My Crazy Life So Far(Transparently Introducing Myself to Fellow Steemians) Pt. 1

Kenneth Amor.

When you type my name in Google, the first hit that comes back is from Local 10 News in Miami, Florida titled "Police Seek Teen Who Fled From Miami Children's Hospital."

At the exact moment of that article being made back in February of 2014, I knew that my life was going to change, and for better or worse, I was now in control of the steering wheel of life at the age of 16 years old.

But let me wind it back to where it all began. I suppose to start I must temporarily visit my early childhood for you to understand the sequencing of events in my life.

 They say you can’t choose your parents, your siblings, your family. You’re born into this world and how you are raised will determine who you are, and who you will become. Otherwise known as your ego, what makes you different. My earliest memories will always affect who I am, no matter how much I try to forget and put those behind me. So allow me to start from the earliest memories I have that slowly began morphing my ego and my personality into who I am today. I was raised in a somewhat wealthy household. My Dad was a very successful businessman, and he had it all. 3 Story house on the coast of Miami, Florida, 3 boats parked right behind the house, lots of cars. However people mistake what my Dad had and automatically assumed that I was “rich.” That was not the case. My older brother and I were never spoiled as kids. We waited until Christmas to get Video Games while all my friends got the midnight release the night it came out. I only had one pair of shoes for the majority of my childhood until I outgrew them, then those were thrown away and a new pair was bought. The majority of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my older brother, and never fit me quite properly.

From a tender age, I noticed that my father could never really keep eye contact with me during a conversation. I believe that when we are young, we pick up on both vocals(Encouraging chatter vs Angry yelling) and facial patterns to pick up on as positive and negative reinforcements, and as a result start to form conceptions or perceptions on actions, things, people, or yourself. For example, if a 3 year old were to trip and fall, most will first look up at the parent to see if they're worried or not that they fell. If the parents are worried, she will use that as a reinforcement and start crying. However if the child sees that the parents are not worried, they will stand right back up without a whimper(with obvious circumstances of course).

I believe that my fathers lack of ability to keep eye contact(reinforced over years), was one of the many reasons I began to see myself as a second best compared to my older brother, and that's just how it was. My father always preferred my brother anyway, even in regards to distribution of the chores list and who had to do the labor intensive duties. In addition to that, my father always granted more personal freedom to my brother, and I was forced to participate in both personal and business activities with my father that I didn't want to participate in, and effectively allowing me to have zero social life.

I became a momma's boy but unfortunately my father was a very controlling figure, and she didn't have much power in what I was allowed to do. In addition to this, I was incessantly teased for seeking guidance from my mother.

I had very little chance outside of school to develop any socializing skills with people my own age, instead, I was forced to not speak unless spoken to, and reinforced over and over(through both verbal and physical punishment) that I better not say or do anything unless its meaningful. This was of course due to my father meeting with important business leaders and legislators, and making a good impression was always more important than how someone actually feels. And of course he was always the one in control, it was his way or the highway. As a result, I matured much beyond my true age and I felt it almost impossible to lower myself to the immaturity of some people my age, opening the doors to introvertism. I only let some friends in and even then most of the time it felt strained and I had overlying feelings of being unwanted.

As the years went on, my interests and personal hobbies began to prosper. My natural athletic ability(or perhaps it was trained into me by means of physically demanding labor from a young age and constant teasing about not being able to complete a task) allowed me to prosper in the world of Parkour and Freerunning. I was fascinated at how the mechanics of performing a flip works, and how you can train yourself to have ultra precise muscle memory to be able to perform the flip and grow beyond your fears, therefore increasing confidence. And boy, did I need it, as Confidence was definitely something I was lacking. Parkour and Freerunning showed me how, with determination, any fears you have of not succeeding can be overcome, and you can become so good that you no longer have that fear. Anything is possible &/or achievable. 

Years went by and I practiced and practiced, honing my skills not only in flips, but also in being able to maneuver from point a to point b the quickest way possible on foot, whether going over, under, or through, any obstacles that may get in my way, such as buildings, stairs, fences, etc. By my 10th grade in highschool, I could be completely over on the other side of a 6ft fence in less than 1 second, using a run to propel myself at the fence, and catching one leg waist high on the fence, I spring up and over using my arms to slingshot myself over the fence while I'm still in the air, before landing effortlessly on my feet to continue my sprint. All these skills became dangerously effective and a huge asset to my story.

During my 10th Grade in highschool is also when I started to develop a newfound interest with the mind. I've learned so much about myself through training my body, I realized that the same could be true with the brain as well. Just as I overcame fears that were stopping me from learning new tricks, it shows the potential for growth and development in the brain. Who truly knows what limits those could be? Well I was keen to find out.

