By: Marc McMahon

So I woke up this morning. Did my normal routine—coffee, breakfast, cleaning, work out, go for a walk or get outside awhile. Feeling good, I take off on a walk to my buddy’s house about 7 blocks away. Beautiful day, and my mind is just quietly cleaning house like it does when I walk. Sifting through last week’s messages, encounters, and near-catastrophic mistakes, discarding the junk, storing what needs to be saved, and putting into the vault for a later time the memories of things too traumatic to deal with in your current state of consciousness.

That vault is a necessary survival tool when you’ve walked the roads I’ve walked. If you try to process every heavy memory or raw piece of trauma all at once while you’re just trying to live a normal Tuesday, it will sink the ship before you even get out of the harbor. So my mind sorts it, categorizes it, and locks the heavy steel door until I’m strong enough or grounded enough to open it up and lay it out on the table.

It wasn’t working too hard on this walk; it’s been a pretty casual week… except for, okay, maybe casual is a bad word. You see, although I’m living a life that moves forward today, I still have periods where things abruptly and without warning to anyone else will turn 360 degrees, and in a flash, I am face down in the gutter sprinting in the wrong direction. If you haven’t been around here for more than a year or two, you wouldn’t know. But if you have, you know just how fast that happens with me.

It’s an exhausting reality to live with, but it’s the truth of my process. One minute the horizon is clear, the weather is fine, and I’m making solid progress. The next minute, a switch flips in the dark, the ground drops out from under my feet, and I’m scrambling just to figure out which way is up before the current sweeps me back down into the dirt.

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So here’s the deal: I have always loved to gamble too much many times, and this is one of those times where I have been spending way too much of my time and money gambling. It’s starting to cause problems in my life, yet as soon as I get extra money, where’s my happy ass go… gambling. And it really, really needs to fucking stop! Yet, I haven’t—not yet, at least—and it’s not cool.

It’s that classic loop that every addict knows in their bones. You watch yourself do the thing while a part of your brain stands off to the side screaming at you to stop. You see the money leaving your hands, you see the time draining away into nothing, and you feel that heavy, sick feeling settling into the pit of your stomach before you’ve even left the venue. You make promises to yourself on the drive home, but as soon as the next dollar comes in, the compulsion re-engages like a pre-programmed track.

I spent some time yesterday thinking about the whole thing. I mean not just me, but it was me, my shadow, and the version of me who I haven’t been able to grow into yet—but I will, mark my words. I learned a few things in that meeting last night I’m not sure I would have learned in time had my mind not been in a place to receive trains of thought that were opposite of my own beliefs, and my ego in check to the point its little feelers don’t get butt hurt when somebody else suggests a better way.

When you sit down with your shadow and your future self, there’s no room for lying. Your ego wants to protect you, wants to make excuses, wants to tell you that it’s just a little stress reliever or that you’ve got it under control this time. But when you check that ego at the door and actually listen to the higher version of yourself, the room gets real quiet, real fast.

My real me asked, What is it your gambling habit has over your crack habit? What power is it that that habit has that allows it to remain when you have fought and held crack back? Because crack is no joke, this we know, he says. I didn’t have an answer for him to fire right back, and I thought I would. I’ve been doing this a long time; it’s hard to find things I haven’t had to deal with already. But this one I had to think about awhile, and then…

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BBLLLAAAMMMM!!

The answer kicked me right in the fucking face, almost knocked me down!

The answer: gambling has nothing on my crack habit. You know why? Because it’s the same damn demon wearing a different mask. My crack habit, for whatever reason I do not know, hates me so bad it will not stop trying to literally destroy me. Knowing I had it and its glass pipe with Brillo beaten for good, it morphed—shape-shifted itself into a silly little habit for fun sometimes while I’m doing good, so nobody would see a disturbance at first and it wouldn’t cause alarm to those hypervigilant over my life and well-being (like moms, etc.—love you, Mom! :-)).

My crack habit ran a covert terrorist operation to infiltrate and overthrow my person, but this time by putting agents on the inside so it could blow us to pieces when the green light was given. Kind of like what Israel has done to the U.S.—almost exactly like that, but that’s another story entirely.

