des.fyi

Not Dead–Eager7.28.25

August 19, 2025

December 24th, 2024, I left my parents home in Arkansas having had survived MCAS related anaphylaxis without medical intervention. December 24th is the day my maternal grandfather died in 2012. When I was then 800 miles away from them in Texas, again, I had anaphylactic shock from simply being in indirect contact with clothing previously washed at their home–I knew then that it was not a coincidence that their washer was riddled with soy, gluten, and peanuts. Children want to be approved by their parents, and their rejection hurt far more than when I was repeatedly assaulted by my now ex-partner during subsequent anaphylactic episodes–which I should have foreshadowed when he refused to help me file a police report after the initial episode in Arkansas and wouldn’t use an epi-pen on me while I was physically unable to communicate during the attack. I do believe these attempts at my life were politically motivated, as my parents are right-wing fundamentalists, and I’m… well…

This week I have had a headache, that could best be described as trigeminal neuralgia, as it makes my face numb and the attacks happen throughout the day, sometimes lasting longer than the “couple of minutes” I’ve read of. It started on the right side of my head, moving from side to side at the peak of attacks. I could feel the trigeminal nerves sending electrical signals through the top row of my teeth on the right side, running through my jaw, eye, sinus, ear… the bulk of the pain beginning at the right trigeminal ganglion, which is directly connected to the brain stem and just so happens to be near the pineal gland–which, as many of you know, is associated with the production and release of DMT according to recent research; though like anything related to the brain, further research is needed.

As the pain was peaking, I laid on my back, legs together, arms over my head, earplugs in, and my eyes closed; at the trigeminal ganglion on the right, moving to the left, they were taking turns to blow life into my throat–quite literally it felt like something was being blown into my throat from the upper back corner of it, up against the trigeminal ganglion. I could feel signals flowing through my top row of teeth, feeling absolute relief filling them. I was breathing so easily, in and out–there was a podcast analyzing different aspects of my life playing in my head, I do not often receive visuals, as usual, as I hear into the heavens rather than see; I dread certain psychedelics potentiality to create visuals as I do experience it as incredibly overstimulating to the point of being nauseating, I find the way I am able to imagine inside my head organically to be enough. Then, the burning in my nerves turned to ice, I felt it, and I feel it now as I write; it drips down from my left ganglion into my trap, rhomboid, into my deltoids, with my armpit lymph nodes feeling awfully icy; it’s normal for me to feel solace in pain turn to satisfaction, and I’m left wondering, are these mechanisms not natural to my system? Why am I to be demonized for a body that makes DMT to aid in biological processes?

I won’t lie, almost died.
Had to find a reason just to keep the fight alive.
Idolized people in my life who only traumatized.
I write my life on this paper,
so I don’t need all yall haters.
So kiss my ass see ya later.
— Nicholas Leanos Diego. Roses On Your Desk, on Diego (2024)

 

I had not a clue that DMT smelled of burning plastic until I was hanging out with a guy in Atlanta that happened to be a neuroscientist. I was telling him about the anaphylactic episode I had at my parents house months before. There was this cold realization that I wasn’t crazy, that I did almost die, and even colder, realizing I have experienced the dumping of DMT more times than I could count. A shiver down my spine thinking about the times I’ve thought people were burning plastic near me even when there was evidence to the contrary. If I’m still alive and seemingly far from braindead–could my chronic illness be chronically beneficial?

The headache I’m experiencing now is not the only one I’ve had recently, the last was a several day migraine that by the end of it, left me better able to understand Spanish. I’ve been studying it as much as possible because since the middle of May I’ve been in Colombia staying with my brother that is from here, becoming part of his family–tidbit about me, is that I have hardly studied Spanish due to the negative stigma toward it that I grew up with in Contra Costa County. As an adult studying various languages for the neurogenesis factor in addition to my interest in cultures, I then discovered that even though Spanish grammar might confuse me (oh my favorite language trio, Mandarin, German, and Russian–how I miss your grammatical structure in comparison), my brain was initially blocked from entering an entire world due to repeat traumatic experiences in relation to it that I then had to work through. It felt like a stone in my frontal lobe was melting out the ignorance & self hatred from my upbringing, the pain bringing new insights to the world that was once censored by past programming.

