day. Unknown dosage (4 chocolate bars with PE strain but exact dosage is unknown). physically healthy but in probable need of ergonomic therapy for preventing and treating musculoskeletal injury/astrophe. I will also get into that because there was a bit of intensified lower backpain and other forms of pain such as sore feet (from pacing around a hardwood floor and being on my feet 5 days out of the week) because of the profession/career I'm working in. (Warehouse/distribution). Will get into some depth about that later.

Disclaimer and early warning: This experience report includes some politics. I was going to put that right into the title but couldn't find the wording. Nothing that is particularly and outright polarizing and it's important to note about that particularly that they directly relate to the experience itself and many of the self reflections and introspection. In short I just have some thoughts and realizations about health insurance, my employer's role in influencing the opiate crisis, and about private equity/stock buyback/dividend programs at my workplace which create and institute dysfunctions, barriers, and breakdowns in efficacy of standard protocol.

Um, essentially I work for a private healthcare distribution center that provides over the counter products and food products to pharmacies. It pays well compared to retail jobs in the area and is one of the few jobs with compensation incentives (healthcare insurance, life insurance, 18$ an hour fulltime with potential for becoming a salaried manager through working through the company in leadership roles (all without going to college, really just requiring a high school diploma or GED, elbow grease, and genuine interest in handling responsibility)

IF these topics/concepts aren't your cup of tea or if it's one thing that ruins the report I earnestly apologize to you. It's still the thoughts I had; many of which I would say are some of the most profound connections, realizations, epiphanies, and "Ahh-ha!" moments I've made analytically. Ever. ... In my lifetime.


Background/set: I'm open toward trying psilocybin as a potential therapeutic treatment for mental illness. What am I trying to treat? Well, that's a large question to answer however I think that I can actually explain it in depth and hopefully report anecdotal testimonial through a simple bioassay. Allow me to go into depth about my personal ongoing struggles and barriers with caring for my mental illness which likely encompasses PTSD, eating disorders, depression, a learning disorder (ADHD), substance use disorder, and loneliness/isolation/detachment. There is overlap between the different things I'm looking to treat and many larger root causes for why and also how come I have these problems and mental health concerns.

I do not currently see any form of doctor and for years have stubbornly decided not to seek medical attention. For anything. It's a shame that I do not and while much of that has been because of not having access to a quality healthcare insurance plan and also because of a lack of agency or knowledge of navigating the complex bureaucracy therein; I have actually genuinely considered actually (and finally) taking a minute for myself to attend to much neglected needs such as my health.

I'll try to reiterate that there's a lot of things overlapping and connecting to larger root causes.

To provide context I have had a few red flags raised that have me concerned enough to start caring for myself. I.e. I've had a couple particularly bad days... Not in a row but they constitute as definite symptoms of larger problems at hand.

Can you imagine an entire day when you have had suicidal thoughts? More than once and in a single particularly bad day accompanied with some drinking alone in the privacy of your home? Drinking that is relatively moderate but either way and nonetheless a problematic coping mechanism with potential to become more harmful over time.

Can you imagine navigating through the complexity of intergenerational trauma passed on through your parents? To provide context can you imagine that from both your father and your mother? Both have abandonment issues. Both have literally been abandoned and in turn abandon as a form of learned behavior; passing on trauma through detaching from authentic interaction. Essentially I realize that the problems I have with both of my parents (a dad with substance use disorder and hardcore pharmaceutical opiate addiction. A mother that has a number of barriers between authentically interacting with her son and caring for herself. It's worth noting that she hoards both physical clutter and animal hoarding and one common part of why people tend to become hoarders is due to abandonment issues stemming from trauma - essentially you hoard physical trash and too many animals as a coping mechanism because of deeper abandonment that stems from a larger point of the problem. That is a major oversimplification but I'm trying to understand her point of view and hopefully support her. Same with my dad but he has other completely different problems including early onset parkinsons. I will also get into how his health insurance is becoming a growing barrier; hopefully without getting heavy into politics but I'll have to talk about those barriers anyways so please just know I tried to avoid the political discussions but they've thoughtfully came up)

If you can imagine, I just have been having some bad days, weeks, years; it's been messy. It's been messy and dysfunctional, messy but functional, all sorts of overlap.

I think that the diatribe I've provided is enough background and context to explain nuances I need to get out of the way. Lets begin getting out of the background/context portion of my testimonial and into my experience.

