The T-zone

...the PATRIOT Act is signed into law, October 26th, 2001.

If you voted for George W. Bush, this is all your fault.

Will be updating more throughout the day if I have free time during a
class with a computer. :-p

Latest news:
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/13000365.htm

Bit scary, don't you think?

WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN. Don't let your rights get raped.

Seriously, what the fuck? Always whining. "Waaaaaaaahhhh, I need some dark! Boo-hoo, I'm going to go cry in the corner and write bad poetry! I cut myself to take away the pain!"

Does anyone but me see the irony in that last self-pitying statement?

If you actually have a problem with cutting, I know it's difficult (come on, if I could have sex with coffee, I would... I know what bad habits are like) and I urge you to seek help. If you don't, fuck you; stop slashing up your arms for attention. I've said this before... do YOU know what's coming? Here it is: not only is cutting yourself for attention FUCKING RETARDED, it's downright insulting to people who actually have problems. I'm almost a full-blown sociopath. If I could be offended by someone pretending to be sociopathic because they think it makes them "cool," I would. Instead, I think very nice thoughts about kicking their teeth into the back of their skull. You'd be surprised... that works wonders for anger. Yeah, I'd say I'm pretty goddamn sociopathic. I only know how I feel and I seldom consider the feelings or basic rights of others when thinking out my actions. Everything I do is about me, and you'd understand that if you weren't so goddamn insensitive about insensitivity. Fuck you.

Anyway, emo kids. Always fucking whining, but it's the darndest thing - I've surveyed the population of emo kids (where I live, at least) and have found that almost all of them are upper-class white kids! What the fuck do you have to complain about?

Take me for an example. I'm not emo, but I sure as hell love to complain. What the fuck do I have to complain about? Oh, that's right: nothing. There's nothing wrong with my life AT ALL, so I'm reduced to complaining about people who do exactly what I'm doing: complaining when there's nothing to complain about.

"Oh but my parents don't love me!" Psh, you bet they do if they've put up with your bullshit for all 13 years of your life. They feed you, put a roof over your head, buy the eyeliner that you make trendy-ass teardrop patterns on your face with, and shell out big bucks JUST SO YOU CAN SHOP AT HOT TOPIC AND WEAR YOUR COLLAR FLIPPED UP LIKE ALL THE OTHER KIDS. Hell, they probably bought the Fallout Boy album you're listening to right now. Shut the fuck up. Your parents love you, but you won't realize that until it's too late to do something about it and you'll be reduced to thanking them for the rest of your life for being so understanding and not injecting you with carbolic acid for your stupid emo bullshit.

"Nobody understands me!" More bullshit please! Newsflash: you are in high school. EVERYONE understands you. Please, stop with the "tortured artist" bullshit. Not only does everyone understand you, they're tired of hearing you bitch about how you think they don't.

The music you listen to SUCKS. Hawthorne Heights, Good Charlotte, The All American Rejects, Blink 182... the common factor here is that they all suck harder than a crack whore for a $20. They are designed to make money from tools like you by pandering to your petty insecurities. "O noes, I like a guy but he doesn't like me back! Now I shall launch into an endless parade of self-pity and pretend that I am in love!"

There are plenty of teens capable of love. Maybe, just maybe, that's something emo kids can do that the other trendy assholes can't. I'm actually quite introverted myself, so I always know exactly how I feel. Rarely do I have to even stop and think about it - I just KNOW. It has to do with eliminating the ego, and I have to be honest: emo kids are damn good at doing exactly what I do, just with a more morbid edge.

Things I hate:

72. Emo kids.
    

FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations

I told you! I fucking told you! The PATRIOT Act is UNCONSTITUTIONAL and is being DOWNRIGHT ABUSED by The Man. Do you see now why I'm so upset about it?

What's this? You want to SEE this evidence? Be my guest.

In other news, +1 for the public education system when students at Pope John XIII (parochial high school) were banned from blogging, in a stunning violation of free speech that you can do absolutely jack-shit about because you're under 18 and have no Constitutional rights, you silly children!

If you haven't joined Amnesty International, you really should.

"Think with your friends. Create new realities. Philosophy is a team sport." -Timothy Leary

Think about it.

The musings below are a product of very deep theta-stage meditation.

You don't need chemicals to alter your consciousness.

Look at it this way: you drop acid and trip face, fractals, new colors, all sorts of crazy thoughts. Where did all those things come from? 200 mcg of d-lysergic acid diethylamide? No, they came from you... drugs are nothing more than a key to unlock different states of consciousness.

I'm pretty sure this was what Timothy Leary said before he drew up the 8-circuit model of human consciousness.

So how about those upper circuits, eh?

When we start colonizing the moon, I'll get back to you. ;)

With short informational bursts in between. I don't remember the exact numbers for the gibberish I'm about to spout off. Google it if it's really that interesting, because I am by no means a neuroscience experts.

Lately, I have been using sound tones to change the dominant frequency in my brain. All the various frequency ranges are present in the brain, of course, but at any given time, one is dominant. It ranges from 0.2 - 30 hz - so I guess, theoretically, if you think hard enough, someone with a VERY good ear and a personal amplifier could actually HEAR your brain working. Wild. Since the amount of current your brain uses is so small, however, the sound amplifier would have to amplify sound as powerfully as some brain scans - the electroencephalogram, I think - magnify the magnetic fields created by firing synapses.

