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Despite a busy schedule u/eruwenn kindly helped me be twice as productive this week, teamwork pays off. Bonus chapter!
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Aaron sat in the open air-lock on the Porkchop Express, looking out over the treetops of Eden from his perch high above the park wall. He picked up the datapad and flicked to a screen with a map and six red dots, one of which had the name Tony floating next to it. Jolie, another red dot, was nearby - she was the third leokas that had grown healthy enough to be released into Eden. After Tony had shared his kill with her, she had stuck close to him. Aaron was glad his friend had bought his date dinner first.
He was so engrossed he didn’t notice Alexa approaching until she kicked him. “We’re leaving soon.”
“Ow!” He exaggerated. “And, I know. I was just trying to spot him. Ya’know, one last time. In case he needed some biscuits or something.”
Alexa slid her back down the wall to sit beside her human, wrapping her arm around his. As her head rested comfortingly against his shoulder, she reached out with her other arm to enlarge the map. The dots of Tony and Jolie were now side by side. "You saved his life. You found him a home, and gave him his freedom. He even has a mate. You've done enough, Aaron. He is the richest leokas in the world, his merch selling on practically every planet in the Federation, and he even has a breakfast cereal with his likeness on it”
“It’s grrrrreat.” Aaron laughed half-heartedly at his own joke.
“It has entirely too much sugar in it,“ she scolded him gently. “But, the toys were a nice touch.” She snuggled into him, enjoying a rare moment when he wasn’t being chased by a member of the crew with business issues. She savoured their privacy, remembering the first few cycles with just the three of them in the animal pens onboard the Azrimad. “One day, you, Sassie, Aiov and I should come back and visit Tony. Just the four of us.”
Aaron choked up a little, realising that Aiov would eventually be another goodbye. “She has a spot reserved in Eden, once she’s grown up.”
The door to the Overlook opened and Daynd came stomping towards them. “Will you two get back in the Tulseria damned ship! I need to re-check all of these seals, since you keep using the airlock as your personal viewing platform.” He waited for them to stand, tapping the metal tool in his hand against his leg. “Hurry up, Pilot, pre-flight checks are your job as well.”
Managing to make her salute as sarcastic as possible, she led Aaron by the hand back into the ship. “He’s grumpier than usual. It's been a few celes since he was on a planet for such a long stretch... I think he likes it here.”
The human sympathised; the ship would feel pretty small after Kasur, and a little emptier without the guest in the cargo hold. As he thought about it, another member of the crew had seemed rather absent lately. “How’s Norrin?”
Alexa shrugged. "In his barrel." Her herald had been struggling to maintain his solid form, so Aaron had put a barrel in his room. It had seemed like a dumb idea at the outset, but allowing Norrin to spend time as a semi-liquid had indeed helped to slow his deterioration.
“And you?” Aaron wasn't sure whether he feared asking the question or receiving the answer more.
She released his hand and poked his undefended stomach. “I can still kick your ass if you keep looking at me with those sad eyes. Don't worry," she added, reaching up to mess with Aaron's hair, "we can get what we need on the world we were found on. There are Inorganics there who can help.”
Aaron huffed, reaching up to try to re-tame his hair by flattening it down. Kasur didn't have barbers, as fur needed no cutting, and after a long period of wearing him down Chae'Sol had finally managed to convince him to sit for a haircut. Upon seeing the results of the Niham’'s efforts, Alexa had then made an attempt to fix Chae'Sol's fix. After that, it had been up to Aaron to fix the fixed fix, using a pair of scissors as well as an animal clipper to try to sort out the back and sides. In the end, it was a haircut, but not a good one. Without careful styling, it looked like he was a cast member in Dumb and Dumber. "Good," he replied after a last press-down on his unruly locks. "Having one crew member in a barrel is quite enough.”
Upon entering the Bridge, they found Embar and Chae'Sol waiting, already running their tests. Sassie was present as well, asleep on her back in the captains chair. Aiov was also sleeping in a legs-in-the-air pose, nestled in her small, open-topped box under the seat. Aaron tried to reclaim the captain's chair for himself, but though he tried to squeeze himself onto the seat beside his dog, the German Shepherd didn't budge.
The Niham navigator passed a datapad to Alexa. “Your checks are done.” As she nodded her thanks, he turned back to watch the power struggle unfold. “Just let her have the seat. She spends more time in it than you.”
The human frowned. “There’s space for both of us if she just moved over.” After another shove, Sassie grunted and finally allowed the human to slide her rump around. Tail swishing, she licked his face as he leaned over her, and he scratched her tummy as he sat down beside her. He wiped his face on his sleeve and tapped the screens in front of him. Danyd’s checks, he noted, were also complete. “Set a course for…” He paused, looking to Alexa. “What is your world called again?”
Alexa shook her head. “It isn’t our world, it’s just where we were found, and it has a twenty seven digit alpha-numeric designation given by the research team.”
“Eurgh. Screw that.” He raised a hand stopping her from reeling off the forgettable digits and paused to consider his options. “Set a course for planet Alpha-Numeric Designation!”
Alexa turned her seat away from him. “We have to take off first, idiot.”
“Fine! Just get on with it.” He stood up. Being the captain was a lot less fun than he had hoped. “Sassie, you have the bridge. I’ve got a call to make.”
After Aaron made his defeated exit, Alexa opened comms to the Kasurian flight controllers.
At the same time, Chae’Sol brought his Navigation console to life and checked over his calculations. “Are you nervous?” he asked the Inorganic.
“Nervous?” She looked at the controls. “No. I am an excellent pilot.”
The Niham and Rinoxian laughed together. Embar’s deep voice replied, “Not the flying. Are you nervous about taking your human home to meet mom and dad?”
“Not at all,” she lied swiftly. “And, we don’t have parents. Anyway, it’s a barren world with only a select group of my people manning a small facility. What could he possibly do?”
“True, true.” Chae’Sol rubbed his chin. “But what about your people? Before you made Norrin your herald, didn’t he want to kill you?”
Embar tapped the pistol on his hip. “We’re prepared for that eventuality.”
She couldn’t help but smile at the protectiveness of the large Rinoxian general. “Thank you, Embar. And Norrin didn’t want to kill me. He wanted to remove the parts of me that make me me; my individuality. Hopefully, we can discuss things calmly with the others of my kind.”
The navigator folded his arms across his chest. “Hopefully. However, Ranjaz is taking bets on how many we kill, and whether or not we start a war.” The silver-haired girl scrunched up her nose, focusing on her piloting so she could appear to be ignoring the Niham as he continued, “I put credits on three, and no war.”
Down the corridor and through the Overlook, Aaron closed the door to his workspace and took a seat. He propped his datapad up against some prototype cereal boxes and sent a notification to the councillor that he was available when she was.
The response was almost immediate and he tapped the datapad screen to see the councillor at her desk as always, the fish tank behind her an ever-present distraction for him. The Anatidae bowed her head in greeting. “Ambassador Cooper, thank you for making time to speak with me.”
Aaron was slightly thrown by the more formal than usual greeting, but bowed his head as he responded in kind. “I always have time for a Councillor of the Galactic Federation.”
She smiled; he had followed her cue perfectly. “Thank you, I will make this brief as I’m sure you have other matters to attend to. I understand you are preparing a selection of Earth’s media for release? I look forward to learning more about your home world.”
The human nodded. He knew that the Councillor had access to Earth’s media already. In fact, she had been the one to provide him with the data. Something wasn’t right, but he replied carefully, hoping to connect the dots as they spoke. “We have chosen a varied selection, and hopefully there will be something to your taste. I would be most interested in hearing feedback from you, should you look through the options. It would help us immensely as we prepare the next selection.”
Eruwenn continued smiling and nodding; another show for the Sentinels. “My work keeps me quite busy, but I will send you what feedback I can. Now then, down to the business at hand. We are finalising the renaming process before we update the records across the Galactic Federation. As you know, we can not stop you calling your worlds whatever you please, but for us to update the central databases it would be beneficial to have some more information, especially regarding some of the naming conventions used. For instance, you wish to rename the star Optimus Prime?”
Aaron tried not to smile. “A great hero from Earth’s mythology, he died for us and rose again. He was a great leader who believed that freedom was the right of all sentient beings.”
“Very noble.” She took a note, it seemed the human was playing along nicely. “And the first world and the accompanying moon?”
The human leaned back in his seat, putting his hands behind his head. “A childhood friend who would always come first. I named the planet Konrahd after him, and the moon is Talon X which was his online name in Gran Turismo.”
Tapping away, the Anatidae didn’t look up from her datapad. “Ah, of course. The human obsession with coming first. Please continue.”
“Sure.” Aaron leaned forward, reaching under the table to where Danyd had installed a small fridge. He took out a can and opened it loudly. “The second planet has been defaced by a meteor impact, all smashed up with an exposed and dead core. We’re calling it Alderaan, after a destroyed world in our pop culture. The two moons took quite a lot of damage as well. The lumpy one is Freak and the one with the big slash across the surface is Scar. No special meaning, one’s a bit freaky and the other has a scar, makes it easy to remember.”
“And the third planet?”
“New Terra.” He drank deeply and then stifled a burp, the development team had definitely put too much gas in this mix. “Nothing clever in the name, but it has potential. The moon is Elune, named after a lunar goddess. You’ll know more about it once we release the vanilla game.”
She looked up, narrowing her eyes. “It’s a marketing stunt for a game release?”
“An homage,” he corrected, although he already had a team working on merch and a possible theme park, with a whole line of cosplay accessories being planned.
The councillor didn't believe him for a second, and on some level was shocked he had not yet named a world Buy A Cupcake. “And that brings us to” -how she loathed this name- “Earth Two Electric Boogaloo, and I really must ask again. Why?”
He laughed, poker face slipping at her obvious discomfort. “Human joke, we add the suffix Electric Boogaloo to unwanted sequels. Plus, it really irritates Alexa.”
Eruwenn realised now why the former inspector clicked his pen so often. She would have appreciated a tactile release right now. “Perhaps she should have had more influence over the names. And the moon, El-ahrairah? Am I pronouncing that correctly?”
“Good enough. It’s named for the Prince with a thousand enemies.” His jovial tone vanished; Aaron knew what would happen to the rabbits if they began to colonise E.T.E.B. “Read the book, or watch the movie. Next.”
With that avenue of questioning closed down she moved on, marking her notes Royalty for the record. She was now quite curious as to which book he was referring to. Clearly it was an emotionally charged subject. “Next is Gaia? And the moons Lakshmi, Kratos and Milda.”
Aaron relaxed a little. “Some of humanity's old gods, I’m hoping to bring them out of retirement.”
The councillor paused. Were he intending to start a religion, it would certainly prove to be popular. She decided not to ask, in case it gave him any ideas. “And the large gas giant with seven moons?”
Now his smile returned in full. “Snow White and the seven dwarves. I can’t name them from memory unless you want some reindeer names mixed in. A folk tale; the gas giant is a perpetual blizzard.”
Eruwenn made another note, folk tale. The council would have questions and the more vague her answers were the better. “Next is Tortuga, which has a flag already, how delightful. Is that a human skull and bones?”
Aaron nodded emphatically. “We won’t actually be encouraging piracy.” He noticed the alarm in her eyes and hastily added, “Yeah, Jarby didn’t like that one either, even after my Captain Sparrow impression.” He saw the incomprehension on her face and explained further. “I did the impression for the asteroid belt as well, but nobody appreciated that either, and I wasn’t about to draw that stupid tattoo on my face.”
She looked at her reference map. “Ah yes, between Snow White and the planet Gallifrey, you have Tyson’s Belt. With asteroid mining advances you should have a steady supply of materials once your initial construction phase is completed. And those names?”
Aaron finished his can and crushed it, they may need to tweak the caffeine content down a notch as he could feel his heart racing. “Sports, and medical.”
She smiled. Naming a planet after someone from a medical field was commendable. “And who was Doctor Gallifrey?”
“Doctor who?” He recognised the wires that were crossed. “No, the Doctor was from Gallifrey.”
“Oh, my apologies. And his name?” she politely enquired.
“Who.”
“The doctor.”
“Doctor Who.”
“The one from Gallifrey!” she snapped, if she had a pen it would have been clicking furiously.
“He was on first base.” The plumage of the councillor's green crest was beginning to rise, so Aaron opened one of the cereal boxes, snacking to provide time to think. Eruwenn was still staring at the screen, confused and frustrated when finally he spoke with slow deliberation. “He was called Doctor Who. Can we move on, because the four moons around Gallifrey are Stark, Banner, Odinson and Rogers, and if you can’t follow Doctor Who I’m not getting into Marvel multiverse theories. Just put named after myths and legends or something.”
“Fine.” She did as instructed, but was still a little confused over who the Doctor from Gallifrey was and why he was now a myth. “The largest planet by far is next, and you called it Pluto.”
A mixture of triumph and anger came over the human. “Yeah, fuck you NASA, Pluto’s not too small now, bitches! You can chalk that one up to revenge, it’s named after a planet from my own solar system that got downgraded on a technicality.”
The councillor had hoped to gain an insight into the human mind through the names he chose for these worlds. What his priorities and aspirations might be, and what he held dear and wanted written in the cosmos. It seemed that he was just as insane as Rilla had repeatedly warned her he was. “Fine.” She didn’t understand a word of what he said, but named after a planet from home was good enough for the bureaucrats. “And Pluto’s five moons?”
“Michael, Tito, Marlon, Jackie and Jermaine.” Much better than Alexa’s choice, she had wanted to name them after the Spice Girls. With a resigned tone he added, “just put down musicians or something.”
Between the insanity and marketing was another welcome addition, music was a beautiful thing that almost all races could share in. “Wonderful, I look forward to listening to them on Musicify.” She had listened to some of Earth’s music during her research, finding that it was as varied as everything else they produced. She had found the classical genre most pleasant, especially while drinking tea. “And finally, on the very edge of the system, the frozen world and the two ice moons.”
The human was relieved to be on the final planets, as the energy drink was buzzing through his veins. “The world is Elsa, named after a princess, and the moons are Cube and Vanilla. You can put those under music, but maybe put an asterisk next to Vanilla.”
The councillor was once again very confused, but did as she was instructed. So often when dealing with the human she felt like she was one step out of time with the conversation. “Well, that concludes my questions. I can get this sent over to our stellar cartographers and the updates will go live in a few cycles. Thank you for your patience.”
“What?” Aaron was confused, he could have done this via a written message. What was the point in the video call? “Oh, ok. Well, thanks for the call, I guess.” After some minor pleasantries it was over, and he still had no idea what it had been for. Mildly disappointed and confused he picked up the prototype cereal box he had been eating from, looking at the cartoon leokas on the front. Turning it over in his hands there was a large drawing on the back for the kids to colour in, and he laughed at another of his prestigious contributions to the galaxy.
Estrilla entered, quickly closing and sealing the door. “Here.” She tossed him a small datapad, that had clearly been modified judging by the bulky addition on the back. It began to vibrate. “It’s Eruwenn. For you.” She looked at his stupid face and snapped. “It’s a secure line, answer it!”
The crew had been called together for an urgent briefing once they had jumped out of Kasur space, and as they gathered around the central table of the lounge they noted no snacks to be tested. This was a serious meeting.
Sassie and Aiov were under the table, and the little leokit with eyes opened was stumbling about with her four-legged guardian watching over her. Despite this development, there was no joy in Aaron's expression. Next to him, in front of the screen, Estrilla paced back and forth, and the Captain gently reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. "She's your friend, you can start."
The doctor wanted to argue that they were no longer friends, but she realised her feelings had changed of late. “Fine.” She cleared her throat, shooting Ranjaz a sharp look clearly indicating that none of his usual nonsense would be tolerated. “As you all know, I am a former shipmate of Councillor Eruwenn Aix Sponsa. Many of you have even met her. We were part of a crew led by a former Imperium soldier and we worked behind enemy lines. For Eruwenn that work never truly ended, she just realised her targets were closer to home. She entered politics to engage with them on their terms, while also using her experience as a covert operative to gain whatever advantages she could.”
The yellow Kachna began to pace back and forth again. “There is a group of powerful people who want to see us return to war. They want to stir up the Hive and the Imperium and, as yet, we don’t know what their goals are. Power, profit, using one atrocity to hide another - we just don’t know, but we plan to stop them. Though this is Eruwenn's goal, if she can gain more power for her people and herself she'll likely take those opportunities as well." It was a harsh truth, but Estrilla no longer knew exactly where the Anatidae's loyalties truly lay.
Aaron walked forward and took a seat at the table. “We can delve into the lore later; let’s just show them the message.”
“Right.” The doctor picked up the modified datapad, noting some confused looks around the table. “This is a relay datapad, off the standard networks. It uses encrypted back channels or something - I’m a doctor not a spy, so don’t ask me how it works. Just know that this message is not to be talked about with anyone outside of this crew, and you are to keep no records on personal datapads. Am I clear?”
There was a murmur of consent. Even Ranjaz seemed solemn, acknowledging the gravity of the situation. Either that, or he was simply missing Skeena. Hoping for the best, the doctor stepped aside as the screen blinked on.
The view was obscured at first, and nothing could be heard except heavy breathing. Then glimpses of a corridor could be seen between someone's fingers - the camera was being carried at a run. The view cleared, sweeping along the corridor to reveal scorch marks from energy weapons and several bodies on the floor. A sibilant voice echoed down the hall from elsewhere, and the camera shifted. "Shit," said a different voice, and a Lacertan came into view, still on the move. "They'll find me soon, I have to be quick. I have a small drone hidden in the debris field and I'm uploading to it. Long after this is over it should head to a relay and send this message on your network. I pray this reaches you in time."
The camera operator pushed through a door, still breathing heavily. "This is the lab," she said as the camera panned around slowly. More scorch marks adorned the walls, and the bodies this time were wearing high level bio-hazard suits. "They were working on a weapon, some sort of pathogen, to kill the Hive."
Energy weapon fire could distantly be heard, and the Lacertan leapt behind one of the counters. As she huddled into a ball, she began crying. "Tell my mother I'm sorry. You'll do that, won't you?" Her terrified eyes were pleading with the camera. "I promised her I'd come home safe. I promised. Tell her I'm sorry for ever complaining about the pink packages and that I loved every single one. Tell her I love her, and that I'm so sorry.”
The sobbing intensified, and the camera sagged in her grip. The security uniform with a badge reading Amel came into view - she was a lieutenant. There came a deep breath, and the camera swung back up to her face. "Sorry. I was prepared for this when I volunteered, don't blame yourself. Just... stop them." Her eyes were now ablaze with anger as she tried to share as much information as she could. "They have a plague from this cursed shithole we've been orbiting for cycles. Last time I stopped them when they got too close to the answer they were looking for... by releasing it. Killing some researchers. People I knew, and worked with. I'm sorry for that, but it worked to stop their progress and I thought they would give up.”
She shuffled further around the counter, trying to get as much cover as she could. “Almost a full bost ago a Sentinel paid us a visit, bringing with him some new data. The diseases on this world are thousands of generations away from the original plague, but this data was the real deal. Their research surged ahead, and I didn’t have time to react. Tulseria curse them to eternity, some brainless Doctor Dix defrosted a patient on the edge of Tulseria-knows-where, and now these assholes are going to start a war and kill billions. You have to stop them.”
Voices and footsteps could be heard in the corridor and her voice became hushed and frantic. “They have to be close to release it, and somewhere with a lot of traffic so it reaches deep into their territory before they realise. It isn't finished. It was supposed to target only the Hive, but I heard Doctor Glimnop talking with his assistant about that not yet being the case. It mutates fast, too. It it gets out it could devastate the galaxy. You have to stop them.”
She leaned back against the counter, her breathing becoming ragged and her voice cracking. “They needed more time.” She was gasping. “I needed more time, I could have stopped them. The Sentinel said something about new colonies, and the need to tidy up. I knew, then.” Her gentle sobbing returned. “I ran.”
The sound of the lab door opening caused the slits of her pupils to widen with fear, and it was a moment before she whispered again. “Don’t come to Darnis, we’re already dead.” The camera panned down to her stomach, where her uniform was burned away and the scaled skin beneath charred and split, bleeding profusely. “Stop them releasing it, promise me!”
Angry yelling could be heard and the camera spun to show a Niham in a smart grey suit, his weapon raised. He fired twice. The camera fell to the floor for a moment before being picked up by the killer. “Damn it!” he cursed, “Find where this is transmitting to!” Then the video cut out.
The silence hung for several tiks as everyone processed what they had just watched. Estrilla gave them the time they needed. “They didn’t find the drone, and other than Eruwenn and her assistant, we are the only ones to have seen this.”
“You hope,” Embar said carefully. “They may have traced it, and then used the drone to follow the signal. Anyone who’s seen this is dead if the Sentinels find out.”
The doctor nodded. “That would only lead to the councillor, not us. She won’t talk.”
Embar was more dubious. “Torture can loosen lips. You think she can tough it out?”
Estrilla looked the general in the eye. “She has before.” He gave a polite nod, veteran to veteran, and she moved on. “We don't have much to go on. Sentinels have their past erased, and are good at staying off of the grid. With only a picture and a voice sample, our chances are slim... and if we look too closely, we'll give ourselves away.”
“His name is Krast.” Everyone turned to look at Ranjaz, who savoured the moment. “He’s the bastard who paid me to break into the military research centre. Asshole thought he was smart. He was going to steal something else, and use my job to cover it up.” All eyes were on him and he gave a mean grin at the memory of betrayal. “But, I beat him to it. Took the lot, and that’s when he set me up. I knew that fucker suspected me, so I kept my mouth shut. Played it innocent while he was watching from the shadows, did my time in Xeno-Biology Protection like a good boy.”
Allistan’s pen was clicking furiously. “What in Tulseria’s name did you steal?”
Everyone was looking intently at the Kittran, and he reveled in the attention for as long as he thought he could get away with before he shrugged. “No idea.”
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Your Tendie Stimulus 2: Playing SPY, QQQ, VXX During MoreNegotiation

