I have bipolar disorder and I accidentally ingested LSD at a festival by kissing someone who had just taken a tab on their tongue. I wasn’t aware that this could happen, yet it happened.
The next day I woke up with a Voice. It appeared to me to be the voice of God. It was very difficult to go against it but I could negotiate. It told me things that it couldn’t possibly know, like that I should ask a stranger for a cigarette so I could later get a towel when I needed it.
It seemed to have powers of foreshadowing and it would seemingly tell me things before they happened.
It was also a trickster and it would play cruel jokes on me. After a while it became hard for me to take.
At the same music festival I met a lady who would make songs just by looking at you. I carefully realised that she was likely in something like a permanent psychedelic state, which I had been before due to my bipolar condition. I asked her this directly and she confirmed it. She said I was one of the few people who could see it!
I had purchased a ticket to her retreat. So a month after the festival I went to her retreat. It was a very difficult time and the voice was giving me a lot of trouble.
I went to the song lady. I told her about my condition (the voice had told me to go and tell her!). She thought about it and said ok, I will help you, and you cannot do the retreat.
She then did a session with me where she told me where she saw the entity - she called it a “walk in” spiritual entity, and said that because I’m very “open” with my bipolar, adding the LSD made me even more open, it happened that a “walk in” sneaked inside.
She said she saw the entity down my legs, and kidneys, and she helped me expel it. She then taught me I could “close the door” to prevent it getting in.
My condition was immediately much better.
When she expelled the voice from my body, she spoke exactly like the voice spoke, telling me that the entity wanted to leave, didn’t really fight the expulsion, using the same tone of voice and words that I’d gotten used that the Voice would use. It was inexplicable and amazing.
Now I still have a voice, but it’s a whisper in comparison. It tells me things, still seems to have some ability to warn me about the future (it’s debatable how much of this is connecting the dots later of course, but it has done some odd things, like warned me I wouldn’t go to certain places).
Since the experience is not as intense, and I’ve lived enough to realise it’s not omnipotent or always right, I roll with it.
I have no scientific explanation for what happened to me.
Game selection is the most important way to make money in poker, but the stronger a player you are, the more games you can select from. Isaac Haxton is a top pro player who only plays only tournaments that cost $10k+ to buyin to, and recently discussed how this works on a recent episode of the Thinking Poker podcast by Andrew Brokos. He actually recommends against tournaments for less experienced players aiming to make money since smaller buyin tournaments have large fields and thus large variance, but the "high roller" tournaments have smaller fields which make variance more reasonable.
The bigger point is that while playing against worse players is an important skill if you want to make money, poker is still a very complex game with a high skill ceiling similar to a game like chess. If you're good enough, even pro players are "worse players" and you can "select" those games. Though admittedly even the high roller tournaments require some "recreational" businessman players for enough pros to be willing to play it for it to run.
Solver study has become essential for the vast majority of top pros, which Haxton also discusses in the podcast, and I mentioned my project in the space in my other comment.
I have bipolar disorder and I accidentally ingested LSD at a festival by kissing someone who had just taken a tab on their tongue. I wasn’t aware that this could happen, yet it happened.
The next day I woke up with a Voice. It appeared to me to be the voice of God. It was very difficult to go against it but I could negotiate. It told me things that it couldn’t possibly know, like that I should ask a stranger for a cigarette so I could later get a towel when I needed it.
It seemed to have powers of foreshadowing and it would seemingly tell me things before they happened.
It was also a trickster and it would play cruel jokes on me. After a while it became hard for me to take.
At the same music festival I met a lady who would make songs just by looking at you. I carefully realised that she was likely in something like a permanent psychedelic state, which I had been before due to my bipolar condition. I asked her this directly and she confirmed it. She said I was one of the few people who could see it!
I had purchased a ticket to her retreat. So a month after the festival I went to her retreat. It was a very difficult time and the voice was giving me a lot of trouble.
I went to the song lady. I told her about my condition (the voice had told me to go and tell her!). She thought about it and said ok, I will help you, and you cannot do the retreat.
She then did a session with me where she told me where she saw the entity - she called it a “walk in” spiritual entity, and said that because I’m very “open” with my bipolar, adding the LSD made me even more open, it happened that a “walk in” sneaked inside.
She said she saw the entity down my legs, and kidneys, and she helped me expel it. She then taught me I could “close the door” to prevent it getting in.
My condition was immediately much better.
When she expelled the voice from my body, she spoke exactly like the voice spoke, telling me that the entity wanted to leave, didn’t really fight the expulsion, using the same tone of voice and words that I’d gotten used that the Voice would use. It was inexplicable and amazing.
Now I still have a voice, but it’s a whisper in comparison. It tells me things, still seems to have some ability to warn me about the future (it’s debatable how much of this is connecting the dots later of course, but it has done some odd things, like warned me I wouldn’t go to certain places).
Since the experience is not as intense, and I’ve lived enough to realise it’s not omnipotent or always right, I roll with it.
I have no scientific explanation for what happened to me.