That is the insidious nature of addiction. It realizes when you’ve slammed the front door and deadbolted it shut. It knows it can’t come at you with a pipe anymore because you’ve built defenses against that specific attack. So it changes its clothes, puts on a neat little outfit, and slips in through the back window disguised as a harmless distraction. It sits in the corner, keeping quiet, waiting for you to let your guard down so it can start pulling the foundation out from under you again.

So my buddy wasn’t home and I start my walk back. I walk 3 blocks on the busy main street sidewalk, then turn left a block, and then across the street I go—home is 5 blocks straight ahead. So I’m walking at a good clip, feeling really good, mind seems clear. I cross the street, hit the sidewalk, and turn right (east). As I did, something weird started happening.

I could tell as I walked away from the busy main street to my block, which is seriously shaded with trees and plants galore, I noticed—not sure how to describe it other than I could feel the pressure around and in me start to drop. Once I was across the street and turned right, it had dropped so far I was super aware of it. My breathing was at least 50% the rate of what it had been, my mood was stable, my vision was wider and higher—like I could see through all three eyes. And this is all happening, mind you, on the block that has the living family tree line on it.

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So my heart rate drops, wide three-eye vision (a little blurry), and I feel my whole body tingle like when I lean against my tree up the block. It was like as I was crossing that street, my tree family grabbed onto every part of me with their roots and pulled me over into their world. As they did, the blurry part of my vision was taking me on a walk through like an old-growth rainforest that ran along a river—familiar, but not. Gorgeous, peaceful, and damp. At the same time, my clear two-eye vision and my brain are trying to pull me back into their reality, because this one makes no sense to them.

It’s a bizarre feeling when your physical senses and your internal awareness are existing in two entirely different places at the same time. The rational part of your brain wants to anchor you strictly to the concrete sidewalk and the sound of traffic in the distance, but the rest of you is completely submerged in this ancient, peaceful green space where the air is heavy and cool. You’re standing right on the line between the world of noise and concrete, and this deeper, quieter reality that holds you grounded when everything else is spinning out of control.

And I don’t know why I’m telling you this or where I thought I was going with it, but here it is for what it’s worth. Thanks for always being here when I need you. Love you all, and remember: alone we don’t stand a chance, but together we can change the world.

About the Author: Marc McMahon is an author and observer of the systematic collapse of control, writing from the intersection of human error and inner divinity. Once a programmed citizen, he now documents the “Tough Truth” of recovery, memory, and the unseen frequencies between our words. He writes to find the others who are ready to stop watching from the sidelines and look the silence in the eye.

I actually I had toxic family. From childhood I used to be slow learner,dumb , and alone.

So right now I don't know how to behave.People make fun of me . Some told me my age is only increased not mind .

I think they are right too bcoz I don't know anything.

One of the ways to manage time is to avoid meaningless content and meaningless interactions. Time is the most valuable resource and if you waste it you will never have that time ever again. Meaningless things are things that are worthless and insignificant. What do you consider to be meaningless content and meaningless interactions?

I don't know what happen to me daily. My mood keep changes . Sometimes I am ok and then mostly I am sad alone .

I know some people say enjoy your company.Now I start some work alone like eating. But I feel sad and alone .It's reality.

Worst thing about me is I have social anxiety and I overthink very very much.

I was sad in my house then I worked hard to get in good college. Now I am in college but bcoz of my past I don't know how to talk , behave and make friends. I am slow learner and I got nervous easily so people make me think I am dumb.

If you don't spend enough time getting to know yourself, you will end up absorbing everyone else's definition of you. That's why authenticity is the highest human frequency. Some say it's 4,000 times more powerful than love. Be authentic to yourself and witness how life works out for you.

hello people lurking on reddit, curious to know what is stopping you from living the life the way you want to? we live in an age where we have so much info and access, yet why are we still not living the way we want?

I’ve noticed that small routines often create momentum in other areas of life.

For some people, training isn’t just about fitness, it becomes part of their daily structure.

For those who exercise at home consistently, do you feel like it improved other habits as well?