UPDATE: 9 AM PST 7/30 Sold out of PYPL for a nice profit. Would’ve been nicer if I didn’t sleep in lol. Pushed in bigly (for me) on SQ 132 8/7c
UPDATE: 12:48 PST 7/29; sold my MRNA after a snoozer. Hunch play after a boring day:** playing PYPL earnings with 8/14 187.50c**
Update on VXX/MRNA 12pm 7/29: got out on open for a little profit in MRNA. Didn’t have a move I was confident in, saw pharma dipping, and went back in I think around -3ish, gonna hold.
SPY didn’t go green enough yesterday so I didn’t buy the VXX. Glad I didn’t, but it’s looking super tempting for EOD
UPDATE IN AN IRONIC TWIST OF FATE (https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/hzgndu/mrna_becoming_theranos_at_warp_speed_an_unfai?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf ) IJUST BOUGHT MRNA 8/7 82c’s to ride the night pump 😂 🤡
UPDATE 10 am PST 7/28- FOMC news already took its shot. PFE has said new price regulations may lead to a slow of use expansion. Child COVID hospitalizations up 23%. Nationals canceling weekend games. Pelosi negotiation meeting at 4 PM. Tech hearing tomorrow. That’s: FED dump, Pharma dump, COVID dump, sports dump, Poli dump, Tech dump. if SPY goes green at all today again I’m buying VXX 29c 8/14
UPDATE- Just sold out of positions on CRWD. Probably gonna leave a little money on the table, but DISCIPLINE is key; at over 100% profit in 24 hours on that play. It’s time to cash in my chips.
UPDATE- 6:30 AM EST 7/28 moves on open- SPOT out, reinforcing position CRWD
UPDATE- 6:30 AM EST 7/27 Bounced out of my $QQQ and $SPY positions on the open I bought Friday (happy to get out with a quick 25% on the QQQ) Moved into CRWD 8/7 103c and SPOT 170 8/7c With mixed reports on their outage being over, I stayed away from $GRMN ——————————————————-
An update on what happened last week, what's coming this week, and my autist thoughts on how that may play out in the market.
Edit: forgot to mention FOMC thanks u/lethalposter for the reminder! I expect a decent fake pump off this into Thursday because although people are acting like it could be a surprise it really isn’t. Zero interest rates, continued easing seems to be the foregone conclusion but market loves suspense games.
Quick postmortum of Tendie Stimulus 1
Congrats to those of who you rode with me on that VXX play--the timing and accuracy worked out so well I'd be lying if I said even I wasn't shocked. If you went with the 32/34 plays you still saw some profit, but the 30c on 7/24 strike was where it was at. I updated in the comments on the first post about the switch to 30c on Wednesday and here on my Twitter --sorry if you didn't see it at the time, I'll try to put updates to call/strike on here too at the top this time, not just Twitter (i actually have a real job now, too, unfortunately, that requires me from time to time :()
We got a big assist from China on the volatility, and in my trading I am trying to remember that mean ol' Mr.China is not going anywhere this week. If I'm being honest, I think it was a bigger factor last week than even the floundering negotiations. So, to a certain extent, I can only take so much credit for that call. Please remember China retaliation is coming if you're still committed to trading both indexes and volatility, and be more conservative in your approach for a bit.
That said, this week is set up to be another bumpy ride. Things have been a little confusing, so
Here's an update on what's happening with negotiations:
Republicans, who have not done a thing about the HEROES act until this past week, were busy the past 7 days fighting among themselves for the first offer to make to Democrats. Them getting this starting point out on Monday is in no way a victory for the process; this was actually supposed to be done by last Tuesday. The noteworthy tidbits:

Donald Trump demanded a payroll tax cut, supported by Mnuchin, early last week (think of this as like a temporary easing measure which allows both individuals and employers to gain an extra 1-3% in their check). Senate Republicans pushed back, and the WH surprisingly capitulated on the demand.
Their next internal squabbles had to do with the Extended UI benefits (I'll get to that in a minute)
The big breakthrough this weekend was committing to another round $1,200 Stimulus checks, and an extension on the eviction moratorium (this is HUGE for the housing market)*

So, what's important here?

The payroll tax rebuff against the White House orders was important because the GOP knew the Dems wouldn't have it, so they wouldn't add it. Senate Republicans already ceding ground on an issue that was key to the President. As much as McConnell postures, this would indicate that Republicans understand how sensitive they're re-election chances are to the outcomes here and Momma Pelosi kinda has them by the short and curlys.
Repubs came out on Thursday saying two key things: 1) UI extension would fall from $600 to $100 a week in their proposal and 2) they were willing to apply a "temporary" extensin of UI benefits as a stopgap measure; with benefits enhancement set to expire this coming week. PELOSI SAID HELL NO TO THE TEMP EXTENSION. Again, Dems know they have them cornered. Republicans this weekend started throwing out raising the weekly to $200, up from $100, and since this is the starting point of negotiations I think the Republicans know they may have to bend over all the way to $350 or $400 weekly, even, and are trying their best to come in low enough to get out with $300.

