Time for an update, since it's been two months more or less.

"Oh. Well, that's unfortunate." slowly backs away

That's pretty much what you get when you put the gory details of a critical event of your life up on the internet for people to gossip about and misinterpret. It's gonna stay up there, of course. I have nothing to apologize for here.

I guess what most people expect from these kinds of stories is some immediate plug after the story ends, to buy my memoir or take my course on navigating trauma or something. While I am indeed offering tutoring services, those are disjoint from this entire thing, or as disjoint as two different parts of a single life can be, anyway. So when I didn't show up with a direct equivalent of that, I think it confused many readers, and (1) they either discarded the entire bag of thoughts or (2) misinterpreted my services page as the buy my memoir part.

For those with a reading comprehension level beyond second grade, though, I do feel as if I owe at least a progress report on how the last two months have gone. There have been good moments, bad moments, and things I won't be writing about.

Basically I have been navigating a credit vacuum (need work for experience, need experience for work). It doesn't help that those two malpracticing "doctors" (Rosenthal and Lequesne) tag-teamed my defamation by keeping me in the Sinai Psych system for over a month. I've had people I've considered friends suddenly break all contact with me after convincing themselves that I really am clinically insane. Other people have made up narratives like "oh he was a smart kid until he ran into all sorts of substance problems in college" or similar.

Let me actually begin with this one, since it annoys me the most. Every action I've taken with regard to using drugs to alter my experience, I have done with full autonomy and self-awareness. I drew hard lines at nineteen where I decided the risks weren't worth it, and I haven't broken them since drawing them over a decade ago. I did my homework on what to not mix. I took precautions to never let my dopamine or serotonin get out of wack from substances. Try to not forget that I was brought up by medical practitioners whenever it helps make your story smoother.

Yet, when the word "drug" comes up, suddenly every nonuser conjures an image of some fentanyl-addled lost cause, or some crank addict with half of their teeth missing. Reader, I promise you, there are middle grounds to this sort of thing between what I have just described and whatever saint you might perceive yourself to be.

I did make some major decisions as to what I would be doing in the future (all of it before moving), and I thought I'd share some of them, so that people have fewer things to pull out of their asses.

Let's start with alcohol. Yes I drank like a hedonist in my first year after graduating high school. However, there was one point where I was prescribed naltrexone to keep myself from drinking away the state of being on multiple early-gen antipsychotics at once, and it completely rewired how my brain perceived the substance. Nowadays ethanol just tastes like poison to me, and I avoid it with religious precision. I get robitussin instead of nyquil at the pharmacy when I have a bad cold. It's been at least three years (probably longer, didn't count because I didn't care) since I last had an alcoholic beverage.

I ceased THC usage on 4 May 2026, and it has been over three months since then. I also used to smoke cigarettes, but cut that out too. I still use nicotine though; my delivery mechanism of choice is to stick a Zyn pouch into electrolyte solution and sip throughout the day. So at this point in my life, I am fully smoke-free.

Anything stronger than the above, I simply abstain from.

Well, I guess that's not true. I am still forced to take the chemical retardant aripiprazole, lest my mom cut me off financially. I hate the drug, as it makes me thrice as slow as I already am, to say nothing of the lithium carbonate they tried to supplement in addition. Everyone around me who has credentials for this says "look at you, you're still really bright!" which is like saying an F1 car with its front wheels missing is still fast.

Now, allow me to draw a distinction between "I don't need to be on chemical retardants" and "I don't need any professional help whatsoever," because people have been lightning quick to conflate the two, and I'm kinda sick of it.

I see a therapist weekly. They have been of tremendous help. The analogy I like to make is, Niki Lauda would not have gotten to be Niki Lauda without Enzo Ferrari, no matter how much Lauda thought Ferrari didn't understand.

I see a medication specialist monthly. They have me on the aripiprazole injectable for now "because they don't know me yet," but I'm optimistic that after a few family therapy sessions where the team gets to see firsthand what I've been dealing with all my life, they'll agree to switch me to the oral aripiprazole and (eventually) taper it off.

Another bit I didn't really explain in the first two pieces either: I tapered oral aripiprazole on my own while simultaneously cutting THC cold in the spring. It is to this that I attribute any symptoms or behavior I exhibited that could be described as psychosis. I'm back on the chemical retardant now, and the THC is gone never to return, so I'm slow and stable while simultaneously counting the weeks until the team I'm working with (and these people actually listen, so I am optimistic) helps me become less slow while still stable again.

As for whether my brain is functioning properly, well, I'll let you be the judge of that as I put out more writing and my chess gets more consistent and my LSAT score comes back (I'm rescheduling to a later date, since my plans for where to apply / binding early decision have changed recently).

I am not looking to prove anything to anyone, nor am I waiting for my critics to catch up. To everyone who has supported me in any capacity, thank you for seeing clearly and being there even in spirit. I'm learning that's not a small thing in this world.

Addendum. To Hunter and Miles: fuck you for helping my mom abduct me to that psych ward, fuck you for trying to do it again this time, and fuck you for every time you made me feel like anything less than what I am. Do not try to contact me again, ever. I'd say all of this to your faces had I the stomach to even look at you.