TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

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CLIENT: …celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day?

THERAPIST: No, I don’t.

CLIENT: My neighbor does. It’s a big Irish family so they celebrate pretty hard. But they’re good enough to have it on like a Friday night.

THERAPIST: (chuckling) Not on a Monday night.

CLIENT: Yea, (inaudible at 00:00:18) Saint Patty’s Day party. So they’re going to be up late and the whole thing. But yea, whatever. It’s like one or two nights a year.

THERAPIST: Oh, they’re doing it tonight?

CLIENT: No, no. They did it last Friday.

THERAPIST: Oh, they did it last Friday.

CLIENT: And yea, and so I’m like it seems fine. Once a year, you throw a rager but it’s a family rager. It’s people from their 20s up to their 70s.

THERAPIST: But that seems a little bit more like containable or something like that?

CLIENT: Yea. They’re out and they’re on the porch and they’re laughing. And some of the younger ones are being idiots and flicking their cigarette butts into my yard. I’m like, fuck man. Three or four of those a year. It’s like, “Come on, man.” But still. And I think most of them are in Frank’s yard so it’s fine. [00:01:08]

THERAPIST: But some will land on there.

CLIENT: Some will land, man, some will land. I was a good shot with it. I could trick shot those off of corners into like those communal ashtray that are outside like smoking stations.

THERAPIST: Work the angles.

CLIENT: Work the angles, man. That’s cool. So I was… that was the great big plan. I was like all right, I’m going to go off weed. It’s going to be great. And I was like Carl isn’t here for a week. I’m like this is really bad time to transition.

THERAPIST: It’s a bad time to do that.

CLIENT: It’s like so I went to see my friend again. I’m like, “Hey man.” He’s like, “Hey.” He’s funny. He’s like, “But are you around this… or tomorrow over this week?” He’s like, “And anytime tomorrow before 1:00, anytime the week after 4:30.” I’m like, “Great. Can we meet tomorrow morning?” He’s like, “Yea, sure.” Like, “What time is too early?” He’s like, “Hit me at 11:00.” I’m like, “All right.”

And so I head out. I’m like, “I’m on track to meet at 11:00. I’ll see you then.” [00:02:02] I’m like he’s not reading his texts and I walk over to his house and the lights are off, the whole thing. I’m like he’s asleep so I just call him. He’s like, “Hey man, what’s up?” I’m like, “Hey, I’m here.” He’s like, “Oh shit. OK, give me a minute,” and he wakes up.

And it’s funny. He’s like, “I was up way too late.” I’m like, “I totally get that. Not a problem.” The neighbors got to stop me. I’m like great. He’s like, “This is a lot more (inaudible at 00:02:25).” I’m like, “Great. Fantastic. That’s what I’m looking for. So I have an X amount of dollars. What can you give me for that?” He’s like, “This much.” And he’s tired and he’s like, “I have to pee real quick.” Goes in and comes back and he’s like, “All right.” He’s like, “Oh, fuck. I go up to the scale. I gave you too much. Whatever. Here.” (chuckling)

THERAPIST: He gave you the bonus.

CLIENT: Yea. He did. He usually gives me a bonus so (inaudible at 00:02:50). And he’s like, “I have to… because my stomach is messed up and everything. I need to use the bathroom. I started taking more (inaudible at 00:02:58). I locked myself out. No big deal.” [00:03:00] He’s like, “Next time we’re going to hang.” It was good to catch up with him. He’s a nice guy.

THERAPIST: So it got you through.

CLIENT: Well, yea. And it’s going to get me through for some time. And it’s really nice. Although I will admit clearly it has put me in a bit of a manic state in that last night I was up most of the night. I have over the past few days in an effort to procrastinate from doing all the math I have to do for Monday, I have become deeply invested in cleaning my office. And earlier this week I have by myself managed to rearrange basically every piece of furniture in the office except for the one giant square bookcase that takes up most of the wall. I’m like that’s never leaving because where else would it go? And the answer is in front of a window which is stupid. So…

THERAPIST: So that’s stays put. [00:04:02]

CLIENT: Stays put. I moved some other bits around. There’s most of them… like I moved this. This is crafty stuff. I moved crafty stuff to the basement. And I’m like I’m at the point now where what I need to do is collapse the magic cards and collapse all the minis as best I can which are all Ed’s dumb projects.

One, I’m going through all my cards and I’m like all right, boom, this is finally it. I’ve pulled everything out I can possibly sell. Everything else is in boxes of a thousand that I can load to the store a few boxes at a time for $3 a box. I made probably close to $100 off of that which is nice. And I’m looking at this box of cards and I’m going through shit I have. Yea, I remember this is like an old shitty Legends card. This is worth $150. Well, put this in a hard case right now. Put that in a box and other stuff. But I’m willing to part with things. [00:05:04]

This card is also worth $60. It was in the cube. I only have one copy of it. It’s not going back in the cube. I can live without it and the other four cards that go with it are all close to the 60. One is a hundred bucks, one is sixty bucks. I’m like there’s a few hundred dollars right there already. And then there’s the rest of the box which will go $700, ranging in value from a dollar to me to like $6 to me so like 20, 10, $20 to me. Ridiculous. There’s… even I have people write me a big enough check. Why? I have to come back to those then. But we start doing it, we start doing deals. I’m like, I’ll tell you what. All this money and the War Wagon over there and that phone carrying case over there plus this cash and these other toys I wanted. And…

THERAPIST: So you could still… I was thinking like in a way you could still purchase this stuff without feeling shitty about it. [00:06:05]

CLIENT: Yea, because I’m buying this with magic cards.

