Why This Devil Finally Wrote the Book (Fresh Strawberries)

I am writing this book because the beauty I found at the absolute bottom of a k hole is non-transferable except through story.

The crazy wild realizations, the utter hells and heavens I witnessed, the love that poured through when there was no “I” finally shut the fuck up — none of it can be explained, taught, or sold.

It can only be told.

So I’m forcing myself to publish little snippets every day as a forcing function, a crowbar, a gun to my own head to finally get out of my skull and finish something because I am tired of carrying it alone.

I have wrestled for years — should I say anything at all, or just shut the fuck up about it?

I decided to speak.

I decided that, writing is art. Great writing is like meeting the person inside of your head. My intention is to write this story as well as I am capable of writing it. Showing up daily, humiliating myself to an empty audience.

What this book is NOT.

Ketamine did not save me. I abused it and it abused me. I am not a guru, I am not better or smarter than anybody. in fact, I have such a deep and immense allergy to authority that individuals that pretend like they got life all figured out, ready to “teach you” for a small price of $999 month or to join their godforsaken group or course.

Fuck all of that in the face.

I am offended by fake stories of authority and certainty. Life is unknowable, reality is an ever changing energy field, consciousness is something we cannot even explain.
Spare me your fucking guru tricks for the uninitiated.

Knowledge, wisdom, those are not things that can be bought. But rather experiences that must be lived, and paid for with a pound of flesh. Lessons cannot be transmitted. You only ever really learn when you have skin in the game. When losses hurt, and when the stakes are real.

The turning point wasn’t my multiple arrests, wasn’t the waste of time rehabs, wasn’t even the nights I woke up on the floor from literally falling out, with the needle still in my arm.

The turning point was the afternoon the medicine finally worked too well. I mean, 2 ounces of ketamine all intravenous in a few weeks. Shit! I had done so many grams at that point that most people would have been in a coma or a grave.

But on this one ordinary Tuesday, something gave way.
The “I” that had been screaming since childhood suddenly shut the fuck up.
There was no me left to find. I had become an empty shell of my former self. All the trauma all the thoughts and emotions. Vacant. Empty. Hollow.

What was left was just simple awareness, vast and ancient, looking out through my eyes, with absolutely no commentary.

It was on that day, that I had succeeded in slaying my dragon. The dragon of addiction. I killed it with its own medicine. I felt nothing. And it was in that moment, I simply walked away and never looked back. It’s been about a year now and I can say, that the cravings are non existent. Just all of this wonderful raw material and this nagging, and I do mean fucking nagging sense of. I really ought to do something with this story.

Since then, my cognitive functioning has come back 100X fold. I can think clearly, and my emotions have stabilized. I do not really know what to make of it all.

I like being an explorer, I like pushing things to the absolute fucking limit.
So many thousands of shots, over the years. So many incomprehensible visions and hallucinations of going into the future. So many out of body experiences, I have absolutely no fear of death or dying. Perhaps of course, getting stuck in one of those hellish nightmares, where I was beaten alive, or ripped limb from limb by demons and ghosts.

Watching the cosmos and the universe, die and be reborn again. Stepping into the matrix and seeing the end of the world. Traveling far into the future hundreds and thousands of years. Like the most amazing dream, I kept trying to peek into.

So now, about a year later and sobered up. I feel like I have so much processing to attend to. There is a lot there to drill down and exhume. Now I have a clarity I never had before. Now I have a freshness that I never had before. Previously, I was far too heavily sedated to be of much use for anything other than my hedonic hamster wheel, of shots. Weeeee, Weeee, Weeeee

Moments of pure awareness, washed over me. I regained consciousness, with the sunshine in my eyes, the soft chant of Buddhist mantras in my ears. I felt a presence looking out through my eyes that wasn’t my own. A mind filled with no thoughts. God, how I loved the blissful state of no mind, no ego. Like a silky warm bath, or what I imagine the first few hours of life felt like for each and every one of us, a fetus in the womb.

The Strawberry Parable

A man is in the jungle and fleeing being eaten by tigers, runs off a cliff and grabs a vine, swinging dangerously over the edge.
He looks down and sees another tiger waiting for him with his sharp and beady eyes looking back up at him.
As he hangs there, two mice, one white and one black, begin to gnaw at the vine he is holding.
Out of nowhere, he notices a delicious strawberry growing nearby.
He plucks the strawberry and eats it, finding it sweet.

The End

Its a great metaphor and has multiple interpretations.

Eating the strawberry symbolizes, finding joy in the moment no matter what the circumstances are. Even in the face of actual, real, existential death.

The tigers are symbolic of death, and the little mice, time, always gnawing away like a clock that never stops ticking.

Life is terrible, liberating, frightening, and compassionate, often all four in the same afternoon,

My motto: Eat the fucking strawberries. You’re dead anyway.

So this memoir is a reflection of this higher and deeper philosophy on life. The beauty that I found, is a beauty that I feel compelled to share in these pages. The truths I discovered are the strawberries, I keep eating while the tigers keep circling.

I am writing this because some of you are still on the vine, convinced the berry is poisoned.
It isn’t.
it never was.

I am writing this because if I die tomorrow and the book is only half finished on some hard drive, the love and stories and wisdom will still be trapped in me. That feels like a worse crime than anything that I have ever been charged with.

So here we are.
Me showing up everyday like a fucking asshole, handing you slightly bruised strawberries from my pocket.
Take one if you want.
Leave the tigers for me.

I have seen the other side, it’s gentler than we deserve.
And it’s waiting for us all.