Surviving and keeping sane whilst attempting to transcend the asylum

I've been insanely busy lately, and have been writing about other things such as The Teen Brain on Cannabis. As much as I love the stuff, it's important to learn about the negative effects it can have, as well as to think about the causes of teen drug use.

Though my The Amazing Meeting (TAM) series is still somewhat backburnered, here's a little taste: Richard Saunders (who I heart forever) interviewed me about the Solar Flare drawings I had made (now framed and in Australia). You can hear that at about 15:45 in episode 301 of the Skeptic Zone.

Last weekend, I was shooting a commercial for Rob (hypnotist of doom), and have been learning more about hypnosis, mentalism, magic, scientology, faith healing and acupuncture and how they're all basically suggestion techniques used for different purposes.

Before moving onto the rest of my news, I bet some of you are wondering who I was trying to drag through the Ultimate Skeptic's Head Trip parts 1-3. That would be the very sweet, square, snarky, skeptical and strange musician/entertainment guy, George Hrab.

Last winter and spring, I was able to occasionally blog about how doubleplus ungood my life had become, considering that it required less brainpower than writing about science. During whatever tedium was at hand, I spent a lot of time listening to many of Geo's earlier podcasts. It really helped me to make fun of the actual crazy-making going on around me.

As I listened back and forth between semi-random older episodes as well as the newest ones, I noticed that Geo started out having more sketches and segments, whereas in newer episodes he mentioned how he doesn't do as much of that as before.

In one of the newer episodes, he talked about how he has lived in the same place and has retained the same recreational habits for the past 20 years. He also said that he's never had to go through any sort of terrible ordeal or illness. I recognized this lack of upheaval as one of the probable reasons his creative output and evolution no longer seemed to be going as fast as previously.

At times, I was also experiencing a lot of really neat, hypnosis-related surreality in my life as well as learning various ways of building one's mental flexibility and creativity. However, due to my decision to take care of my ex, I was using these skills to improve my 'adaptation to tough times' ability.

For months, neither my brain nor laptop were both functioning and online, thus making writing, building my own mental flexibility, and checking sources all the more difficult. I did, occasionally, climb out of the muck and revert once again to my clear-headed state long enough to study more survival and sanity skills for a few days.

Fighting to internalize this knowledge, I figured that at very least, I should be able to write something from the top of my head about this subject which would be intelligible enough to be interesting or even useful. Not so much for a blog post, but for emails, and one of those emails went to Geo.

It might have stopped there, except I also noticed that Geo often mentioned that he didn't do any mind-altering drugs -- except the (mind-narrowing) substances caffeine and tobacco.

He didn't seem to think those narrow his creativity, so to speak, yet he has opined that mind-expanding drugs, among others, probably hinder other musicians' creativity. Yes, this includes The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and the one he practically has a segment about, Yes.

That really blew my mind.