THERAPIST: Right, right, right, right.

CLIENT: Or if you can’t give me money for it now that I want to give rid of I got it. I’m just trying to clear that space out and it wouldn’t be… I don’t think it would be for that much. I think it was ridiculous. If he’s like, “You have $2,000 worth of stuff you’re not going to write me a check for like over $1,000.” I’m like, “Well, let’s do a little over $1,000 and that War Wagon, that phone carrying case over there.” And it sounds great and I’ll come back later with the rest of the stuff in like a week.

THERAPIST: But I think you make the… but you made the important link I think about… something about the studying of the math and that. It’s like it’s…

CLIENT: Oh sure, man. That needs to happen, right? And it’s driven this incentive to like do these other projects.

THERAPIST: Yea, the intensity of that stuff. [00:07:02]

CLIENT: Yea, and I’m so close to the end of the magic project. I go to the positive cards that need to be sorted. And I’m like I can see that.

THERAPIST: Yes, yes.

CLIENT: I can see them. I know the end is almost here. I’ve cleared every binder I have.

THERAPIST: I think that’s… see, I think that’s exactly the importance of it in one respect to you is because when you’re… and this is true I think of engaging in like something very like intellectually challenging is like you don’t know where the end is. You don’t see the end. You don’t see like that point in time where you go, “I’m going to get this.”

CLIENT: Oh yes, it’s done. That’s true whereas with this it’s sort of... and it’s done.

THERAPIST: It’s right there.

CLIENT: And it’s been such a long time. I’ve been doing this for three years as a project. And it’s a lot of cards. And every time I think I’m done I find more stuff. I’m like oh right. And this last time I was like… I’ve gone through. I was like, all right. I’m keeping one of everything and I’ll sell everything else. And now I’m like why would I do one of everything? [00:08:03]

I need a few hundred cards to show the history magic and like that I think is cool. I need a few hundred other cards because these are powerful cards not going in the cube and coming out of a cube. And I need another thing for like these are special art cards. Some are signed and some are foils and whatever and then the cube. And I’m like and I think I can get by with just that. And so I’m going through and just putting more and more stuff into 1,000 pound boxes to get rid of them. (inaudible at 00:08:39) forever and always.

THERAPIST: Forever and always.

CLIENT: And it’s just so nice. And just going through boxes and being like I have all this stuff that I can throw stuff out. But also I have some of these useful empty shoe boxes which will sort all sorts of things. I’m like I’ll keep a few of these around and see what I can put in these. See what a difference I can make. [00:09:06]

So that’d be good. So the second project I was to go through all the minis. I have this war room stuff. It’s just boxes full of plastic screws, bits and pieces on it. What I really need to do is cut out all those bits and pieces and be like put them in a box and be like trash every… recycle everything else because it takes up far too much space. Under tables and places where there’s stuff like that. And whatever…

THERAPIST: But it’s kind of enjoyable to do all this, right?

CLIENT: Well, I mean, yea. I mean, to a degree. The mini stuff will be less interesting and so maybe of the fact of that will help me get to the math faster.

THERAPIST: What are you… now what are you doing in math? What’s the…

CLIENT: We’re moving on from Z-scores into more stuff to do with normal distributions. And I’m moving, moving. [00:10:00] I was going to go to math. I went to math on Monday only to find that school was closed for the week.

THERAPIST: Oh, it’s on break, right?

CLIENT: So yea. So I have two tests on Monday. There was one test on last Monday and one. So whoops.

THERAPIST: So they closed down the whole thing. You can’t get… they don’t even let you…

CLIENT: You can’t get in at all.

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yea. I’m like, “I have a test on Monday and I can’t see anybody about that?” Well, that’s fine. But it’s fine. I’ll learn the stuff. I’ll learn Chapter 6, the rest of Chapter 6…

THERAPIST: Which is on normal distribution?

CLIENT: …which is on more advanced normal distributions and stuff like that and then go into seven which is on stuff I don’t know about.

THERAPIST: You’ll find that distribution stuff interesting.

CLIENT: I do. What I’ve found so far is fascinating. I love it, absolutely love it. I started charting out distributions of die rolls, of 3d6 altogether which is the standard for Dungeons and Dragons, right?

THERAPIST: That’s interesting.

CLIENT: So you roll 3d6. And so I wrote… put it on a normal curve.

THERAPIST: It’s curve though, right? [00:11:08]

CLIENT: Yea, it’s a normalization. There’s one way to roll a 3. There’s one way to roll and 18. There’s three possible combinations that get you to 17. There’s three possible combinations to get you to 2. So… and there’s 27 and 27 for 10 and 11. So the mean is 10.5. The standard deviation is 2.97. So…

THERAPIST: So it almost acts like a normal… like a… what’s the word for it? How a very normal distribution works, right?