I decided to take Psilocybin on the weekend. It's after lots of hard work from a five day in a row working week with a three day weekend. It's after I went over to my sister's home to visit with her, her boyfriend, my dad, and I. (we also made lots of curry, talked about cactus growing, and a whole bunch of etcetera that is definitely out of scope and I won't get into it; point being I am in a pretty happy mood after socializing with family. Good stress relief and it's an authentic relationship/activity so it's a good setup for being in the desired mindset for undergoing a psychedelic experience with a focus on using that experience as a therapeutic aid).

I took the mushroom chocolates, 4 out of 8 pieces to a bar that roughly contains about 4 grams but it's hard to really know hence i'm listing this experience as an unknown dosage. I started sifting cactus potting soil (i'm starting some seedlings) and did that for a bit until I started to feel some effects and put all my objects associated with cactus seed growing into a neat organized pile off to the side under a kitchen table to sit there until I can finish sifting.

As effects begin to set in I had some preflight anxiety and intensification of lower back pain. The backpain; that's pretty much because I work at a distribution center. I know that Amazon has failed to implement ergonomic protocol which benefits their workforce through preventing musculoskeletal injuries through simple pre-work and/or after work stretching. (We do not do stretching after work or in-between breaks, however). We do our standard stretches before work at our start up meeting but sometimes we either rush through or don't do all of the stretching. (somewhat? --> ) Thankfully there's folks/people from higher ranking leadership positions at work who are a little more of a hardass about ensuring that ergonomics are actually important and implemented but it's also straight up becoming more relaxed and basically neglected which is creating lower back pain and neck pain for me and other employees who work job functions that include lots of stooping, lifting, movement, and task management. Many peers will blast procedures like this as being outright too strict about doing the stretching properly and holding supervisors accountable over it but I've decided I'm going to become more adamant about it because we aren't going to let ourselves be another crummy Amazon facility with an epidemic of lower back and neck pain! (And to be honest, why don't we as employees just wanna spend 10 to 15 minutes of one or two of those hours doing stretches? Well, I'm figuring that out lol)

Following my period of preflight anxiety and intensified lower backpain I did stretching to help ease tension in my muscles. I did the mountain pose, lifting my arms to the ceiling. I paid attention to signals of pain from my body to avoid stretching in ways that aren't feeling comfortable. I did a lower back stretch where you pull your arm out and turn to a side which if you do that gently can be very helpful at easing lower back tension in your muscles. And finally I layed down on the ground face to the ground. Pulled my arms up to stabilize and gently and stretched myself backward and then curled into a downward facing stretch where I have my rear end raised and arms pulled forward and then finally doing what is called an inchworm where you put your two hands on the floor and your feet on the floor and slowly move/inch them together until you meet the two sets of appendages and finally stand upright.

After that or somewhere between that, sifting cactus soil, and pooping I was watching youtube.

Going to my history: I remember having Democracy Now playing in the background from autoplay when I emerged out of the bathroom. (I didn't select the video, it just came on from autoplay in case my wording confuses anyone) It was "The Belmarsh Tribunal D.C. -- The case of Julian Assange". That was super heavy on politics and I didn't want to watch that while tripping because it's too much to get into for the moment. So my first video after changing to something that would be better to watch was entitled "Male Orcas = Nature's "Man Baby"" by The Young Turks which was on my feed and caught my attention and got into how there's some interesting research showing that when mother Orca whales have male offspring they are more likely to stop having children and that it's apparently linked to males being much more needier toward their mothers. The hosts discussed why that is an evolutionary reason (in short there's lots of things going on here. Low supply of Salmon. Evolutionary explanations for why that is. There's some etcetera I don't wanna get into).

Then There was "Congress Takes Aim at Cannabis, Considering Regulation crack-down" also by The Young Turks. I watched that one and after that felt like going onto science/nature oriented content.

That brought me to Bizarre Beasts. I started with "Fig Eat Wasps Before You Eat The Fig" and it gets into the mutual relationship between fig wasps and figs. Then "The World Used To Be Full of Giant Tortoises". Then "This is Not A Crab". Followed by "Not a Vampire... or a Squid". "This Frog is Bad At Basically Everything" came next and I was tripping enough to get super fascinated by the pumpkin toadlet which is so small that it can't properly jump. Super cute! It's so adorably tiny. It's little arms can't even jump. It's major defense mechanism is being bright colored and highly toxic if eaten. Just absolutely the cutest and most adorable thing I've ever seen!.

