Well that was strange. I had a night filled with dreams which weren’t dreams. They were more a re-sequencing of the entire chain of events of.. my life, through the lens of neo-buddhism or something.
As a snapshot of where we are: I have spent 9 weeks unable to sleep or dream because aripiprazole lowered the seizure threshold for my epilepsy. I am 90% sure this is why the hallucinations; I basically became James of Arc for a few months, and came out of it all very confused. I have put no substances in my system, including caffein, for 2 weeks.
Now the drugs are gone and that was my first full night’s sleep in memory, and REM sleep is returning. I have been using history podcasts to drift off, and today seems to have been a 3 hour podcast about the period in history when the Buddha was around.
What seems to have happened is I have reframed my entire life as one coherent narrative, kinda like b-man mk2. I’m not b-man but I’m following his footsteps, and I somehow saw the entire thematic narrative of his life superimposed onto mine. Dreams are metaphor and all that.
I woke up bang in time with my supposed circadian rhythm, and woke up right in the final minute of the podcast both times I played it. So I think somehow that podcast was taking my hand and keeping the dream on rails.
It all seems to make sense. I’m sure this will fade and is an echo of a seizure, but it wasn’t like the last few months where I have been waking up with a religious fervour to get these articles online.
This was more like a quiet ‘so this is how the world is’ realisation, or reshuffling, or consolidation of all the hallucinations of the last months.
It was great, to be honest. I’ve had a few challenging things these last days but they all make sense now. It’s something, either out there or in me, showing me what the poison was I had been dripping into my own ear.
I’ve stopped playing DOOM and am back to RPGs. I’ve stopped slaving away at ironman and am starting archery and aikidō. I have ditched friends who are poison and honestly don’t know if I will bother making any more because I don’t need them. I have my family and that’s all that matters.
But it feels like the integration and sequencing of the memories and understanding I have gleaned through those 3 subjective years of self-flagellation and meditation has begun.
Where I previously felt like I had an intuitive understanding of quantum computing, now I have started feeling like I have an intuitive understanding of the dhamma - the one the b-man taught - but not in terms of dogma and rather in terms of real-world practicality.
[2025/07/24, 20:17:31] James: Bed
- 90 min
[2025/07/24, 23:00:23] James: First waking
- 90 min
[2025/07/25, 0:28:41] James: Second waking.
[2025/07/25, 0:29:05] James: I’m listening to history podcasts while sleeping now and I think they are helping to organise my thoughts, in a way?
- 90 min
[2025/07/25, 2:01:10] James: Third awakening
- 70 min
[2025/07/25, 3:14:40] James: Fourth
- 30 min
[2025/07/25, 3:42:04] James: Fifth Podcast in final word and paused it as it finished. These are 3 hour episodes and this is the second time tonight
- 120 min
[Wake up around 6]
So this is a full 8 hours of sleep. This is incredible. I have achieved a maximum of 2 hours per night for the last 9 weeks, and the partial seizures have woken me up the second I drift off, especially at night (napping seems ok for some reason).
It feels like the recovery and integration is happening and I can finally start to unravel what was and was not delusion.
But these delusions came from within. Aripiprazole is not a hallucinogen. All it did was lower the seizure threshold for my epilepsy, which made me see ship (fate, god) for a couple of months.
Now I can integrate that. The fact that this was all from within me. I can cherry-pick what kind of people and ideas I want to surround myself with.
Life is good. It’s ups and downs on the chemical front, but overall I have come out of this ordeal a far happier and more understanding person. And now I can choose what kinds of people I let into my sim. Family and positivity first; negative nellies need not apply.
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