Sleep Quality Tracker started by Antibenzo7

I missed out on a bunch. Congrats on the 400 day mark, and it sounds like everybody's starting to see lots of green for spring. And it sounds like people's sleep is about the same, or possibly a little better now.

 

I took about a month break from real life and got stoned almost all day everyday, I've been enjoying these Cannabis Cup winning strains here in seattle. I got lots of sleep over that month, but my sleep suffered when I quit, as to be expected. It didn't do any damage, it just basically made my sleep suck because of what I was used to from the month before.

 

Anyways it's been about a week since I quit again, and my sleep is going back to normal again, about 7 or 8 hours total each day. Problem is, it's never all at once. It's very unusual that I sleep a whole night through, it's usually three or four broken sections instead.

 

But yes, everything is extremely green for spring. The Pacific Northwest gets really green, it starts out almost a darker green at first, and then you start seeing all the white and red blooming flowers and trees, and then once it starts getting sunnier and warm, then it starts to drizzle a little bit again occasionally. Once it starts to drizzle, everything turns neon green and it's almost popping out at you.

 

I lived in the Appalachian Mountains with lots of green for the first half of my life, but it never got to this level of green. The Pacific Northwest is a whole different story, it's almost like painting everything bright green and throwing in some dark green evergreen trees in the mix, with all kinds of bright colors from flowers and blue water and White snow-capped Mountains everywhere, it's like a painting with all different types of bright colors.

 

And yes, it's like we switched weather with colorado. I saw that Colorado has gotten quite a bit of moisture and the weather was pretty much flip-flopped with us. We've had really dry weather like California for the last few weeks, sort of like last summer. We only got about 2 or 3 days of rain out of the whole summer last year, and it was in the 20s% for the relative humidity and 30 to 40 for the dew point, just like Denver was.

Hi all,

 

JustInTime, welcome back! Nice you got lots of sleep that month. Did you ever feel it was beginning to not work as well or was it just as good from the start as when you stopped?  Good to hear your sleep is going back to normal.  7-8 hours is impressive.  Like you, my sleep is broken throughout the night. Perhaps that is the way it will always be after this length of time. 

 

Your description of how green it is there is amazing.  Spring is a beautiful time of year.  The neon green would be fun to see.  Do you notice it when it is cloudy or when the sun is shining?

 

With the snow capped mountains in the background, it does sound like a painting. 

 

We are still having cooler weather here with rain and more rain.  I love it! Yesterday I watered the lawn for the first time this year. Then the rain came again throughout the night and this morning. 

 

Last night I slept 7 hours and 20 minutes.  My deep sleep was 52 minutes, which was good. Sometimes it is a lot less.  I think that is the reason for my feeling not rested. 

 

Have a great Saturday everyone!

 

NG

 

 

Good morning,

    NG, while you're experiencing lots of rain, there's been a mini drought where I am.  The temps have been in the 90s, close to record heat for the beginning of June.

 

I got 7.5 hrs of sleep and a 1-hr nap.  I feel pretty well rested today.  Hope everyone's doing well.

I'm glad everyone got some decent sleep. I slept okay last night, I don't remember how many hours though. I actually just took about a 20 minute nap as well.

 

Night, it never stopped working, but my body started to get used to the sleep. For example, the first few nights I used it I got great sleep and slept about 8 hours straight. But towards the end of the month, I started to wake up in the middle of the night and have to use it in the middle of the night to get back to sleep. That's when I decided okay well I would rather go back to regular benzo withdrawal without the marijuana, and it took a few days to get my body back to this withdrawal level, and now I'm waiting for my body to get back to baseline again. I think that's what we're all hoping for, is to see our baseline from birth again sometime soon.

 

I started to realize that it doesn't really matter what kind of substance you put in your body, it's going to get used to it. Caffeine, marijuana, sugar, vitamins, fatty foods, basically anything. Definitely psychiatric medications, or any other kind of synthetic pharmaceuticals. Think about the people who take lifelong medicine, it's probably worthless at this point. Sometimes I even question heart medicine and blood pressure medicine and insulin, things like that. Doctors know that those kinds of medicines help people, but for how long? I don't think they've ever done decades-long studies on the same people.

 

Anyhow yes, the neon green is pretty cool. We get two different colors of green for the most part. When you look at the Puget Sound islands, they have light green trees and dark green evergreen trees mixed together. It's like having different color hair on the islands.

