Prompt: "I think I may have finally learned how to get “high” with food and water. (cutting out all the excess consumption)"
Before writing about the food and water, I feel a sense of responsibility to apply context for the reader. Also, this is purely based on my own personal experience. Dunno if this will work for anyone, would love to think it would.
CONTEXT
I have used cannabis as a form factor to achieve a certain peak mental state of open-mindedness. This habit started in 2017, stopped for a period of a year in 2019 and re-continued in 2020. That consumption would take place in the form of "dosage". Essentially, self medicating.
In all honesty, it has led to some of my most revolutionary thinking and feeling. More recently, consuming cannabis has felt more addiction and less achieve peak mental states. In this vein, I have been looking for a way out. While trying to stop, I realized I was actually addicted to it beyond the means of mental awareness.
The addiction became a behavior of creating mental space. This mental space is what would help me induce flow states. Here, I got stuck on a loop.
How do I induce my flow states if my behavior has become so closely connected to, go outside, consume cannabis, come inside, write and work? Rinse repeat. (I could induce flow states in other ways but this was the primary way)
Writing alone always helped me get into a flow state. Like now. No, I did not go outside this morning, although I should. It's only 4:30am, the streets feel so serene at these times.
Every time I walk outside my house the addiction comes to mind. Literally. I hated it and loved it. See cast.
Last context I'd apply is why I felt compelled to start using cannabis.
In 2017, several years after leaving the military, I tried it, again. The feeling of emotion I felt during that time was beyond the imagination I carried previously. I never knew I could feel those things. Cannabis connected me to a range of vulnerable emotions that helped me see a different side of myself and of the world. This vulnerability led me to a place of happiness I had never experienced before.
It taught me empathy. I deeply believe I have lived most of my life without the sense of empathy. For whatever reasons.
So, now that I finally hardcoded empathy into me and only need mental space. I had several questions to answer for myself.
Can I induce my flow states without excess consumption?
What use do I have for cannabis?
How do I create this feeling of "high-ness" for my work?
CONSUMPTION
Introduce food and water.
Before starting, this is not a diet regiment or anything of any eating regiment I.e. no blueprint here. Although I do love his work, see cast.
I feel "high" now as I am writing this. Jamming to some Black Coffee mix from Apple Music and here we go... actually I changed my mind. Throwing on my favorite track of Fred Again. He just hits differently. Maybe it's the real vocals that make you feel the empathy.
Damn. Fred again really just gets you into some deep thoughts.
This has been an experiment for myself. Playing with proportions of food and spacing of time between meals. Less focused on what I eat, except for eliminating excess consumption.
The reason I haven't focused on "what" I eat, my family naturally eats fairly healthy. We have two kids that we are very health conscious for.
The most important factor has been reducing excess. Not eating large plates of food, the small "natural" sugar-stuff, the snacks, and the drinks.
Chasing a taste in my mouth that has become synonymous with flow and mental awareness.
The first thing I did was replace every drink with water. No more coffee, no more juices, no more anything except water. Actually, I sometimes do water with a scoop of cacao. Depends on when I crave it.
This change has allowed me to keep a very active taste bud and has helped me sustain a morning routine of waking up at 3:45am almost daily. With an alarm. Without an alarm I have a wakeup between 3-5am, it's contingent on my own children sleeping.
For father's day I had several sips of black coffee. It tasted delicious but I couldn't drink it all. Like I used to. I was a 2-cup a day kinda dude.
For breakfast, I started to skip here and there. All depends on what I feel.
My normal go-to is oatmeal with blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and/or banana, with a big scoop of almond butter. When I say go-to I mean this has been my breakfast of choice for over a decade now. My 4-year old will only eat this, EVERY MORNING, unless I make pancakes. She's a pancake monster. But who isn't?
For lunch, it's a toss up between pepperoni pizza from A-Pizza Brooklyn on bird road and 57th avenue. A home-made salad with a scoop of hummus, chicken with veggies, salmon with veggies, or left-overs from dinner. Sometimes I'll skip this because of the taste in my mouth and my slight sense of craving anything.
For dinner, see lunch options. I never skip dinner.
Essentially, I eat the same things I have been eating for years, except I alter the timing between meals and always drink a ton of water. I think this may be considered or called fasting.
Chasing a feeling and taste in my mouth that are distinct from anytime I eat something.
I can now literally taste my own taste buds and feel how my body feels when I consume foods.
I think the main reason for this change is cutting the excess small stuff. You know that thing people say? "It's the small things...".
Yesterday, for fathers day. It was the first time I went to a restaurant and couldn't finish all my food, while still having an appetite to eat more. Not because I was full, nor because it tasted bad, my taste buds were full. I was overwhelmed by the amount of flavor. The coffee, the eggs, the potatoes, the bread with butter. Greenstreet Cafe is a go-to here in Miami, not the best, but a staple. The food is predictable decent. But all that taste was just too much. I tasted the salt more than anything.
Sidenote.
The wildness of the universe, this song just came on.
So to summarize my consumption.
eat smaller proportions.
space eating out depending on taste in mouth and feeling
only water as a beverage (small tastings during shared moments)
"HIGH"
Leaving the "high-ness" for last.
Let's go back to the original prompt:
"I think I may have finally learned how to get “high” with food and water. (cutting out all the excess consumption)"
I can't remember who and where someone responded something about "going slightly hungry" I thought it was on this thread of cast.
If I'm chasing this state of "high-ness" which is really just a flow state, how can I more predictably and organically make it happen?
I was less concerned with predictability. Remember I have children. I wanted more organic. I never thought I could use food as a mechanism for feeling "high". Also, this "high", a sense of flow, is always downstream of my sense of the world.
If my sense of the world was highly altered by my consumption of cannabis, there should never have been a reason for me to believe that I couldn't achieve a similar sense of the world with other forms of consumption. Yet, I lived believing that at some point.
I continuously find myself being wrong, see cast.
When I found this new organic sense of the world, through my day-to-day behavior of eating, predictability came downstream of it. And instead of chasing a physical behavior of going outside I can tell how "high" I am or will be based on how hungry I am, what taste I have in my mouth, and asking myself.
How do I feel?
Like right now, I'm feeling slightly hungry, already drank 3 glasses of water, equating to around 4-5cups, been awake for 3hours, and feeling as high as I did when I previously used cannabis as a crutch.
Food & water is the first and final abstraction of reality.
Going to go for a walk outside and then make breakfast for the family. See you all later alligators.
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