MENTAL HEALTH UPDATE, NOV. 20th ‘24

I’m sitting here on the 20th of November today, it is the year 2024, almost 10 years since my mental health deteriorated. The storm is quite calm today, that can change over the course of a week, or a minute, depending on circumnstance and what I can consume. I went out for dinner with my mum 8 hours ago and it is currently 3:03am.

When I was 19 my mental health collapsed and I was left with the shell of who I used to be, living vicariously through the person I used to be, infact the old Cale Anderson is the only person I’ve been jealous of my entire life. Atleast since I was a kid lusting after my mate’s toys and sweets and chocolate in their pantry etc.

That all started in 2015. I used to rearrange the numbers of 2015 to spell the year L10N & think it was the year that I would find my pack and fiercly take on the world. I took on myself and got consumed by him. The lion devoured me. 2015 devoured me.

Here’s an excerpt from my book, “Avoiding Hellish Detours: The Exit Strategy”, from around that time:

So here we are, me and my mate (at the time) arriving at my first Rainbow Gathering. I heard about this one from a lovely, quite sexy aquaintance, from Confest. These days weren't so bad. Confest had it's ups and downs. Rainbow on the other hand was full of ups. There was an enthralling sense of freedom sweeping through the air.

There were times at Rainbow where we'd take it in turns at the random bathtub that was set up next to the river with a fire underneath to heat up the water in the tub. There were cleansing ceremonies using smoke in a sticks and leaf dome we built that could fit almost all of us (25 people or so) and there were a lot of trips we took internally on the wild mushrooms we had growing around the huge open camp site. At one point during the gathering, I looked up at the moon and thought, "I wonder if she is watching the moon tonight". I was a simp and had an obsession with Emma, both of us shared a little time to get to know each other, but our love was one-sided and I SIMPED on her hard. I bought my Mum Hibiscus flowers, beautiful purple flowers from Emma's flower shop just so I had the chance to see her and God, she was good looking. Let's just say, at the time, I was a bit of a dork and had no confidence to ask her out, get rejected and move on, just didn't want to admit it to myself that my standards were way out of line, and who's to say we had anything in common, anyway?

As I gazed up at the moon, David Ananda pops up from walking around in the dark and I was holding, in my left hand, a ball with all these flashing lights inside it. By the way, I was on mushrooms. I proceeded to jump around excitedly and purposefully bounce the flashy ball into my nutsuck and Ananda laughed his arse off. "Ah, the antics of Cale", he uttered.

He was cool, man. I'll never forget that guy. He was the one who'd driven me home back to Warragul, and stayed at my mum's house with me with Shanti (who'd tagged along with him to get somewhere in Melbourne. Shanti was a gypsy woman with barely any teeth and a penchant for chanting under her breath randomly like an old witch, but she was cool and I loved her, and I'm not just saying that incase she reads this and decides to put voodoo or hoodoo onto me), from this Rainbow Gathering. When David Ananda left in the morning he left his giant tarp at mine, and picked it up 3 months later (during which time me and my highschool friend H tripped Psilocybe Subaeriginosa mushrooms in that same giant tarp that I'd turned into a mongolian styled tee-pee inspired by those that were set up at Rainbow Gathering.

As David left that day, he left me a sticker, which said, "Do Your Own Thing".

Yemaya was just around the corner. Dicks out, many times, with the boys on the dancefloor, bouncing up and down during blaring psytrance rhythms. Polly was a girl I'd been in love with for most of 2015 since I'd met her in Melbourne. She and I got lost together at the festival and ended up falling asleep, in the cold, on the floor, of one of the food/chai stalls. We cuddled beneath layers of colorful sarongs until warm hues of dawn crept over the festival grounds.

Later on I was on drugs again after that first night at Yemaya. Dancing with fire twirlers, risking my life to look cool, ducking and weaving under the double sided fire sticks, as everyone cheered that I was surviving it. It was dangerous. There was one point when I gave a middle aged man an energy ball, by rubbing my hands together and forming a "ball of energy" and pushing it into his chest. I did that to him for a $2.00 coin.. so I.. could buy a rum ball that was way over priced. That was the only sustenence I'd had for a 20 hour period. I was starting to get a bit freaky in the brain space, if you feel what I'm saying. In other words, I was unknowingly presenting with symptoms of psychosis that were long in the works, almost 5 months in the works. It was like August at this point, I believe. Polly noticed, of course. She always noticed when my eyes went a little wide, when my laughter strayed into manic territory. People always cringe a bit when I laugh a little too hard, like The Joker from The Batman.

*Tip 2: Do The Best You Can, Don't Forget About Others... One of the first things that pretty much disappears in the dismantling of your mental makeup, aside from your neurons, brain cells and connection points, is your social circle and your support system. This isn't entirely your fault, as your diagnosis is largely to blame, it's not entirely your friends and fanily's fault either—the sickening feeling they have when they see you not acting right, kinda speaking erradically, triggering them with your psychotic behavior. It's weird for them. It's your 'new' normal. You push them away, too: you decide that their opinions and concerns for your wellbeing are attacks and disacciote, alienate and space yourself apart from them. They think your weird. Do the best you possibly can and don't make my mistake. Leave atleast two key figures in your life that are mentally stable, and you'll balance between their two different world views and perspectives, and hopefully, take their advice on board when they call you out. It took my years and years and years to form a social circle again, and it was hard and lonely. I don't wish the same feelings on you. *

"Blue light, you are the chosen one", written on the left side of the bus, above the queen sized bed, in a vehicle I thought to be mine. To think this exact bus was driving around this state, near N.S.W manned by Richard, during my stay at Yemaya Festival. Just a few months away.

Love yourself for what you’ve taken on..

I had a mental health scare a couple of weeks ago, where I was convinced I was a narcissist. I believed it 90%. It was a delusion fuelled by my obsessive grandiose posting on facebook that led me to look back on it, thinking, “damn, i’m so full of myself” and a TikTok video that someone made about the link between ADHD and Narcissism.

Anyway. I’m feeling good now, things are looking on the up. It won’t be up forever. But still. I’ll leave you with this:

When the prized posession has no value anymore, do you throw it out, or do you wait for it to be valuable to you again? ♥️