When you're very alert (doing something that requires concentration, like taking finals for vector mathematics), your brain is in a beta state. Theoretically, your brain is in a beta state in school. Don't confuse this with physical alertness - I'm absolutely exhausted right now but at the rate I'm thinking my brain is probably operating somewhere in the frequency of 20-30hz. Your brain is probably in a beta state when you're talking with your friends at lunch and maybe when you're doing classwork - if you actually put in any effort.

The alpha range is a "relaxed but alert" sort of state. Now don't get me wrong - you can be nervous as hell and still be operating on an alpha frequency. Remember, it's all MENTAL. Theta is associated with light sleep and drowsiness, but you can be running a marathon and still be in theta. It's all in the mind. Physical effects are often there for me, though, but I don't want to confuse cause and effect. I'm pretty sure that it's the brain that affects the body, not vice-versa. I have a hard time staying physically alert when I'm mentally exhausted, but I can be mentally alert and be VERY tired physically, as is the case right now. I'm going into a theta state. Self-hypnosis and an uncensored stream of thought. You're going to love this. After this, I'll probably sleep for a bit - I'm supposed to be waking up in 2 1/2 hours.

I'll skip over gamma waves because, well - they're just bad news. They're usually associated with anger and violence. Some people try to use them for out-of-body-experiences. Stick with the thetas. That's like trying to use PCP to alter your consciousness - marijuana is safer, easier, and does it better. :-)

It's working, my brain is starting to slow. I get tension headaches when I think too hard. I have been on a beta frequency for nearly 7 hours though, thinking nonstop, jumping from topic to topic. I made a lot of profound realizations. I am going to try to share them with you now, if I can remember them and not ramble too much. When I start to think quickly, I ramble, and the only way to record my thoughts in "real time" is to tape them. I can type at nearly 140 WPM, but I talk a LOT faster. If I write down fragments of ideas, I forget what I was going to say. I have a slew of new ideas for that that cropped up since I wrote the last sentence. I'm already thinking about what to write as a conclusion - that's how goddamn fast I am today.

Ironically enough, I almost fell asleep during school. They prescribe Adderall to kids that they think have trouble in school, not necessarily because they need it, but because it will fix the problem, even if it will cause a million bad side effects on the way there.

Adderall is 75% dextroamphetamine and 25% levoamphetamine. That's because amphetamine is a racemic molecule. Dexedrine is 100% dextroamphetamine, though it's hardly prescribed anymore. The only real use is for Air Force fighter pilots - it's the "go pill" they pop before takeoff. That seems like a REALLY STUPID idea at first, but it actually probably saves their lives. I'll explain and then return to the explanation of the chemistry behind Adderall, followed by a description of more brain frequencies.

Dextroamphetamine is a vasoconstrictor. That means it tightens the blood vessels (the opposite of caffeine, which is a vasodialator, explaining why you get headaches when you stop drinking coffee). When you pull a lot of G's, your heart ISN'T STRONG ENOUGH TO PUMP BLOOD THROUGH YOUR BODY. Think about it - each "g" you pull is multiplying your weight by that number. Normal gravity is 1 g. You probably don't pull more than 3 g's on your average roller coaster - but you're pulling g's for one or two heartbeats at most.

I am doing a shit ton of research and math to ensure that you get accurate information. STFU.

Air Force pilots do INSANE banks and turns. No pilot in his right mind would attempt those - he'd pass out. They wear suits that inflate once they pull G's, constricting all their arteries and veins, letting the blood stay in their head a little bit longer. This ONLY works if they tighten EVERY SINGLE MUSCLE IN THEIR BODY. Try doing that. Strain every single muscle in your body as hard as you can. Hurts, doesn't it? Now do that for five seconds. Good. Now go find a metal canister propelled through empty space by highly combustible fluids, all the while knowing that any of a billion different factors could cause you a painful/embarrassing/fiery death. Accelerate to several times the speed of sound. Perform the sharpest downward swoop you can. Alright, if you're reading this, you should be at the bottom and your body should weigh about 12 times what it does in normal gravity. NOW try straining every muscle in your body. That's as hard as you did before, why isn't it working? HARDER! HARDER! COME ON! If you pass out, your plane is going to crash. Your LIFE and AN ENTIRE COUNTRY depends on you tightening those muscles and keeping the blood in your head, so snap to it!

Fact: Hemmerhoids are the number one complaint of Air Force pilots.

So you can see why it would be helpful to have some vasoconstrictors in your system up there. I'm going to guess that levoamphetamine doesn't work nearly as well, because it's more "mellow" than dextroamphetamine. Sit there and imagine how depressed you'd have to be in order to want to die. Now sink lower until you don't care HOW you die. Now stay that way for a few hours. That's an amphetamine comedown. Oh yeah, hallucinate, too, because you've probably been awake for a few days, and don't forget to feel searing pain all over your body from being active too long. Your eyes feel like someone's applied some steel wool to them, too. Ouch. This sucks. So much for speeding.