Thus came my fascination in Lucid Dreaming. Lucid Dreaming is essentially becoming conscious that you are dreaming without waking yourself up, giving you full control of your dream body to do whatever you could think of in vivid dream reality. It was an entire world that I could explore and create, and experience countless things in unexplainable detail. The only trick to access that dream world was through constant training of the mind, just like Freerunning. Every night I would write down as many dreams as I could remember to build up my dream recall skills. Then I began to repetitively train myself  during waking hours to do simple "reality checks." The point of the reality checks were to repeat them so much that you carry them over into your dream, where if you were dreaming when you perform the reality check, it would be obvious that you're dreaming, allowing you to gain consciousness in your dream. As I began experiencing more and more lucid dreams, I wanted to be able to experience some of the power of the dreaming brain in a waking reality.

I then discovered a whole new branding to what I was doing. I was a psychonaut, exploring the boundaries and capabilities of my mind, a true adventurer into our own unknown. This passion soon brought on tremendous research for unlocking some of the power of the mind, and that's when I stumbled upon psychedelic drugs. They temporarily open the floodgates and allows you to think and feel and perceive things and people and yourself in ways you never could even understand, all while in your waking state. Naturally, I was intrigued.

I had never even smoked weed even though most of the people in my school were smoking by the 7th grade. Weed just never appealed to me at the time because 1. smoking was harsh, and I hated the smell of cigarettes back then so much that I would hold my breath even just walking by a smoker, and 2. because it had so much potential to get caught with since it stays in your system for so long, plus obvious smell on your hands, breathe and clothes. Perhaps it was because of this that when venturing into the Psychedelic Drugs world, I chose Psilocybin Mushrooms since they were the most natural and didn't require it to be smoked, as well as being unscreenable in drug tests.

After many months of research on the long and short term benefits and drawbacks, the potential effects it could have both while you're on the drug and off the drug, the potential for bad experiences, the overall good experiences, and sourcing the psychedelic mushrooms, I finally decided to take the plunge and give it a shot.

From this point on, everything changed for me. I became enwrapped in how much control I had over my mind, because I knew that normal people would likely lose their minds. I began testing my limits, pushing the boundaries on how much my mind could handle. Psychedelics were my drug of choice. But as I wanted to experience new feelings and perceptions, my interest furthered to Molly as the drug that chose me. Without having the social skills to properly talk or make friends, I always felt left out or unwanted, which was generally strengthened by my shy attitude. Molly changed that for me. It made it so easy to talk and connect with people, it was the missing piece I needed to be a functioning confident member of society. But then in two hours it was gone and it left me feeling worse than ever, not even wanting to carry any conversation at all.

This was the start of my addiction. This was prime time to be in Bitcoin back then. Silk Road was prominent and you could get any kind of legal/illegal drugs shipped to anywhere, ordered online just like Amazon. My friend was already doing it successfully, meaning I had an unlimited supply of whatever I wanted. All I needed was the funds. 

Well, my father being the prominent business man that he was, kept money in the house. I never knew how much but I always knew it was there. I often sit and debate whether my next actions were caused by the start of my addiction, or whether it was my way of rebelling against my father for the buildup of treatment over the years. Perhaps it was both, but I myself couldn't tell you for sure.

Once I located the stash in the house, I opened the bag and removed one small rectangular block of many wrapped in aluminum foil, and left everything exactly as it was. When I got back to my room, I opened the foil and inside revealed $10,000 neatly stacked of crisp, old $100 bills back from the '70s. Within two weeks, I had a sheet of acid and 50g of methylone(a research chemical mimicking the properties of MDMA).

My addiction progressed to levels unbelievable to even me. I was taking huge amounts, and as my tolerance to Molly slowly started to build up, I would simply increase the doses. I remember taking 33 mollies in one day just to keep myself going and up without crashing. My longest 3 day binge I used 5.5g of the methylone. My psychedelic use was skyrocketing as well, in order to combat depression periods associated with taking so much molly, I would dose or mix with psychedelics to alter the way the drug affected my body.

I limited my use to nighttime only as I have blue eyes, so large pupils would be a dead giveaway that I was on some type of substance. Additionally, with less interaction with my parents, the less chance they had of knowing of any behavioral changes. Most nights I barely slept because I had to continue doing the personal and business activities that my father had scheduled for the day when I wasn't in school. 

But this buildup couldn't last forever. Finally the day came where I got caught for drug use. My mother was cleaning out my room while I was on a business activity with my father, where she found the scale I used for measuring the molly, the empty gel capsules, and my dream herbs.

I tried to play it off as remnants from my Lucid Dreaming days, but they were suspicious already. They seized my personal computer and in it they found the countless experiment reports I had written while I was experiencing the drugs, as well as numerous pictures of me with my pupil dilated and with drugs in the frame of the picture.

At this point, I felt so ashamed to have done that to my family that I left, thinking they would be better off without me. I had nowhere to go, but I knew I could do anything. I was determined to make it on my own and to not be a bother to my family any longer. The first night I left and I knew of a house that was still under construction, and I knew I wasn't going to sleep much so I didn't need to worry about waking up to construction crews. I just needed a roof over my head for the night until I regrouped and figured out a game plan.

This ended up being much longer than I thought it was going to be, and because of that, I will be splitting it up into 2 parts. Thank you for reading this far, and I would love to hear your guy's feedback if you have any. I hope this isn't too transparent for my fellow Steemians, and I hope you come back for the next part.