\Side note: the eviction moratorium is a huge win for Dems, but it's also a win for staving off what was clearly a coming housing crisis. I believe there is another win wrapped inside this win; at some point down the road, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next month, but sometime in the next year, a mortgage/rent relief program is going to be floated. They already introduced a city-wide lottery here in Los Angeles where you can have your missed COVID rent paid by the government if you can prove you lost employment due to COVID. There is just no way they can be expecting all the people who got a free ride to be saving and pay back lump sums of multiple thousands to landlords once this all clears up. I guarantee there is a nationwide rental credit or something in the future, it's economically unfeasible not to. The hard part will be figuring out how to not punish the people who scrimped and did things right and used their UI/COVID check to pay rent on time, while rewarding those that didn't*
So, what will happen in the coming week

People are dancing over the $1,200 stimulus check announcement--and yes, I think it will provide a healthy boost for the morning session tomorrow. I hope so, at least, given I'm holding a 7/27 323c on SPY and a QQQ 7/31 160c (which I'm actually not terribly happy with myself for buying). But please remember, that's only a part of what is the beginnings of the new package negotiations. One thing I will say is that the market actually cares way less about UI than the Stimulus checks--the $1,200 covers the midle class working folks if it's up to $75,000. Extended UI is also for survival with a cherry on top, the $1,200 affects retail, travel, tech, etc. That said, this week will still be volatile
- Pelosi is going to say, probably Monday afternoon/evening after Republicans send theri package that it's a no. Markets will get nervous because they will act like they're surprised by this, and freak out that a deal won't get done in time. Rhetoric around a no deal will get ratcheted up.
- There are still probably at least two full back and forth draft cycles between both sides before we see a deal
- China is still going to retaliate
- All the tech CEOs are being brought to the hill (moved from Monday to Wednesday). They are speaking in front of the Democratic house rather than the Republican Senate. I don't expect it to be kind, particularly in light of recent Bezos hate, Zuckerberg Civil Rights issues, and Papa Elon's recent shenanigans (though he won't be there).
- Non-partisan take: Republican or Democrat I think it's pretty clear Pelosi is going to win this one. a) COVID is getting worse, and the Republican platform largely centered around it being better b) Republicans frittering away off-session time not making any progress is bad optics c) they're already capitulating on key offers d) this is going to THE issue of the coming election--aside from COVID, which Donnie has botched

How I'm playing it
Honestly, I'm a fucking QQQ addict, and even I will be staying away until EOW if I can dump these 7/31 calls for a profit Monday morning/early afternoon. It's just not time yet. This week is a week to play invididual equities, not indexes. If you hit on an index you're not gonna hit THAT big, and if you lose you're going to lose big and be like yeah, I pretty much could see this coming. So, if things generally are unfolding as I think;
Monday
Dumping: my QQQ calls and my SPY 7/27 once/if I see a profit in the morning session. Moving into: GRMN* 90p 8/21, CRWD 105 8/21c**, SPOT*** 300c 8/7 or 8/21 depending on how it is PM
EDIT: u/hospitalchurn brought up ZS here too in the comments, which I didn’t know much about. At first glance looking like as strong as a play as CRWD if not even stronger.
Tuesday
If we haven't tanked and VXX has reset to sub 29 VXX: 7/31 29c (dumping likely Thursday)
Wednesday Sitting on my hands but that's a god damn lie because I'll probably have found some rididulous YOLO on the daily thread and will move my GRMN put money into it
Thursday
Dumping VXX, reassessing, and likely putting a bunch into 8/7 and 8/10c's anticipating a done deal and a bounce back from a beating this week. Will load up on QQQ as well as I think tech hearings will be a bottom of sorts
Friday
Updating this DD on why I did none of this and instead put my bank account and heart into the bank of Su Bae. But hopefully not lol. AMD has to come down. I'll most likely be staying in the SPY and QQQ call game for 8/7
Notes:
*GRMN is going to get WAY worse; similar situation have seen stocks drop by the 20% to 30% range in the immediate aftermath. The fact that they are doing TERRIBLY at communicating with their customers is a godsend because it means they have plenty more bad news to trickle out in pieces next week. They were cucked, yes, but as always happens in these situations, their lack of honesty, proactiveness, and trasnparency is going to cuck them way more. Forward guidance during their earnings call will be poopy, and there was already talk that they were honestly topped out at 100 a share.
**CRWD has kind of taken a beating this month, and cloud security is going to be a big winner as the GRMN story breaks more.
***Erbody that know whatsup knows SPOT is going to hit 300 sometime soon. Their roster is just too off the charts, I expect their forward guidance on the earnings call to set them over the top. I'm also reall scared of earnings this season though, so my thoughts may change on this.
TLDR: The $1,200 check is only a starting point, and not the bread and butter of coming, tense negotiations this week around UI benefits extension. With shuttle negotiations coming up and lots of doomsday rhetoric around them, China acting a fool, and the tech hearing coming on Wednesday, it may be best to play individual stocks based on your research and some discounts than dive back into indexes just yet. GRMN puts and CRWD calls should print at least Monday, VXX back in play later in the week, SPY and QQQ calls on Friday
__________________________________________________________
As always, updates will be a hodge podge of here and my Twitter of the same name. Also as always, I know politics as I am a fundraiser for political campaigns, non profits, and foundations, but I am NOT a financial expert or somebody who works in the field, so don't bet the farm on anything I write if something doesn't align with your own Crayola drawings. We're all just playing hunches and doing our best to justify them; I'm on a streak now, but all streaks end lol.
Edit: further reading on upcoming tech hearing https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/24/21335735/tech-antitrust-hearing-apple-amazon-facebook-google-preview
Monday Update 3:00 PM PST
Positions CRWD (B+) turned out to be a solid move, up 3.5% on the day. Not an A because GRMN didn't move down with it, lending less credence to the theory that GRMN's fall was the catalyst for CRWD's rise. Can't really ask for much more than a 3.5% day though SPOT (C+) pretty much stagnant at about 1.5%, but bought somewhere around there during PM. Such slow movement right before earnings is worrisome, but hoping for a big day tomorrow. If it's not moving PM, I may dump it. GRMN (DNC) didn't end up buying it because I saw they were back online before open. Would've been a big ol' F.
News This is a pretty good summary of what Republicans are proposing in the HEALS act, their answer to HEROES: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/27/politics/stimulus-negotiations-republican-plan/index.html -The key changes: the additional $500 for dependents from the first CARES act would now be for all dependents, not just those under the age of 17 -The $600 will be replaced with $200 for extended UI benefits, higher than the initial $100 Republicans floated on Friday. Look for this to end around $350. In October, it will be replaced with a 70% of current worker salary cap, up to $500.
How I'm moving Not doing much, for now. If SPOT doesn't move much in PM I'll ditch it most likely. Due to the recent Under Armour news I'm thinking of long puts. For right now I like where I'm at with cloud security and will be searching for new plays tonight. If you have any recommendations on what to look into hit me up, please. Obviously if I add it here I'll tag you.
If we're green tomorrow--depending on how green--I may (gasp) consider some QQQ puts. SPY puts were tempting, but then I remembered we have the FOMC announcing Wednesday that they will continue with zero interest rate and quantitative easing.

Musician with a decade long panic disorder no longer has panic attacks.

Hello fellow crazy people! (just kidding.) I’ve had quite a long history of panic disorder, and now that I’m on the other side of it, I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject in the hopes that at least one person can benefit from my experience. If you’ve done an exhaustive amount of research on panic attacks in an effort to rid yourself of them, as I did, then I probably won’t share any revolutionary magic trick that you’ve never heard of before. (sorry about that). However I did find some solace in a few reddit posts that I related to when I was suffering, so hopefully this can serve as that for someone.

I imagine that this will be a very long post, so for those that aren’t looking to read some schmuck’s whole life story, I’ve categorized my thoughts as followed:

My personal history of panic disorder. This is not to satisfy my insatiable need to talk about myself, but rather to detail what I dealt with so that you might relate your own struggle to mine.
My progression of approaches to how I eventually “beat” panic attacks, and why I annoyingly put “beat” in quotes

3.Summary/explanation (perhaps the most helpful part if you’re a TL:DR person)

Quick tips for in the moment of a panic attack
Resource recommendations eg. books and articles.

*disclaimer: My progress was made without the use of medication or therapy. I want to be clear, that I am not taking the stance that someone suffering from panic disorder can’t or shouldn’t benefit from these things. In fact it’s possible that I would have healed quicker had I used these resources.

1.) I am a professional orchestral musician, and for close to 10 years, I would have a panic attack on stage for about 95% of the performances that I took part in. Most of those 10 years were during my college years, and the last couple were once I was in a professional orchestra. In school I would have a performance approximately every 2 or 3 weeks, sometimes more sometimes less, and as a professional I have performances at the very least once a week. That totals hundreds of panic attacks over a 10 year period. In that time, I also would occasionally have panic attacks in other situations, but I primarily suffered from them on stage. I share this to emphasize that you can be very deep in panic disorder, and still make it out panic free.
My panic disorder started when I was a senior in high school. I was scheduled to play a solo with my youth orchestra, where I am standing at the front of the stage with the orchestra playing behind me. During one rehearsal, I was standing up front, when I started to feel somewhat sick. I didn’t want to disrupt the rehearsal so I didn’t say anything, but the sick feeling only got worse. Along with feeling somewhat sick, I also started to freak out a bit and get tunnel vision. I had to ask the director if I could sit down, at which point he was shocked to point out that I was super pale. I sat down, feeling sick, freaked out, and now super embarrassed as this was all happening in front of my orchestra mates. Finally, after a few minutes, I had to excuse myself to the bathroom where I promptly and violently threw up. I had food poisoning. While some could have had a brief incident of food poisoning and moved on with their lives, my brain decided to turn that moment into a decade long panic saga.
That rehearsal put the thought in my head, “what if that happened during a concert??”. For the next 10 years every time that I was on stage, this thought would come to mind, which would start a bouncy spiral which anyone browsing this subreddit is most likely familiar with. On stage, any little body sensation was magnified accompanied by the thought of “o shit it’s happening”. Since you’re likely to be anxious while on stage performing anyway, there are plenty of nervous body sensations to attach this thought to. Soon my mind expanded it’s repertoire of increasingly horrific scenarios to taunt me with: “What if you pass out on stage??”. “What if you just lose control of your body and scream something really loud during a soft passage of the music???”. “What if you get so nervous on stage that you have a heart attack on die on stage?? your heart is beating really hard, it could happen. They would have to stop the whole performance just for you if you died!” And finally the worst one, “you can’t keep living like this. You picked the wrong career and ruined your life.” A non panicked person can read those ideas as a bit silly but in the moment of panic, as you surely know, they are very real.
My level and duration of panic during performances would vary a bit each time, which actually added to the stress of them. Not knowing what would come that night was quite daunting. A lot would depend on where I was seated on the stage. During a panic attack, I often found myself looking where the stage exit was and constantly accessing whether or not I needed to leave or if I could rough it out. Being seated in a way that would make exiting more difficult often led to stronger attacks, whereas the attacks would sometimes be more mild if I was seated very near the exit where leaving might not make that big of a scene.
My symptoms included profuse sweating, racing heart, shortness of breath, tunnel vision, and most noticeably a barrage of thoughts mostly centered around whatever terrible thing I was surely moments away from experiencing. These could last anywhere from a couple of small bursts (small maybe 5 minutes increments throughout the performance) to essentially the entire performance ( a couple of hours with a 15 minute break in the middle.
Afterwards I would feel sweaty, exhausted, and completely defeated. I felt like a fraud among my fellow musicians who had a complete, calm, control over their nervous systems (actually not true), and very often felt hopeless against this mountain of a problem that I had been battling for so long with seemingly no end in sight.
It’s now been a bit over a year and a half? (hard to tell in Covid time) since I’ve suffered from a panic attack on stage, and I’m actually confident that I won’t suffer from one in the future.

2.) For the first several years, maybe 5 or so, I didn’t even acknowledge that I was having panic attacks. I just told myself that I got really nervous on stage and that I needed to work on that. I certainly didn’t tell anyone else about it. I wanted to be the cool, calm and collected one on stage, and the fact that I was the farthest thing from that humiliated me. I didn’t realize that this attitude was a big contributor to my problem until much later. I eventually told my parents that I was having a problem with “freaking out” on stage sometimes, but I still didn’t let on just how consistent this “freaking out was” until much much later when I finally accepted what was happening to me, I was having panic attacks. This acknowledgement was step one in getting over them.
So now I was about 5 or 6 years into having panic attacks, and I was determined to beat this monstrous thing. I read countless online articles about panic attacks and how to overcome them, as well as posts on support boards from fellow sufferers This was *sort of* step 2 in recovering. I now knew that I was suffering from a problem known as panic disorder, and during the actual attack I was able to recognize it and say to myself “I am currently having a panic attack”. In my research, I also learned quite a bit on what is happening to my body in a panic attack. The most helpful fact that I got from my reading was this: if you’ve experienced multiple panic attacks, you’ve probably already gone through the worst symptoms. In other words, whatever you’ve experienced in previous panic attacks, it won’t get worse for future panic attacks. Your body is reacting in a set way, and will continue to react in this set way when prompted by panic. This was a big improvement from before when I was just “freaking out” and anything could happen. I now was dealing with a documented disorder that I had some knowledge and understanding about. The only problem was that I was still having them!
Thanks to my plentiful googling of panic attacks, I understood that my “brain was trained for threat detection against saber toothed tigers except now there aren’t any saber toothed tigers but my brain doesn’t know the difference blah blah blah”, but I was still having these fucking panic attacks and they were uncomfortable as hell!! I could recognize that I was just having a panic attack, but the scary scenarios that I was terrified of were still on the table. “I might be just having a panic attack, but what if I panic so much that I throw up, or pass out or (insert other fate worse than death here)?”
Just knowledge wasn’t enough. I was now about 7 or 8 years in, and I was still having panic attacks at the same regularity. I needed a strategy or technique to apply if I was ever going to defeat this thing. At this point, I was also dealing with new opponents in anxiety and depression brought on by some other big life changes. I became a regular in my library’s self help aisle and was always in the middle of some book on mental toughness or stage fright, determined that I was just a couple pages away from solving this bear of a puzzle. As I was learning a multitude of techniques from these books, I realized that in a weird way, my consistency of panic attacks was an advantage to my overcoming them. Rather than being randomly struck by them at different points, I knew that at 7:30 pm that night, I would have a panic attack on stage. This meant that I could plan out a strategy ahead of time, try it out, and then learn and adjust from that strategy for the next time. Further still, I opened up a word document entitled, “Panic attack journal” where I would enter the date, the strategy I had for that night’s concert, and then how it went afterwards. Every so often I would have a performance with no panic what so ever. I would joyfully write that I thought that I had overcome this terrible saga in my life, only to try and apply the same strategy the next night and be met with the same familiar freak out. Looking back on my journal, my favorite entry is a simple one: “03/12/18 Strategy-focus on your left big toe every time you feel like a panic attack is coming on. This proved successful in the last performance. Result- thought that I was going to die the whole time, go fuck yourself.” Nevertheless, I believe viewing my panic attacks as opportunities to grow rather than strictly fearing them was the third step in my overcoming them.
This self help searching naturally brought me to the field of mindfulness and meditation. I had dabbled with meditation before as it’s commonly brought up in the world of orchestra auditions, but had never committed to it fully. I decided to dive in fully and commit to meditating every day. In addition to practicing, I shifted my reading more to books on this subject and found myself very deep in trying to understand the concepts behind meditation, as I found the subject to be applicable not only to this problem, but many other aspects of my life that I wished to improve: performance, happiness, focus, etc. I had a few experiences experimenting with meditation that are extremely interesting that keep me meditating to this day, but as a very impatient person, I was very frustrated with my perceived lack of progress on the panic attack front.
Side note- I did actually find a meditation that I could do before concerts that consistently eliminated panic attacks. I say that this is a side note because I was hesitant in including this meditation here because this isn’t actually how I eventually overcame my panic disorder. This meditation would eliminate my panic attacks for that night, but I would have to do it every day, otherwise the attacks would return. While this meditation would clear up my panic on stage, I ended up feeling very “off” and not myself the rest of the time, which scared me a bit and made it hard to continue practicing this meditation. Looking back, I now understand why I felt so “off” from this meditation, and I do encourage anyone suffering to try it and see if it helps them. If you also feel a bit weird after doing this meditation, I promise that that feeling will go away eventually. The mediation is simple and as follows:

-Sit in an upright but comfortable posture. I would do this at the foot of my bed or a chair.
-Close your eyes and try to settle any obvious tension that you have in your body.
-When ready, deliberately silently think something verbal to yourself. For me, it would be reciting the alphabet. Do this for about 30 seconds or so. Pay attention to “where” in your awareness you are hearing this
-Once you are done reciting the alphabet or your favorite Nickelback song or whatever, keep your attention on that same spot in your awareness where you were hearing it.
-Just wait for another thought to pop up. This is the trickiest part of this meditation. You are going to want to “reach out” and try and think something yourself or make something happen. Just waiting for a thought to come up on it’s own is actually more difficult than in sounds. I often found myself reminding myself to “not reach out” or “let it come to you”. These are of course thoughts themselves, but they did help get me in the right mental spot.
-Eventually, you might notice that a thought comes up, seemingly without your authoring it. It might not even be a clear concise thought, for me it often just felt like mental activity rather than a sentence or something. When you feel a thought come up without your creating it, you are in the right spot. Just sit in that perspective, and watch the mental activity do it’s thing without you having to do anything about it. This might last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. For me, this was often accompanied with some relaxing of muscles, but not always, so don’t expect any relaxation to occur.
-When finished, take a few moments to look around the room and reorient yourself to your surroundings. This is not a required step, but I found it to be nice to ease out of the meditation, rather than just jump off the cushion and back into life.
-I would sometimes use a timer for this, sometimes not. It was less about how long I sat, and more about getting into that state of mind. Sometimes I could find that state within 30 seconds, other times after several minutes, other times I couldn’t find it at all. The key factor in this was my willingness to just sit there and wait for a thought, and not reach out and try and make any thing happen. Feel free to message me your experiences with this if you’d like to talk about it as I won’t cover it any more in this post.

After reading countless books spanning the subjects of eastern meditation, sports psychology, and various western therapy methods, I started to notice a few commonalities, the most obvious one being the idea of acceptance. Particularly emphasized in meditation and ACT (acceptance commitment therapy), in relation to panic attacks, this is the idea of fully embracing and allowing the panic to be there and theoretically, the panic will subside on it’s own. Now if you’ve listened to my ramblings thus far, then you’re probably pretty desperate to get rid of your panic attacks, and thus have probably already heard of this concept of acceptance, and then might be annoyed that you’ve read all this way just to hear the same solution that you’ve heard before.
I say this because that person was me. I had heard so often that accepting my panic was key to me overcoming it, and yet I just couldn’t do it. I would go into a performance thinking “ok, just accept the panic, and then it will go away. That’s all you have to do, just accept that it’s there, and it will go away”. Of course what would happen is I would step on stage, put on my acceptance armor, and when the panic showed up, would freak out that my strategy wasn’t working. Not very accepting was I? This is the stage that I bet a lot of people get stuck on. They read that acceptance is the key to moving past panic, but are still unable to accept in the moment. The bad news is that, I’m not actually entirely sure how I was able to get to the moment of acceptance that I did. It might have been the daily meditation. It might have been just hearing that acceptance was the answer over and over again. It might have just been luck. The good news is that it might only take one true moment of acceptance to get over years of panic, at least that’s what it took for me.
The performance was not unique from any other, I was sat somewhat in the middle, so escape would be somewhat difficult and embarrassing. I had suffered from panic attacks for nearly 10 years now and wasn’t really sure what to do about them. In fact I sort of didn’t care any more. Everything I tried so far failed to get rid of them, but on the bright side maybe I didn’t have to. Interestingly enough, for someone who was terrified to throw up or pass out on stage every performance for 10 years, neither of those things had happened to me yet. I was tired of fighting this whole thing. Somehow during that performance, I truly didn’t care if I had a panic attack or not. I had played enough performances under panic where I knew that I could make it through, so why bother putting the effort into preventing one?
That performance ended up being one of the most bizarre, but transformative experiences of my life. About 5 minutes into the performance, the usual panic symptoms arose. My vision narrowed, my heart beat increased, thoughts of doom and demise flashed through my mind. There was a difference this time though. This time, I took no involvement in any of these symptoms. Even my terror filled thoughts seemed to flash in front of me and then subside without my ever having created nor got rid of them. In fact, I saw the entire cycle of a panic attack come up to it’s fullest most terrifying height, and then subside, all seemingly without trying to adjust or get rid of it. It felt as thought the panic attack was all happening on a movie screen separate from me, rather than happening to me. In that moment, it all felt so impersonal.
The weird thing about this performance was that it didn’t feel like the big victory that it was. I hadn’t applied a long thought out strategy and vanquished my decade long nemesis. I hadn’t done a special meditation before the performance and made myself immune from panic. I didn’t even go into the performance with a plan to “accept it fully” so that I could transcend it. Rather, I just did absolutely nothing about it. And yet since this performance, I haven’t suffered from a single panic attack. This leads me to what I believe to be the most important point in this whole post. So important that I will bold it and underline it. You will stop caring if you have a panic attack, before you stop having them. In other words, any solution that you have against panic is only fueling them. All the solutions that you have tried to your problem, are actually the problems themselves.

3.) Now, I recognize the frustrating paradox that is created here. One might take this advice and try to “allow” the panic to be there as hard as they can, only to be frustrated when this strategy doesn’t work. Again, I don’t know exactly how I was able to overcome this paradox and arrive at a point of true acceptance, but I have some theories:
Change the priority that panic has in your life. In my moment of acceptance and since then, the idea of a panic attack has gone from this big scary thing that needs to be conquered, to at most a somewhat annoying thing that might arise. The idea of a panic attack now feels like it’s at the same level as the idea of an itchy nose. I’d rather not have either of them, but I don’t really spend any energy trying to prevent an itchy nose. While I’d prefer not to have an itchy nose, I don’t actually care all that much if I get an itchy nose. Which is a great segue to repeat my important, bold, underlined point: You will stop caring if you have a panic attack, before you stop having them. Again, lessen the priority that panic attacks have on your life. If you make them the main focus of your life, then they will be the main focus of your life. Changing this relationship with panic might feel impossible right now. It might feel like panic is controlling your life, and the idea of not fighting it tooth and nail might feel like something that you can’t do. I would suggest committing to this acceptance as much as you can for a month and see what happens. Give up the fight for a month. If it doesn’t get any better, than you can go back to fighting and you’ll know that acceptance doesn’t work for you, but I suspect that you’ll be surprised in your ability to care less about your panic attacks.
I also think that my meditation practice helped me strengthen this accepting muscle. There are plenty of resources for meditation available online and on phone apps. I’ll detail what I used below. Meditation is relevant to acceptance in that you will be keeping your attention on an object which will often times be the breath. You will inevitably get distracted by something. You then accept that distraction’s presence and return your attention to the breath. This is a skill that can be improved through repetition and that very is relevant to accepting panic: You notice the signs of panic, accept their presence, and return to something more important.
Finally the last tip on acceptance of panic is to try and have some humor with it. I used to approach my panic as a evil nemesis: weapons in hand, ready for trial by combat. In my moment of acceptance and today, I see it as an annoying neighbor that might show up on a bad sitcom. “O ya there’s panic, look at him go, what an idiot”. I said that I haven’t suffered from a panic attack since my moment of acceptance, but I have had the symptoms come up a couple times since then (maybe 3 or 4 times in 1.5 years, each one less intense than the last). While the symptoms would come up, I didn’t suffer from them as there was no fight to be had. I just saw them come and go as I would that itchy nose or annoying neighbor would, and commented on how silly it looked as it did.
The steps of my recovery that I’ve outlined in this post are as followed. In my experience, each step is necessary in order to get to the next one
1.) Recognition of what’s happening: I’m having a panic attack.
2.) Knowledge of what’s happening: This is what a panic attack entails.
3.) Seeing your panic attack as an opportunity to grow: What happens when I try this?
4.)Applying acceptance: Let it all happen. You’ve got better things to think about.
As I mentioned, I haven’t suffered from a panic attack for over a year, after having them consistently for almost a decade. I’m confident that I wont suffer from one in the future, not because I don’t think one will arise, but because I don’t really care if it does. (although the symptoms of panic really don’t ever arise anymore anyway). I still have some work to do. Years of performing with panic has left a negative feeling associated with performing that I’m still working on, although it’s steadily getting better. I still deal with with symptoms of depression and anxiety, although I feel like what I’ve learned with panic attacks applies with these feelings so I am very hopeful for improvement here.
Lastly, I strangely feel somewhat grateful for having gone through what I did, and I hope you will too. I now feel like I have a sort of vaccination against panic, which is a valuable thing during these uncertain times. I feel like I’m able to handle stressful situations easier than ever before, and there is a huge sense of accomplishment in overcoming something that for so long felt impossible to overcome. If you have any questions about my journey (I hate using that pretentious word in this context, but I can’t think of a better one) please feel free to comment or send me a message and I’ll try to get back to you with as honest of a reply as I can. Thanks for reading this far, or at least skipping until this point. Please know that however long you’ve been dealing with symptoms of panic, a panic free life is not far away. Or maybe I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, but give it a try.

4.) I wanted to include a section on brief tips for in the moment of a panic attack. I want to encourage sufferers to always try and lean towards the route of acceptance as this is the road towards freedom, but also recognize that applying this knowledge is not always possible in the moment, especially for particularly bad panic attacks, so I wanted to include small tips that have helped me in the moment.

-As I mentioned earlier, If you suffer from regular panic attacks, recognize and reinforce the idea that you’ve probably already experienced the worst thing that will happen to you. I never threw up or passed out on stage, but even knowing that, every time a panic attack came up, I thought that maybe this would be the exception. After learning how panic attacks work, you realize that if something hasn’t happened in previous panic attacks, it’s not gonna happen in future ones. A body that is accustomed to routine panic attacks is going to react in routine ways. Usually the worst part of a panic attack is not knowing how bad it will get. Remind yourself that you’ve already experienced the worst of it before and were fine. This reminder is critical in moving towards acceptance.
-Shift your attention, particularly to the 5 senses. This is a common technique, but it’s common because it works. Your panic is no more important than the other things in your awareness, yet you give it all your attention simply because it demands that you do. Simply put your attention on other immediate senses. I found success with senses that aren’t immediately obvious. Can you feel the sensations in the second knuckle of your left ring finger? How about your right nostril? Putting at least some of your attention somewhere else in your immediate awareness takes some of the strength away from your panic and it will eventual shrivel on it’s own.
-Your panicking because you’re not breathing and you’re not breathing because your panicking. Check in with your breath. Chances are it’s shorter than normal. See if you can lengthen it a bit, particularly the out breath. For extra credit, see if you can feel every molecule of air flowing in and out of you for just one breath. I found that exhaling through slightly pursed lips was a good way to lengthen my exhalation as well as make the sensation of breathing easier to follow.
-This one is a little weird and might only apply when you’re by yourself, but give it a try. When panicked, balance on one leg. If that’s too easy, try it in the yoga tree pose. If that’s too easy, then try it in yoga tree pose with your eyes closed. If that’s too easy then go teach a yoga class. I was skeptical about this when I first heard about it, but was pleasantly proved wrong. Your brain only has so much attention it can use at a time. When panicked, we usually put the majority of our attention on the panic and what we’re panicked about. Balance takes a certain amount of attention to achieve and so you’ll find your mind almost magically settling in order to achieve equilibrium on one foot.
-Talk to someone. Anyone. This is easy to do when you’re with a close friend who might know about you’re panic disorder, but harder to do if you’re in a store with a bunch of strangers. You’ll most likely be self conscious, thinking that everyone can see this psycho losing their mind in the sock aisle, but most likely you look completely normal. Like putting your mind on another sensation or balancing, engaging in a conversation will take attention points away from the panic and panic needs attention points to survive. Plus you might make a friend. Probably not but do it anyway.

5.) Here are a few resources that I found myself coming back to and that I still reference today:
Ten percent happier books, apps and podcast- There are a ton of meditation resources out there now but ten percent happier has been my go to. It’s an organization spear headed by Dan Harris, a skeptical journalist who has his own experience with panic attacks and now is a strong proponent for meditation. I first read his book by the same name, then went on to download the company’s meditation app, and am now a regular listener to their podcast. I’ve dabbled with most meditation apps out there, but am drawn to ten percent happier mostly because I find Dan to be the most relatable figure in the field. As a very secular, non spiritual person, I am often turned off by some of the seemingly put on serenity and “foo foo” of other spiritual teachers. Dan’s book is a great gateway into the world of meditation, for someone like me that has no desire to deal with metaphysical claims but just simply wants improve their mind. His app continues in this vein. The app also includes meditations and talks from many different teachers, so your chances of finding someone’s voice whom you relate to are good.
The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris- I find this book to be the best “self help book” that I’ve ever read. It is essentially a break down of the steps in ACT (acceptance commitment therapy), but is done so in a very easy to understand way. It reads as a sort of user manual for handling difficult emotions, and does so in a very relatable voice. This book is mostly geared towards dealing with symptoms of anxiety, which while different than panic, I find the approach to be transferrable. This is one of the only books that I made sure to go out and buy after reading it from the library, as I wanted to keep referencing it later.
Anything by Dr. Claire Weekes- Claire Weekes was an Australian Dr. that wrote several books on the subject of anxiety and panic. As her books were written in the 60s and 70s but read with the same understanding of books of today, she is considered a pioneer in the field. I personally have her book “Hope and help for your nerves”, but I think reading any of her books or listening to any of her talks on youtube are beneficial. She had a remarkable way of simplifying what can so often feel like such a complex problem.
This guy’s post: https://www.reddit.com/Anxiety/comments/61hi78/things_i_have_learned_about_anxiety_and_how_to/
I’m not sure why, but I found this reddit post to be very encouraging to me. So much that I bookmarked it and revisited it several times. It’s a well written story of someone overcoming a strong anxiety disorder, more challenging than what I went through. It also inspired me to put what I’ve learned out on the internet, just in case someone might be encouraged as i was.
I don’t know how to end reddit posts.