Yeah, so the next time Freevibe tells you that speed kills, think again. They might be biased against lady Mary Jane, but that doesn't make amphetamine any less of a demon. If you EVER heed ANY of my advice, DON'T use amphetamines. If you're taking Adderall for something, that's wonderful - you probably don't need it, but it sure is good for your concentration, isn't it? Well it's also killing off a lot of neurons - I'd get off it. No, you won't have withdrawal symptoms, not in the strictest sense of the word. Surprisingly enough, amphetamine is not addictive. Neither is meth, coke, or even crack. Here, let me go off on another tangent. By the way, just because I'm talking about stimulants doesn't mean I'm spun. Your hero T-zone quit the caffeine habit for about a week, but got back on the wagon yesterday. Since caffeine is NOT, in fact, addictive, a tolerance ONLY exists while the substance is in your system. The half-life of caffeine in the bloodstream is 4-6 hours, depending on the metabolism. It's definitely 4 for me - I am slightly hypoglycemic and I was INCREDIBLY hyperactive as a young child as a result. My metabolism is extremely fast - the ONLY way I can gain weight is by exercising, although I'm sure that's going to slow right down when I hit 30 and I'll have unsightly body fat like the rest of you, unless I change my lazy habits before then. I practice kung fu, play the bass, and type constantly (I have an Internet addiction, it's terrible, but I love it at the same time) at rather high speeds (I've already mentioned that I can type up to 140 WPM, nerdXcore, bitches), so I'll be arthritic and have carpal tunnel by then, and because of my mom's side of the family, I'll be going bald (if it weren't for them, I'd be going bald now). You can see why I'm eager to live while I'm young.

My daily intake of caffeine was about 400mg of caffeine at the time, and that's a generous estimate. After about 24 hours the amount in my system was negligible, and after three days it was completely gone. I'd have to be taking in several grams per day in order for a tolerance to still be there after a few days - theoretically the tolerance was gone after 24 hours since there were about 6.25mg of caffeine in my system by then. You consume dozens of times that much - well, its equivalent in theobromine and related alkaloids, anyway - when you eat a chocolate bar.

So, I think it's safe to say that after a week, I had no tolerance at all. I kicked off the day without caffeine but succumbed to temptation (I had four hours of sleep the night before, yes, my fault, so that meant that I had to fix it, and fix it I did) with a delicious cappuccino at lunch.

Of course, 8 hours later I had only a small amount of caffeine in my system. Two Mountain Dews and I'm STILL going. I can't say I like caffeine comedowns, either - but at least I get angry instead of depressed. I get tired and can sleep them off - IF I'm home. Rarely am I home when my caffeine levels get low. I need to invest in a lot of caffeine gum.

So, anyway, that's one reason why I'm up now. Another is that I spent about an hour in a theta wave hypnotic sort of trance earlier - something that I have yet to explain - and, remembering my brief experience with polyphasic sleep, took a half-hour nap around 4.

Bad move.

I tried polyphasic sleep (sleep for 30 minutes, stay awake for four hours, repeat until you fuck it up and don't want to go through two weeks of hell to set it back again, a month or two for most poeple, though drill sergeants can do it for years, or so I've heard). I am a VERY light sleeper. It took me three weeks to get adjusted to dropping straight into REM sleep - at least it was summer and I had nothing else to do. You know that zombie-like feeling you get when you've been up for so long that you aren't tired anymore but your eyes hurt and you can't even add 2+2 because it will make your brain overheat and melt out of your ears? Multiply that by a few weeks. It was worth it, though...

Because for a while, I was sleeping for only 3 hours a day and functioning PERFECTLY well. I have tried to survive on that much sleep before. I started to go totally schizophrenic after a few days. See, in those 3 hours of "regular" sleep I got no REM sleep at all. I have to sleep for 6-8 hours before I dream - I spend a lot of time in the higher stages, remember, light sleeper - so naturally I started to have a few auditory hallucinations. I saw shadows out of the corners of my eyes too, crazy shit. Sleep is GOOD. If you're a deep sleeper, though, you can get by on less sleep, BECAUSE...

You don't need NREM sleep! If you're sleeping and not dreaming, you're wasting time. REM sleep is what keeps your subconscious in check (although some people LIKE for their dreams to blend with reality, in which case, save several hundred dollars a month and drop Benadryl instead of acid) and is when your body does all its healing. NREM sleep is just a period of low physical activity - all it really is is a waste of calories. The human body is an inefficient machine.

I waste a lot of time in NREM sleep and get an average of 8 hours of sleep a night. This means that there are some nights I don't dream at all. Naturally, I'm a bit off my rocker. I like weekends because I get to catch up on that ol' sleep deficit - I really should be sleeping for about 12 hours a night because it takes so long for me to progress to REM sleep. My theory is that the more REM sleep you get, the more sane you are. My mom confirmed this theory - she has a better grasp on reality than anyone I know, and she's a deep sleeper - once she drifts off you have about 10 minutes to wake her up before she's GONE.

Being a light sleeper, I have no problem waking up - but if I get interrupted during REM sleep I'm pretty much fucked. There are five stages of sleep. 1, 2, and 3 are NREM. 4 is REM and 5 is a deeper stage of REM. 1, 2, and 3 are where I spend most of my time, and most of my REM sleep time is in stage 4. If I wake up shortly after entering REM sleep, I have no problems, but it takes about a half hour to figure out what planet I'm on. This is why my caffeine habituation periods are so sporadic. At this point in my life it takes about 6 hours to drift off into REM sleep, so getting 8 hours of sleep actually makes me MORE tired the next day (I am using BrainWave Generator to remedy this problem - I can put my brain into a beta-wave state each morning instead of relying on coffee to do it by waking my body up. Plus, there's no half life for a brain wave state. I have to be careful not to get TOO comfortable in school though - if I fall asleep once I'm zonked for the rest of the day. I don't know why, but I have a lot of trouble changing my dominant frequency. The higher the frequency, the harder it is for me to fall asleep. Physically, I'm EXHAUSTED most of the time. People think that's just laziness. It's not. I'm actually tired - my brain has more stamina than my body. Generally speaking, when I SHOULD be trying to sleep, I'm still in a beta state. After a few hours I sink down to a low enough alpha state that I can drift into theta and eventually delta in about 20 minutes. Usually, though, I engage in strenuous physical activity - pushups, chin-ups, crunches, weightlifting, whatever. On the plus side, my insomnia has made my BMI considerably more desirable. If I tire myself out enough, I guess my brain, in its oh-so-intelligent beta state, says, "gosh, sleep might be a good thing. Let's kick in some theta waves, yo."