I’ve been suffering various types of headaches since I was under 5 years old, and have been misdiagnosed enough times by the age of 18 that I’ve given up on medical care in the United States, having only gone in for routine gynecological care since then thanks to free or discounted resources that were immediately accessible in California, Maryland, Delaware, and Georgia. And with that, it’s time I confess that for as long as I could recall, I’ve been tripping balls without even having to do drugs prior. For this reason, in conjunction with my overt exposure to mature film starting as a toddler, I have been vehemently refusing psychiatric care since the first time I was dragged to a specialists office as a small child. I did not want to be pathologized as a basket case when I genuinely endured a solid ten out of ten amount of pain during the peak of my headaches that paired with psychiatric symptoms. I did not think it even mattered that I hallucinated, as I was aware of the difference between reality and a hallucination more often than not–I also found the hallucinations I’d experience, if I was allowed to suffer in silence to be more comforting than negative, as it kept me distracted during the overstimulating sensory pain I’d experience as well as improving my ability to play after the fact. I loved playing with toys into puberty (fourteen years old) and I’ve been roleplaying online as well as with my own variations of performing arts that I do when I’m physically able to be in the public sphere.

Due to my neurological symptoms, it did not matter that I was not pathologized, I was still prescribed SSRI’s, most notably: amitriptyline–a drug that you might be familiar with if you’ve ever looked at what is used to euthanize both humans and our pets. I was placed on this drug at twelve years old, two years before menstruation, and my lymph nodes became swollen, I gained weight, began to act weirder than ever (I was already weird), and I lost interest in socialization. I became more sensitive and started to have difficulty differentiating the hallucinations from reality, as the noise from the hallucinations would aggravate my migraines as if it were real. I couldn’t admit it, but I should not have had to, as I would scream and cry begging for silence to be told that nobody is making noise–then, recently, I realized, why would that matter? Why would a family that has gaslit and assaulted me be honest about what is happening in reality? The increased hallucinations seemed to be correlated with this SSRI that I was on up until I was sixteen years old. My Mother (who was also on this drug thus existing with a bias) would force it into my mouth every evening once she discovered that I was not actually taking it, even though I begged to get off it.

There is at least one explanation for why my symptoms worsened on amitriptyline. Tyramine. It builds up in leftovers like Histamine does. I was never told by any of my specialists to avoid foods such as aged cheese (which my Mother had always made a staple in our diet) had to be avoided while on this drug. I was never told this the four years I was on amitriptyline. The severity that I experienced neurological disturbances after being placed on this medication would cause me to miss so much school that it’d become overwhelming to come back to it. I had to be homeschooled for part of 7th grade after being placed on this drug. When I went into highschool, after already knowing the implications of dosing this drug, I thought it’d be cool to get high instead. I would save it to take a large dose, along with any other prescribed medications such as tramadol, promethazine, and sometimes even the vicodin or oxycodone that my Mother would give me–I’d take it with my best friend, who was just as prone to self harm as me. We would nod out at school, ditch class, hang out in the bathrooms, walk around campus or the neighboring houses under construction–we also had a Little Caesar’s and WinCo in the neighboring town that we could get to and walk back before the next class started. By the end of my first semester of 10th grade, my Mother pulled me out of highschool before I could be suspended for open drug use, ditching, and persistent class disruption. I fell to the floor crying when I found out and promised my best friend I’d walk to her house after her school got out everyday, which I never actually did. My behavior didn’t change, I had other friends I’d do the same self-destructive behavior with, and towards the end of it all–I had nobody. It became hard to maintain friendships when my sensory issues and the chronic pain, the way I would get would make it unenjoyable to hang out. I chose virtual interactions over real life. You cannot see the symptoms of pain and discomfort behind a screen.

––Oh, but this is not entirely about my teenage behavioral issues nor the addictions I faced, for neither of those things are the direct cause of my pain, though they also did not make the situation any better. What am I getting at here? Well, I’m wondering whether or not pharmaceuticals are hindering the evolutionary process by preventing completely normal biological functions that then build-up and manifest into one of the many possible derangements of the human system. Are there certain genetic implications that make one more likely to experience these biological functions in excess? Could this be related to an addictive personality? Why are children with a genetic susceptibility to addiction being put on drugs that lead to dependency? Are we being regressed into an inferior state of being due to pharmaceuticals and the popularization of inflammatory foods? Why was I being hindered from potentially producing DMT naturally, when psychedelic drugs are known for their ability to prevent and treat addiction?