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Jul. 22, 2002

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUSLY:


1-7-2002	1-14-2002	1-21-2002	1-28-2002
2-4-2002	2-11-2002	2-18-2002	2-25-2002
3-4-2002	3-11-2002	3-18-2002	3-25-2002
4-1-2002	4-8-2002	4-15-2002	4-22-2002
4-29-2002	5-6-2002	5-13-2002	5-20-2002
5-27-2002	6-3-2002	6-10-2002	6-17-2002
6-24-2002	7-1-2002	7-8-2002	7-15-2002

WWE hit the reset button again with a new storyline assigning general managers to each brand, and it featured the shocking debut of Eric Bischoff. The new storyline will have Bischoff as the heel GM of Raw, while Stephanie McMahon will be the babyface GM of Smackdown, while Vince McMahon will take more of a backseat role and reduce his TV presence. Of course, just 5 weeks ago, Vince panicked and blew up the existing "feuding GMs" storyline between himself and Ric Flair, so now we're re-starting it with new people I guess. It feels like a last-ditch effort to save the brand extension, which has been an utter flop since day one, with no effort to differentiate the shows and only resulting in diluting the talent and falling ratings.
Bischoff and McMahon struck a secret deal about 10 days prior to his debut. Bischoff had talks with WWE last year about coming in during the original Invasion angle, except they only wanted him to do a one-off match with Vince for the PPV (which Vince would obviously have won), but Bischoff turned down that offer. But this time, they agreed to a more long-term deal. Bischoff didn't know he was going to debut on Raw until just a day or two prior, when Vince called him and told him to be there. The whole thing was kept secret and almost no one other than Vince himself knew about it. This is believed to be a unique contract, in which it's a short-term deal with the option to renew it for longer-term if the angle gets over. His only role is as a television character, it's strictly a performance contract. Bischoff is not going to be a part of management or creative.
When Bischoff walked across the screen in the backstage segment, almost everyone in the company was just as shocked as the viewers at home. Bischoff's debut saw him come out and hug Vince, which Dave thinks about is the dumbest possible way to introduce him. Sure, the Invasion angle is over but WCW's corpse isn't completely cold yet. It's only been a year or so. There is probably still plenty of money to be made in Bischoff as an outsider trying to destroy Vince McMahon and the WWE. But as always, that would involve Vince allowing himself or WWE to look vulnerable against an "outsider" and his utter refusal to do that is a big part of what tanked the Invasion. But that's par for the course. Bischoff cut a promo, giving the fake "WWE version" of the Monday Night Wars history (Dave points out multiple inaccuracies that WWE still clings on today, such as claiming they stole Hulk Hogan from WWF. Of course, Hulk had been in NJPW and hadn't worked for WWF for nearly a year at the time WCW signed him. Things like that.). Dave thinks it became one of those promos full of old stuff or inside references where so much of it is about things that the average fan doesn't know or care about. Dave thinks most of this audience in 2002 isn't familiar with Alundra Blayze, they don't know Raw used to be taped instead of live, and they don't care about 83-week TV ratings streaks (Dave also notes that Bischoff said 84 on this show, which is incorrect). And once again, it became one of those promos talking about how much WWE sucks lately, which is something you don't want to keep pointing out to the fans who are still watching because you just make them feel dumb for supporting something that even the people producing it knows sucks. Shit like that is partly what drove off WCW fans. Bischoff also gloated about almost putting WWE out of business, and to the many guys in the locker room who remember that vividly, it wasn't a joke or a storyline. Those are guys who really were fighting for their job against a guy who really was trying to put them out of business. Bischoff has tremendous heat from the locker room, with a lot of people who worked for him in WCW or who resent him from the WWE side....they don't want Bischoff there.

WATCH: Eric Bischoff debuts in on WWE Raw - 2002

This angle was going to take place regardless, but it's thought that the injury to Kevin Nash may have moved things up a couple of weeks because Vince once again panicked when his plans went down in flames. Nash had surgery last week. Because of the location of the tear, it's not quite as serious as the tear Triple H suffered last year. But Nash is also 10 years older. However, he has vowed to return, noting he doesn't want his career to end like that. With his age and his track record of injuries (this is his 22nd surgery, dating back to his collegiate basketball days), Dave isn't sure how much Nash will be able to offer if/when he returns next year. Also, while nobody wanted Nash to get hurt, the mood in the locker room was said to be much happier this week without him around, as the whole Nash/X-Pac/Shawn/Triple H group isn't very well liked these days (the more things change...)
Speaking of X-Pac, a weird situation with him this week led to him being suspended by WWE. The day of the Raw when Nash tore his quad, X-Pac missed his flight to the show. Why? Well, he was hospitalized earlier that day in Minneapolis. Again, you ask, why? No idea. Sounds like X-Pac sure would like to know also. He called WWE saying he was in the emergency room and had no idea how he got there. He left the ER and made new travel arrangements and he got to Raw 90 minutes before the show started. And then he went out there that night and worked his match (and Dave says looked more impressive than he had in a long time). However, after the match, he still couldn't explain to WWE officials how or why he was in the hospital earlier that day and so they were naturally suspicious. As a result, X-Pac has been suspended and removed from all upcoming bookings until they get a medical report on what the deal is. Dave says X-Pac has been acting out of control for weeks now and it's been well-documented (threatening to quit if match finishes weren't changed week after week). The feeling backstage was that as long as Nash was around to go to bat for him, he was basically protected, but no longer. With Hall fired, Nash out for probably a year, X-Pac suspended, and Hogan a babyface, the feeling within the company is that the NWO angle is dead. Shawn Michaels is still expected to appear at upcoming house shows and Raws in some new role, since much of the advertising for those shows was based around him appearing, but this is probably the end of the road for the NWO. (This kinda flew under the radar, but yeah, X-Pac never wrestled another match in WWE. The match where Nash tore his quad remains to this day the last time X-Pac ever worked a match in a WWE ring. He gets released soon after this and we all know in retrospect that he was dealing with some drug issues throughout this time).
Dave provides some details on Vince Russo's first (and only) creative meeting when he was briefly rehired by WWE last month. Russo apparently proposed a Raw vs. Smackdown feud that would eventually lead to reviving one of them as WCW and reigniting the WCW vs. WWE war. This time, they would have Eric Bischoff leading the WCW side, while Russo suggested Mick Foley as the leader of the WWE side. It was pretty much made clear to Russo during the meeting that if they were to do a Raw vs. Smackdown angle, it would be Stephanie in charge of the WWE side, not Foley, and sure enough, that's what is expected to happen (but without the whole WCW-revival part). Russo's idea was pretty much a combination of the 2001 Invasion angle and the 2000 WCW Bischoff/Russo angle. Dave notes that Russo wanted to essentially start from scratch again, strip everyone of their belts the way they did in 2000, and bring in Bret Hart and Goldberg to be involved as well.
A big recap of UFC's debut show in England, which featured rising star Frank Mir getting beat in what should have been an upset, but word is Mir didn't take the fight seriously and barely trained. As a result, he got murked in the first round. Also, while in England, some people in Tito Ortiz's camp got into a big drunken bar brawl with fellow fighter Lee Murray. Chuck Liddell was somewhere involved too. Anyway, long story short, some people tell the story that Murray knocked Ortiz out. Ortiz denies it (to this day, this is a famous MMA story and both men tell different versions, so depending on who you believe I guess).
TNA's 4th show ended with a strong angle that actually got them some national publicity. It involved Tennessee Titans players Frank Miller and Zach Piller hopping the rail and attacking Jeff Jarrett and some other wrestlers, resulting in a big brawl to end the show. So how much of it was real or shoot? Well, Russo is involved, so who knows. The official story is that Jarrett and Piller were supposed to shove each other from across the rail, but that's it. From NFL sources, Dave has actually heard the same thing. It was supposed to stop at a shoving confrontation, and then Malice would come pull Jarrett away. That was the story as Russo allegedly wrote it. But reportedly, Piller had been drinking and he ended up hopping the rail and straight up overpowered Jarrett like it was nothing and took him down. Whether this was a shoot or a work is still unknown, but it ended up getting them coverage on SportsCenter and Dave says it's possible it was a work that only a few people were in on. If it was a work, nobody else was in on it. Ron Harris, who works backstage, almost rushed to the ring to save Jarrett and Malice (who wasn't supposed to touch the football players) got involved and broke it up quickly. After the show, the players were backstage laughing and joking with Jarrett and Miller has been openly telling people it was all planned and they were told to make it look as real as possible, but it's still unknown if jumping the rail and tackling Jarrett was part of the plan or not. Several other Titans players were at ringside with them and saw it unfold, but mostly didn't get involved. So now after the publicity, TNA is trying to see if they can make a match out of this. Either way, it's starting to feel like an elaborate work that none of the rest of the roster was clued in on, which is exactly the kind of shit Russo used to do constantly in WCW that soured morale among the locker room, and for this to happen on Russo's first night in, with an angle he wrote, sure feels a little familiar.

WATCH: Tennessee Titans/TNA brawl

Puerto Rico's IWA had its most successful show in company history, drawing more than 11,000 fans (without a single WWE name on the card) to see the payoff of an angle with Savio Vega fighting for control of the company. WHO SAID SAVIO AIN'T A DRAW?!
On the other side of things, WWC has postponed its anniversary show from August to September in order to give themselves more time to build up big angles and storylines. Seems like something they probably should have been planning earlier? IWA has become the dominant promotion in Puerto Rico and WWC felt they didn't have the build-up necessary to do a big-money show right now. Especially after this IWA show did such big business, anything less would be an embarrassment.
Bischoff's debut on Raw was a pretty big hit. How big, you ask? During Bischoff's in-ring promo after his debut, Raw added nearly 1.1 million new viewers from the previous segment. Meaning that as soon as Bischoff walked across the screen backstage, tons of wrestling fans started calling their friends telling them, "Holy shit, Eric Bischoff is on Raw, turn it on!" The bad news is that as soon as Bischoff's promo was over, a lot of them tuned right back out, leading to a huge drop-off for the rest of the show. On the flip side, this week's Smackdown, featuring the heavily-hyped return of The Rock ended up being the 7th lowest rated episode of the show in history (4th if you don't count holidays). Rock's not a draw, bet he won't even be in the business in a couple more years.
Kenta Kobashi is finally back in the ring, wrestling undercard prelim tag matches for NOAH. Even though he's in tags and doing limited in-ring work, his knees are said to be already killing him and one of them totally locked up on him after one of his recent matches. But he still hasn't missed any dates.
NJPW announced that Kensuke Sasaki will face Pancrase star Minoru Suzuki at the Tokyo Dome in October. This match was actually planned for the big Tokyo Dome show back in May, but negotiations fell apart because Pancrase didn't like the idea of Suzuki doing a worked pro-wrestling match. Suzuki started his career in NJPW back in 1988 and was being groomed to be a big star for the company, but he quit and joined UWF because he preferred to work shoot-style matches. In 1993, he and a few other guys all started Pancrase, which he's been doing ever since. These days, Suzuki's days of fighting for them at a top level are over and he usually only competes against nobodies or in catch wrestling (grappling and submission only, no striking). Anyway, for those curious, this didn't happen. Not sure why yet, I haven't gotten that far, but Suzuki doesn't return to NJPW until 2003.
Goldberg is said to be leaning very much against going to WWE anytime soon and is instead eyeing his options of working big shows in Japan. He's contemplating an offer to make an appearance at Toryumon's show in Tokyo in September, but only an appearance. He doesn't plan to wrestle until later in the year (don't think the Toryumon appearance happens, but he does end up working a few matches in Japan here soon).
Bret Hart is still hoping to make his scheduled appearance for Jacques Rougeau's upcoming indie show in Montreal. If you recall, Rougeau's big show there last year drew over 11,000 fans and he's got himself another big stadium to fill this year and Bret was expected to be the biggest draw. Whether he'll be healthy enough to make the show, following his recent stroke, remains to be seen but he's determined to try. As of this week, Hart is able to lift his left arm over his head. Just a week ago, he couldn't move it at all. His grip strength is also coming back and he's able to walk short distances. His vocal cords were also damaged but have started strengthening again and he's able to talk again (though he can't cut a wrestling promo yet, Dave says, so he might not be doing much other than coming out and waving to the crowd if he does make it). He's still having some vision problems also, but not too bad all things considered.
Dave says that "no matter what you may hear," a lot of people involved in TNA behind the scenes are very unhappy about Vince Russo being brought in. He also says that a lot of people associate Russo and Ed Ferrara together, but they actually had a major falling out awhile back and hadn't been on speaking terms until now. When it became clear Russo was coming back, Ferrara reached out to Russo and the two sides made up. He goes on record saying for sure that neither Mike Tenay or Bill Behrens are happy about Russo's arrival, among others, but says everyone is being professional.
Notes from TNA Weekly PPV: Crowd of about 1,500, only about half paid. Dave says it was easily the best of the 4 shows they've had so far. About 85% of it was written and booked by Jerry Jarrett and the original writing team before Russo was hired, but Russo did make some changes. Dave says some people are beginning to get tired of Don West on commentary already and he definitely brings a ton of enthusiasm (but nothing else, Dave adds) to the table. During the Ken Shamrock vs. Omori match, the crowd was distracted by one of the cage dancers near the entrance who was apparently showing her ass to the crowd. Former WCW wrestler Crowbar (real name Chris Ford) worked a tag match under the name Tempest and Dave notes that when Ford worked a try-out match for WWE awhile back, he also signed over the name Crowbar to them when he did (guessing Dave is mistaken about this. He never used the name Crowbar in TNA, but he's been using it everywhere else ever since for the last 18 years). Brian Christopher is now going by his real name, Brian Lawler, and cut a promo on Jerry Lawler about being a bad father. It got a lot of heat but now they've made fans want to see a match that they can't deliver. K-Krush faced NASCAR driver Hermie Sadler and got DQ'd. Dave says Krush was absolutely awesome here, actually carrying Sadler to a watchable match. Sadler was awful of course, but the Gayda/Stratus match from Raw was light years worse, so hey, who cares? TNA tried to bring in Hermie's more famous older brother Elliott Sadler, but that fell through because Elliott has some type of affiliation with WWE, though Dave isn't sure what (I did the research and apparently Elliott drove a Summerslam-themed car during a race around this time, so I assume that's it).
More notes from TNA Weekly PPV, since this recap is huge and big, unbroken paragraphs suck: Mark and Jay Brisco worked a brief match until Malice ran in and destroyed everyone (Dave says this was a Russo addition to the show. Dave also says the Briscos will be great some day and notes that on this show, the announcers lied and said both of them are 18, when in fact, Mark Brisco is still 17 and therefore not even allowed to wrestle in many commission states). Former porn star and ECW valet Jasmine St. Claire debuted and gave Jeremy Borash a lap dance, took off her underwear, and was about to strip nude until a big angle stopped it. And yes, in case it wasn't obvious, this was another Russo addition. AJ Styles and Jerry Lynn are the tag team champions and ended up in a big brawl backstage. If you've been paying attention to the show the last 2 weeks, you would have recognized that they were doing a slow build with these two partners having friction, but Russo convinced Jarrett to hurry up and pull the trigger on the split, so here we are. Dave thinks this had no impact at all because it felt completely rushed, the story hadn't progressed far enough yet for these two to already be coming to blows. Another interview with the Dupps saying "shit" repeatedly was, yes, another Russo addition. Try not to cut yourself on all this edginess. Shamrock vs. NOAH star Takao Omori ended in a no contest because of politics. Shamrock was supposed to win clean, but then NOAH decided they didn't want Omori to do a job, so this is what we got. Dave thinks TNA should have said screw them then and just not used Omori because it's not like TNA's fanbase knows who the fuck he is anyway. Omori was said to have been spaced out all day beforehand and looked bad in the match. Crowd didn't care and they pumped in a ton of fake crowd noise for it. Jeff Jarrett ran in and took everyone out with chair shots, including "NWA rep" Harley Race, who ate a brutal unprotected chair shot to the head from Jeff and Dave thinks that's not good for anyone's brain, especially a guy pushing 60. Race was there basically to help Omori since Harley's small promotion in St. Louis has a relationship with NOAH. And finally, the 6-man X-Division #1 contenders match was excellent. Dave thinks WWE really missed the boat on Jerry Lynn and K-Krush. He admits Lynn probably couldn't have ever been a top guy in WWE or anything, but he makes everybody he wrestles look like a million bucks and guys like that are priceless to have on your roster. They also pumped a bunch of crowd noise in for this match, and at one point, the fake crowd noise loop stopped and there was a moment where it went from a loud roaring crowd to dead silence in a blink. Also, a fight in the stands distracted the crowd near the end. But great match otherwise. Show ended with the Titans players angle.
In other news, The Shane Twins have been working as the masked penis wrestlers The Johnsons in TNA but the penis aspect of it has been played down to almost nothing. Upcoming plans were for the team to unmask and revert back to the Shane Twins, but when Russo came aboard, that plan got scrapped and they will remain The Johnsons for now. Because dammit, Russo will get to make penis jokes on TV or he's going to die trying.
Many of the key names in TNA (Shamrock, AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn, Mike Tenay, among others) have now signed 1-year contracts. Scott Hall was rumored to have also signed a 1-year deal, but Hall is telling people it's not true and he's only committed for 4 more dates. Low-Ki is signed through the end of the year.
At the recent K-1 vs. PRIDE show, there was a huge upset when PRIDE fighter Quinton Jackson knocked out Cyril Abidi, one of the top kickboxers in the world. The "plan" was for Abidi to win and then go on to a bigger money match with Don Frye, but that's what happens when you try to plan things around a shoot.
And I'm sorry, I know this ain't an MMA recap, but this is too good: at the UFC press conference for the UK show this week, Dana White showed up with a bag filled with $250,000 in cash and challenged UK boxing promoter Frank Warren to put up any fighter in his stable and White would find a UFC fighter of the same weight to fight him, winner takes all the money. If you recall, Warren made some statements a few weeks back calling UFC fighters unskilled steroid freaks and claiming that his boxers could beat any of them in a real fight. So Dana showed up with a whole bag of cash, doing Dana things.
Notes from Raw: Vince came out to the NWO music and said that's the last time we'll ever hear it and that the NWO is dead, so as expected, that's it for that gimmick. Tommy Dreamer is back to his old ECW gimmick and is already 1000x more over than the jobber-eating-gross-stuff gimmick WWE gave him. There was a Coach/Booker T segment backstage which is when Eric Bischoff walked through the shot, leaving everybody with their mouths hanging open, and then his promo. Another hype video for Rey Mysterio debuting on Smackdown next week. Former WCW wrestler and recent developmental guy Johnny The Bull made his Raw debut winning the hardcore title, and Dave is baffled how he got the call up because he's one of the worst guys they have in developmental and is nowhere near ready. But it's all about how he looks. Undertaker & Lesnar beat RVD & Flair in the main event and afterward, Lesnar turned on Undertaker in a good angle, though Dave doesn't have high hopes for the inevitable match.

