Johnny Belgium

I know four stoners that became schizophrenics. One of them killed himself in a psychotic episode. His mother came into his house and saw him hanging from the staircase. It kinda looked like he was standing. She was in schock and did the dishes and was talking to him as if he was still alive and just standing there in the hallway. Another stoner I know is living alone in his grandparents house, and refuses to see anyone. The last time I saw him he was talking about wacky conspiracy theories. That was in 2019. Only his brother has seen him since, 5 years later. He used to be one of the most intelligent people we knew. Weed is often depicted as harmless and even as medicine. People make fun of the movie 'Reefer Madness' that is about marijuana making people insane. Some celebrities promote smoking weed as if it will save the world. But it is a flawed drug. It does create schizophrenics. Weed can have very different effects with different people and at different times. It's ve...

My mind is constantly offering me lies, exaggerations and omissions (leaving important information out). Sometimes this bullsh!t comes out of my head in speech and in writing. But I try to be honest and dismiss these false thoughts. That is not my nature. It's a choice I make.  Sometimes I get stuck in my head and get all upset at something that really doesn’t matter. I argue in my head with hypothetical people, and get all overstimulated. I make bullsh!t arguments nobody hears. When I become aware of this, I take a deep mindful breath, I take my mind back to my body, my breath and my senses, I try to learn a lesson and let go of what upset me. Most of your thoughts are worthless. Don't identify with your thoughts. What really matters are your actions. And I include spoken and written words as actions. Your mind is a bullsh!t artist. Just let it go. peace ✌️ 💜 🌱

I look back with nostalgia to my childhood in the nineties. But I mostly miss the culture. The music, the movies, the television. In many ways, it was also still the dark ages. We didn't have easy access to all the scientific information about nutrition and mental health, for instance. We were pretty ignorant of important facts we consider obvious today.  My mother was a schizophrenic that refused treatment and my father once said that "it was his pedagogical conviction that children raised themselves". His profession was high school teacher, interestingly. My mother and father both came from big families, and really, they should have called child protection. We were left alone to our own devices and I ended up drinking liters of coffee every evening, not realizing what it did to me. I made 2 to 3 pots of coffee every evening. I slept only about 2 or 3 hours every school day, but I rarely missed a day of school. Getting up after 2 hours of sleep was tough. I would be a zo...

Our gut and brains evolved for hundreds of millions of years in nature. Civilization has created hyperstimulating products that hijack our primitive reward system. For instance. We are programmed by evolution to seek out salt, fat and sugar. So corporations make products loaded with those. We are programmed to achieve goals, so corporations make video games. We depend on others in nature, with social media we can connect to everyone in the world. And organizations, legal or otherwise, sell drugs that chemically trigger a reward directly, like alcohol, tabacco, cocaine or weed. Sometimes an addiction can be productive. Like a work addiction, an exercise addiction or an addiction to optimizing your diet for health. But productive addictions can also lead you down a harmful path.  Dopamine is the motivation chemical. It actually releases in anticipation of something exciting. You get your first hit of dopamine before your behavior. Another name for addiction is habit-forming. When you...

There is this meme going around that you shouldn't use rational arguments because people only respond to emotional argumentation. In online debates with me, people have even said that my argument is wrong because it is rational and not emotional. For instance, I have argued that a plant based diet is superior, and someone (who claimed to be in politics for the Marxist pvda party) responded to my reasoning that I shouldn't use rational arguments and that people would revolt if they didn’t have their daily piece of animal carcass. The irony or paradox is that "you shouldn't use rational arguments BECAUSE people only respond to emotion" is a rational argument. They should be saying "I feel you shouldn't be rational." And even that is a reason. What is logic or rationality? It is stating a hypothesis of cause and effect. This will happen when that happens. That happened because of this. It's what science tries to uncover. Cause and effect is the fund...

A Plant Based Diet is not a Vegan Or Vegetarian Diet. On a Plant Based Diet you get most of your nutrients from plants but allow for a small amount of animal products. ❗️Don't get your nutrition advice from randos like me. Instead, for advice on eating Plants, check out this FREE website:  https://veganhealth.org/ DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING I WRITE.  I started writing this guide at the beginning of my journey. It's a mess, and I now know better. Especially when it comes to supplements. I now take a multivitamin that contains B12, D, Selenium, Iodine... and I take an Omega 3 algea supplement which Plant Eaters anecdotally need. I make sure there is always soup in the fridge that includes Beans or Lentils and Dark Leafy Greens. I still agree with a lot of this advice, but changed my mind on some of it. I advise you to read websites and books by qualified people like: Books: Vegan For Life, Nourish Subscribe to the newsletters of the websites: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health...

There is a lot of mind reading going on. People claiming to know the true motives of a person. I don't even know clearly what my own motives are, let alone other people. Speculating about motives is a big part of the news and of social media. "They are just stupid" "They are lying" "They don't know that they are lying" "What they really want is actually..." "They are a narcissist" "They have a cognitive bias" "They are evil" "They intend well" ... The field of psychology attempts to read minds. Their conclusions often seem true. But it's not an empirical measurement like measuring a volume or length. If I don't know my own motivation, how can a researcher? You can say: "people are pretty much the same" and base your mindreading on your own mind. But perhaps people have different ways of thinking. Maybe not everyone is skeptical. Perhaps people can be in denial or not able comprehen...

TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE !!! Had I been diagnosed before the LSD, it would have probably been with bipolar. My teenage years were marked by episodes of depression and what I now realize were mild psychotic symptoms. When I was 20, I had been in a mostly depressed phase for over 2 years. I was supposed to be studying. I stayed up watching news channels till a hole in the night. I watched TV till I was so tired I fell asleep. TV stopped me from being alone with my dark thoughts. Had I gone to bed at a normal time, I would be struggling to fall asleep with my thoughts. So I watched TV till I was dead tired, then woke up in the middle of the afternoon. Repeat cycle. For about 2 years until this story begins. I also had episodes which I now recognize as mania or psychosis. But I thought it was my rich and intense fantasy life. For instance: An attractive girl would catch my eye in the supermarket and I would have visions of us together. One thing, they were really intense. But they also kep...

  TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide. This is the story of my first acid trip. If you are going to try psychedelics, please read my harm reduction guide first so you don’t have a bad trip: https://johnnybelgium.blogspot.com/2022/09/johnny-belgiums-psychedelic-trip-guide.html Club 27 is a group of famous musicians that died when they were 27. Most of them died from drug use. That includes alcohol. I’m in a different club 27. My life began when I was 27 years old because of an LSD trip. My mother was a certified schizophrenic and never got the help she needed because she was too paranoid. My father had issues too. Long story short: I had a crappy childhood. I think I had a mood disorder before the acid cured me. I remember having panic attacks in kleuterklas (school ages 3 to 6). Sometimes I was really really angry without an apparent cause. I didn’t know how to talk to people. Like many boomers my parents thought children raised themselves and didn’t need to be parented and socialized. As a t...