Then I watched " Fly Through The Water Like a Deep Sea Skate", "Is This Weird Animal Our Closest Relative?", "A Year of Beasts!", "Living Soap Bubbles With Tentacles", "A living Tube With Little Tube Feet" which was about sea pigs and made me giggle and laugh that there are apparently little tubes with tube feet in the ocean swimming around without a brain. (I need to note also that much of these videos at this point are fascinating, captivating my attention, and stimulating my sense of interest and wonder - Bizarre Beast's definitely makes it into my recommended biology related content).

At some point I shed tears at one of these video's, I think that it was "Not a Vampire... or a Squid" because at this point I really thought about the wonder of our oceans and the wonder of our planet and how our oceans are threatened with anthropogenic (i.e. human caused) mass extinction... And it made me realize that I'm fully capable of pursuing a biology career................ Mad Sick Crying or very sad Wut?

The rest of the video's from Bizarre Beasts were "The Two-Legged Reptile That Hears With Its Skin", "A Feast of Bones", and finally "How An Invasive Snail May Save An Endangered Bird".

After all of that I begun to pace, sit, think, brainstorm, and self reflect about my career. What was going on in my mind?

Well.... at work we are about to have a town hall this upcoming week and also our company has sold the Distribution Center "and will lease it back to us". A lot of people in our start up meeting do not know what private equity, stock buybacks, and dividends are. I brought it up immediately and asked a dumb question to the guy making the announcement and reassuring us not to be worried "Is that like...... a stock buyback?" and no.

Technically.. It is not a stock buyback technically it's probably a private equity firm which will use dividends and stock buybacks to inflate and manipulate profits. And the private equity firm is going to take "extra left over revenue and reinvest it into incentives" which means... they are going to take a lot of revenue that can be used to do some of the following: 1) replace old, outdated, equipment with new working equipment that doesn't have defects. 2) give employees raises 3) make significantly higher quality improvements to some of the very poorly produced training video's 4) fund more continuous improvement events like Kaizens (which is a Japanese term meaning continuous improvement), and I can go on and on about it and poke holes through and through until I've broken a natural law of physics but the point is the revenue doesn't go to any of this; it props up the workplace and supply chain bare bones and puts multiple million's of dollars into a dividend or stock buyback.

I had all sort of brainstorming going on for addressing it in the town hall, anonymously submitting my question to the town hall using the QR code, how I should address it with peers and others in leadership positions, how important it will be to use effective verbal and written communication, and it brought up lots of things to think about. I realized I do not want to work where I'm at forever.

My genuine passions and end goal would be either: to pursue something akin to forensic psychology/analysis with a specific and specialized focus in far right domestic terrorism such as white supremacists and things of that nature OR a focus on destructive cults, pyramid schemes, and things of that nature OR (and most desired of all) going into a highly specialized biology career such as microbiology. It would mean being in an academic setting throughout the rest of my life..... but it'll sure beat being a lowly essential worker propping up a private equity firm devouring millions of wasted USD! lol

I realized that would be things that I'd have to attain through recovery from substance use disorder and that I'd need to probably look toward going completely sober for a very long time, possibly the rest of my life. As well as seeking treatment for mental illness and trauma in order to properly treat mental illness which would impede any strides for success. It would mean being very driven for success. It would mean being extremely hard working. It would also mean that if I follow through and work very hard to achieve my desired goals that I could be extremely happier for the better! Illuminating so many possibilities that I had never considered before... and unfortunately highlighting so much wasted potential for someone so young with their life ahead of them..

At some point I heard my neighbors yelling. I was sort of still tripping. By now my dad has gotten up. Throughout it appears he's going through some health issues. He'll nod out and droop in his chair, light a loose cigarette that eventually burns a hole in a pair of pants or the chair and repeat. His legs are swelling up from congenital heart failure which is a harsh sounding word for retaining too much water (that's the way my sister put it but it's hard to say he may have suffered a stroke at some point). He refuses to take concern seriously or has trouble understanding how deeply concerned some of his behavior appears. He'll complain to me if I rub his shoulder and ask "Hey dad are you okay?" and say "I'm fine" with slurred speech or tell me that i'm making him feel bad vibes because i'm bringing up negativity. It's a major problem I deal with all the time because he doesn't want to go to urgent care; he stubbornly thinks that his fragile body is actually really invincible and still young and healthy. Love him to pieces but it's very difficult to know that he's probably going to be dead one of these days despite it being completely preventable.