 

Whenever the summer comes around in the Pacific northwest, the skies get hazy bright blue like California. And we have Mount Rainier in the background, the 14,410 ft super volcano with glaciers on it, and sometimes the white mixes into the bright blue skies, it's almost a whitish blue when it's real bright out, making it hard to spot due to contrast sometimes.

 

This is all new to me, because the clouds and the sky were a different color on the east coast. The clouds are big and fluffy on the East coast, and they get super dark before storms. Over here in the northwest, the sky is either gray or it's bright blue, until the sun goes down or comes up, and then it gets all colorful like Florida, only with mountain ranges in the background above the water. The trees are different, the bushes are different, the color of the water is different, the sky color is different, pretty much everything is different. You would think hey it's pretty much the same because it's all green and somewhat of a temperate climate, but it's not. I'm assuming it's so much different because we're at so much of a higher latitude, were the furthest city north in the United states, just a couple hours from British Columbia, Canada.

 

I do miss Colorado sometimes, it was fun going to Red Rock Amphitheater and hanging out near Estes Park and Boulder. I always wanted to go check out the red Boulders and cliffs and the desert in the western part of the state, but I never got to go out that way. I always wanted to check out Telluride Colorado as well, such a nice place. Also such an expensive place.

 

I also wondered about the broken sleep, but I'm pretty sure it will go back to normal. The reason I say this is because I screwed up towards the beginning. Around 16 months, I was at a sleep level I hadn't seen since I was a child. I would close my eyes and wake up the next morning not even knowing what happened, like I didn't even know I went to sleep but it was the next day and I was refreshed. No vibrating, no panic, just waking up early and going about my day. Unfortunately I messed it up playing around with a bunch of alt cannabinoids instead of good organic ones. I'm not sure what the difference is, but all of the CBD and CBN and stuff that I was getting online through me into a major wave, and took me back to acute. I was very hesitant to try any cannabinoids again after that mishap, but I tested my luck regardless with the organic cannabinoids from my local dispensaries in seattle. I had no issues, I tested it further and further, and found out that it was only the alt cannabinoids that gave me the issues. Anyways long story short, I'm almost positive that our sleep will go back to how I was at 16 months, and that we will heal completely, at least if 16 months was an indicator of the future sleep to come.

Greetings BB friends,

 

JustInTime, thank you for explaining about the marijuana and the body getting used to it.  I agree, it seems that way with most things we take/consume. 

 

Sleeping 8 hours straight sounds so nice.  I agree, we reach a point where want to get back to childhood or wheneverhood normal.

Hopefully baseline eventually returns for all of us.

 

My husband was put on blood pressure and high cholesterol meds when he was in his 40s.  His father had had two heart attacks in his 50s and so my husband thought he was doomed.  He has been on the same meds for all of those years.  His BP is always a little high as well as his cholesterol. His cardiologist  tried to put my husband on beta blockers, but his bones hurt and he thought he had bone cancer, so he is still on the old meds. 

 

I love the sound of the Puget Sound tree colors. It sounds like what we see driving through the Colorado Rockies with the lighter green aspen trees interspersed among the tall pine trees. It is most noticeable in the fall when the aspens turn gold.  I can't get enough of seeing them each year.

 

Mount Rainer is an amazing volcanic mountain.  Your words paint a perfect picture of what you see. 

 

Red Rocks, Estes Park, Boulder and Telluride are great places to visit.  I never tire of them.  There is a gondola in Telluride that is free to ride up to the top and back down again.  Hard to believe, but it was a few years ago.  The meal in the hotel we ate at was fairly reasonable. I think that is in the past, now.

 

Last night was an very off night for me. I dozed off for a few minutes twice during the evening. When I went to bed, I could not go to sleep. finally listened to a sleep hypnosis on my phone and still could not sleep.  I did drop off a couple of times, but mostly was awake. My fitbit claims I slept 4 hours.  Today I feel somewhat okay. 

 

Hang in there! 

 

NG

 

 

 

Sounds like a pretty rough night, that's how my sleep was when I quit the marijuana last week. I would doze off for a little while, wake back up. Be up for a few more hours, go to sleep for another couple. It's hard, it's almost like our circadian rhythm got damaged by pills and now our nerves have to grow back or detox more. A lot of the time I wonder if we're still detoxing, because whenever I'm having a wave I'm really tense. And whenever I'm really relaxed, my body feels nice and loose and I don't have many symptoms. Like a sponge squeezing out moisture, only maybe it's muscles squeezing out benzos.

