Hello All,

I just picked up my 30-day chip at my half-way house which is given out for those who achieved 30 consecutive days a row of sobriety. I have been technically(from substances) sober for longer but not anywhere near mentally and I have finally been put in a situation where I can look really get to know myself.

Excluding myself from my computer and from my solitude has miraculously put me in a much better place in life. I did however suffer from perhaps the most depressing thoughts I have ever had the first few days in my new place. I thoroughly convinced part of me (whatever that means) that I was useless and would be so the rest of my life and that my actions as a whole would be a net negative (in terms of expected value) to the world. The clear solution to this is suicide. The whole world would benefit, not to mention some life insurnace money for my parents. Luckily not all of me had come to terms with this but mathematically it made sense. Somehow these feelings left. I realized I loved everybody else but myself. I really hated myself and many of the titles I had carried so tightly. Even my diet was a significant part of who I was. I was better than everyone because of my failing diet...

Going to 12 step meetings everyday and being around people in recovery has been an incredible experience and I no longer think of myself as worthless. I am also no longer following any sort of diet. I eat lots of fast food, lots of sweets, it all tastes so good and I feel pretty good to. I have a job where I tutor 9th graders in math all day. Its a perfect job for me. I enjoy coming to work.

One point I wanted to make was that as much as our food is polluted with toxic elements the society we live in is probably equally or more "polluted" with elements that we have not evolved to deal with accordingly and thus I must continually do what it takes to detox from these mental, emotional and behavioral challenges. I have enormous struggles overcoming the years of mistaken beliefs, enabling and the such that have dominated my life. Like with diet, these continuous stresses have accumulated within me to "toxic" levels and like many here must diet daily to stay in good health I must partake in a number of different cognitive behavioral strategies to stay healthy. The best strategy is simply to be with other people who have empathy for you and to talk about whatever it is that is on our minds. This is exactly what the half-way house has provided me - an environment where I can express myself without fear. My roomates are tremendous and the meetings, though I don't agree completely with all the 12 step program, have set me free of my tumultuous struggle with the definition of God. I am the most spiritual I have ever been and probably the least religious and I feel so content with this.

Life, of course is not all rosy with bloody lamb shanks but the confidence I have to find help is growing. I am attending family therapy and have a few friends that have been talking honestly to about failry regularly, one of whom has helped bunches is a guy who posts here who's name starts with K and ends with D.

I am trying to take things slowly and in moderation. I was going to avoid this board for much longer but realized this practice would have been too strict. I can live with moderation for certain things. Drugs and alcohol not so much. Internet, yes. I was going to do the same with women - avoid them completely but I think this too was too perfectionist. I do have codependt tendencies but not to the point of addiction.

I will not post much at all, but I did want to check in with an update.

One dietary note - I did complete a successful liver flush the day before I went to my place. Lots and lots of small green stones came out. I felt no different the day after but could "feel" my gallbladder for the next couple weeks. I would like to come back to rpd at sometime in the future its just not something I want to think about right now.

Saw a bit of the first film. Unbelievable stuff. The inuits are just complete bad asses. I fast forwarded it to around the 17 minute mark and there is this dude catching fish with his spear and then biting the head immediately afterward. Then they kill a walrus and have to have three men tug it back to shore and immediately start eating it. This next sentence is for TD. A fantastic example of how modern weightlifting (rowing and deadlifts) would greatly improve their life functioning.

Hello Miles,

I am going to use your above statement to further dictate to everyone my personal philosophies on the matter of attributing causation to different factors in diet. It seems to me that once a person has an inkling or just the smallest seed of security about a connection between dietary factor and human physical condition that this person will without a doubt try to confirm this belief at every instance possible. And the more information gathered, the more this connection will be confirmed. It is nearly impossible to break away from this type of thinking as we are programmed to make these very connections. What is troubling is that modern society is many magnitudes more complex than what we evolved in and so the connections we have made have run astray and have little to do with reality. Its like looking at a very starry night and picking out the dots that connect with the current image in your mind. Humans are so incredibly good at picking out the dots that align exactly with their current story its scary. Scarier indeed is the ego that possess us so tightly in this modern world that we may almost never admit to even looking to challenge our own so sacred thoughts.