I remember talking to him. By now I'm definitely not peaking anymore and am plateauing and coming down. We talked about tobacco cessation. I prompted/pitched some ideas to him like the idea of seeking counseling and changing his health insurance policy so that he is not on the private and fraudulent Medicare Advantage program that he signed up for because cable television is pushing Medicare Advantage ads targeted to seniors before the annual deadline for enrolling (which is already passed, said and done; goodnight Irene Crying or very sad Confused Mad ) and well I think I'm gradually making progress on that and This coming Monday I take him to a heart specialist so.... yeah. So many things I care about... .....

I think at some point he said he was hungry and was thinking oatmeal. I asked if he wanted oatmeal and yogurt and he said not mixed together so I asked if he wanted them separately and he said yes to that. so I opened a Greek yogurt brand new (salted caramel flavor, limited/seasonal) and he asked "why don't you ever buy flavored yogurt?" in slurred sentence and I said that it was flavored as salted caramel and handed him the whole container with a plastic spoon that came with a French Press we bought years ago. He said "I don't want the whole container" and I told him it was okay, to just eat what he wanted to and started on the oatmeal by pouring out water used to brew coffee and then made a single serving of quick cook oatmeal. He likes it plain-jane with lots of sugar. I cooked it in less than 4 minutes by using high heat for maybe 2 minutes and turning the burner off and letting the heat and steam evaporate excess water and finish cooking the oatmeal. I put his food into a bowl and he poured lots of sugar into his oats and sat back onto the couch and ate his oatmeal, nodding out here and there with his head slumped over.

[Edit: I mention "I looked through the eyehole to their door" -- I wanted to clarify that was some bad communication. I looked through the eyehole from within my apartment and not through the eyehole into their apartment just in case the wording of that sentence created confusion and miscommunication. I have already copied and pasted this and submitted the experience report to Erowid and it is possible that the Erowid report will contain the problematic wording but i'm going to resubmit the report containing this edit herein which will also be the version I'm posting to some message boards like Shroomery and DMTNexus. I sincerely apologize for that!]

Near this time frame when the neighbors were yelling and fighting with each other.. the T.V. my dad was watching was too loud to hear what was going on with the neighbors to check on them. I knew them and worked with both of them at a previous food service job. I heard the male yelling at the female and the argument sounded heated and violent like a domestic dispute. I looked through the eyehole to their door and saw the female leaving and I heard her crying. At a point when I finally get my coat on, pants on, my doggo on a leash i hear the police talking to her and put my dog back into the apartment and politely ask "Is everything okay" and asked if she was okay. She was in the middle of telling the officer she'd been slapped and choked and was crying and the two officers were doing their jobs extremely well. One officer was talking to her, I gestured in a friendly manner to sit down at the steps of the apartment to talk to them and make sure she's okay and that everything was going well and told them I had heard some of the commotion and the other officer asked me to come over to talk just asking what I had heard and I told him I'd heard the commotion but hadn't knew what was going on and I told him that I'd leave them to it. This was a very good response from law enforcement. I think the officer who pulled me aside could see my eyes were thoroughly dilated the officer's never asked about it and for a time where we constantly hear about police responding to situations like this with instances of using excessive force or exerting their authority over drastically it was so refreshing to see the police responding to a domestic dispute between two people (both of whom are black/people of color) and to see law enforcement essentially perform their job functions how they genuinely should without there being any issues was genuinely a good feeling!

I calmed down my doggo. His name is "Zybo". Zybo was barking and woofing at the commotion. He knew that something was going on but I beckoned him over to where I was sitting and held his shoulders to calm him down and he stopped barking and stayed by me between my legs while I comforted and calmed him telling him stuff like "Calm down baby, there's stuffs going on" accompanied by shoulder and neck rubs. When it appears that everything calmed down and had settled I walked him. By now day is breaking

Thank you to all who have read my personal testimonial and bioassay and I again apologize if anyone wasn't looking for an experience report detailing all of the perspectives I've brought up. My plans for the rest of the day are to listen to a whole bunch of Adia Victoria (blues singer, I'm typing a the last third of the report to Adia Victoria playing on Autoplay) and I'm probably going to pull up my Hulu account and rewatch a documentary called "Fire of love" (2023) which is a documentary about the volcanologists Katia and Maurice Kraft. I would like to rewatch it, it's super romatic and beautiful. I may also rewatch "The Territory" (2023) after because that also sounds good.