WATCH: Rey Mysterio debut vignette

Notes from Smackdown: it was a pretty bad show and for a pretty surprising reason. It was all built around Rock and he was awful. Rather than trying to sell a PPV, he came off like he was trying too hard to be a funny, "cool" guy and became a parody of himself. Dave is a huge Rock fan and thinks it was painful. He did a big in-ring promo segment with rapper Busta Rhymes that was just an elaborate plug for his new Halloween: Resurrection movie ("coming out in July?" Dave asks incredulously and, right, wtf?). Even Rock using Angle's own ankle lock against him at the end of the show looked hilariously fake and Dave has no interest in the Rock/Angle match at Vengeance after this show. Edge & Hogan defending the tag titles was a super heated match and Dave can't understand it. The live crowds are still nuclear hot for Hogan, but it's not translating at all into TV ratings or ticket sales. But man, the people who do buy tickets sure do love him. They seem to be slow-burning a Randy Orton heel turn. The Nidia segment at the buffet was great and Dave thinks they may have stumbled across a pretty great gimmick with her.

WATCH: The Rock & Busta Rhymes Smackdown segment

The crew got a little backstage pep talk before Raw this week, mostly given by the agents (John Laurinaitis, Arn Anderson, and Fit Finlay) as well as Triple H. In particular, Triple H talked about there being too many people in the locker room who think they deserve a push ahead of the newer guys because they've been there longer. He said too many guys are sitting back waiting for someone to give them a push rather than breaking out from the pack and earning the push. He said he got over on his own when management was trying to hold him down after the MSG curtain call incident. Said too many guys are being lazy, playing cards and playing video games backstage rather than watching the matches and learning. He said just because you've had a few good matches on TV doesn't mean you know how to work or deserve a push, and also said everyone needs to work harder at house shows because attendance is down and it was guys like him who worked hard to re-build the company the last time business was down. Needless to say, for a locker room full of people who feel like they bust their asses only to get their legs cut off and hit a glass ceiling (often at the hands of the same guy giving the speech), this went over just about as well as you'd expect with the rest of the locker room. Not that anything Triple H said is wrong. Dave agrees with most of it. But considering who the messenger was, it was not well-received.
Lots of backstage talk about last week's Bradshaw/Trish Stratus vs. Chris Nowinski/Jackie Gayda match, which was among the worst matches anyone has seen in years. Fit Finlay is the usual trainer and agent for the women and usually goes over their matches and spots with them, but in this case, Sgt. Slaughter put together this match. Gayda missed a few spots early in the match and seemed to panic and it all fell apart from there. Backstage, she was fully aware of how bad it was and was said to be extremely upset. There's been talk of sending her down to OVW for more training, but she'll probably still be on TV because she's fresh off winning Tough Enough.
Steve Austin hasn't had any contact with anyone in WWE except for Jack Lanza, who was the agent Austin often worked with for his matches. All that's known now is Austin told Lanza he's still training hard and Lanza felt like he's getting antsy sitting at home and may be ready to return already (I think he's got bigger problems at home). But Austin and Vince still have not spoken and there's still a lot of bad feelings there.
In light of recent events, Dave digs up the transcript from an old Prodigy online chat from 1996, in which Eric Bischoff was asked if he would ever work for Vince McMahon. His response: "I would rather chew off my fingers."
Writer Brian Gewertz reportedly has some heat over Raw's declining ratings. The problem is, no matter who it is (Gewertz, Heyman, Russo, or even Stephanie), the final approval for everything you see on television comes down to Vince McMahon. He deserves the credit when it's good and the blame when it's bad, end of story. It's a common occurrence for Vince to rip up a script and tell the writers to come up with something new, so any bad segment that makes it to TV is on him, and resulting in lots of last minute changes. Some people are even blaming Gewertz for Kevin Nash's recent injury because Gewertz wrote the match into the script the day of the show, so Nash wasn't even aware he was going to be wrestling until a couple hours before they went on the air and I guess he didn't have time to properly stretch and get ready, and ended up tearing his quad 10 seconds in. Same thing with Cena's debut, that was a day-of decision, and luckily Cena was already on the road with the crew working dark matches, so he was available. But again, Dave says you can't blame Gewertz for either of those things because, once again, it's Vince who is constantly changing his mind and forcing last minute rewrites and whatnot every week. How is Gewertz or any other writer supposed to build long-term stories under those conditions? (Man, this sure feels familiar)
Latest on DDP, he and wife Kimberly are planning on moving from Atlanta to Los Angeles to try their hand at acting careers. They've both saved a lot of money from their years in wrestling and can afford to take a chance on this kind of thing I guess. (DDP has done a handful of acting roles, mostly in the mid-00s, but obviously nothing of note. And Kimberly Page did a few movies, including a starring role with DDP in a movie called The Scam Artist that I can't find anywhere, and of course, her most famous role as "chick who's tit fell out" in The 40 Year Old Virgin).
Randy Orton suffered a concussion in a house show match with Batista. Orton was trying to sell a clothesline by flying in the air and taking a big flat back bump, but hit his head on the mat coming down and was knocked unconscious. He should be back in a week or so though, because it's not like concussions are serious injuries or anything. EMT's helped him out of the ring and he walked to the back under his own power but he was knocked clean the fuck out for a bit there.
This week's episode of WWE Confidential featured Big Show and Bradshaw playing a game of HORSE with the winner "getting a shot to sexually harass Linda Miles." So obviously they're out of ideas for this show. (Yeah JBL is on some full-blown Jerry Lawler shit with Miles here).

WATCH: JBL perving on Linda Miles for 5 minutes under the guise of playing basketball

John Cena is still finishing up in OVW and working the upcoming big Six Flags show in Louisville. Despite being a big babyface on TV, he's still a heel in OVW and is playing a gimmick where his main roster success is going to his head.
The New York Daily News ran a story on the "Sex, Lies & Headlocks" book that is coming out soon about Vince McMahon and noted several revelations in the book, such as Vince being paranoid about his office being bugged in 1993 prior to the steroid trial and how he wouldn't sit or talk near windows because he thought the FBI was listening in. It also talked about how Vince gave a job interview to Matt Lauer to host the WBF Bodystars show but didn't think Lauer had the right look, among other things. When asked for comment, WWE responded "No one in WWE has any interest in reading it. No one cares to." Dave says that's 2002 carny talk for, "Can you get us an advance copy?"

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Raw appears to turn a corner (lol no), WWE making major cutbacks and severing developmental ties, TNA also making major budget cuts, WWE Vengeance fallout, and more...

Poppy Seed Tea Guide - My thoughts and findings after 10 years.

