It was in the playground where I enjoyed my first dissociative state. I would’ve been about five. I was looking up at the white blue sky watching spots of dust slip across the lens of my eye. Each spot was a dot with a fine black halo where the meniscus of the tears filming my eye held the dust grain. And a chain of spots, a wonky line, where the impressions of a tiny hair slid down.
At least, looking back, that’s how I’ve rationalised it. At the time I thought they were angels. Chains of angels holding hands.
I lost depth perception. And the sensation felt like: Existence is a peanut. I’m the pea. The world is the shell. It fits so tight. It could be printed on my eyes.
I held up my hand, I didn’t recognise it as mine. I held it out. It grew small. I drew it close. It grew large. But its distance from my eyes remained a constant 0.00 cm.
A good friend recently described the symptoms of derealisation. I told him about the peanut.
The peanut state returned. Most disruptively when on the receiving end of one on one scrutiny from an adult. Somehow I discovered that pinching my thigh inside my pocket surreptitiously helped me reorient. Most crucially, it helped me focus on dodging the scrutiny. That’s important for later.
As I matured through childhood and entered my teens I began to speculate that my parents were filming me through the mirrors, and broadcasting the film somewhere dingy. It dawned on me; I was being ridiculous, of course. It dawned on me; a girl from class was watching me through flies. Although I was never convinced enough, it seems, to confront her over it.
A classmate introduced me to Marilyn Manson. Mechanical Animals.
Like a battery hen; I scratched at myself. Most usually with the point of a razor blade, or a modelling knife. Rarely the chad slash. Typically the virgin scratch. I was committed to maintaining my privacy; injury had to be controlled, brought out in increments. And then I discovered matches. And the metal plate of a lighter. And cigarettes. And the lancing of blisters. And the peeling of scabs. And like that I developed a technology as yet unknown to man. Let’s call it… “the endorphin tap” aka “the peanut state ejector seat”. And then I started getting creative.
My good friend introduced me to Manic Street Preachers. The Holy Bible.
We began exploring anorexia together. And glam.
My good friend introduced me to Radiohead. OK Computer.
We formed a band. He was lead. I was bass. In a very jovial, sportsmanly way, we began to compare rib definition.
The Smiths. The Queen Is Dead.
I was seventeen when I discovered magic mushrooms.
Muse. Origin of Symmetry.
Under certain conditions, under specific stresses, can the human body register the poison of insanity and spontaneously initiate a physiological purging and regeneration? Hear me out.
In his book “Battle for the Mind: A Physiology Of Conversion And Brain-Washing”, British MK-ULTRA linked psychiatrist William Sargant kicks off with Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.
Sargant says that “simple physiological mechanisms of conversion do exist”.
He says that Pavlov discovered “the great importance of environment, as well as of constitution, in deciding the final behaviour patterns of his dogs. He found that certain fundamental instincts, such as sex or the need for food, were constantly adapted to changes of environment by the formation of appropriate behaviour patterns.”
A gradually changing environment can be gradually adapted to, successfully.
“Pavlov established that the ability of a dog to resist heavy stress would fluctuate according to the state of its nervous system and general health.”
An environment that cannot be efficiently adapted to is exhausting.
Exhaustion of the mind, body and nervous system causes a suggestible state, a hypnosis state.
This altered state can be induced in dogs and humans by “fatigue, fevers, drugs, and glandular changes”.
Holding that tension, humming, over time, can induce complete breakdown, an irrecoverable hysteria.
However, “It was the Leningrad flood that gave [Pavlov] the clue as to how the brain might also be wiped almost clean, at least temporarily, of all the behaviour patterns recently implanted in it…
“Pavlov had implanted a whole set of various conditioned behaviour patterns in a group of dogs – before these were one day accidentally trapped by flood water, which flowed in under the laboratory door and rose gradually until they were swimming around in terror with heads at the tops of their cages. At the last moment a laboratory attendant rushed in, pulled them down through the water, and out of their cage doors to safety. This terrifying experience made some of the dogs switch from a state of acute excitement to one of severe ‘transmarginal protective inhibition’… On re-testing them afterwards, it was found that the recently implanted conditioned reflexes had also now all disappeared. However, other dogs which had faced the same ordeal merely by registering increased excitement were not similarly affected and the implanted behaviour patterns had persisted.”
It was around this time, a little earlier maybe, emerging through puberty, that I realised my soul was a girl’s soul. I was a lesbian trapped in a boy’s body. It got a laugh, but I really meant it. Not only was my soul female; she was hot.
Scissor Sisters. Scissor Sisters.
University. NME ran a front-page feature on “The Summer of the Shroom”. Some kid killed himself. The mushroom ban came in. We turned to ecstasy. A new friend confronted me, having caught me branding “NO” into my forearm with a stick of incense. My interest in self-mutilation dropped away as the cocktail of e and green took hold.
Radiohead. Kid A.