CLIENT: This is like a strictly normal distribution essentially. It’s like the literal definition of the area under the curve is one and it goes up. There are reflection points around the cup and then reflection points going downward. And it’s perfectly even. [00:12:03] And it’s not too high a peak. It’s just along this thing. So the funny thing with dices rolls is there is nothing beyond third deviation. You get into the third deviation, there’s no 0.003% chance that you roll something other than an 18. Like over an 18, it’s impossible. You never roll a 19.

THERAPIST: Well, unless the die just stands on its corner.

CLIENT: Yea, sure. Unless that happens somehow at which case we call it a tipper when we roll the entire thing. So we have rules for these things. So all I have to do is take apart these two tables in the basement and rebuild a 4 by 5 table so 4 by… instead of 5 by 6 which is how we’ll probably… yea, 5 by 6 and half from that one. Just hobble together from the two tables the old man left. [00:13:07]

THERAPIST: The guy that lived there before?

CLIENT: Yea. But if I can take those apart and build something else, I would like that very much. Put a little shelf under there so I can store my buildings in there. I’ve built shit before. I’ve built tables. I mean, basic break room tables but that’s all I’m looking to do. So I can do it. And I get Vince down there. I go, “Hey Vince, come on over. I want to build this thing.” And that’ll be fun. We can build that. [00:14:01]

One of them I’m thinking about right now the premise is like simplifying. A thousand dollars, $1,500 worth of magic cards is great. That’s half a mortgage payment. Taxes coming up very soon. I need to see what that bill is like. It’s going to be interesting for sure.

THERAPIST: Oh, wait. You’ll get a refund?

CLIENT: Well, I hope so. But I got on that settlement which counts as a 1099 and that was like $22,000 so…

THERAPIST: So you got to pay taxes on that.

CLIENT: Yea. And I’m like…

THERAPIST: Oh, they don’t take it out automatically. They just give it to you.

CLIENT: They gave it to me so yea, that’s going to hurt. I’ll probably put in for an extension and be like I’ll pay that this year sometime.

THERAPIST: I didn’t realize that’s how they structured it. That makes sense. They just give it to you in a lump sum, though. And then you have to pay the…

CLIENT: Exactly. So I’ve got to deal with that. [00:15:02] And yea, so that’s my life. But I’m trying to simplify. I’m trying to get rid of these magic cards and get through all these like plastic bits and get rid of all these extra board games I’m never going to play. And I can’t really store them where they’re out of the way if I can’t just get to them. (pause)

And I know it helps me avoid doing math which is funny. And part of the difficulty is this is I’m starting to realize I’m getting into math and there’s parts that are actually pretty easy. I’m like I understand this stuff and quickly then the other part of me is, well, but remember there’s stuff that can surprise. Sometimes this gets… so you get them way harder, right? And I don’t want to see you there on Monday morning cramming the first half of Chapter 7 and take two tests that day one on six and one of seven. [00:16:05] So be like…

THERAPIST: Well, that I think is some of the challenge of math to anybody, to you, is the unpredictability of it. Like you don’t know what… like in Chapter 7, you don’t know what’s coming your way. You don’t know what’s going to challenge you and feel hard.

CLIENT: Yea, and I was thinking about Chapter 6 in general. I still need to review it I think but to be like… because I got a B but I’m not here to get a B. It’s like, “Hey, how good are you at stats?” Oh, about 82% of the time I’m right. Because sometimes I’m way off because I mean, that’s what happens during those things. I’d rather be, “How are you at stats?” Oh, 91.57 because I would’ve been 100 had I not taken a strategic (inaudible at 00:16:55).”

THERAPIST: Well, it seems to me like it’s similar to like doing work. It’s like you need to kind of continually go over and over it again until you get all the bugs out because you go through…

CLIENT: Well, right. This is process I’m doing here.

THERAPIST: That’s awesome.

CLIENT: It’s realizing which tools to use at which points. Which equation is useful here? What am I trying to determine? Math dude, math. It’s like once that’s done all of a sudden I’ve got a degree. And I sitting, I’m like for a year now I could’ve been getting occasional voice work for a year easily. And yet and here I remain. And here I remain. I was under that super angst-y PEEPtinis (inaudible at 00:17:53) do.

THERAPIST: What’s that?

CLIENT: So two years ago there’s my friends Jim and Derek. They hold a PEEPtinis party where they make a martini and they put a PEEP in it. (inaudible at 00:18:06) I can’t drink one of those. I’ll drink something else. But still every year they have a competition for who can make the best PEEP related art. And a couple years ago I was like, oh, I’ll never enter this. And I’m like, oh, I got idea for home. OK, Ursula I’m going to write a poem for this thing. And it’s like… (inaudible at 00:18:30) was like, OK, was that seven minutes? Cool. Check it out. And…

THERAPIST: Oh, I think you told me about that one.

CLIENT: I told you that one. That was funny. And people really liked it and it won which was fun. But it was about like the experience of being a PEEP in a package that everyone else has eaten but you. The title was Everyone is Dead but Me.

THERAPIST: Everybody… (chuckling)

CLIENT: And so I’ve written a sequel to it this year called Why Can’t I Die? And it’s about that same PEEP and I’m in a garbage bag who’s been there for however long and that experience of internal darkness. [00:19:11] And… but there’s this whole point in it where he says, “I pray, I hope, I beg that there be some force, benign and kind, willing to free me from this eternity. Yet here I remain.” And it’s funny stuff. I’m not trying to be serious.

