Hello From Indio Iconoclast

I'm a 45 year old man who has never felt like a native of this planet. From the time I was born I was always restless and irritable. My skin never felt like my own and it would crawl on my body... I remember standing in front of the mirror as a toddler and pulling on my cheeks telling my mother I hated my face and wished I could pull it off and put on another one... I also had strange neuroses and idiosynchrises like being driven INSANE by the seem in my socks or requiring that my parents endlessly retie my shoes to make them tighter to the point where they would say I was going to lose circulation and need my foot amputated to try and scare me into a state of reasonability. Nothing worked, I remember pulling my fresh dental fillings out using the button of my denim jacket because the space it occupied didn't feel right in my mouth. I cite these things to reveal an alien pattern of behavior and state of being that haunted my early existence. I was a complicated child, but I posit that all of the neuroses I manifested were just results of eccentricity borne of an elevated IQ and awareness of my human experience. Everything seemed too loud, too bright, and too caustic... be it sensations or emotions or thoughts. I experienced synesthesia where I could taste sound and color and the boundaries between my senses were blurred almost like an infant experiences (which explains the constant awestruck facial expression and pawing and cooing at the air that most infants do...)
As I grew older my parents at times thought I was on the autistic spectrum or born with Asperger's syndrome; which was an astute observation as I would be placed in gifted and talented advanced placement classes with the smartest kids in the class and then kicked out after the first week for behavioral reasons like staring out the window, climbing furniture, or being generally restless and disruptive... In time I was diagnosed but never medicated for ADHD, but my parents, being a medical family of an NP heart transplant coordinator and a Dentist, were very anti-chemical intervention... As a result I suffered through my youth because I could easily make honor roll and excel in sports at every level I encountered yet never reached my potential due to depression and feeling out of place.
In my teens, I discovered drugs and alcohol and began to self-medicate... Marijuana at 12, Alcohol at 13, then amphetamines, benzos, and opioid painkillers at 15, then hallucinogens that same year, ecstacy and cocaine at 17 and 18, and then finally dropping out of college at 20 and finding myself cast down from the Upper Middle class of my former life into the hell of the county homeless shelter due to my addiction. It was there that I mustered the first desire to self-improve through rehabilitation, and I attended a 90 day inpatient run by Franciscan Friars in NYC metro area of my birth... I devoured the classics of self-improvement and philosophy : Marcus Aurelius, Tao Te Ching, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, the I Ching, the Diamond and Lotus Sutras, Siddhartha, Radiant Mind, The Holographic Universe by Dr. Michael Talbot, etc. I was a philosopher and a seeker. I would have open mic style dissertations like TED talks with my friends discussing the nature of reality, the spirit, the totality of existence, morality, the meaning of life, gender, motivation, science, quantum physics, and synchronicity... It was a heady time with occasional acid assisted exploration and cataloging of life as we experienced it. But the harder substances brought my external world to a crashing halt and required attention at that rehab, the second of many, but the first where I self-applied the principles of sobriety and self-care. I made it ten months before imploding due to my youthful hubris and know-it-all self will...
Then I entered the beginning of the darkest and longest chapter of my addiction, Heroin and hardcore opioids such as fentanyl, methadone (which I kicked on four separate occasions). The depression and anhedonia inherent in recovery from the altered psycho chemical systems of a recovering addict had me in a loop of despair for over 2 decades... During that time I spent the decade of my twenties as a professional patient on Medicaid in my wonderfully blue home state of NY. In the NYC metro area I attended 50+ rehabilitation centers between the levels of detox, inpatient, long-term inpatient, 90 inpatient and Therapeutic community level (9to12 months), and halfway and 3/4 houses. My 30's were a decade of incarceration, where I served 11 years in 4 states including NY, NC, California, and Texas. I finally landed in Austin Texas at 42 years of age intended to revivify my stagnant musical career, and I relapsed and went on the run to end all runs... For two years I slept on pavement, frequented hobo camps, consumed meth and fentanyl IV and always while sipping on my trusty tall boy of malt liquor... I knew I was directionless but needed a solid bottom to push off of. I ran for a period with two felony charges over my head and a warrant for my arrest out of Texas. I went to Charlotte NC at the request of my ex girlfriend whom I loved so much I would've moved heaven and earth for her. I walked off of the methadone maintenance program at 150mg daily dose and hopped on a Charlotte, NC bound greyhound around Christmas 2024, knowing full well that withdrawing from a 1g per day IV fentanyl habit on top of my 150mg daily methadone dose that I was a zombie with a limited shelf life on the street. Upon my arrival I sat in the rain drinking at 6am in the december cold in the shadow of the skyscrapers of charlotte with my guitar and a carry all of my clothes when the object of my affection never answered the phone when I got there. I staggered around town for a few days in deteriorating health until I collapsed and ended up in an ambulance. I was brought to the hospital and nursed back to health with a week of methadone doses and fentanyl IV in the hospital before they got me a return ticket to Austin... All the while my entreaties to my Lauren, my Baby Knockout, were unanswered and I slumped in defeat as I made my way back to Austin... I got stuck in New Orleans for three days a week before the terrorist attacks Christmas week and then finally dragged my defeated heartbroken ass back to the fentanyl hell of Austin, but at least I'd beaten my way off of methadone for the 4th time.
Within a months time, my health so bad (see photos for comparison of me 8months ago and now) that I weighed 160lbs, when I hadn't weighed that since 9th grade and my frame was accustomed to being 209lbs. at 5'9"... In a Xanax blackout the police picked me up and I detoxed in a cell in Austin city jail, in such bad shape that it took 11 days for me to be medically cleared from withdrawal sickness and sent to the main jail in Del Valle, where at least I would be able to move about the block and watch TV and read books to pass the time. This was in January of 2025. I was released on the mend on February 17th and immediately returned to my old haunts on William Cannon and I-35 in south Austin, and in a 24hour period I overdosed and was narcanned 4 times. The first 3 times were just like awakening, but the 4th time happened in the South Park meadows bathroom and I was double dosed by a passerby who didn't realize how narcan worked, and in agony I screamed on the floor of that bathroom for an hour as I felt as though I'd been skinned alive and thrown into a vat of acid. I was hallucinating I was in such terrible precipitated withdrawal, and it was then, at 44 years of age, that I landed in the hospital, called San Antonio Recovery Center, and was picked up via Uber at my friend Honky's house the next morning, a Sunday, and driven to my new life in San Antonio for my final and most evolved metamorphosis to begin.
As though I were an insect molting into a new shell and shedding the old; I slept for almost a week and had my roommates checking that I was breathing with a hand mirror... After that I began the process I've lived many times before... Immersing myself in exercise and therapeutic work through the 12 steps and self-appraisal and perfection, I journal everyday and go to the gym for 3 hours each day. I'm back in the best shape of my life at 196lbs and still ascending and adapting and evolving and perfecting in the triple existence of my mind body and spirit... I would like you all to join me on this journey, answering questions and sharing the experience of putting a life back together aiming for the highest echelons of physical, mental, and spiritual existence, sharing experiences, answering questions, mentoring and enlightening one another, and hopefully creating a Jedi counsel of sorts. Elevated beings navigating the mysteries of life through the banal one day at a time experience we all have to drudge through. I hope I can create an interactive arena for ascension and immortality and I need all of your help to do it. I see this becoming part journal/chronicle, part forum, a virtual agora for the Platos, Socrates', and Aristotles of my fellow demigods making their way through this confounding Labrynth of mundane life. Will you help me brothers and sisters?