I bought some hair straighteners. I spent hours getting ready, applying skills honed on years of Warhammer 40k to my nails and eyes.
I didn’t know then that oestrogen treatment causes cancer in men, but I’ve always felt deep revulsion for cosmetic surgery. And horror stories of the forced transitioning of gay boys in the Philippines, according to rumour, solely for the reason that homosexuality is abhorred. The grinding cycle of child prostitutes into ladyboys. A fetish factory for international degenerates. The facts gnawed into my delusions and exposed them, here, thank God, if nowhere else. I hadn’t yet heard about Iran.
So transitioning was off the table. That wouldn’t stop me. I weighed in at nine and a half stone. I bought skirts and wore my hair in bunches.
David Bowie. Hunky Dory.
The highs barely splashed me. The comedowns grew torturous. I switched to acid. I made strings of beads, volcanic stone and woodgrain, weighted with fossils and arrowheads. It became too painful to sit. I had to take some time off work.
Ozric Tentacles. Sultana Detrii.
I started using a stick. Blood red paisley. I was worried I was putting on weight. I was struggling to breach nine stone. I thought it was a pot belly. It was the skin vacuum-sealing tight across my guts.
Suede. Coming Up.
I had to start exercising. Exercise and green were my only relief. Or I’d be in too much pain for tomorrow’s shift. Or I couldn’t manage clubbing Saturday night, no matter how smashed I got. I strained hours to complete basic bodyweight positions, ten reps of ten. Six hours, or more, fuelled by energy drinks and fruit juice. I was worried I might lose definition of my ribs, so I skipped eating some days. I was pinned in a stoop.
Rammstein. Reise, Reise.
Awash with acid. My girl is asleep. Trying to watch a movie; “Yellow Submarine”. A bluebottle lands on the screen, and the silhouette of it imprints like a sunspot on my vision, kaleidoscoping out to tattoo everything I can see. Wave after wave of shapes, facets, slapping me in the eyes. All flies.
Flies imprinting in my eyes! I’ll never see again without the bluebottle stamp! I move to the bathroom. There’s the toothbrush. I hook myself upon it. The acid reaches out. And captures the design. And the toothbrush kaleidoscope hits me like an epiphany; I choose what to imprint by concentrating on it.
I stand transfixed before the mirror; my reflection ballooning between a spindly-legged power-chested Hiawatha and an angry wren.
I woke in the afternoon, clear-eyed, and returned to the mirror, and confronted the vision of a holocaust survivor dusted with black/green glitter, wearing a dull and greasy glo-stick bracelet as an Arab strap.
Aretha Franklin. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.
I could go on for pages detailing for you the body-horror matinee of my recovery so far.
Lamont Dozier. Going Back To My Roots.
I could describe how my wrists filled in, how my feet spread out, of how my ribcage tilted up, of how all the fused together scaffolding of my shoulders scraped as it eased off, and the feeling as each blade dropped. Or the sensation as an arm slotted back into its socket, after years of unacknowledged dislocation. And the memories that flood with it. Or of how my physique shifted from Gulag inmate to inverse thalidomide to Genestealer cultist to hunchback to shark attack survivor.
Fela Kuti. Zombie.
But I don’t have the space. So what do you really need to know? Bottom line; you are your own straightjacket, and it feels like shrugging on a sub dermal wetsuit over a period of four or five years.
Ultimately, what am I saying?
Take a child. A toddler. Any toddler. Any toddler eating soil. Eating soil is called “pica” behaviour.
The toddler can’t speak, can’t reason, so he can’t deduce that he has a zinc deficiency and communicate that to his parents. He can’t order his bloods. He can’t get a prescription. And so, pre-rationally, he’s drawn to eating soil. The body knows what it’s missing. The body knows what it needs.
Here it is then, pure speculation; like the toddler, pre-rationally, is drawn to eating soil, so I, subconsciously, was drawn to people, friendships, personalities, that could facilitate my access, one way or another, to extreme altered states. Clubland pica. Faced with a contradictory and anti-predictable environment the body starves itself, distresses itself and casts out for the blackest depths of suggestibility and blind panic, for a reset.
Restore factory settings.
Maybe.
It’s a thought.
So with all that in mind, I sit down and watch Alex Jones interview Michael Rotondo, the thirty year old New York man who made global headlines last week after his parents had to sue him to move out.
And I count my lucky stars.
Sam Cooke. Change Gonna Come.
Afterward: Gallows humour aside, if you have been affected by any of these issues I’d recommend self-education and private talk therapy. These are some of the resources that helped me:
Trans issues: http://www.sexchangeregret.com/
Self improvement: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-for-life/
Childhood trauma/Identifying truth: https://freedomainradio.com/
Addiction, self mutilation, gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, identity disorders and eating disorders are serious burdens on a healthy life and personal growth. You can’t build a stable house on sand. A significant weight was lifted from me when I learned to accept my biological reality. Upon this rock I will build my church.