I've been writing for OVER AN HOUR and I'm like four degrees removed from my original topic. Stay tuned. Scroll down if you want. Look at whatever you think is interesting. I'm in a very pleasant theta state right now - I feel unified with everything. I also happen to be open to hypnotic suggestion, so I am taking this time to rid myself of some bad habits. Brainwave entrainment can be very rewarding and quite worth-your-while. If you're into lucid dreaming, astral projection, OOBE's, etc., THIS IS FOR YOU. You should all download BrainWave Generator. If EVERYONE practiced self-hypnosis, I guarantee the world would be a better place.

I'm thinking too fast, can't stay on one topic. My IQ has been measured at over 170 before. I took three different tests and scored 175, 177, and 171, respectively. We can average them out to about 174. No matter how you look at it, that's at the genius level, but I don't seem any more intelligent than anyone else with an IQ over 130. Sometimes I notice this difference, but I think, "no, I can't have done it that fast. Everyone else is still thinking. I must be wrong."

Of course when I was right after all it doesn't stop me from doing it again. Hell, it'll probably happen dozens of times before my next update.

IQ is a shitty way to measure intelligence. IQ measures what you CAN do - in theory. Well, that's great - but there's not much to be said for it. I can't take an IQ and use it to design a puzzle that will really stretch your brain. I'm terrible at most puzzles, which leads me to another point:

How about this "multiple intelligences" thing?

Intelligence is define as "the application of knowledge." That being said, how can you even have "bodily-kinesthetic" intelligence? I guess you could, but you don't have to be too damn brainy to figure out the rules of basketball, football, baseball, water polo, croquet... whatever. You're even more retarded if you play rugby, because you're almost guaranteed to never have children - although that might be a good thing, considering the fact that you just decided to play a violent full-contact sport without even covering your testicles. If you're a chick, your bangability rating is negative if you play rugby, because any chick who plays rugby probably has more testosterone than a 9th-grade locker room, and it probably came in the form of anabolic steroids. Mia Hamm, I am talking to you.

(No, I'm not suggesting that she takes steroids. I have no reason to suspect her of it. Hell, she's more muscular than I am - I'm scared she'll come to my house and beat me up if I accuse her of anything. It takes some major balls to be a slightly nutty blogger-slash-webmaster. I don't think she's on steroids, either, because she lacks the other telltale signs of male puberty. If she really is on steroids she'll have the mindset of a pubescent teen and will understand this, so either way, it's cool. Mia Hamm, if you're reading, I don't usually dedicate entire paragraphs to people I know nothing about. I only know that you're a chick and you play soccer. I only used your name because it was the first chicklete that came to mind. Please don't hurt me, kthx.)

I'm just keeding!

We had to take a "multiple intelligences survey" in health class. I scored pretty goddamn high (8/10) on three different ones (ironically, my mathematical score was lower than my bodily-kinesthetic score, but I KICK ASS at math, so that means that theoretically I would be a bitchin' athlete), namely verbal-linguistic, musical, and intrapersonal. I was surprised at intrapersonal, because that was the first time I ever really considered myself an introvert. In case you haven't noticed, I have changed times a bagillion since I started this site - it's almost like someone put an egotistical prick into the "stop being an egotistical prick" box and out came The New T-zone!

You love me.

So anyway, zooming back to the chemistry of Adderall. 75% dextroamphetamine, 25% levoamphetamine. Dextroamphetamine has all the real recreational value - it's the speedy, euphoric high, although with a few nasty side effects (vasoconstriction means you can't get a boner, so if you're looking for a sex-a-thon, invest in some good ol' fashioned cocaine instead, you can treat comedowns the same way, I'll explain). Levoamphetamine is only there to "mellow out" the dextroamphetamine. The d-amp kicks you into high gear, and the l-amp lets you concentrate while you're tweaked. Someone who isn't me prefers Adderall to d-amp because d-amp makes him completely functionless, although the "thinking eight bagillion times faster than even Ice Cube could ever possibly talk" effect can be fun. If there was a way to record thoughts directly from my brain, damn, I would have flooded the fucking Internet by now. There are yottabites of information waiting to be released. You think this is a lot, shit, it took me two minutes to get this far and a helluvalot longer to type it all out. I started typing at 2:08 AM. Now it's 4:10. I stopped in between to write several pages to a friend of mine about whatever crossed my mind. It took like 20 minutes after I was done for him to finally respond. If I could type as fast as I think you would all be in the dust by now.

...and so the remaining fragments of my ego surface once again.

The only reason this WORKS is because I'm in a theta stage. If I hadn't pulled myself down into that hypnagogic-type state I wouldn't have said most of that shit. This ENTIRE POST would probably be condensed into 4 or 5 paragraphs. I haven't even finished the idea I started with.

So, beta is alert, alpha is relaxed but alert, gamma is bad. Theta is my favorite. Spending 40 minutes in the theta stage shaves several hours off the time I need to spend sleeping each night. Don't get me wrong, I like to sleep, but it's goddamn inefficient. Plus, if I spend 40 minutes in theta before I go to sleep, I can drop straight into REM sleep - provided I stop before I get pulled back up to beta. The preset is an hour long - 10 minutes to drop to theta, 40 minutes in theta, and then 10 minutes to build back up to beta so you're not drowsy when you're finished. I have another copy that I play before I go to sleep. That's what I've been listening to - I froze the parameters. I've been in theta for two hours. Hopefully, I won't fall asleep during school.