 

I love yellow Aspen trees in the fall time, I know exactly what you're referring to. They look like Christmas trees that got bleached and then painted yellow. We have lots of yellow in the fall here as well, it's great to have seasons year-round. Whenever you get tired of cold weather, warm weather is right around the corner. Whenever there's a drought, there's moisture on the way.

 

The blood pressure medicine and the other Med is interesting, sounds like maybe his body is getting used to those as well. If he's been taking blood pressure medicine for 20 or 30 or even 40 years, and then his blood pressure is always high, sounds kind of like how when we were stuck in interdose withdrawal because our bodies weren't being calmed down enough by the benzos. I was on beta blockers for about 20 years, and they robbed me of my energy, and not much more. They did keep my blood pressure really low, but doctors said that it was Dangerously low. Interestingly enough, they never took me off of them regardless even though it was supposedly dangerous. And then the older I got I started wondering, what if there's a purpose for having high blood pressure sometimes? I mean isn't that natural, plus maybe it is a defense mechanism for our biology. If we get attacked by an animal, or we have to run from something, or we have to fight somebody, I think we need the blood pressure. Needless to say, I got rid of all my Pharmaceuticals at the same time and went cold turkey on all of them and will never turn back.

Good afternoon,

  JIT,  the Seattle area sounds like an outdoors person's paradise.  My older sister lives in Bothell, Washington and enjoys hiking and scuba diving.  She used to mountain climb, but has stopped that over the years.  I've never been to the state of Washington, although I've been to Colorado a few times.  I used to own a timeshare in Winter Park/Fraser, Colorado, and experienced the best fishing at the Granby Dam area.  I no longer own the timeshare as I couldn't travel every year and the maintenance fees piled up.

 

Last night I got 7 hrs of sleep followed by a 1-hr nap.  I've felt pretty good today..

That's great that you got 8 hours total, sleep definitely helps. I think I've been to Granby Lake in colorado, if I remember correctly. I spent lots of time in Boulder and Denver and Aurora and I went to Morrison and Red Rocks, and somewhere up in the mountains on the way to Granby Lake I believe.

 

Bothell, WA is about 20 or 30 minutes from me I believe. Part of the Puget Sound area and the Seattle Metro area. Yes, the Puget Sound is good for scuba diving. We've got coral reefs and octopus and crabs and orcas and all kinds of marine life down there. I was just at the aquarium about a week ago, some pretty interesting stuff in there for sure.

 

I went to the zoo last week as well, they've got a 92 Acre zoo with pretty much everything. I can't enjoy it to the fullest yet, but it definitely helps with symptoms as well. Anytime I'm at an aquarium or at the zoo, or on the water or anywhere that has to do with mother nature, I feel better. I just got home from sitting on some Driftwood and having my feet in the gravel on the beach, it grounds you. I feel like it rewires your brain temporarily, puts it in the right place. There's been times when I've had waves, and they've dissipated while I'm sitting on the driftwood. Not sure how it works, but it does.

 

Right now I'm in downtown Seattle on the waterfront, but I think this is temporary. I prefer mother nature and the remote wilderness, but as you know that's a little impossible while you're going through benzo withdrawal. I mean sure you could try to survive in the Woods by yourself and hunt and all that stuff, but it would be really difficult while going through waves. City life is fun temporarily, but it's not for long term in my opinion.

 

Hello,

 

Took the weekend off from BB.

Now I 'm back.

Really interesting stuff about where you live. Sounds like there's  a lot of wonderful places.

 

Congrats on the good sleep,  RnR! 

 

Sorry your night was rough, NG. Hopefully last night was kinder to you.

 

My sleep is OK,  though the pattern has changed a little lately. I can't get to sleep within the first hour or so. I'm too warm because of the sunshine I get during the day, I suppose. After that first waking hour sleep is fine.

 

After an almost record wet April, we're now having a long dry spell. Add to that strongish winds and you know why there's an official drought atm. Oh well, it's that time of the year.

 

Have a pleasant Monday everyone.

 

TS

Hi everyone,

Good to see you back, TS!

