How I got here

I'm currently recovering from a grief, depression, intimate partner violence, State abuse, and whatever-the-hell-is-in-nationwide-legal-psuedo-cannabis-vapes based psychosis. Long story short: I sacrificed my physical, mental, emotional, and future well-being as a human shield so my non-biological daughter who I won't see again could have part of a childhood and not develop a cluster-b personality disorder like her mother. To those that don't understand what these people are like behind closed doors, you simply have no frame of reference. There are no words that will allow you to understand; many social workers and psychiatrists are often even fooled into serving as these people's unwitting thralls. Their nature is predatory. They smash mirrors within and without (even posting something public about it like here will summon a small herd of them to cover the tracks with doubt). They have no ideology other than predation, so they follow the ideology of the hour that gains them the most; they wear personalities like hats. It was after being attacked, yet again, that I was DARVOed (because I was actually escaping for good this time, and the cherry on top of these relationships is always, without fail, a DARVO kick-in-the-ass on the way out the door). Then, despite having over two hours of her attacking me over years of time recorded, including her pouncing atop me and snatching my phone on the very day in question, the brilliant detective at Atlanta PD warranted me, and I stayed in the Rice Street gulag where the schizophrenic kid was murdered by police via bedbug consumption (the police there use subterfugal torture methods to "keep people in line" by throwing them in freezing-in-winter, low-to-no ventilation, hot-in-summer, or bug-ridden cells, keeping lights on at all hours, refusing medical care, 30 people bricked in cells meant for 8, kept standing for days, COVID outbreaks in entire cell blocks, standard US prison system fare, torture by any sane definition of the word). It's when I looked down at the homeless man in that cell, the one laying flat directly in the piss and the shit on the floor so he can lay down in the real estate that no one wants, that I said to myself, "yeah, that's where I'm at."

It's after that, I underwent a psychosis so vast that every word, every symbol, every story, every axiom, every fear, every thought, and all of human history amassed into a unified and perfect whole; only after would I come to recognize that what I saw was identical to the ascent in Merkabah literature, Thelema's visit to the City of the Pyramids, Samadhi, and several other analogies for such experiences. Myself had disappeared, and in its place was a sacrifice burning through time like a star. There were only really two forces in the universe, entropy and creation, and the two were yet an illusion still of a singular. Dark matter became simply matter not yet light, returned to the path of least resistance towards supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies, dark energy became simply the remnant left by matter past the edge of observability to continue the pulling, decimation, and return, breaking the laws of thermodynamics that were merely local phenomenon, and creating novel matter in the process, the early stages of which would expand in an accelerated manner that would appear as a bang, but be more akin to a snake eating its own tail and growing.

I wandered in a daze, searching for what I called my fellow "wizards" or fellow autists or fellow disciples, not fully knowing what I was doing or why. I researched Benedictine and Bhuddist monestaries to try to escape the world. So yes, US hermits are very real, we are very noble, and we are fucking livid regarding the state of adequate hermitages. I'm currently in a low-rent studio, searching for minimum wage jobs, so I can pay less taxes to the undemocratic State. "Fully-employed" I'd make 1/4 million a year.

I don't think those examples are similar.

A tenured professorship or position at a prestigious institution provides a lot of resources and status that the minimalist approach does not. I don't know a single professor who would accept living in the very modest setup I proposed.

Also, I don't know any research organization that provides room and board for long-term faculty/staff. IAS does not work that way. Surely there are universities that provide room and board for graduate students, and some summer research internships will provide room and board. But those cases are rare in my experience in the US, and are only be temporary at best.

The opioid epidemic has killed a good chunk of my friends over the years. It was rampant in the form of "cheese" when I was a teen; one of my closest friends was left to die when he began vomiting from an overdose. When I was in the Marines I saw Marine after Marine prescribed opioids for pain and injuries after deployments, many of them separated out and continued using. As an adult I've lived in the Bay Area and Portland; I've gotten to observe first hand what culture these drugs cultivate on our streets. I've gotten to see opioids make their way, sometimes by mistake, into the rave scene and the constant fear it creates among people who want nothing to do with those drugs. We have Narcan at our house because people consistently use the church parking lot next door to shoot up in their car. I've personally ran down the street and through the fence to go bang on doors because I saw someone passed out for too long - not because I want them gone, but because I don't want to see someone else die.

To put the entire mantle on dealers would be a mistake, imo. Their choice to sell can come from a variety of incentives: sometimes from clout, sometimes their upbringing, sometimes lack of opportunity, sometimes lack of education, many times a mixture of the above. Often enough these people are users themselves; the pain the people they sell to endure they also typically endure.

I don't view this post as victim-seeking and I don't really view him as a victim. Instead, I view this as a critique of prison culture that reinforces its outcomes. I view him as someone that wants to change and has the capacity to change, but there is little if any pipeline or incentive to do so. If there is one, it seems frail. When people want to change we should have a stepped pipeline for reintroducing them to normality and finally society.

Like you, I'd like to see less opioid related deaths in the future but I think there's more than one way to get to that goal. If there's a way that can make productive citizens out of people rather than shutting them away forever then I'm all for it because, frankly, the threat of a felony or life imprisonment didn't stop people before. In fact, that's when the prison population and recidivism bloomed.

I agree. It's a delicate topic full of nuances and differences in jurisdictions.

The site doesn't show the date, but I emailed him and he says he posted it yesterday. Ain't that just the way!