Mind you, theta-wave brain activity is no substitute for REM sleep. I'm going to experiment with that. Delta is the deep-sleep wave - very low frequency, 0.1 to 2 hz I believe, but high amplitude. If I could drop myself allllll the way down to a high delta, putting myself into a really deep theta before hand, could I induce lucid dreaming from a wakened state? I'd try it right now but I really should do my homework - I should have been working on it 7 hours ago. I was in theta-world instead. That's why I'm up so late, and all this time I could have been doing it, I've been showing you the door to another world that's unlocked by a simply brainwave frequency.

BrainWave Generator. Try it; you'll like it. If you do, you can buy it - or find a keygen somewhere if you're an unscrupulous sort of person. This is one piece of software I ACTUALLY BOUGHT, because it wasn't lame enough to pirate, and I even pirated DOOM III, so that should give you an idea of how high this ranks on T-zone's Scale of Awesome Shit.

Oh yeah, beating a speed comedown...

Well you're going to be depressed. You're going to think about all the negative things in your life. You will be more depressed than you've ever been - unless you've rolled before. Are E comedowns depressing? Someone let me know. I have never done E - or speed for that matter, of course, because those things are for people that are risk-takers and I never take risks, oh wait, except I leave the house every day, not to mention that every molecule I breathe in is one more molecule that has an infinitesimally small chance of causing me to spontaneously combust.

So, you're going to want to die. You're going to consider suicide, because this depression is worse than some stupid comedown, you were depressed all along, you just didn't notice because you were speeding. Wrong, bitch. You're depressed because you're coming down. There are a few options here:
1. Take more speed. After a while, you're going to do this even though you really don't want to. You're probably going to keep going until you run out, then take your comedown, steal some money, and go buy more central nervous system stimulants. Just because it isn't addictive doesn't mean you can't have a nasty habit. Alcohol is addictive, but I'd bet money that more is spent annually in the US by speed freaks than alcoholics. Of course, alcohol is a depressant and speed is a stimulant, not to mention that if you read my homebrewing guide you can get wasted for under a dollar, but speed is - what's the going price these days, anyway? Well if you want to buy Adderall or Dexedrine, probably $10 for 3 days' worth. I'm just guesstimating. Guesstimating - what a Europeanized-North-American word. I say Europeanized because if it was really North American, the Indians would have been using it long before we got here. Ironic that I downplay you goddamn Germans (I'm almost a full-blooded German, it's OK, I can say that, and the rest of me is Welsh and Irish) for coming over here with all your bloody diseases and call Native Americans "Indians" in the same sentence. To be fair, calling them Indians really highlights Columbus' total ignorance of hyperbolic geometry - and I heard somewhere that now whenever anyone says it it's short for "indigenous people" anyway.

But what about the Eskimos? Nobody loves them. I'm not even sure that's the right word for them. Geez, I live in this country and I don't even know what the original inhabitants are called - oh well, I have an A in US History. AT LEAST WE'RE NOT LEAVING CHILDREN BEHIND.

Do you find it at all amusing when history textbooks use the term "African American" to avoid using the word "black?" Sure, the book calls me white, but the Puerto Rican guy who sits next to me is an "African American." Trego, I'm talking to you.

Wait a minute. If he's Puerto Rican, why are we calling him "African American?" There are white people born in Africa. If they move to America, they're African American. Similarly, black people don't have to come from Africa - or even be of African descent. Look at Bob Marley. If you called him an African American he'd probably just blow marijuana smoke in your stupid monkey face and say, "I'm Jamaican, mon," while you choked all over the place, because damn, you can't ghost a hit worth SHIT.

I think he was Jamaican, but in Buffalo Soldier, he said he was "stolen from Africa." I KNOW Rastafarians are Jamaican. Why didn't he say "stolen from Jamaica?" Who cares. He probably had a joint in his hand the size of a rolled newspaper while he wrote the song. He didn't even drink, just smoked pot. That's admirable. "I don't do drugs - I just smoke weed." Stop laughing - that statement actually makes sense. When was the last time you heard of someone dying of a marijuana overdose? Shootings over the spice happen, but they're extremely rare. Shootings have happened over Pepsi before (and I have the date, location, etc. documented in one of my various books because I know you don't believe me, two Italian guys were arguing because the pizza boy forgot the soda to their hotel room, and one said, "HE SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT THE PEPSI!" before he fired six shots at his brother through the door), so maryjane is no surprise. Violence and crime are often associated with addictive drugs. Since I haven't been over addiction yet, time for a neuroscience lesson, but first I have to take a piss...

OK. I also had some more coffee. The trick is to figure out how long x amount of caffeine will keep you awake and then consume more caffeine before it starts to wear off. Once it starts to wear off and those brainwaves drop to theta, hoooh boy, I hope you don't have to do anything important for the next few hours. Even IF you sleep, if there's caffeine in your system you won't get enough adenosine, so you won't get any REM sleep. Sleep is a waste of time if there's any caffeine in your bloodstream. So the mathematical formula for calculating when to redose with caffeine... keep track of your caffeine level at all times, go with 4 to 6 hours for the half-life (the time it takes to eliminate half the substance from your bloodstream, and no, if it's in your bladder, it won't do anything, so stop agonizing yourself and piss every 15 minutes as you undoubtedly will if you're consuming that much caffeine, which is a diuretic in addition to being a casodialator) depending on your metabolism. I'm 5' 7" and about 130 lbs., but I exercise enough that I'm actually pretty muscular - for an ectomorph who spends this much time on the computer. I also take chromium each morning to keep my insulin levels from going all over the place. Once again - hypoglycemic - if I don't eat breakfast I'm fucked and you probably shouldn't talk to me because I'm going to be REALLY IRRITABLE, or REALLY TWITCHY if I had caffeine, which I usually do when I don't eat breakfast.