But then so at the same time it’s that sort of thing like, “I wish I was something where like free me from this.” And it goes on and talks about, “After almost dying, I was grateful that I was spared. Should I have begged for death? I wonder this in the endless dark. If there is meaning in being sorry, then I am. Yet here I remain.” And I like that idea. It’s super angst-y and hilarious is the other thing. [00:20:06] But like stupidly so.

THERAPIST: It’s both, though. It’s humorous but like deeply…

CLIENT: (chuckling) Yet here I remain. Well, it’s that thing, right? It’s the, I seem to be suffering. There seems to be no point to it. There’s no God to save me. There’s no sort of punishment other than this. No sort of reprieve from it. I don’t know what I did if there was a rule that I broke. Was there a rule that I broke or is this just the way it is? (pause) So then we publish on my (inaudible at 00:20:46). Just put it out there. Go like shitty poems from a guy who writes shitty poems by Lou Jacobs, a book of shitty poems. (chuckling)

THERAPIST: What’s shitty about… what’s shitty about it? What do you see shitty about it? [00:21:02]

CLIENT: I don’t know. It’s… I mean, they’re just like… these things are like… this one took me 13 minutes to write which is twice the length of the second one but not nearly as long as the first one and twice the length of the time to write it. Should I have begged for death? What a question. Was that not a mistake that I didn’t want to die? (pause) And if so, I apologize. I do. I’m sorry. I wish I chosen differently. But there it is. But then there’s nothing. There is no response so just continuous dark.

Anyways, I’m looking forward to reading that to a group of people who I’m sure will find it funny. They found the first one very funny. It was (inaudible at 00:21:53) almost a unanimous vote. I voted for Brianne because she did PEEPton Abbey which she took a bunch of PEEPS and built like a little Downton Abbey out of gingerbread and then like the little paper clothes on each PEEP to give them outfits for characters of Downton Abbey. [00:22:10] I’m like that was a good…

THERAPIST: A diorama.

CLIENT: Yea, that was amazing. I voted for that and I was the only one because everyone else voted for me. I was, “Brianne, I’m sorry. Yours was amazing. I loved it.” But we’ll see what happens. I’m thinking a lot about God and shit so after we’ll do the thing with equally lengthy outcomes. What I like to do so that can be funny. (pause) The people who use God language, like even my good friend Adam regarding who (inaudible at 00:22:57) posts like oh yea, faith is pretending to know things that you don’t know. And Adam is like, “Well, it’s not pretending as much as believing things which have no factual evidence. There’s a subtle difference.” And I haven’t responding because like there isn’t that subtle of a difference. [00:23:11] I mean, they’re splitting hairs to quite a degree.

THERAPIST: Wait, say that again. What?

CLIENT: He says, “Faith isn’t pretending to know things you don’t know. It’s believing in things without factual evidence.” These are equivalent in the end. These two things are equivalent. You believe in things. You claim to know things that you don’t know…

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: …and you can’t know. You cannot possibly know and the reason you believe… and again, the reason you believe these things because you were told them as a child. Like and that’s it. That’s the sum. That’s the summation of what makes a Catholic, more Catholics. Other Catholics make other Catholics. [00:24:00] And it’s the same for all of them. It’s the simple argument. It’s like I’m a Christian. I’m a devout Christian. Be a devout Muslim where you’re born in like the Middle East. You can be a devout Hindu. You were born in India. It’s totally based on where you were born.

THERAPIST: Yea, how do you shed all that?

CLIENT: Or what was available when you went through that life trauma?

THERAPIST: Yea, how do you shed all that and find your own?

CLIENT: Well, how indeed. Well, Sam Harris happens to be writing a book on it. It’s called a Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. I’m very much looking forward to reading it to see what he has to say about that.

THERAPIST: Is that right? That’s the next one.

CLIENT: Yea. I’m very curious to what he has to say about that.

THERAPIST: How old is he now?

CLIENT: How old is Sam Harris now? I don’t know. He’s like our age, isn’t he? A little older.

THERAPIST: Is he? No. Is that right?

CLIENT: I don’t know. He doesn’t seem that old.

THERAPIST: Didn’t he write that… the big book came out. Didn’t that come out a while ago, like 10 years? Maybe.

CLIENT: Maybe. He was young. He wasn’t even a PhD then.

THERAPIST: Oh, is that right? I don’t know much about him.

CLIENT: He was working on his PhD for neuroscience when he wrote the first one. [00:25:01]

THERAPIST: I know mostly through you and through the stuff that all… you’ll see in the popular… he’s out there.

CLIENT: At least he has stuff to say and Gregory Mole (sp?) doesn’t like him. And he doesn’t care for Gregory Mole (sp?).

THERAPIST: Who… I don’t know him.

CLIENT: He’s a liberal talking head. But one who’s very much afraid to criticize any religion. He’s like, “You can’t talk about Islam as being like this particular kind of religion.” He’s like, “Christianity killed a lot of people.” And the response is, yes, but they’re not doing that now. But were they doing that now, we’d be talking about Christianity. That’s not what is happening. We’re talking about Islam because there are sections of Islam that are dangerous and we need to address that. But there are still people who believe in these really dangerous things for the rest of us.