This is why I like to think that I will continually look for reasons why my thoughts are wrong. It is so easy to see how I can perpetuate my own connections. I do so without trying. It is so natural and comfortable. But to admit that your thinking is wrong or partially distorted is perhaps the key to life. Once you have motivation to change your thoughts and accept that you are not your thoughts, life can become so much easier. Depression is so hard to let go because of my attachment to the 'fact' that I am worthless. Its so easy to find instances where I look worthless and virtually AM worthless or situations where my presence is wholly a negative. My own confirmation bias of myself is so deeply ingrained within me. I am slowly pulling my way out of this enormous hole that I have dug for myself. Luckily I have some excellent tools to get out now. I just need to find myself far away from the edge of this hole because it seems so easy to fall right back in.

I'm going to give you a huge hug TD and kiss both your cheeks sincerely whenever we meet.

A higher water to sugar ratio would be better, no?  I don't get what your trying to say

This again shows faulty logic and reasoning. Percentage of water or sugar or calories in a food does not necessarily mean anything. There is no yes or no answer here. If you think so, then again just dilute some sugar with water and drink for your easily digesting post workout carb meal.

So you get to eat more watermelon, get less sugar and more nutrition.  If your eating by hunger watermelon seems like a better option?

Again, poor reasoning and a poor question to pose. If watermelon is easily digested it makes it harder to control hunger for most which will likely cause watermelon to be overeaten in the real world. I don't know one indigenous tribe that eats watermelon but nearly all of them eat berries. This is getting way off topic to the OP and is just a pointless argument over nothing that actually matters.

Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous your comment is, blueberries contain 14.5g carbs/100g, would you classify blueberries as being high like hell in sugar???

I believe this to be an insult or at least thats how I would take it. As for your reasoning - Whenever I consume watermelon it is usually in much, much greater quantity (by weight) than blueberries and just as an educated guess since watermelon has a much higher percentage of it as water implying that its fibrous content is much lower than that of blueberries and so when eating equal amounts of sugar from both fruits my blood sugar is going to surge higher for watermelon than it is for blueberries. I would guess watermelon's glycemic index to be higher than blueberries and if you assume this to be a bad thing then eating watermelon is going to worse for the majority of the people here. I don't think many people ever eat by weight of fruit and instead eat by how they feel.  I mean with your logic, drinking a cup of water with added sugar less than 7.6% of the total should be better than watermelon. Why not do this and drop a vitamin C tab in it and just never eat fruit to begin with?

Have your bowel movements improved since the HCL?

I actually kept in contact with him and he convinced me to buy one of those water powered engines for my car. It worked. Free transportation for life suckas!

Where have you been?

I know you have done a series of liver flushes where the last ones were stone free. I wonder if you were to do one again now and see if you got anything out. Its been a long time since you have done one iirc.

Yuri, I thought you were eating heaps of blackcurrants?

I'm going to guess edumecadedly and say the roe, skin and brains are high in fat, which is exactly what the bears need to store and discard the lean meat.

I agree that the focus on trying to "win" an argument is a tremendous driving force for the person delivering the post. Ego is an infectious bitch. I know before I submit a post whether or not I've thought about the perspective from the other person's vantage point. The structure of sentences change dramatically when I do so and are far less aggressive. There have been several occasions where I will go back and correct myself before submitting once I have calmed down. That said, I think alpha's statement from the beginning was implicitly qualified or at least thats how I took it and my initial reaction to your comments was that you were acting emotionally instead of with your normal good reasoning.

I do wish I could be more calm, thoughtful and rational when I post. It simply requires realizing that its ok to act accordingly without ego and then the post follows naturally. We all know how to deliver a thoughtful, insult-free post - its not hard to do. But this is a message board and so the ambiguity of communication with just words is inherently problematic. Message board words have very much scarred me in the past and so I know how much value there is in pleasant communication across these forums. I'll say its quite uplifting to not have any negativity or any purposeful communication that is intended to put someone down while making yourself look superior. I could easily be one of the worst at this because many, many times my initial reaction is to do harm. There is something quite appealing about making someone else look like a retard. Its a quick ego boost. Perhaps its just the usual misfiring of our fight-or-flight sequence that seems to do so poorly in modern society.

Andrew Carangie was right. His book, How to Win Friends and Influence People really makes a good case for making those around you feel special.

So you are going to liver flush now, right.