As I mentioned in My Emotion Journey, Part 1, my older brother (one year older) was off-the-charts-hyperactive, so much so that my parents put him in a boys home for nine months when he was just eleven years old. I promised to blog about this further in a future blog, so this is it.  The fact that my parents voluntarily put him in a home for boys should be very telling – it’s hard to overstate the significance of this. Despite only being ten years old, I was very aware that this made our family and my brother distinctly different – I didn’t know of any other families who had done the sam ..read more

“In the beginning MAN created God, in the image of MAN created he him, petty and spiteful. And when MAN saw what he had created, he said that it was good, for it then allowed him to control and abuse the weaker and different among him in the name of his God.” ~ Anonymous ..read more

I had the best job of my life one summer when I was 16 working for the Youth Conservation Corp. I really hit it off with a coworker and just because we clicked so well, it seemed like the rest of the crew kind of deferred to us socially.  I invited my friend to come to Youth Conference with me near the end of the summer and he did. He met several other kids there that he knew from his school. When we went back to work, he was telling a coworker how overwhelming this “good feeling” was that he had experienced there, particularly during testimony meeting. Up until this point this guy ..read more

When I was a teenage my Dad was in a really bad car accident. It was a depressing time as the effects of his accident and recovery kind of weighed on the family. After my Dad finally made it out of the hospital and was convalescing at home we had a family home evening lesson about the sacrament which my Dad gave. After the lesson was over, our Home Teacher showed up with permission from the Bishop to help administer the sacrament for him and the rest of the family since he had not been able to go for quite awhile. The bread was passed on a dinner plate and the water was in paper picnic cups w ..read more

Apparently I had quite a temper when I was a little kid. I got this observation mostly from my Grandpa who was a pretty chill guy himself. One thing I remember happening with him was he picked up a toy I was playing with and I guess I had a minor temper tantrum. He took note of my reaction and just to see what I would do he put it up in the shade cover of the chandelier. Then I really lost it. He chuckled a bit as he gave it back and then dubbed me Hot Stuff, the Little Devil after the comic book character.  When I was five, my Grandpa gave me a challenge that if I could go a whole month ..read more

Religion and church have come up a lot this week during my infusions. I seriously doubt that that’s the most common point of reflection when on a ketamine infusion. But it was for me now just because that’s what is on my mind so much these days as I go through this faith journey. So there it is again, pain and religion related in just one more way, at least in my world. The biggest take away from today was that science is humble and religion is not. My main observation with this is the importance of an effective mechanism for determining if a belief about something is correct or not. If the be ..read more

The four hour ketamine infusions continue. The dosage went up each day but leveled off today. Several different themes kept going through my mind, but the two main ones at first were paradoxes and illusions. With paradoxes a concept or principle would cross my mind and if I decided something about it was true, an example of the opposite also being true would soon emerge. How can opposites both be true? Maybe they aren’t truly opposites or there was something else about them that I didn’t know or understand, as with illusions. The word illusions is interesting because the root of the word seems ..read more

To date, no human beings have died from their bladder’s exploding. Prevention is overrated. The church is a bully and I am warm. These are my main takeaways for today. Yesterday, I had to go out and pee about an hour into the infusion and the nurse suggested to me that I should pee right before it started, which I had. Of course I peed again this morning right before it started but I was curious to see what would happen if I waited longer. I’ve always had to pee more often than other folks it seemed, and I didn’t know if that’s because my bladder is smaller, maybe I just drink more water, beca ..read more

I went to Lagoon today, and I was safe. I went there virtually, with the assistance of a four hour ketamine infusion at the University of Utah Hospital. Although I went to BYU, I’m quickly becoming a Ute fan. The Lagoon part was just as good or better than the real thing. I don’t think real Lagoon has any of the actual rides I went on – mine were probably better. I also went on a bunch of other trips but it’s too mind-blowing to even attempt to describe. I’m speechless. Today’s takeaway was that “I am safe.” That’s important because I didn’t feel very safe for much of my childhood and feeling ..read more

Upon graduating from Brigham Young University and completing ROTC in the mid-1980s, I was commissioned a U.S. Army 2nd Lieutenant. The following spring I was playing softball one day and slide into second base and came away with a bad case of hives, all over my leg where it had come in contact with freshly cut grass. I was miserable all night and a day or so later went to see the doctor because the hives were so bad and weren’t going away. As he was prescribing an antihistamine, he mentioned something about how allergies are really triggered by something in the mind. I was looking at him funny ..read more