In conclusion I had a very profound experience that gave me a lot of insight into my own human nature. I rediscovered a passion for analytical critical thinking. I brainstormed more regarding my workplace than I have ever before at any point in my working life in a single night regarding thinking about Kaizen or continuous improvement and begun to see and envision how that relates to everyday life. I would prefer to go to college (hopefully I can figure out scholarships or grants) to pursue something that is better than working essential work, dirty work, manual labor, whatever you want to name it. Preferably I want to pursue biology and specifically hone in on pursuing my major as microbiology and getting a P.H.D. Maybe having some dabbling interest in computers so that I can construct with it as an asset and use computer software to create models and simulations needed for representing biological processes. Hopefully there's a bright future ahead of me. I know without a shred of doubt that if I can become totally sober and pursue literally any pursuit of higher education and get to do something that keeps me away from a room with a bottle of wine or a distribution facility that that particular definition will mean to me: success.
 

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Toshido
#2 Posted : 2/14/2023 8:18:56 AM

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My lord. Where to begin. A lot to unpack here.

Set and Setting: Eating mushrooms around your family, who you described as having serious problems related to substance abuse, as you also admitted to having yourself, probably isn't the best way to spend a psychedelic experience, let alone spending it watching youtube videos non stop.

If I watched the young turks coming up on some mushrooms, I'd have to start questioning my purpose in life as well!

Never go towards politics when you're tripping, it leaves too many avenues for anxiety to pop up, which it certainly did for you.

I also don't think that it would be a suitable line of work for you given your mental state, but something like microbiology could actually be beneficial to you. You can make the world a better place without having to endure the stress and hatred that would come along with dedicating your life to hunting down white supremacist terrorist groups lol.

My advice.

1) Get some therapy. Even if it's just 1 or 2 sessions it can be VERY helpful to get an unbiased opinion instead of having to constantly view your life through a 3rd person lens through the eyes of your family or even yourself.

2) Cut back on the drinking. I drank heavily between the ages of 24-26 and was suicidal, I had no direction in life and I blamed my problems on everyone else but myself. I finally stopped deciding to play the victim and I turned things around by creating small goals for myself and accepting the reality of my situation, which was being broke after college and moving back home. Once I showed some humility and decided to press on, life got considerably better with a positive mindset. I'm 35 now, have a good career and my own home.

3) I typically don't eat psychedelics if I have a lot going on, even if it's just busy work stress. It sounds like you have substance abuse problems, family problems, problems at work etc. Do psychedelics help us to restore meaning and heal? Yes. But you really need to take care of your mind and your body before the entheogen can be a helpful teacher.

4) Check out the documentary Queen Of Trees. There is a crappy quality version on youtube, but the HD version is well worth it on iTunes as it uses tons of macro videographer to capture the symbiotic relationship that the fig wasps have with the figs.

Take care of your brain, set yourself small goals, do one at a time. I'm 35 and just now hitting my stride, so don't feel rushed. If you complete enough goals, you will look back and chuckle one day.

Lastly, please just be careful eating high or "unknown" doses of psychedelics when you have signs of trauma, ptsd, anxiety or depression.
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compulsimple
#3 Posted : 2/14/2023 4:47:22 PM
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Hey Widderic, thank you for your advice and feedback! I think that I'm definitely going to be going to be trying to access mental health care and to do things that have a beneficial impact on the things that I struggle with or bottle up or detach from. I think that I'm going to stop drinking entirely after having a breakthrough realization that I'm inheriting and learning problematic and self destructive coping mechanisms. I'm not binge drinking or anything akin to hardcore long term alcoholism but I do get depressed frequently which is associated with the alcohol as an emotional coping mechanism that rather than helping the root caused emotional and psychological damage simply evading it for a fleeting and shallow moment.

I think that some of the issues with my family are complicated. I try to care for both of my parents and there's a lot of trauma caused from things out of my control that I need to have a healthy relationship with like such as seeking therapy and restorative coping.

I genuinely appreciate your response and I'm currently integrating and trying to plan for what I could and should be doing with my life. I think that as much as my job isn't great for me I need to walk myself back and accept the need for a career that provides an insurance plan that allows me to access treatment; and I need to actually take the advantage and privilege of having access to care that I actually do need.

I think my long term goal is probably leaning most strongly on something like using my current career to my benefits and to remind myself that I have another goal to work to over the long term (and/or changing the companies or job functions is also an option to see if the same type of work with a different company or different work generally would make a beneficial impact and result in stress reduction that exacerbates other problems like interpersonal relationships with family and family dysfunctionality). It's going to be probably 3 or 4 years before I can actually consider getting into a community college that could transfer credits to a university for microbiology considering currently I'm paying off a vehicle and trying to get that paid off entirely before making a leap to study fulltime.