Hi all,
To say thank you for all the great advice here, I'm going to put down everything I've found about PST over my 10 years of use. If others want to contribute, or find something that is wrong or shouldn't be in here, I'll be happy to make updates. I won't be discussing or responding to any questions about sourcing.
* DISCLAIMER: While I've run this guide past a medical professional who is a part of the sub, NONE of this should be taken as medical advice. Everything I've put down here is simply my experience as a 10 year user of PST, and 15 year user of opiates and opioids. Remember this: PST is liquid opium - morphine and codeine - drugs that have killed many people. It's not a toy, and it's not a competitive sport, like a 'smoke-a-thon'. If you don't use poppy seeds with intelligence and respect, they can kill you.
I don't use meth, and wouldn't write a guide for it. But speaking as somebody with chronic pain caused by an auto-immune disease, and the failure of doctors to properly support me, I have to look after myself. Many here are in the same boat. I am able to lead a relatively healthy life with PST, so I can attest that there is a legitimate use for it. Please understand that I'm coming from a position of using PST as pain relief. If you're a purely recreational user without pain, understand that because of a number of factors, primarily availability and a wild variation in strength between sources and batches, PST can be incredibly addictive, dangerous, and the odds are against you being able to use it as a purely recreational experience without becoming addicted.
EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT
Not everybody gets the same effect from PST. I personally get euphoria & pain relief, followed by a sustained amount of energy. Others will be sleepy and nodding. Others get varying amounts of itchiness. Some never have a problem urinating, others can't squeeze a drop.
True story: I've met a person who was able to get a HUGE effect from just 2-3 tablespoons worth of the tea that I prepare for myself, when I'd drink 2-3 cups at that strength. Literally a tablespoon of average seeds had them on the ropes. The most important point here is that you can't take what one user advises as gospel.. including me. I'm trying to err well on the side of caution, particularly after seeing what 2% of my dose can do for someone without tolerance. Always stay safe.
TOLERANCE - START SMALL
Every supply will have differences from batch to batch. I've even noticed a difference from the top to the bottom of a large pack due to free opium dust making it's way to the bottom of a pack. If you're not 100% certain you know how strong your seeds are, start VERY small, at perhaps one ounce of seeds. I've had an extremely strong euphoric effect from 1/4 cup of seeds from a new supply combined with a new preparation method, where I was using 2 pounds per dose the previous day. The washing of seeds prior to sale varies, some may not be washed at all. This is the equivalent of taking a pharmaceutical tablet not knowing whether it's 30mg of Codeine, or 80mg of Oxycodone.
Following on from that, keep tolerance in mind, and monitor it as much as you can. While increasing tolerance is a pain in the ass, it does give you something of a buffer if the worst were to happen. A sudden decrease in tolerance can be VERY dangerous if you don't keep it in mind. If you were to use PST on Saturday and Sunday, then abstain during Monday to Friday, your tolerance will drop through the week. For those without solid experience and tolerance, and even experienced users at times, this can be treacherous. Don't use a large dose after even a few days off. Start small.
A great piece of advice is to split up a batch of tea, drinking a small amount, and waiting to see what effect it has. 60-90 minutes will be enough for you to feel the effects. Unless you know your seeds and what you're doing, don't gulp down your entire batch of tea in 30 seconds flat.
DOSE TIMING
If you're only using PST recreationally, I would recommend no more than 1 dose per week. At this level, you may have a chance at keeping this as a recreational thing without it spiraling. But the second you're starting to feel a compulsion to increase the frequency, addiction is at work and you're on the downward slope.
In my position, I regularly use 2 doses per day for pain management. The first is often one larger dose, with 1-2 much smaller follow-up doses to get to where I need to be for pain relief and energy. In the afternoon after work, I'll use medium sized dose to top me up for the rest of the day. As with other painkillers, you will get extra pain relief if you're only spacing doses by a few hours, but if you're trying to get a second buzz for the day, I'd recommend no less than 8 hours between doses, and no more than 2 doses per day. This seems to be the amount of time your body needs to 'reset', it's been my rule of thumb for 15 years, it works for me. Even then, if you follow this daily, it won't take long before you're increasing your dose or needing a day or two off to lower your tolerance.
Something I can say with reasonable certainty is that you can't take an initial dose, then do the same thing again in 2 hours time and expect another buzz. The body doesn't have unlimited chemicals to pump out every time you want to push the button. If I take my first dose of the day and it's weak, I know I can take a second dose which will elevate my energy levels, and that'll get me through the day. But it'll do little else.
It's very important to keep in mind that PST is longer acting than many other forms of pain relief. Some people have said they get a full 24 hour effect from a dose.. I personally get a solid 6-8 hours. If you aren't spacing out your doses enough, you are putting yourself at risk of an overdose. Add in a second dose when the first is still acting on your system, and you're at risk of overdosing. This is common in methadone users, because of the long acting nature of that bastard of a drug.
PREPARATION
Any time I mention how much seed I personally use for a dose, this is NOT a recommended dose for anybody else. This is what I personally use at the 15 year mark to control significant pain. It is a STRONG dose, taken by someone with SIGNIFICANT tolerance and LOTS of experience. The seeds are quite viable, but definitely not 'strong', not even close to some of the pictures I've seen of other sources. As per the story at the beginning, my dose could quite easily kill somebody.
START SMALL or don't start at all.
Most people including myself stick to the bottle method. Some do this on a stove top but I've never tried, so I won't comment there. I personally use either a 1.5, or 2.25 litre Coke bottle and fill with seeds to the bottom edge of the wrap-around label. I use either room temperature Coke Zero / No Sugar (for the high pH), or hot tap water with some sort of flavoring. While I've had many good highs from using cold water or cold Coke, warm/hot liquid does seem to reliably increase the strength. Because of variable seed strength, you may not get a consistently better effect from hot water over cold, but I do think that hot water is the most effective. There has always been some disagreement over whether boiling water destroys the alkaloids, so to err on the side of caution I don't put anything with the seeds that would burn my hand.
The seed-liquid ratio is hard to suggest, but you need to be able to freely shake the bottle without the mixture feeling like a slurry, or worse, wet cement. You need those seeds moving around without clumping up. Generally once I've shaken my bottle, the seeds will settle and there'll be roughly an inch of water above the seed line.
The bottle needs to be shaken hard, for around 1-2 minutes. The objective is to strip as much of the alkaloid on the outside of the seed off as possible, and getting it strained into a cup, without taking so long that the seeds will be to absorb liquid (and alkaloids).
As above, start small, drink 1/4 - 1/3 of your batch and see how you feel in 90 minutes. As you get more experienced you'll know what works.
TASTE
Poppy seed tea tastes like crap. It's hard to compare it to anything, but it should taste earthy, dirty, bitter. I've never met anyone who had anything nice to say about it. I've used sugar-free Coke for mine instead of water for a long time, and only just recently switched to plain water. You can add all sorts of things to make it taste better, fruit juice concentrates, teabags, sugar. Without any flavoring, you should be able to drink it with your nose blocked, unless you have a weak stomach. It's not nice, but no great drug tasted nice.
The bitterness can sometimes indicate that you've made a strong batch, but DON'T put too much faith in that. I've had batches that were incredibly bitter and did nothing, while I got caught out with one that tasted about as strong as a 5th or 6th wash (not that I wash that many times), yet it knocked me on my ass out of nowhere, to the point that I wouldn't have been able to work without being obviously high.
If you've water that is too hot, shaken the bottle for too long, or try to make a batch with yesterday's seeds, you'll get a distinct taste. It's hard to describe, but it tastes.. wrong. You'll notice a slightly fatty texture which is the seed's oils, and a vaguely organic decomposing smell. One smell/taste you can describe is the licorice odor that seeds give off when they've been in a bottle for a few days and started to pressurize the bottle. You'll smell it if you don't dispose of your seeds in 24-36 hours. Obviously these seeds are WELL beyond useless. Also, if you taste or smell anything 'chemical', get rid of the seeds.
COLOR
There are plenty of pictures on this sub showing what the color of good tea looks like. It should be cloudy, possibly with dirt and plant matter, and a beige to dark brown color. Two things to look out for - if it's milky white, that usually means seed oil, you've shaken too long or used water that is too hot. And if the water is completely clear, it's possible the seeds have been completely washed prior to sale (or worse, been used for tea and dried, then resold).
NAUSEA
Some people will experience stomach discomfort or nausea when taking recreational doses. Not all stomachs will thank you for dumping a large amount of foul tasting swill into them. It's worth noting this here, because a little nausea and discomfort isn't always an overdose symptom. You can usually ease the nausea by eating a small meal or a glass of milk prior, or during. Because of the reports of fat being able to increase opiate bioavailability, I would steer clear of really fatty foods here, carbs or protein will be safer.
OVERDOSE
I'm not an expert here, and the onus is on you, the user, to do your research on overdose symptoms before you experiment with ANY drug. But there are a few obvious ones that should never be ignored. Vomiting, slow breathing, reduced heart rate, vomiting, and nodding. If you're not familiar with nodding, it's nodding off to sleep. Think the stereotype of a heroin user in a movie. If your head is dipping, you're finding it hard to keep your eyes open, dropping off to sleep briefly.. you're in dangerous territory.
IMPORTANT: Like any opiate, you should never take PST with any other CNS depressant drug: alcohol, benzodiazepines, other opiates/opioids, or sedatives. They can dramatically increase the likelihood of respiratory depression and OD. In layman's terms, this will likely play out with you nodding, falling asleep, your breathing will slow to the point of stopping completely, and you will die without intervention.
PLEASE - spend 15 minutes looking into opiate/opioid overdose symptoms, and have a plan if you find yourself in trouble. Smart users have Narcan on their possession and somebody available to administer it. A large amount of overdoses happen when the user is alone, with nobody available to step in when things start going wrong.
DISCRETION
It can be difficult (but feasible) to keep preparation secret, if you're in that position. Shaking is noisy, but can be mitigated by wrapping the bottle in a blanket, masking with background noise, etc. Straining a bottle can cause cracking noises from deforming plastic, so my suggestion is not to squeeze the bottle too much. Squeeze out perhaps 10%, then with your hands wrapped around the bottle, you can manipulate the sides to suck in air and return to it's original shape, relatively quietly. If you squeeze to the point that the sides are touching, you'll make all sorts of cracking and snapping noises trying to get air back in so that the last of the liquid can be strained.
I also try to keep the bottle upside down from start to finish, so that the liquids are always toward the exit. If you have to put the bottle down, try to place it with the cap down (and obviously closed). It seems intuitive to have the bottle right way up to refill with air, but this can cause problems getting every last drop out.
The very last of the liquid will come out bubbling. This tells you you're at the end, and it can get a little noisy. When you hear this, squeeze gently or just call it, there's not much coming out at this point.
Poppy seeds are small and get EVERYWHERE. Keep an eye out for them. If they're regularly showing up around a sink, toilet or elsewhere and spotted, they could tip somebody off.
POTENTIATION
There are numerous threads all across the internet with lists of potentiators that can increase the effects of your PST. I personally haven't found anything groundbreaking here. Dosing on an empty stomach is well known and does seem to be quite noticeable over dosing after eating. In my experience, I can only guess that, at best, there might be an extra 5-10% increase up for grabs using common potentiators quoted online, which I don't find very noticeable. If you're using responsibly and have the potentiator on hand, you might find something that works, but generally speaking, there aren't any silver bullets that'll make your PST appreciably stronger. Dextromethorphan (DXM) is purported to keep tolerance from rising, but only if you're using it daily in a therapeutic level, as recommended on the packet.
Grapefruit juice is commonly recommended as a potentiator, and while it doesn't work for me, the medical professional who looked over this guide can attest that it does work. The simplified explanation is that it blocks the livekidney system from filtering the drug at the speed it normally does, thus increasing the amount in your blood. It's also important to note that Grapefruit juice has a wide range of interactions with other medications. It's not uncommon to see a prescription label with a warning not to drink Grapefruit juice while taking the prescribed medication. As with everything here, do your research. Definitely don't jump into potentiators until you're comfortable using PST on it's own.
There are some things that will decrease, or negate the effects of PST. To start with, I get a better result with less liquid used. If you're using larger amounts of seed, you can halve the amount of liquid by splitting the seed between two bottles. Shake the first, strain into the second, strain into a cup. This puts the available alkaloids up for grabs across less area in the stomach. Consuming a large wash, followed by a large second wash, is likely to decrease the intensity.
It's been said that eating a fatty meal after your dose can increase oral absorption of morphine somewhere in the range of +30%. In a thread in this sub, one user reported using peanut butter to achieve this. I'm yet to try this one. There are plenty of threads on potentiation to research if you want to go down this path.
The safest bet is to prepare your tea, drink it, and wait. If you need to, sip some water, but do your best to just let your stomach do it's job without interruption.
CONSTIPATION
Constipation is a big part of opiate use, and it can be quite extreme with PST. I highly recommend the regular use of a gentle stool softener like Coloxal & Senna. Magnesium tablets are well known to have a laxative effect. Coffee has always helped me. My first of the morning generally gets things started. I can't really qualify this, but I've noticed personally that if I don't stay regular, then I won't get as much euphoria and energy from my dose. It's as though there needs to be free bowel space for the body to utilize the drug. YMMV. I personally don't fret if I miss a day, but I will postpone a dose if I haven't moved anything by day 3.
There can be MAJOR consequences to constipation, the most immediate being fecal impaction. Do your research, this is important and if you're using PST regularly, you will have to deal with it.
URINATING
The majority of people I've talked to have had varying degrees of trouble peeing while on PST, mainly on heavier doses. I can't speak for women, but if I have problems (rare these days), one option is to pee with your pants down, at least around your thighs. You want to lose any restriction around your waist. I've also countered the problem by trying to get as far as I can standing, switching to sitting, and keep alternating, and things eventually get moving. There seems to be a mental aspect to this.. it's not something I can explain but I fare better in a private stall over standing next to a co-worker at a urinal. Keeping your mind clear helps.. I've found that sudden changes in thought or little body movements can cause all the pipes to snap shut.
DISPOSAL
Disposing of used seeds can be problematic. I've heard cases of clogged plumbing from washing them down the sink or toilet, and even a case where seeds stuck in the pipe below a sink beginning to sprout through the sink hole. I haven't come up with any good alternative that doesn't leave them out there for someone to find. I personally empty my bottles into a sink with good plumbing and a garbage disposal, with LOTS of running water.
My major problem during much of my time has been that I prefer using Coke over tap water. There's a trap here: rather than using one designated bottle for seed, emptying it of seed, cleaning and re-using it, you just keep using the newly empty bottles of Coke, and get in to a loop where you accumulate a bunch of bottles filled with used seed. In a pinch, it can be hard to get rid of the large amount of seeds, clean the bottles out, and dispose of them discretely. I've been in numerous situations where I've accumulated a pile of full seed bottles and had to think fast in order to keep things secret.
Keep on top of your used seeds regularly, and don't leave them around for someone to find, either in the house, or out in the world. Don't throw bottles full of seed in the garbage, empty them, wash the bottle and put them in the recycling.
Be smart - that last thing anybody should be doing is advertising PST and putting a target on it.
WITHDRAWAL
Everyone is different. Withdrawal can be brutal, or in my most recent case, quite manageable. In my own experience, I know I'll need a few packets of Immodium (Loperamide) to handle the rebound diarrhea that happens when you come out of forced constipation. Exercise helps. Drink plenty of water. The sweats are made worse if you don't shower regularly. I've gotten quite lucky by being on the lower end of the scale here, but some people really suffer. You should consider this when before you decide if you want to try PST. Using it regularly, I guarantee you WILL end up in positions where you have to go through this. It happens in a hundred different ways and it's not a fun way to live if you don't have to.
Protip: If you haven't got Immodium on hand, you can get a similar effect from a few tablespoons of Cornflour mixed with water or milk. It won't help with any other withdrawal symptoms, but it will help with the diarrhea.
SCAMS
Please do your research when buying seeds online, particularly from sites set up specifically to sell poppy seed.
If someone is actively giving you a source for seed, then they'll either be genuine good peoples, which will come across in your messaging with them, or they have a vested interest. They may be legit, but at worst it may be an outright scam taking your money with no product to send, or they're trying to earn commission somehow.
If a source is advertised or communicated here, look for other users with post history that can verify that they got their order and it was good quality.
FINAL THOUGHTS
One last time - PLEASE START SMALL, OR NOT AT ALL. I've spent more time on PST than other painkillers, and I can guarantee you that it WILL end up taking over your life. While I've managed to get through to manageable lifestyle on PST, it didn't come easy. Lots of supply dropout and forced withdrawal. Lots of time grappling with the need for pain relief versus feeling like a piece of shit drug addict. Lots of time considering how it's affected my life's story. The many compromises you need to make in your every day life to accommodate a drug habit.
Don't advertise PST. Don't talk about it freely, unless you're with someone who also uses it. PST flies under the radar in many countries, but it's not completely invisible. This is Fight Club, don't talk about it.
Thanks to everybody here who has contributed to the general body of knowledge.. you've all had a positive impact on my life.
Stay safe and be kind!
\** Note: If the Mods are happy for this post to remain up, I'll try to make a few edits for better reading, and make any changes that other Redditors/Mods thing should be made.*
EDIT 1: Added section on Scams.
EDIT 2: Added warning about CNS depressants to Overdose section. Thanks, Sunscript.

