@mike8 Sorry, Mike: I just "found" your email as I was deleting the couple of hundred mails that had piled up while I was out of the country and not using this email address. As far as self-awareness goes, I've met so many wonderful people during my surf travel adventures around the globe over half a century; And I'm an avid reader, so I stashed away more info than I was ever able to use, although now that I'm an older person, and finally a grownup, it's all coming together. I've been doing lots of trauma work, and that's helped me to get to the root of my old and now unnecessary survival habits. I have a couple of great workbooks I'm currently using: Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma by Janina Fisher, whose mentors were Bessel Van der Kolk and Gabor Maté, am doing Dialectal Behavior Therapy, also with workbooks. I chose that method over Cognitive Behavior because I'm a socialist, and that's the nuts and bolts of Marxism; simplified, it's a compromise between to opposite feelings which create a rebirth/natality in another direction. The work is easy, but you have to be persistent. Hannah Arendt's works have greatly influenced my life, especially her book, The Human Condition. Now that I have a neurological disorder, I've had time to reflect and grow. Along with being a surfer for sixty years, I'd been studying Chinese martial arts which encompasses the five milenia history and culture of an amazing and ever-expanding civilization. In my daily practice of Tai Chi, I'm deeply rooted in Eastern thought--entirely different from the individualism of Western society, which is one of the many reasons the U.S. collapse was inevitable. Plato said that democracy could never be realized because democratic leaders would always be the best actors and showmen, not great thinkers or statesmen. Proof positive, our prez, and worse, Vance--placed there by Palantir and millions of dollars. Also, we're focused on instant gratification rather than building for future generations, while the Chinese are taught from early on to be cooperative. I was amazed when I was fortunate to have visited. Their infrastructure is light years ahead of ours--thousands of miles of high-speed light rail, cheap, economical electric vehicles, amazing engineering works, an education system that builds generations of people working together for the greater good. Sorry, got off track.

It's also helpful to journal, to put your feelings down on paper: prose, notes, artwork, dreams, what your day was like, the people you met; and I finish each day's entries with gratitude. It's easy to forget what a gift we have being on this planet; And we're only here for a brief moment. As I began to slow down, I gained clarity.

Benzos: When I last visited Brazil, a doctor friend of mine wrote out a prescription for Klonopin and gave me some boxes of samples. When I eventually ran out, I was able to find an online "supplier" called MEDvidi. I pay $159/mo to see a doc writes me 'scrips for
0.25 mg alprazolam which I take only as necessary. They're fast-acting and helpful for my
occasional panic attacks. I'm tempted to take a pill whenever I interpret my tremors as anxiety, but don't, although I feel safe knowing I have one on hand. I'm currently trying water micro-dosing to taper down. Stopping abruptly was nothing short of torture. I was taking 2 mg/day plus 10 mg of Ambien. On top of nausea and vomiting, I ended up having a tia (mini stroke)--lost a bit of feeling down the left side of my body, but it's not a big deal.

So, Mike, please be gentle with yourself as you work on your issues. There's another self inside you that needs love and attention. I hope you connect with that beautiful person and get to share him with the world. Thank you for reaching out to me.