THERAPIST: Yea. No, he’s just going… so Harris is just going after the danger of faith as opposed to a particular…

CLIENT: Yea, so I guess there’s nothing to do with it being Islam.

THERAPIST: It’s a particular…

CLIENT: It’s what people believe and why they believe it.

THERAPIST: Right. [00:26:06]

CLIENT: So I’m building up quite a tolerance to marijuana again.

THERAPIST: What’d you notice?

CLIENT: It’s just it doesn’t last as long. It’s… and part of it this is a really a lighter weed which is good, which is better for me. Let’s me actually do the things I set out to do.

THERAPIST: Oh, and that’s what… it doesn’t sound… motivation…

CLIENT: Like clean the office and sorting the magic cards. It helps me do all the things I want to avoid. The math, instead of being so I mean, like, “Oh, why didn’t you do your math?” “Oh, so I can get high.”

THERAPIST: Yea, no, no. Right. It’s different. (pause)

CLIENT: So I like that very much. And still I notice the tolerance, too. I’m smoking most of the joint now. I go outside to smoke weed. [00:27:02] And I’m like I shouldn’t. I should be using the day for other because it’ll last a lot longer.

THERAPIST: Well, are you worried about it because of the money?

CLIENT: Yea. And with a vaporizer it’ll last a lot longer but it’s also harder to tell when I’ve had enough because it takes a little longer to set in. And so like…

THERAPIST: Is that right? It takes…

CLIENT: Yea, it takes a little longer to get a high. So…

THERAPIST: So with… if you’re smoking it, you’re smoking with a joint, it’ll get to your bloodstream. It’ll just get in really…

CLIENT: I think faster. But I think also is that you’re burning ash. And there’s oxygen stuff going on.

THERAPIST: That makes sense.

CLIENT: So I think it’s part of that feeling of like, oh no, I’m high. Well, that’s not a useful part of it. [00:28:02]

THERAPIST: Yea, but it’s still… like you’re saying it’s still affecting your brain.

CLIENT: You’re not taking the first bites of this donut, right, because my body starts to metabolize food. It’s like OK, now you can metabolize the food (inaudible at 00:28:17) marijuana. So I don’t. (pause) Anyway…

THERAPIST: What do you notice? That if you eat, it’ll… (pause)

CLIENT: So I don’t. Late in the morning, the first in the morning I want to do is smoke weed. Sometimes when I’m being smart about it, I’ll have a cup of yogurt, like a tiny bit, just to get something in there. But oftentimes I’ll wake up and it’d be 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I’m like I haven’t eaten yet but…

THERAPIST: It’s… one thing that’s just hit me and I’ve kind of known this maybe without formulating it entirely is that you feel it’s almost like weed is so much more reliable than food to you. [00:29:12] In some way it’s like you think more about… you’ve got a connection with weed that’s so much more like this. “I think about it. It’s not conflicted to me at all. It comes readily to mind. It’s easy as opposed to food. It’s food you have to kind of like…”

CLIENT: Food has always been an effort. It has always been an effort.

THERAPIST: There was scarcity, though, wasn’t it?

CLIENT: A little scarcity. But for now, for whatever reason it’s preparation of it and eating of it. And yea, there was always scarcity for a long time. So… and I don’t know, man. (pause)

THERAPIST: But weed has always been something that so you can… you’ve always felt like, “I can get it.”

CLIENT: Well, now I do. [00:30:02] In my younger days it was always a crapshoot. Like what were you going to get? Who was going to sell it to you? Who had some? What were they charging for it?

THERAPIST: Harold or was it…

CLIENT: It was Harold. And before that it was just get what you can, right? Here in high school, who has weed? Oh, I don’t know. The ones whose parents will let them have some, that’s who. (pause) I still remember that day [] comes to pick us all up in the van. It’s after we had been in (inaudible at 00:30:38) was acting all cool and chill. Trying not to be like oh, we’re fine with weed. Fine with weed. And Logan buys some weed, takes it under his shirt. His mom comes to pick us up. Get in the van. He’s in the front seat. He takes it out between the two seats and shows it to her. And she’s just is, “Oh Logan.” She’s like, “That will not be enough for all of you,” because he was throwing a good party that night. He’s like, “No, I’m just really kind of feel like it’s going to go on.” And she’s like, “All right, are you sure?”

And it’s funny. I tell that story as if I were there because that’s how I told it after he told it to me. The story I incorporated myself into. And I told you I used to do that. Just his memory was shit. So it wasn’t good anyway but he was also smoking weed. And I think part of them also was just like, “I smoke weed. I don’t have to remember shit.” And that’s some sort of excuse that he had. And…

THERAPIST: It sounds like a nice memory to make in yours.

CLIENT: Sure. I did that with a lot of my social memories because I wasn’t invited (inaudible at 00:31:49) for the most part except for that one part where we all went to the barn and smoked weed and dropped acid (inaudible at 00:31:55) house. That was a fucking bomb. That’s probably one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my entire life. And I think that’s the sort of the party you can only have when you’re a teenager in high school. It’s a beautiful spring night. There’s this barn that’s made up with music and there’s couches up there in the loft. And Latrey Hughes (sp?) is out on the lawn.

THERAPIST: The wood?