I think that I'm going to try slow living/reducing frivolous purchases with the money that I do earn. I'm probably going to try to create a fixed budget and figure out how much I can allot to things like hobbies such as cactus cultivation, mycology, native plant/pollinator friendly gardening, and also my deep love of literature. Overall though saving income long term has the most benefit to my situation (i'm actually good at that, I managed to save for years before I financed a car and had 9K for my downpayment and I make enough that I don't even have to destroy myself with constantly working overtime and still be able to make those savings and put a gradual 50 or so USD to personal hobbies like literature and permaculture).

I believe a biology career like working with a government job like with conservation or academics are the best option because they actually pay significantly better than what I'm currently doing; better than the supervisory position I originally thought to work toward, and it comes with benefits like insurance that I need. On that note too I'm thinking about my retirement and looking for a pension or roth IRA (not a 401K that is based on stocks. I need to look into what option for retirement that I should go for).

I'm going to take some precautions and avoid any use of psychoactive substances and including entheogens and especially, especially, especially alcohol which just eventually makes me more depressed. I may still look to entheogens for therapeutic work but in a context where I'm doing every-day-life physical and emotional maintenance and likely in a position or point of time where that's something that I could do without the influences surrounding my every day environment that will just influence any narrative that could otherwise immerse me into healing and emotional growth.

I'm also not doing a terrible job overall of taking care of myself but I think this highlighted for me so many cracks and problems that have developed over a longer period where I've lost the resolve I had previously. I've had several years in early adulthood that despite a lot of problems where I've coped and sustained very well in a healthy point of adulthood.

Also I definitely found politics to be a bad rabbit hole. The biology video's on youtube were still really great, i definitely found it fascinating and I think that reading literature like a field guide or natural history or most notably Ed Young's "An immense world" are fantastic options as kinetic/written activities. I gravitate to video because I have always found that kinetic reading or writting to be hard to perform during a psychedelic experience (except for the platau or afterglow so possibly if I continue to work with entheogens that the planned itinerary are to meditate and lie down with a blindfold to some music during the come-up and peak of the experience).

Also I think especially things like the young turks which can be really polarizing are needed to be avoided and I was really into the leftist rhetoric when I was younger but as I've grown I gravitate to things like reading articles or watching interviews and examining nuance and trying to be more of a critical thinker politically. (I prefer interviews on Democracy Now a lot more considering their reporting is a lot more focused on actual journalism rather than rhetoric's and particular ideology. It also aligns with a pro-peace and pro-environmental perspective that I gravitate to). I think that random youtube videos aren't very helpful but maybe planning video viewings like a documentary coupled with an itinerary of related things to biology or the topic at hand I want to examine and immerse into.

Fire of Love (2023) or The Territory (2023) or Not Going Quietly (2021) would probably be okay for viewing and documentaries found on the German DW documentary would all be practical for viewing. I'll try to find an HD version of Queen of Trees. I love documentaries generally so Thumbs up

I think the experience did provide many beneficial insights. I'd describe the experience as having difficult parts to the experience where I had to work through difficult and uncomfortable parts of the experience. I think that focusing on narrowing what experience I would have based on controlling the external factors and timing of my usage around a proper mindset are key to future work with entheogens once I've come to a point where I think it would be okay to work with them.

Again, I apologize for bringing up anything political and I agree that it invites a lot of unknowns. I'm definitely interested in it from a psychological and social point of view but that's not something that I have to do on mushrooms lol

I think I'll likely avoid pursuing a criminology career. I love psychology and I commend people who go into that field for trying to prevent or counter domestic terrorism but yes that is mentally brutal. It's good job security because unfortunately we have major problems with a growing root cause of radicalization online and through nurturing those ideologies in secrecy but it's also just not something for me personally (still very fascinated with books like "We are Proud Boys" by Andy Cambell and some of the documentaries on DW about radical groups have always fascinated me). The career path is actually very intriguing and attractive because there are real options for finding work including learning another language and coalitioning with other counter-terrorism entities like in Germany possibly (that was actually what I wanted to lean to but also had felt that the growing radicalization in the U.S. was more prevelant and would have required more people in the profession).

Biology is probably going to be my strong suit. Though there are still careers in forensic biology including forensic entymology. There's also possability for going into a medical career with microbiology or in veterinary so it's both a wide ranging career to focus on and one with a lot of different options and possability to really have different choices and prospect for generalization as well as specialization
 
 
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