 

Spring and summer weather do call for adjusting our sleep habits.  Hopefully you are sleeping a little better. 

 

Wishing you some rain to help with the drought.

 

JustInTime. Lake Granby is a beautiful place.  You did see some great places when you lived here. 

 

Puget Sound sounds amazing.  I love the ocean as much as I love the mountains.  I never took up scuba diving, as my husband wasn't interested, but he would snorkel.  I was quite happy doing that whenever we ventured to the ocean. Our son and daughter in law are scuba certified. I like hearing about their adventures.

 

In the Caribbean once, I made eye contact with an octopus. It backed in partially under some rocks and looked intently at me. We shared a moment before I swam away.  I love nature.

 

Zoos are lovely now that they have made them to be more like a nature preserve.  I no longer see stressed wildlife wandering back and forth in their enclosures.

 

Enjoying sitting on driftwood at the beach sounds so perfect. 

 

Sometimes my husband's BP is normal and sometimes it is high.  If  I take it at home, it is low. When we go to the doctor's office, it goes up.  He refuses to take new medication, so I let him be. I am happy he takes what he is used to taking. 

 

R&R, Winter Park and Copper Mountain were my two favorite place to downhill ski in the winter.  Fishing in Lake Granby sounded wonderful.

 

Last night I slept 7 hours and 45 minutes with two hours and 16 mins of REM sleep.  Deep was a little over an hour. 

 

Sleep well everyone.

 

NG

 

Zero sleep.  Stress brought back acute. 3 months out. Feeling pretty scared to be honest.

jonyob, I am sorry you are going through this.  I can honestly say that tapering off of benzos and the recovery was the worst experience of my life. I never believed I was going to die, but I did feel like I suffered beyond belief.  I would talk about it to anyone that I could.  Most of their expressions and comments told me they had no idea what I was going through.  The BB site was amazing.  I found the help and support I desperately needed.  Life began returning to normal in bits and pieces. I take everything one minute, hour, day, week, and month at a time. I remain here because my sleep can still be stressful and it helps to know my BB friends understand. 

 

It's normal and okay to be scared.  Your thoughts and feelings are genuine and understandable.  Time is your friend.  On bad days you feel like you are stuck forever where you are, but tomorrow is a new day and so is the next.  Ever so gradually things inch forward to help you heal. 

 

Hang in there and be proud of how far you have come.  It is such a monumental step getting off of benzos and here you are at 3 months.  Stress makes things worse, but even that gets better. I learned how to manage some of my stress, which does help. 

 

NG

 

Thank you for the words of encouragement nightengale.  My symptoms are pretty close to acute brought on by stress.  I used to handle stress like a champ and now I can't handle any real stress without symptoms.  Inner ears are plugged, outer ears dry and flaky.  Zero sleep.  Pressure headache.  I wouldn't mind any of it if there was a known end date. 

Jonyob,

 

Sorry you had such a cruel night.

NG said it so beautifully, every word she said is 100 % true. Remember yourself of how far you have come. People like us are very strong or we wouldn't have made it this far!

It takes as long as it takes, but it does get better!

 

NG,  so happy your sleep was much better. Way to go!

 

Hope everyone sleeps well tonight.

 

TS

Troch, I couldn't help but to notice you've had identical weather to me. It was really wet over the winter and the beginning of the spring, and now we have a dry spree and fire warnings for the next few days in Seattle. I'm pretty sure the United Kingdom gets about the same weather as the Pacific northwest, I wonder how that works as it seems to be at the same time as well.

 

NG, that's exactly what my blood pressure used to do when I was taking beta blockers. It would be extremely low most of the time, but then it would go crazy high when I would go to doctors and get vitals taken other places. That's why I was comparing it to benzos, it's almost as if when I was on beta blockers my blood pressure was really finicky. It didn't take much to make it go through the roof, almost like it was on edge or something.

 

That's how it was in my last final days of taking benzos. I was extremely anxious, I had sweaty palms, I could keep walking and walking and working out, and nothing would calm me down. It's like my body was overactive and it wasn't producing enough calming chemicals. So perhaps beta blockers put your blood pressure on edge, as if it's not getting enough of the blood pressure lowering chemicals? Who knows, but it seems similar in a way.

 

I've never been snorkeling in the caribbean, that sounds awesome. I used to go down to Miami sometimes when I was living in St Petersburg florida, we used to go down to Fort Myers and Naples and cut across to miami, there was lots of teal green water and white powdery sand down there, but I never saw octopus.