CLIENT: [] (sp?) in out on the lawn lying there surrounded by these lawn mowers. There are all these broken down lawn mowers which I wasn’t positive were real. But at the same time it didn’t matter.

THERAPIST: Oh, because you were tripping.

CLIENT: And I remember her ass was so perfect. I was looking at it. Oh, I reached out and so I poked it. She was like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I just want to poke it.” And then so I mean that was weird. I mean, hell, was hot as hell. [00:33:07] There was a point in which I thought the ground was vertical which was very interesting and quite a night, quite a night, my first psychedelic experience. Amazing that the world could be so different. And same… (crosstalk)

THERAPIST: You can change it or it could be changed.

CLIENT: It can be changed. The perception of it can be changed.

THERAPIST: Powerful.

CLIENT: Very much so. And the realization we could do more of these things later is that everything that you experience comes from you. These are all things… so if you are afraid, if you are worried, this is not the experience for you. If you’re like, “Oh no, I got a bad trip.” So, well, if you’re really worrying about a bad trip, then maybe but likely you’re not. Just get some music you like. [00:34:16] So hang out some place you feel comfortable and safe and just be like, what’s decent or fun?

THERAPIST: Yea, because there’s a sense that you’re going to… not only that the bad… that the trip will be bad but that it’ll be worse than your current perception. And… but if you’re going with the idea that it’ll be better…

CLIENT: The time when I couldn’t find the back of my head and which was hard. I was pretty sure my fire in the back and had to drink so much water because of all the cobwebs in my throat. That was a pretty negative experience and it was only a few hours at the time. But I remember thinking at that point, it’s like this is the problem with tripping is once you’re tripping, you’re tripping. You’re there for eight hours.

THERAPIST: It’s… it does control you for about eight hours at least or at least for more. [00:35:02]

CLIENT: Yea, it’s like this is what is happening.

THERAPIST: Yea. You’re not getting out.

CLIENT: The things you see are very likely not real. You will experience things and make connections that aren’t correct. You may experience anesthesia and other things. You may have shared hallucinations which as I come to look at them later on are group influenced hallucinations. Like, oh my God, I’m seeing the Tikiman. Oh my God, where is the Tikiman. Oh, they’re doing those things. Oh, there they are.

THERAPIST: It’s suggestive.

CLIENT: It’s suggestive and as we told the stories to each other, it becomes this more realistic thing we perceive or believe we perceive. And that was the last time I remember. It was amazing, just absolutely amazing. Beautiful, clean stuff made by a chemistry student who graduated 20 years ago, 30 years ago. And it was called Purple Jesus because his painting was a big purple Jesus on a cross and it cut up into tiny little pieces. [00:36:05]

THERAPIST: That was the paper that he put it on.

CLIENT: Yea, on a tiny little piece of paper you put under your tongue for at least a half hour they say. It doesn’t take that long really. But whatever, it’s under your tongue. And a half hour, all of a sudden things get a little different. Like the third time I dropped acid my friend Oliver and a bunch of other frat people (inaudible at 00:36:33) and they’re like, “It’s not kicking in yet. Not kicking in.” And then we go to McDonald’s and I’m getting my straw and it’s a little bigger than the straws that I’m used to. And I look at Oliver. I go, “Oliver isn’t this straw just a little bit bigger?” And he starts to giggle. And I’m like this is it. It’s beginning. This is… at one point during that trip, I said something or did something so offensive that everyone left the room. I have no idea what it was. [00:37:04]

THERAPIST: No one told you?

CLIENT: Well, the host was like, “I can’t believe the way you’re behaving.” He’s like, “Everyone has left because of you.” And the problem is like maybe that’s just what he perceived. He was tripping, too. I don’t know. My friend turned into Donald the Tiger briefly. There was game that we would play. There was a very complex game being played. The rules to which no one would tell me but very clearly there was a game being played. There was no game, right? The rules that I perceived were made up as they went along. A lot of it was funny so directly in the moment right now, right now, right now, right now, right now. Staying in that moment forever because we were listening to fucking Phish, right? Because what else would you listen to when you’re tripping except for the Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd? And listen to Phish and they’re doing… it was a live concert. [00:38:03] Because of course they’re live concerts. And it was in one of those jazzy like… we finished the song ten minutes ago but now we’re just fucking jerking off with music.

THERAPIST: The music is off but you’re just…

CLIENT: Well, no. The music is still going but the song ended. It was Phish. It was like they finished the song. They’re like, “Now we’re just going to like play for 10 or 20 more minutes.” This… like jams.

THERAPIST: Jams.

CLIENT: Jams, yea, for whatever. And I’m following the notes and I’m on a roller coaster that follows the notes in space. And then the music just stops. They go from long high pitched note. That was the end of it and I’m cast off the rail into space. It’s floating through space. There’s a moment where I’m like, oh no. And I was trying to scroll through it but I’m in space now.

THERAPIST: I’m not going to come back.

CLIENT: Yea. And this… yea, what happens if this is where I am? And this giant scroll unrolls and forming and said everything is OK right now. (pause) [00:39:01] And I was like, yea, try to keep that moment. And I’ve tried to keep that moment from time to time like, yea, that’s right. That’s… everything is OK right now, right? There is worry in the future but Sam Harris says it quite well. There’s always now. The past is memory. There’s a thought arising the present as in the future. (pause) So…

THERAPIST: Yea, a major part of meditation.