So, that being said, male, 15 years old, 5' 7", 130 lbs., I go with four hours as a half-life and the consumption formula goes as such. Let c = initial amount of caffeine (don't forget to calculate how much caffeine you have before you go to bed and adjust upon waking before consuming more; work with your tolerance and you won't get as many negative side effects, though I don't recommend consuming caffeine past 12 hours before sleep, because it blocks adenosine and can stunt growth if you're still growing, bad idea during puberty, and doesn't allow for REM sleep unless concentrations are low enough to allow the extra adenosine to bind to receptors, but that requires a lot of complicated surgery and electron microscope use to determine how many adenosine receptors you have and the density of both substances, so nevermind, just make sure your caffeine levels are low when you go to sleep) d = caffeine to be consumed, and t = time since caffeine was last consumed.

I was taught half-lives in a really shitty manner so I'm doing more ACTUAL RESEARCH and PROPER MATHEMATICS to ensure that you get a good formula. See, while we were making sure that None of the Childs got Left Behind, we conveniently forgot to gloss over the difference between biological and radioactive half-lives. I mean, if I just tell you that "the half life of caffeine is 4 hours," well, what the fuck? Doesn't that make it an extremely unstable radioactive compound? Furthermore, why the hell are we consuming it?

Well, Suzy, I do believe that the biological half-life refers to how long it takes to eliminate half the sample from the bloodstream, whereas the radioactive half-life refers to how long it takes for half the sample to become a different isotope.

I wonder how many kids decided to be rebellious by typing "marijuana" into Google during study hall, only to read that the half-life of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol is anywhere from 20 hours to 10 days, have their heads filled with horrific images of someone hitting a bong only to sprout five extra arms, and never stimulate their cannabinoid receptors with dried vegitation for the rest of their pathetic little (probably "sk8er punk") lives...

...all because you didn't understand 8th-grade science.

Dammit. I don't think tax dollars allocated for NCLB should be wasted on Freevibe Jr.

Anyway...

Formula to find d...

d = c[1/2]^^t/4

Now we know how much caffeine is currently in the blood at any given time - assuming you remember when you consume caffeine. Incidentally, "t/4" is supposed to be an exponent, but this font family and superscript tags only go so far.

//I just added a carat to make things easier.

So d is the amount of caffeine currently in the blood stream. Most people benchmark caffeine content against coffee, but that's stupid - coffee generally has 4 to 12 mg. of caffeine per ounce. 1 cup = 8 oz., if you take it with milk and sugar, you're probably only drinking about 6-7 oz. Green tea's caffeine content is usually around 3 mg/oz., so the Arizona bottles the foreign guy down at the gas station always tries to sell you are worth it. Green tea and coffee are both delicious, and both are powerful antioxidants. Sure you could go with black tea or white tea, but if you're going to do that, you might as well have some Earl Grey, because it tastes better and you can speak with an accent to make yourself more interesting while you're drinking it.

Some countries limit caffeine content at 135mg/liter, which is a bit silly, because the places in which this occurs are usually places where there's a universal "tea time," in which I'm sure more caffeine is consumed than at any other time during the day. We here in the US of A have the privilege of enjoying Monster energy drink, which now comes in two sizes - pretty damn big for an energy drink and FUCKING MASSIVE, OMG, I HOPE MY HEART IS READY FOR THIS! "Monster energy drink," is just another way of saying, "crack in a can," only the comedown isn't so much shitty as it is frustrating, it's legal, it's cheaper, you don't have to rape your lungs, and there's really nothing aside from caffeine, taurine, creatine, B-vitamins, and various pseudo-stimulants with names longer than Ron Jeremy's penis. It's good. Just drink it. You'll like it.

All that processed sugar is bad for you. I drink coffee exclusively in the mornings. These days it's rare for me to drink any sort of carbonated beverage at all. If I stop at a vending machine, it's only to get some Passion Fruit Tropicana to go with my Hot Pockets on the way to school.

So that's ONE way to beat a speed comedown, but after a few days, you're going to get tired of swallowing/parachuting/you're a dumbass if you snort, inject, plug, or otherwise ingest that shit by any non-oral method, because it's all waxy and will fuck up your nose (save it for candy, you fucking speed freak), veins (if you've got a syringe lying around, you're either diabetic, in which case you really shouldn't be tweaking, or you've got better things to do than inject fucking amphetamines into yourself, Goddamn, go get some heroin or something), anus (get the fuck out, anyone that's dumb enough to shove anything other than a suppository up their ass needs my foot to make sure it gets in the whole way), etc. those little pills/that white powder that suspiciously has the same chemical properties as sodium bicarbonate (baking soda, fucknut) that the guy on the corner threw in with the $10 Rolex that's real, it only LOOKS plastic, calmly reassuring you that you would get "spun as fuck, yo," before he laughed, walked around the corner, bought his [insert opiate, benzodiazepine, barbiturate, or Pokemon card here] fix and tried to find some other unsuspecting tourist to make money off of.