 

I saw a 16 ft wide octopus a couple weeks ago, and we did the same thing and locked eyes. It was strange, it was on the opposite side of the tank and it saw me, and then it shot over to me like it wanted to say hi. It stared me in the eyes, and I stared at him. It looked like we were examining each other, and then I started to walk off and go my separate ways, and it looked like it blinked and gave an impression of saying bye, and then left. They say they're extremely smart, maybe it could pick up on what I was thinking.

 

I had something similar happen with a giraffe a few weeks ago. I was walking around checking out the old growth evergreen trees at the zoo, and I noticed the giraffe was just staring at me instead of paying attention to the people in front of it. It's like it was sidetracked by me dozens of feet away, meanwhile the tourists in front of it we're trying to get its attention, but the giraffe wasn't interested. Maybe the giraffe saw that I was enjoying nature like him, and he was curious why I liked nature so much and we had something in common. Who knows.

 

These are the types of reasons why I prefer mother nature and wildlife. Society has taken a huge downturn, I prefer to stay away from most people these days, as they've lost touch with real life. Maybe things will improve in this country sometime soon, but I have my doubts.

 

I think I got about 7 hours of sleep last night. I just did some home exercises with some light weights and some push-ups and a few squats and some bicep curls and triceps and things like that, it always sucks when you're going through withdrawal, but it feels good afterwards. Working out also gets rid of waves sometimes, if you ever want to check it out and try it. The last thing people want to do is work out while they're having a wave, but it can shorten it if you get lucky.

Good morning,

 

Justintime,  That's interesting. They say nature always evens out, looking for some sort of balance. We're heading for a longer period of warm weather.  Looking forward to a bit of real summer. Before you know it we're in late summer and autumn again. I try to enjoy the moment,

 

Congrats on your really good sleep!  Exercise can be helpful, but there's always the risk of overdoing it. I speak from experience. Lol.

 

My sleep was good last night. I did wake up once or twice, but that's normal. Feel rested.

 

Enjoy today.

 

TS

jonyob, you are welcome. I hope today was a better day.  Acute symptoms can be stressful and very difficult to get through. Is your headache still there? 

 

TS, thanks.  You have a fine way of saying kind words.

 

I am glad you slept well last night. Wishing you many more. 

 

JustInTime, you made some interesting points about drugs.  Benzos do take away the production of natural chemicals our brains made naturally. Once Benzos are taken away, the brain has to regrow the gaba receptors.  Who knows what blood pressure/beta blocker drugs do to our brains. 

 

You also had an amazing encounter with a huge octopus! It does sound like they do have a connection to our brains/thoughts.  Even the giraffe seemed to be on the same wave link. Those moments stay with us. 

 

Society has taken a dramatic downturn.  I stopped watching the news. 

 

You did well with 7 hours of sleep.  Exercise sometimes does help.

 

I also slept around 7 hours.  I've had a headache the last two days. Not sure why. 

 

Take care everyone,

 

NG

 

Hello folks,

 

NG, thanks for the nice complement. Allow me to return it! 

 

Happy for you for having had 7 hours of sleep. Sorry about your headache.  I hope it goes away asap.

 

How's your garden doing? Has everything you planted survived the "trauma"  that comes with the process?  The gardens are changing by the day, or rather the night. Most growth takes places  during the dark hours. Every morning I notice more and more  perennials that have started to flower. Such a wonderful time of the year!

 

Justintime,  just imagine what the octopus had to say after coming home to his wife and kids! 

 

My sleep was good.  I got some 7 hours as well. It seems that's what we need atm.

 

Going to a funeral today. Yes, again. This time of a cousin from my father's side. Despite the 20 years age difference, we got along really well. We saw eachother on a regular basis. The last 7 months or so I visited him more often because he was getting  worse.

Last week he died from COPD at the age of 88.

I'm grateful his suffering has ended.

 

I hope everyone slept well.

 

Have a lovely Wednesday.

 

TS 

Good morning,

 

Thank you, TS. It was lovely!

Good to hear you slept 7 hours.  That is always a plus!

 

Sorry to hear you lost a dear relative.  You will miss him.