CLIENT: Yea, totally which I keep trying to do. It’s hard. I fell off the yoga wagon hard and I’m like I need to get back on that wagon. And I’m so hard on that little wagon that I just don’t do it.

THERAPIST: Is that… yea, you get too hard on yourself sometimes?

CLIENT: Yea. Every day I’m like, oh, I should it today. If I don’t do it today, I’m a bad person. So I don’t do it that day because I don’t like feeling like I’m going to be a bad person.

THERAPIST: Don’t tell me what to do so…

CLIENT: Yea, don’t tell me what to do. Who the fuck do you think you are? I’m waking every fucking day, (inaudible at 00:40:03). So I also saw Frozen the other night. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Frozen.

THERAPIST: Yea, the cartoon.

CLIENT: Have you seen it?

THERAPIST: No.

CLIENT: You should see Frozen. Every human being should see Frozen.

THERAPIST: Really?

CLIENT: Especially any human being who is not a fully realized human being.

THERAPIST: That makes us all, right?

CLIENT: Yea, that’s true but especially the younger ones. It’s such a wonderful film.

THERAPIST: Oh, I see. Kids, you mean.

CLIENT: The first Disney princess where it’s two princesses. One of the rare ones it doesn’t have with a wedding with a story that’s not about a love between a boy and a girl. [00:40:59] Although there is like a fraction of budding romance. That’s we never get really past that by the end of the film. There’s like, oh, they’re probably going to develop some sort of relationship later. As opposed to like, oh, now we’re in love forever. There’s a whole like reference to she meets this guy. She’s like, “I’m going to marry him.” And then she’s like, “I can’t marry him.” She goes, “You meet him today. You can’t marry a man you just met today,” which is a total disregard of all Disney princess films.

THERAPIST: Is it a Disney?

CLIENT: Yea. This is. It’s their new… they’ve realized the time has changed like Brave. It’s Frozen. This is the way to go.

THERAPIST: So what is Frozen? What’s it about?

CLIENT: Frozen is… there’s these two princesses, one of which is an ice sorceress. The other which is a little sister and she loves to play… they love to play together. She’ll make like snowbanks and snowmen and she’ll like to… just like make all this ice stuff and the other one will play on it. [00:42:05] And… but there’s an accident. She hits her on the head with like an ice beam and knocks her unconscious. They have to take her to the trolls and the trolls are like, “Oh, good thing you hit her on the head.” So they fix her but they’re like… and this is the dumb part. They’re like, “What we’ll just do is remove all memory of magic from the little girl’s head so she won’t remember that her sister has magic.” So then she won’t want to play magic with her sister which is actually the dumbest fucking thing you should do and your parents go along with it. But her parents teach to like conceal because her emotions make it more difficult to… (crosstalk)

THERAPIST: The older one still has magic.

CLIENT: Yea, the older one does. And her emotions make it hard to control. And so when she’s near her sister she’s worried that if she feels… if she loses control, she’ll hurt her sister. So she grows up ignoring her sister over the years and almost automatically. [00:43:02]

And there’s this… and the great premise of the movie actually is that the parents die and it’s Elsa’s turn to take over as queen, right? And they have this big event for the first time ever. Elsa always wears gloves so she doesn’t like freeze stuff she touches and there’s a moment of the ceremony she had to hold like a ball and a scepter without her gloves on. She has to really concentrate not to let the panic of the audience freeze these things.

And there’s a whole thing that goes on and it was at the grand ball which like loses it, she loses it. She just freezes a bunch of shit and people are like, “Holy shit. Sorceress. Oh my God.” And she’s like, “I’m out.” She bails. And as she storms up the mountain, she doesn’t realize she’s frozen the entire area. She has no idea she’s doing this. But then she has the great song which is like the title song, the Let It Go song, which is where she’s… the best part is she’s… for years she’s hidden this power. [00:44:09]

And she keeps telling herself the mantra. Her father was always like, conceal it, don’t feel it. It’s like this whole thing she does. Don’t let them know. And there’s a breakthrough moment where she’s like, “Well, now they know.” So she’s like, “Fuck it. I’m in ice sorceress.” So she’s like doing all this… she builds a fucking ice castle. It’s fucking great. And the best part of the movie is the other princess is immediately like, “Oh, you’re an ice sorceress. OK. I’m going to come find you. I’m not mad or afraid. I get it. This is why you’ve been avoiding me.”

THERAPIST: I need to see this.

CLIENT: Princess goes (inaudible at 00:44:56).

THERAPIST: That’s real nice.

CLIENT: It’s very good. [00:45:01] You should see it.

THERAPIST: Yea, it won the Best Animated film.

CLIENT: God damn right it did.

THERAPIST: And the Best Song.

CLIENT: You see it.

THERAPIST: I’ll see it.

CLIENT: It’s like $5.50 at the Apple Cinemas now.

THERAPIST: I’ll go see it.

CLIENT: Or ten bucks now.

THERAPIST: Is it on…

CLIENT: You got to buy it if you put it on digital. It’s ten bucks which is a movie ticket in most places. It’s a fucking great film. (pause)

THERAPIST: Well, what’s that?