That was the worst sentence I've ever written... or read... or even heard, for that matter. Christ, Johnnie Cochran was more articulate. I'm sweeping back up to that ol' beta wave - headphones time.

Bottom line: Most of that shit is waxy binders that are not pleasant. They taste like shit too, but you can take comfort in knowing that they're not going to do any damage to your mouth, until your teeth start grinding. Just pop the pills, or if you HAVE to have it hit you faster, crush up the little balls, wrap them in a tissue, and swallow.

Here's how Adderall works:
Inside each capsule are a bunch of little balls designed to burst open as soon as they hit your stomach. Inside these balls are half of the amphetamine salts in the capsule. If you pop a 20mg pill, you really only feel 10mg. After a while you'll start to come down. If this is the first time you're coming down, wait a bit, because you're probably going to come up again. See, the other 10mg from that pill is inside the second little ball, which was inside the first one. It's designed to sit in your stomach for about 4 hours before dissolving. The only way to shorten that time is to lower the pH of your stomach acid. If you do this, write me beforehand so I can capture a future Darwin award on video. You know what that is in your stomach? Hydrochloric acid. If you drink anything that will sufficiently lower the pH of your stomach acid, getting stimulants into your system will be the least of your worries. The fact that you've got an extremely caustic concoction INSIDE YOUR BODY, PREPARING TO WORK ITS WAY THROUGH YOUR ENTIRE DIGESTIVE TRACK CAUSING YOU TO SCREAM IN PAIN, GOD, YOU THOUGHT EATING MEXICAN WAS BAD, THIS IS LIKE THE DIARRHEA FROM HELL!

Oh yeah, and you'll probably land yourself in the ER, because I can't imagine that drinking acids is too good for you. Yeah, sure, saliva's an acid, orange juice is an acid, if you can't use Litmus paper, stop reading and don't ever touch any drugs other than the Flintstones vitamins your mommy gives you every morning.

So ride the comedown out... you'll come up again soon if you popped the capsules instead of parachuting them.

That's method 1 of defeating a comedown. Generally speaking the kinds of people who practice this haven't showered in months, can't remember the last time they slept, could beat Kate Moss in a Disgustingly Thin Contest, and will probably laugh quite loudly when you even MENTION something as weak as Adderall.

Chances are, if you're popping Adderall to get tweaked, your parents are paying for the water you washed it down with. That means you probably don't want to turn into a speed freak, because... well, people will start to notice when you only blink once an hour. You'll waste away. All stimulants are appetite suppressants. You won't feel like eating but if you don't, the comedown will be EVEN WORSE. Eat when you feel yourself start to comedown. Eat something you would eat for breakfast. I recommend Hot Pockets. Take chromium when you tweak so your insulin levels don't go off the charts and make your comedown as awful as possible. If this were meth or something I could understand, but come on, this is your friend Jimmy's ADHD medication that he doesn't like because it makes it so he can't masturbate like a wild monkey while viewing violent pornography on his parents' television.

I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. Oh well, too late.

Method 2 is to buy some Xanax when you buy your stimulant of choice. Make sure you know how much you can handle. If you're coming down and you pop 4mg thinking it will knock you out, you might wake up in a barn next to something that looks like it's either a pig or your mom underneath all that mud. Benzos can cause severe anterograde amnesia, they are powerful CNS depressants, and they are all of varying addictiveness levels, Xanax being the most addictive but the best for comedowns.

Or you could just smoke a bowl.

Of course, I'd rather smoke a bowl than tweak in the first place. I'd rather ride the bong around my house and talk to Samson than get spun up, geek out, think that someone's going to kill me, have a hypertensive crisis, cry myself to sleep, and wake up with a terrible feeling of dissociation that refuses to go away no matter how hard I try to keep my mind INSIDE my body.

That brings me to Method 3...

DON'T DO SPEED.

Stimulants whose names are not trimethylxanthine (that's caffeine, fucktards) are usually a bad idea, amphetamine especially. Amphetamine is the standard against which all other stimulants are benchmarked. It's not addictive but it's extremely habit forming... oh yeah, I almost forgot...

Habituation vs. Addiction or, "gee, I sure could use some coffee right now," vs. "GET ME MY FUCKING SMACK, BITCH!"

No matter how much you need that coffee every morning, caffeine is not addictive. Neither is Adderall, Dexedrine, any sort of amphetamine cocktail, meth, cocaine, even crack isn't addictive - but I'll be damned if they're not all habit forming.

Rather than list things that AREN'T addictive, I'll give you what I call the "big 5." Three classes and two individual compounds:

1. Opiates. Opiates consist of anything that comes from the opium poppy (morphine, thebaine) or anything that's made with compounds that come from the opium poppy (almost any other opiate, including, but not limited to, codeine, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and heroin). Opiates are all highly addictive. Rush Limbaugh was addicted to oxycontin, which is most commonly prescribed under the brand name Percocet. Everyone's slagging him off for it, but I can't say I blame him. Percs are fun and by the time you realize that you've built up a tolerance, you're already hevily addicted. If you're going to fuck with opiates you'd better be able to stick to your limits. Chances are if you can't stop drinking coffee, you can't handle opiates. I am the only exception to this rule, but even I tested my ability to stick to limits first. I CAN stop drinking coffee if I have to - there simply is no reason.
2. Barbiturates. Barbiturates were used as anticonvulsants, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, etc. a while back. Seconal, Luminal, etc. are barbiturates. Barbs are more or less the opposite of amphetamines - powerful central nervous system depressants, only unlike most stimulants (I only know of one addictive stimulant, that's coming, hold your horses, no, opiates are not a stimulant they make you quite sedated thank you very much). Barbiturates are also easy to OD on - I know people that have popped 60mg of clonazepam and had no permanent ill effects, whereas barbiturates are a common suicide method. Abbie Hoffman chose to end his stay on earth by swallowing 150 phenobarbitols. I think that any OD would actually be an unpleasant way to die, but I'd rather have heroin or morphine, because at least it's fast. Barbiturates were replaced by the less all-around nasty and IMHO more enjoyable...
   
