whereweare20250829

So… still a lot to unpack but I think we are getting there. The initial euphoria of the experience, as well as the terror, has subsided and I am back in my self. But my self seems to have changed in a major way. At the same time I am returning more toward a baseline which has its problems, such as sensitivity to low, rumbling engine noises which are audible at all times of day right now. One of the really nice things about aripirazole was the lessened sensitivity. Hopefully I can achieve something similar with regular meditation practice. The noises of the modern world are just too much for me at times.

Anyway to break it down:

I am 7 weeks away from both the breakthrough experience and the abrupt cessation of aripirazole. I am reinstating regular mediation practice but not going too hard; the focus right now is consolidation.

Aripirazole:

I am about halfway through the anticipated recovery period. The drug has left my system but it seems there is another month or two of dopaminergic recalibration expected. This means I will be fragile and less able to handle stressors, and my sleep might be broken, motivation spiky, etc.

Nibbana:

If that’s what it was! But apparently this is normal - a month or two after the experience you start to question ‘was that real’ as your old behaviour patterns begin to reassert themselves. This is where I am now, but the changes in my baseline suffering are profound and I no longer feel like everything is unfinished or inadequate. I still have the tendency to go too hard, but I still have dysregulated dopamine, so that’s no surprise.

Executive function:

Dramatically reduced. I struggle to hold emotional conversations, to the point where they are impossible. I tried to support a loved one at the start of the week and ended up having a complete meltdown, from which I am still recovering. I still feel emotionally fragile and incapable on that front. This is incredibly frustrating because I want to help people, and I feel ‘better’ on an inherent emotional level, but I am not capable of acting as I wish.

Living situation:

My eldest son is staying with me during the week and it has all gone smoothly. I am happy for the company and the regularity of schedule. I am happy to be sharing dinners with him, quietly. Life is quite peaceful with him here and our world remains uncluttered. I think he prefers it this way too, though he may not realise it.

The world:

The world remains more beautiful than it ever has been. I still stop to appreciate the flowers and the birds singing. I hope this does not change.

Meditation:

I have woken early today. 4:30. Yesterday I meditated more than usual before bed, just because I wanted to, and this may be why. Thoughts arise more than in the immediate aftermath but they remain easy to release. I seem to be able to hold a meditative awareness in my daily life quite easily for the most part, but complex emotional conversations or lots of faces still overwhelm me.

Autism:

I am realising my sensitivities more: emotions and noise and clutter. I really struggle when I go back to our old house and see the clutter on the floor. Too many salient objects at once. I can handle shops and such with relative ease. Emotions are the really hard one for me and I feel utterly incompetent. I want to help people but am incapable of it - I try to predict how I can make them feel better and my brain just grinds to a halt, like mismatched gears, and I can feel a physical pain in my head at times. The deep rumbling engine noise that is present in our town half the time (and inaudible to others) is there and bothering me somewhat again, but not as much as before. I guess nothing bothers me as much as before.

ADHD:

Largely under control, I think. I am still an obsessively motivated type of guy, but I think my motivation now is to try to calm the motivation.

Training:

I am tracking perceived levels of dopamine, dvar, cmem and others to try to spot patterns and cultivate them toward stability. I do find it a bit annoying that I need to put such effort into something which others are just born with. I don’t know how I functioned all these years.

Sleep:

Generally good and restorative. I am still taking ramelteon and will continue doing so for the time being. When I stopped it my sleep dropped by a couple of hours per night, which was followed by the meltdown during the difficult conversation. I have slept 11 hours per day since the meltdown on Sunday. I guess this will pass too.

Overall:

I think I am in a consolidation phase. I don’t really know.

The accounts of stream-entry talk about this kind of questioning phase coming around the 1-2 month mark, sometimes followed by a pretty major ‘dark night of the soul’ where it all seems like a dream and your old self starts to re-emerge. You still have many of the same conditioned responses, but they are not as powerful and are easier to release. This is what I am experiencing.

But I am also going through a major recalibration after the aripirazole addiction and chemical inanity. Even thinking back to that period fills me with dread and exhaustion, but at the same time a kind of envy. Envy isn’t the right word. Aripirazole showed me how easy the world is for most people compared to me. How easily they can let go of sounds or thoughts or obsessions because of how regulated their dopamine systems are. I feel… sad that I can not do that by default. That I will have to train myself intentionally for hours per day, all day every day in fact, just to hold onto a level of stability which most people are born with.

Maybe with 6 months of regular meditation and walking I can get there. But even then I think it will be more fragile than the norm, and require regular and consistent practice to maintain.

I do feel like I would be best living in a hut in the woods like the recluses of old. I would be equal parts bored and relaxed but I cannot handle the overwhelm of the world. I don’t know how I managed to do my job for so long, even despite the fact that a decade of it I was locked away in my room by myself. The… juggling of expectations and prediction of emotions and hedging of bets… I think all of that was so traumatic that it has been wiped from my brain, and this might be one of the reasons I struggle with the inherent contractions and compromises that come with all close emotional relationships.

In short:

Still recovering.

This is a very different recovery curve to what you would expect from the drug alone though. That would start out acute and then ease off. For me it seems to have started out with calm agitated elation, moved to calm elation, and only now seems to be nudging toward depression and anxiety. But maybe the anxiety is just my old baseline reasserting itself.

Who knows.

/jb202508290603