 

My garden is doing well. It has been so cool and rainy here, everything is growing slowly. Nothing has died, so I am happy.  My perennials are also blooming.  Right now the peony bushes showing off. It is a wonderful time of year!

 

My fitbit says I slept 3 hours and 27 minutes.  It has my wake up time as 1:08 am. I was awake during that time, but did sleep some after that, as I recall dreaming.  I did get up to walk around 6 am, so maybe that has confused the sleep time.

 

On the plus side, my headache is gone!

 

NG

 

Hi NG,

 

Happy for you now that your headache is gone.

 

Your sleep wasn't much good, but we take what we get. Tonight is going to be better.

The walk at 6 am sounds lovely. You walk was outside I hope 

 

There were a lot of people at the memorial service. The church was crowded and warm!

As usual there was a kind of reunion afterwards. I talked to several cousins from this side of the family. Some I hadn’t seen in 4 or 5 years. Again at a funeral.  A bit sad really. Long ago we met at weddings,  nowadays it's funerals.

 

Nice to know your garden is doing well. All of your physical labour is paying off.

 

Sleep well tonight. Nights are really short at this time of year. Because I live "up north"  sunset is at 10 pm tonight. And there's still more to come. On a clear evening it doesn't get dark until way after 11 pm. I love those long summer nights.

 

TS

Troch, sounds like we are in the same place, just different countries. I live at a high latitude as well, and the sunlight has been coming out around 3:30 a.m., and sun has been sitting around 10:00 p.m., and today was extremely warm. It was 87° in the sun, I believe we set a new record for this time of year. We had fire watches, in case there were any sparks. It's been really dry and low 20s humidity with ocean breeze.

 

Night, sorry about the relative. That's never good when you meet somebody at a wedding and see them again at a funeral, but I suppose that happens to many over the years. Meet in white, say your goodbyes in black.

 

It's crazy to think we all survived this predicament, so far at least. I was almost 99.99% sure I was going to die at the beginning, I had been on massive amounts for 20 years straight with no breaks other than for a few days in the hospital. I went cold turkey on lots of different substances at the same time, so it was brutal.

 

I got hit with some strange waves tonight, lots of nerve pain in my feet and hands. I started sweating profusely, felt like my body was detoxing. I used to drink a lot when I was younger and I would go to detox when necessary. You get flushed and hot feeling, and you start to sweat and your ears will ring. That's what my body was doing tonight, even though it's been almost 4 years off of pills. Sometimes I think we're not done detoxing yet, I can't really think of another reason behind it.

 

Everything in my city is turning extremely green now, everything is much fuller than it was a couple weeks ago. The warm air is making the ocean smell good and salty, you can smell it a lot more when the weather warms up. It's an estuary, part glacier water from the mountains, part salt water from the Pacific ocean. The water is usually about 45 to 55°, all year long, so the warm weather seems to carry the saltwater smell along with the heated sun rays from the season.

 

Some days I sit on the beach and think to myself, that would be nice to have a super yacht. Imagine if we could just go through benzo withdrawal and cruise around the ocean, have a chef cook us some meals, and walk up and down the hallways to get exercise with no other Society members nearby. Just us and our food, and the weather and the ocean. Not happening anytime soon, so I'll just take my ferry or water taxi across in the meantime.

Good morning Justintime,

 

Wow, you're on a roll with your posts! I really enjoy reading them.

This time of year is so beautiful. You're right about the colors, the smells, the sounds being intense. I love it!

 

The sea and the ocean do something magical to us.

The way you describe your area, almost makes me want to go and visit there. On the other hand, where I live is beautiful too. And it's right around the corner, no 9 hour flight required.

 

Sorry about the strange waves. From the way you describe them it must be really unpleasant. Hope they roll away soon!

 

It's always good to have dreams. Perhaps one day...right?

 

My sleep wasn't much good. Couldn't get to sleep and when I finally did, sleep was light. Woke up at 5.30 am. Got up and went fishing.  Didn't catch anything but it was nice to be outside. Unbelievable the number of people already on the road to go to work! Glad I stopped long ago.

 

Have a lovely day.

 

Trochsetter

 

 

Good morning,

JustInTime, thanks for the picturesque description of where you live. Sunlight at 3:30 am is early! When we went on a cruise to Sweden, I awoke at 3 am and looked outside to see it was light! I was so excited I woke my husband to come out and have a look! It was amazing, I never went back to bed, as I was too busy taking pictures and enjoying the scenery. 