3. Benzodiazepines. Xanax (alprazolam), Valium (diazepam), Klonopin (clonazepam), and even Rohypnol (flunitrazepam, the "date rape" drug, the most powerful of the benzodiazepines and the only one that's US Schedule I). CNS depressants that do everything barbiturates did, only they're active at higher doses, so if you're taking them regularly, they won't interfere as much. Prescription levels of Xanax will actually make everything seem pretty damn entertaining - until you build up a tolerance, anyway. They'll end up increasing your dosage and you'll probably be addicted for life - IMHO (lots of stuff here is IMHO, this site is ALL ABOUT my OPINION, OK?!) Xanax is the most addictive of the benzos, but it's not hard to break if you catch it before physical dependence sets in. It seems downright tame compared to...
4. Nicotine. The most addictive substance known to man. Naturally occuring in tobacco and one of two legal addictive drugs. 46% of users are hooked (psychologically, of course) with that first cigarette. If you think you can handle it, go ahead. I've smoked before and I am most certainly not a nicotine addict - in fact I thought it tasted quite disgusting and I'd rather listen to Rod Stewart than inhale anything like that again. Nicotine gum won't give you a buzz, stop bothering me about it - it's only good for ANYTHING if you're already addicted or you really really really want to get addicted because you think it will be easy to break and you want to prove how tough you are. (You can switch out "tough" for "retarded," it actually improves the accuracy of the statement. Try it!) Indian spit tobacco is the only nicotine method I ever enjoyed, but I enjoyed it sparingly, with a few friends once every couple of weeks. Not living in or even close to India I don't have a regular supply, and chances are anywhere I can get it here will be DAMN EXPENSIVE. The head rush simply isn't worth chasing.
5. Alcohol. Yes, alcohol is physically addictive - plug "delerium tremens" into Google. I think alcohol withdrawal would be one of the worst to go through, opiates being second and finally nicotine. I have never been addicted to anything in my life (but I do have a massive caffeine habit which I could easily break if I had reason to), and I don't plan on it either.

Yes I have hypothetically enjoyed some of the substances on that list. I've never tried barbs, but I'm not a big fan of depressants, so I don't want to. Thank God I have more self-control than I thought or else I'm sure I'd be a heroin addict by now - I'm a fan of opiates.

I am drug free and have been for a while now.

It's not something I can really fit in with school, except stimulants. That being said, it's time to start the coffee - I've been up all night letting the theta waves bring creativity, wit, and brilliance to ln3ix.com/blog.

Mary jane is fine. Smoke as much pot as you want, I don't care. Any substance can be abused. Some of you can handle hard drugs, some of you can't. Hell, Albert Einstein did coke occasionally - mind you, it was legal back then, hell, they gave cocaine tooth drops to little kids after they went to the dentist. Stay away from speed. I know everyone's telling you it's cool. It isn't. If you want a taste of the opiate world, buy some Vicodin. Hydrocodone and hydromorphone, I hear, are quite excellent - hypothetically I have tried them both. They're pretty much at opposite ends of the opiate spectrum, strength-wise... hydrocodone is prescribed left and right for pain, coughing, etc., but hydromorphone is very seldom used anywhere... and I can see why. It's 5x the potency of morphine, making it the strongest opiate (yes, even heroin) and the only morphine derivative besides oxycontin (oxycodone is just time-release oxycontin, STFU).

Speed kills. Next time you see that on the anti-drug commercials, take it with a grain of salt. Something doesn't have to be addictive to ruin lives and brilliant minds.

The fact that every single kid that knows more than five words by the time he's 10 years old gets put on SOME sort of habit-forming stimulant to treat his "ADD" doesn't help either. Adderall is a great learning tool, yeah, but taking amphetamines every day will only result in brain damage. If you're taking Adderall I recommend you either switch to a non-stimulant ADD/ADHD/OCD medication or get re-evaluated. If they diagnosed you with ADHD, you're probably just hyper. If they diagnosed you with ADD, ADHD, or OCD and you were under 12 years old they had no clue what the fuck they were talking about. Valium works better, anyway - none of the nasty neuro-toxic side effects.

Also, let's be honest...
...when was the last time you saw a second-grade boy who paid attention in class?

That's like asking you when the last time was you saw an emo kid who wore flourescent orange hunting camouflage.

Although that would counteract the flamboyantly homosexual fashion statement that is eyeliner on people with penii.

-T-zone, reminding you that the choices you make today really DO shape your world tomorrow, and if it takes someone other than your school's morning announcements to drill that into your skull, dammit, I'll do it.

"Don't deepthroat a banana." -Michelle

EVHpeavey2004: you know what? I don't listen to pussys because thier greasy and full of other peoples shit, so I don't have to take this abuse and shit form you man. I hope you burn in hell, except I forgot you already are so I HOPE YOU BURN HARD I SWEAR IF I COULD IWOULD NUKE YOUR WHOLE DAMN HOUSE!

The beginning of school means a sudden lack of substantial updates.

National History Day means you're going to learn a lot about Timothy Leary or Abbie Hoffman.

Stay cool.