While pain prevents me from being a normal worker in a post industrial society that is presently achieving peak “capitalism” (it seems like such a facade when the US government essentially subsidizes corporations like Walmart), it is as certain as the depths of Hell to not hinder me from being a productive member of society outside of the context of industry. There are many cultures where money is not valued, in fact, it does not exist, because that is not integral to humanity, our community is–which since the event of the internet, should be the entire planet.

…–el pachuco es un clown impasible y siniestro, que no intenta hacer reír y que procura aterrorizar. Esta actitud sádica se alía a un deseo de autohumillación, que me parece constituir el fondo mismo de su carácter: sabe que sobresalir es peligroso y que su conducta irrita a la sociedad; no importa, busca, atrae, la persecución y el escándalo. Sólo así podrá establecer una relación más viva con la sociedad que provoca: víctima, podrá ocupar un puesto en ese mundo que hasta hace poco lo ignoraba; delincuente, será uno de sus héroes malditos.

La irritación del norteamericano procede, a mi juicio, de que ve en el pachuco un ser mítico y por lo tanto virtualmente peligroso. Su peligrosidad brota de su singularidad. Todos coinciden en ver en él algo híbrido, perturbador y fascinante. En torno suyo se crea una constelación de nociones ambivalentes: su singularidad parece nutrirse de poderes alternativamente nefastos o benéficos. Unos le atribuyen virtudes eróticas poco comunes; otros, una perversión que no excluye la agresividad. Figura portadora del amor y la dicha o del horror y la abominación, el pachuco parece encarnar la libertad, el desorden, lo prohibido. Algo, en suma, que debe ser suprimido; alguien, también, con quien sólo es posible tener un contacto secreto, o oscuras.
— Octavio Paz. El laberinto de la soledad (1950)

 

I love pain, humiliation, the experience of realizing I have been fooled. The existence of my body as a female is ornamental when my brain is sternly male despite periods of time of female behavior, it does not negate my malehood. I adore fear though I seldom feel it outside of the realm of chaos that my neurologically inflammatory reactions might bring. These tattoos on my face are my mask, a permanent pledge to clownhood, it exists to confuse and to incite fear into the audience, that then are riddled with assumptions of my personhood (or lack thereof), that I am a bug to squash–that I must be a complete fool for doing this to myself. I am someone to be ashamed of, as it is hard to hide the redhead woman with crosses on her face and tits hanging rather than encased in a brasier. I do not feel shame, it is the audience who feels it and wishes to project that shame unto me. The way I exist is a means to deny me my reality, as I must be far too deluded to be capable of understanding the human body, this shameful body that even the field of biology does not understand.

God forbids a person like me from playing a part in scientific advancements. I am a high school drop out. I was born female and have always felt male. I’m attracted to males and females. I am mixed race. My voice is deep and loud. Public education in the United States, as it exists since the industrial revolution, does not work with a brain that functions in the way that mine does, as learning requires that I have a peaceful environment to process and grow (which a standard classroom setting nor the suburban open house layout could provide). It’s no wonder that doing something as repetitive as Oldschool Runescape was my only solace away from “real life”, the game mechanics of reality was made for people who would jump off a building if their brains were psychedelic in the way that mine is–and oh, they do.

Billions of dollars go into the confirmation bias that pathologizes chronic pain. That is my adversary and I hardly stand a chance against it due to the way humanity chooses to give value to the ruling classes idol of choice – the dollar. It is worshipped by billions of human beings, and if not worshipped, we are obligated toward its utilization given the structures in place that incentivize the dollar as a replacement for culture. This destruction of culture that came with the attempted (and rather successful) eradication of countless ethnicities through the Americas, which has created “demons”. Including me. Monsanto–I mean, Bayer as they are now called–bastardized corn, a sacred food with more complex DNA than we do. Frito-Lay has put an incomprehensible amount of money into attaining subsidized commodities that only exist due to environmentally destructive agricultural practices done by Bayer, the corporation based in Germany that bought out Monsanto in the middle of 2018.

I thought every major city was going to be nuked when I had a near death experience in Arkansas. Now I understand that it was a metaphor for the massive amount of industrial and agricultural pollution from soy, wheat, oats, peanuts, and the pesticides that come with that. I’ve concluded, after an adulthood of living across the country, that the United States is becoming inaccessible to those that have autoimmune conditions. Autoimmune conditions are increasing globally worldwide.

Not a single US politician has attempted to bring attention to Mast Cell Activation Disorder.