Morning Market Synopsis - Monday, Oct. 5, 2020

US equities higher: Dow +1.09%, S&P 500 +1.14%, Nasdaq +1.53%, Russell 2000 +1.82%

US equities higher in Monday midday trading after snapping a four-week losing streak last week. Materials, energy, healthcare among the standouts. Defensives underperforming with REITs the only sector lower. Treasuries weaker some notable curve steepening. 10-year yields highest since late August. Dollar outperforming yen but lagging on euro cross. Gold up 0.6% following a 2%+ gain last week. WTI crude up 6.3%, near best levels, after losing ~8% last week.
President Trump could be discharged from the hospital as soon as today. However, still a lot of uncertainty given the disclosure that he had received supplemental oxygen and a steroid called dexamethasone usually given to people seriously ill with COVID-19. House Speaker Pelosi said on Sunday that lawmakers are "making progress" on another coronavirus relief bill after Trump called for swift action, but she did not offer any details. Biden expanded lead over Trump in the national polls following the chaotic first presidential debate. NYC, France and Italy all reportedly set to impose new coronavirus mitigation measures.
Pretty quiet elsewhere with so much of the focus on Trump's coronavirus infection, election implications, and fiscal stimulus. September ISM Services index was stronger than consensus. WSJ discussed how big tech stocks may be among most vulnerable to a corporate tax increase that could result from a Democratic sweep in November. Heightened regulatory on tech also a big them with antitrust lawsuit against GOOGL-US expected late this week. There were a number of articles highlighting concerns about a pickup in permanent job losses. NY Times also discussed how job losses are spilling over to many industries not impacted by the coronavirus.
Several M&A headlines in focus. BMY-US to acquire MYOK-US for $13.1B. NY Post said Carl Icahn would accept a $50 per share bid for NAV-US from Traton. CAT-US to acquire O&G division from the Weir Group for $405M BBIO-US to acquire EIDX-US . TRP-US to acquire rest of TCP-US it does not already own. FTV-US positively preannounced. DKNG-US out with a 23M share secondary. NCLH-US extended sailing suspension. AMC-US and CNK-US down on closure of Regal theaters and delay of new Bond film. PZZA-US announced new CFO. GAN-US signed 10-year agreement with WYNN-US to provide iGaming and Internet sports betting in Michigan.

Notable Gainers:

+58.2% MYOK-US (MyoKardia): BMY-US confirmed it will acquire company for $225/sh in cash; represents a ~61% premium over Friday's close; BMY expects transaction to add a significant growth driver but may be minimally dilutive to 2021-22 EPS.
+42.7% EIDX-US (Eidos Therapeutics, Inc.): Agreed to be acquired by BBIO-US in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $73.26 a share; represents a 41% premium to prior close.
+14.2% LTHM-US (Livent Corp.): Barron's favorable on lithium miners on growing demand from Tesla and other car makers, most notably Livent with assets around the world and strong growth forecasts among street analysts; also mentioned positively were ALB-US and SQM-US .
+13.3% JELD-US (JELD-WEN Holding): Upgraded to overweight from equal weight at Wells Fargo; said windows and interior doors channel inventories are lean and lead times may have increased; positive on pricing announcements and improvements in window quality control.
+12.8% HMSY-US (HMS Holdings): Bloomberg reported the company is exploring strategic options including a sale; HMS has been strongly impacted by Covid-19 on lower volume as US hospitals allow fewer elective procedures; stock has underperformed the S&P by almost 50% in past year.
+9.8% REAL-US (The RealReal, Inc.): Announced it is partnering with Gucci through the end of the year to launch an online shop featuring pre-owned Gucci items and to promote circularity for luxury fashion.
+6.5% REGN-US (Regeneron Pharmaceuticals): President Trump's COVID-19 treatment included company's experimental antibody cocktail; also upgraded to overweight from neutral at Cantor Fitzgerald, citing Dupixent as growth driver in both short- and long-term.
+5.0% DOCU-US (DocuSign): Upgraded to overweight from equal-weight at Morgan Stanley; cited valuation following 19% decline since September, strong fundamentals coupled with durable COVID tailwinds; also said pandemic should help with new customer acquisition and renewal rates.
+4.1% CRWD-US (CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.): Upgraded to buy from neutral after new analyst assigned at Goldman Sachs; noted disruptive platform in Endpoint Security market, room for upside with revenue growing at near double the rate of peers.
+2.6% GILD-US (Gilead Sciences): President Trump received remdesivir as part of its treatment for Covid-19.
+2.6% NAV-US (Navistar): NY Post reported Carl Icahn would be willing to accept bid of ~$50 per share; Volkswagen's Traton, Navistar's largest shareholder, expected to finish its due diligence by the end of the week and increase its $43 per share offer.
+2.1% FTV-US (Fortive Corp.): Positive Q3 preannouncement; expects revenue to be up 2% vs prior guidance for flat to down 3%; Professional Instrumentation (PI) and Industrial Tech (IT) both tracking better than expected; also expects positive y/y growth in operating profit ibn both segments.
+2% ATUS-US (Altice US): Upgraded to outperform from market perform at Bernstein; cited valuation; notes underlying fundamentals bottomed earlier this year; expects expanded investments in 2021; believes Q3 results will help rebuild investor trust.

Notable Decliners:

-10.8% AMC-US (AMC Entertainment): Cineworld announced the closure of its more than 500 US Regal theaters; new James Bond movie "No Time To Die," pushed back from November to April 2021.
-2.0% NCLH-US (Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings): Announced an extension of its previously announced suspension of global cruise voyages to include all voyages embarking between 1-Nov and 30-Nov across its three brands.
-1.4% DNKN-US (Dunkin' Brands): Downgraded to neutral from buy at BTIG; cited valuation following doubling of share price since March; also expect decline in franchisee cash flow this year, focus on development outside core geographies could weigh on 2021 growth.

10:10:55 AM CDT on 05 Oct '20

Self-promotion of my novel

I would like to promote my story in my Webnovel and need help for improvement. if you like the story or not, review it if it's worth your time and interest comment if there's an error or misinterpreted thoughts. don't give a shallow review, just read the novel if you're interested.
Title: Retired Player's Devotion Genre: Realism, Video Games Word count: 27.71K words (ongoing novel) Type of feedback: General feedback as a reader Link: https://www.webnovel.com/book/retired-player's-devotion_17772220405819905 1st Chapter:
Episode 0 – aftermath (1) 20XX, Philippines The emerging of game capsules took the world by storm and gaming companies taking opportunities to the games related to capsules to make profits and tune in the world of cyber reality to make scientific research which why also many scientists studying it. Right now in the Philippines, many rental capsule establishments are taking place so who didn't have enough money to buy capsule can experience and play these virtual reality games. In the era of capsule gaming, there is one game that a lot of players waiting for its official release and still playing it even it is in beta for 2 decades. GAIA, a capsule MMORPG by Tri-Gon, will be going for a Launching of the official game despite being disregarded for years by the company ------------------------------------------------- -"Tri-Gon, proudly saying that they will release their very first and might be possible the last release game of the company, GAIA in the public. Despite 2 decades in Beta, many games in their belt and the success of the first company made the gaming capsule. The company didn't give on the game they just experimented in their early years. The company president Dr. Rita Furukawa's statement shook the world by this unexpected revelation to the public. The company's official press conference is not yet determined as of this moment but some speculation said that the official release Da—"-
All of the newspapers, television, and the internet are shocked by the company's movement. It's questionable that they are releasing their last game as a gaming company since they are smashing the gaming industry and also they are not in some sort of crisis.
And here I am, sitting in front of the TV resting for minutes when I see the news. Heavily breathing exhausted and drench of sweat in my forehead, this is so pain in the ass doing rehabilitation exercises.
"Jon, 10 mins is over. We need to continue." She said
"' Insan, can we just stop. The exercises are so painful, I don't know why I need to this kind of rehabilitation even I can recover my feet by just walking."
"Gago, you need this! This much better and faster way to recover your feet by the accident, by walking only the body will make all the muscles functioning properly so that it will recover completely and enhance functionality. Come on, don't make this hard for me, this is for your own good too. "
"Okay okay I'll do it, but can I rest more? This is too new for me."
"Alright, 5 mins Jon. 5mins only."
"Yeah, Thanks Ate Kyle."
She leaves me alone for a moment while tending to the other patients, it's not I'm the only one doing rehab this kind of day. Its Monday, 3 months have passed since my accident, and still miserable of what happened to my life has gone through this past month. All my plans in the future have been cut off to me and slipping to my very own hands.
Based on what the police said in the investigation, the accident is intentional and the suspect confesses to it. I don't know who the guy was and why he did it to me but they said that he loses a ton of money to the Playoff last week in the Pacific Championship Series, the money he lost was the money he earned from drugs has gone through the bet and it is taking the frustration out on me. Since we won the game by the crucial winning gameplays made by me, he is so mad on how the comeback was gone through the series that's why he intentionally wait for me and rammed using his car while influenced highly on drugs then rammed to another Jeepney crossing affecting my head. All my family was shocked by what happened, they want to sue the suspect but his father was a politician from the senate in the Philippines so that's why the media is controlled and no one is reporting it on the news.
Someone come to the hospital when I was in a comatose state, the father of the suspect namely Senator Francisco Dimayuga, threatening to keep this quiet and give compensation money. The family retaliates that my lost future cannot be paid by some petty money they gave to us, but he said that I'm just an Old E-sport professional athlete and my time as a player is fading that's why accept by how much he is willing to give which I can earn only in 3 years being a Pro – Athlete. All things escalated in the court even though it's an uphill battle but the media explodes of what happened and the public enraged of what is the decision of the court. The result was HOUSE ARREST for 3 years, one of the punishments together with drug rehab by the government by the party defending the son, John Alexander Dimayuga. He is free even though they are fined with the expense must be paid to the winning party and also full hospital expense with rehab fees. He is still living comfortably in THEIR vacation house in Batangas, there is nothing we can do since they have the power of the law with them.
Two and half months have passed that I woke up that my family celebrates it, but I can't move or speak that I was crying. For all, I thought that I was paralyzed for the rest of my life, but they operate my spine to save me for paralyzation with the immediate consent of my parents, and grateful that I can play professionally. In one week that has passed, I can speak and ask what happened. They tell me that I was in a coma for months and my team goes to the worlds as wildcard participants then got lost in the semifinals of the tournament. My team was going to visit me when they got back to the Philippines.
"5 mins is up Jon."
"Coming to you, Ate." As I stand up slowly feeling the pain especially my back, patiently taking my time to walk to start the remaining exercises. Time has passed through the day and I finish the session at 3 pm since it is a 3-hour session. I commute from home to the hospital for about 1-2 hours every day, it is not that hassle since I just go 2 transportation to the hospital, UV going to Alabang then pedicab from Alabang on route to the hospital. The southeast Asian hospital is one of the best hospitals in the Philippines due to early response to diseases and improving healthcare through updated technology and advancements.
The Physical Rehab center is kind of big for a common rehab center; it has a complete set of equipment that is up to standard since this is the newest department from the hospital. The exercises are not that extraneous as I thought would be but those specific exercises give pain to the chosen muscle that Ate Kyle wants to aim to recover so it will be tiresome after the session. Kyle Villasanta, my cousin who is specializing in physical therapy and rehab is one of the staff here in their newest clinic. She's not that tall, long-haired chubby woman in her late 20s, she is about to graduate as a doctor major in physical rehabilitation together with her being a nutritionist. Her dream is to be a fitness expert that I saw on TV for diets and shit, I'm proud of her of all the milestones she went through studying.
"Is that the guy on the news lately? The Victim of the suspect intentionally rammed?" "Yes, he is. Despite the accident, he is still fine though."
"I pity for the guy, he is an E-sport professional. He misses the important tournament; I wish he can come back though."
"Some say that he should retire since he got to a coma which some of his brain processes are slower now."
"That's why he is here, to get back in shape as fast as possible."
They talk behind my back silently and I can still hear them talking about me, I just ignored it since it will not produce a positive impression about me and also I'm a professional, I need to deal this since my face and name is in the public which is a normal occurrence of being an E-sport Pro. I just finished the session and got back home. I said bye to my cousin and talk to her to come to my house sometime in Lavida Dasmarinas, she said 'next time on the next weekend' then I go out to the hospital.
Soon as I go back home. The interior of the house is empty except the room and the kitchen, the living room is a literal space of the bungalow house which is kinda bummer. The only thing there was is my High – end PC which I go to practice my games online with my teammates. It's hard to live alone since my parents got divorced and have different families now; we're okay in me but to each other, not so much. They call me time to time, just annoying nowadays since I got to an accident. They worry about me since I'm basically cannot work and I got shorthanded to play in the worldwide tournament which was held twice a year.
I didn't know when I come back to play to PCS since the result of my test in my neurologist is coming by tomorrow at the same hospital in the afternoon after the rehab.
My teammates con-call me on my phone to check up on me, but we are just bantering to each other of what happened to the tournament last 3 months ago. Diego, Kit, Ren, Jha, and Cha are the names of my teammates that I playing with representing Team Bonfire sponsored by Genius telecommunication company.
Despite what happened, Charice was forced to play the jungle to cover up the team. It was a disaster since the social media flaming to put a woman on a major role that the team specializes on but they got silenced when she is smashing the jungle most of the time but got shorthanded in the semis, it is no small feat for a team that losses a crucial teammate on the team but still we didn't win which our aim to be since I'm in my retiring age of 28. Being an E-sport professional of 28 years old, you're 45 in a standard sport. That how high is the turnover this kind of sport has, since this accident happened there is a high chance that I retire which that I didn't achieve what I want as to win the Worlds. What can I do? It's just circumstances; at least I gave myself a heads up of what will happen in the future.
I'm staring down in my PC, tempted to play League but shrug it out of my mind since I will not be satisfied with how I play the game. Instead, I crack some eggs, chop scallions and carrots then mix it up to cook some egg rolls together with instant soup noodles for dinner tonight like some broke Asian college student. As I eat alone sighing, a home so empty that the sound of wind makes it unbearable. I'm so used to it but sometimes what it feels like to have someone to be with you when you come home and greet you every time, this is one of those times wishing to have someone in this house. Then I take a shower, preparing to sleep early to end this fucking day.
I just want to play professionally, please give me good results tomorrow so I can play for the next season. Crying myself in agony wishing to play longer until my last breath; this is all I have, don't let this accident affect my career. I fell asleep with struggling thoughts in my mind.

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