 

I dream of having a private jet and flying all over the world on a whim. Your private yacht comes in at a close 2nd to my plane.  If only we had been born with enough money to live our dreams.  Money doesn't buy happiness, but I could still have fun even if I am not happy. lol

 

It does sound possible that this far our you are still having waves. Do you ever drink alcohol? I do now and then and wonder if has an effect on my gaba receptors. 

For so many years I didn't touch alcohol hoping it would help me heal.  A few times a year, I will now have a glass of wine or a  margarita. 

 

TS, the ocean is magical. Sometimes we fly away to experience things and other times we take a short drive. 

 

Sorry to hear your sleep was light. Going fishing sounded like a good solution to waking up early.  My early morning walk was around the house, but my mind took me to sweet places.

 

You are so right about weddings and funerals.  Family reunions/get togethers do change over time.

 

Sleep for me was 7 hours and 35 minutes.  The tiredness has not gone away, but I do feel better.

 

NG

Good morning,

    Getting over a cold and sinusitis right now.  I imagine the bad air created by the Ca.nadian wildfires isn't helping.  Got 7.5 hrs of sleep, though.  Can't complain about that :-)

I agree about the wealth, some people were born into some pretty lucky situations. I've never been much of a materialistic person, but what I want is the freedom that comes along with being a billionaire. No bosses to answer to, no finances to worry about, never having to settle on something you don't like very much, and always having the best food and most relaxation time. Others think they need the huge houses and the fancy cars, but I'm just after the freedom.

 

The private jet sounds like a good idea too. Skip the TSA lines, skip the body searches and x-ray machines, skip the flight attendant telling you to stay in your seat and buckle your seatbelt and not get up to go to the restroom. Skip the screaming babies and weighing luggage and losing luggage, that would be nice. Why is it that people who don't have a lot of money, get treated like prisoners at the airport? Last time I went to the airport I got yelled at for having ChapStick and Kleenex in my pocket, the TSA agent was acting like it was drugs or a bomb.

 

Going fishing sounds nice, I haven't done that in years. There were some guys at the end of the pier across the street catching Squid and Dungeness crab the other day, they all had their generators and spot flashlights going on the water. They would Shine the Light on the surface of the water, and pull up a bunch of crabs and Squids and throw them in an Igloo cooler. I go to the farmers market a lot, next time I'm going to have to pick up some crabs to take home for dinner.

 

I also saw the news about the wildfires on the East coast, that's crazy. We get Wildfire smoke in the Summers over here on the West Coast, but I've never seen New York City turn orange from Wildfire smoke until today on the news. Last year I took a video where the islands here in the Pacific Northwest turned completely orange, and almost a reddish color. It was the most Vivid colors I had ever seen, it looked computer-generated or like it was out of a movie.

 

I think I got about 6 hours of sleep last night, and then another half an hour nap or so today. No I do not drink alcohol, I quit in 2019. I figured why start back when vaping marijuana is more exciting? I figured I would only use marijuana in the future, since it doesn't affect the same part of the brain as benzos. Usually I just go outside and walk a bunch and recently I've been doing some workouts at home, and occasionally if I feel like taking a break from reality, I will just go to one of the multiple marijuana dispensaries surrounding my home. I've got two of them within three blocks, and I've got another two within two blocks.

 

This new marijuana is completely different than the old stuff, now they have just about every color and type, skin patches and feminine suppositories and eye drops, as well as syrups and hard candies, disposable vape pens and different consistency batters and waxes, you name it. But don't believe the hype, all that Indica versus Sativa stuff seems to be marketing. The THC levels also seem to be marketing, they are never consistent. I've had strains of marijuana that only have 15% THC and they get you way higher than the stuff with 34%. I've also had sativa that puts me out and makes me go to sleep, whereas I've had Indica that makes me jacked up like caffeine. Everybody is different, just like with benzos.

 

I think I will be considering fishing from now on, actually sounds like a pretty fun Pastime at the moment. The rest of the world is freaking out and everything is spiraling out of control. Maybe people just need to get back to Nature and catch some fish and cook some meat on the fire, use some of Earth's natural substances to take a break from reality. Hiking in the mountains, swimming in the ocean, having family and tribes versus having government and corporations. I think the Detachment from reality is what's doing the world in right now, causing all the chaos.