CLIENT: I don’t know. I just need to… there you go, so much of my life subjunctive. I hope to. I just need to. If I could only. If I could just.

THERAPIST: But what were you about to say?

CLIENT: Everything at once. [00:46:04] The math, the voice reel, the magic arts, the mini stuff, the graphing. And all these projects are starting to get to other projects. If I can clean up my crafting station I can craft. I can build little buildings, whatever. So… (pause) But whatever.

THERAPIST: It’s almost though like I was getting the sense of like you think about it and you… then like there’s this sense of it being a very plotting kind of thing to get there. All these…

CLIENT: Yea. Or am I going to do it? And the truth is I was going to go home and just fucking do it.

THERAPIST: Well, man. You’re close.

CLIENT: Yea. Well, in that regards.

THERAPIST: Close to it. Well, and you’re close to this degree.

CLIENT: I am. I am. It’s very close. It’s very close. [00:47:06]

THERAPIST: This has been a lot of steps to get to where you are right now.

CLIENT: It’s true. It’s the opposite of fighting. If you’re in a fight you’ve made a great series of mistakes leading up to that moment. So… and that’s the key. Don’t make those mistakes. Just don’t do it. I’ve never been in a bar fight because I don’t really go to bars. I’ve trained bar fighting. It’s awful. It’s the worst possible thing. I can’t imagine being in a more cramped space. (pause) [00:48:01] It’s the irritation. It’s the fucking disease, right? Isn’t that it? The thing like you start and stop and start and stop and start and stop.

THERAPIST: What do…

CLIENT: Start projects and stop projects and start projects.

THERAPIST: I think a lot of it is there’s a real rush of feelings. I mean, that’s the way I’d characterize it but it seems like… but the way you describe it, it seems like a rush of feelings when you set forth to do something like study, put a voice reel together the doubts, the anxieties, uncertainties that aren’t just abstract things that people encounter. [00:49:00] They’re felt deeply and they’re obstructive.

CLIENT: They are obstructive. They are. So how does one…

THERAPIST: But they’re… that… it’s in that in itself that like you’ve gotten to where you are. You’ve like encountered those limits and then grown from it. You hit walls with this math. All along the way you described it. And then you find your way out of it. That’s the way I hear it.

CLIENT: That’s true but it seems unacceptable.

THERAPIST: Yea. No, that’s the thing. There’s something inside of you, too.

CLIENT: It seems unacceptable.

THERAPIST: That this is the… this book is unacceptable.

CLIENT: Especially the part of me that’s like where the fuck is your voice reel, right? You went to fucking school for this. This is what your degree is in is fucking acting. So why aren’t you using some part of that? (pause) Carl, I was so talented. [00:50:00] If I hadn’t missed that rehearsal, I’d be on Saturday Night Live years ago. I was that close.

THERAPIST: What was it?

CLIENT: I had a contact who was going to get me into the feeder program.

THERAPIST: Into the what?

CLIENT: Into the feeder program.

THERAPIST: Is that… which was what?

CLIENT: Like the Second City thing in Chicago. And yea, that’s their feeder program for SNL.

THERAPIST: Yea, that and the (inaudible at 00:50:23).

CLIENT: And he was going to hook me up with it and missed the rehearsal and he cut me off. He was like, “I’m done.” He’s like, “You made a mistake. Can’t have any mistakes in the business.” Not unless you’re Charlie Sheen.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: (inaudible at 00:50:43).

THERAPIST: No, I think… but I think that’s right. There’s something that feels just very unacceptable to it not being perfect.

CLIENT: Clearly, right? I mean, and that’s the whole thing. Why aren’t I perfect? [00:51:00] And I spend so much time worrying about why I’m not perfect that I don’t perfect myself. I spend all this time thinking about I could be doing yoga and looking at my body again. I would love to be into yoga so I wouldn’t be such a fat slob. And just like I bent to put my shoes on this morning standing upstairs and this got in the way. I’m so squished. I was like, well, that’s uncomfortable.

THERAPIST: It confronts you. (pause)

CLIENT: The tattoos I was going to get I’ve put off. (pause) It’s like the thing I’m going to get when I actually follow through with my body. When the body looks the way I want it to, then I can follow through on that.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: But right now it doesn’t doing anything. It’s like why consecrate something that isn’t…

THERAPIST: Well, it’s just like the… all the… I think, well, exactly what you’re saying when you’re encountering something like, “All right, I want to get this done in my office but there’s this in the way. It’s not done yet.” [00:52:08]

CLIENT: I need to finish that. Especially now I’m so close. So very close.

THERAPIST: Well, so we’ll pick up on Monday.

CLIENT: We’ll pick up on Monday. (pause) I’m stiff.

THERAPIST: Yea?

CLIENT: Yea, well, I’m moving all that furniture by myself. I was using my legs most of it. Some of your back goes into to it instead. Before I mentioned yoga and the absence thereof.

THERAPIST: Did you find any of a challenge in the yoga (inaudible at 00:52:56)?

CLIENT: Challenging to do it.

THERAPIST: Just to start.

CLIENT: Just do it. But no, it’s challenging, that aspect of like this is as far as I can go right now. So it’s a very different sort of thing. It’s the opposite of craft (ph).

END TRANSCRIPT