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Musings of an Extraordinarily Ordinary Man… turned clinically asexual epileptic from breath play.

Part 1

This is a repost from the user Lodkufehts_Toy on Fetlife, all credit to him. Posted because of the important and unique nature of the post.

Journal Entry 1 - Introduction
This is going to be a long one, folks. Fortunately, it’s not for you. It’s for me. And, I’m not connected to many people. Therefore, the number of people burdened with the temptation of reading it will be very small. Even better, from that very small population, the actual number of masochists that choose read this will be even less. My apologies to those two people.

My therapist thought it was a good idea for me to do this. Ever since my kink accident I’ve had a therapist for the first time in my life to help me find a way to live with my new reality and mitigate my suicidal desires. She was the one that recommended I find a kink support group for victims of kink gone horribly wrong. But, we couldn’t find one. It turns out people injured by kink simple leave the community and do their best to hide their pain and their shame from the world. Then, she recommended that my partner and I write about the accident on FetLife to see if that would generate a support network. It didn’t, except for one truly amazing exception. Thank you, David!!! Then, we looked into non-kink support networks for traumatic brain injuries. That’s not a good fit because it’s a little difficult to talk about the woes of a self-induced TBI to hero’s that got their TBI’s protecting freedom. So, here I am... trying the last proposed option for some sort of psychotherapeutic benefit — journaling and posting semi-anonymously. Fingers crossed.

I’ve been told that I might be holding on to some animosity as it applies to kinkiness — not kinky people, but rather what kink represents. Therefore, that seems like a good place for me to start.

Incidentally, as it applies to my soap-boxing below, I’m defining “Kinky,” or any derivative of the word, as actions or behaviors, given or received, modeled after actions or behaviors specifically designed to inflict physical and/or psychological pain, suffering and sometimes death. Therefore, crossdressing, foot-worship, light sensory stuff, etc... not kinky. Basically, everything I liked before my accident... kinky, such as whipping, flogging, caning, rope play, breath play, and essentially all edge play. You know, the fun stuff.

The point of my writings below are to explore the variables that played a part in creating my new agonizing reality — To try to understand what the contributing factors were that allowed/encouraged my partner and I to make such objectively bad decisions — To probe the fabric of the community’s deepest held tenets, such as SSC, RACK, and PRICK — And to, hopefully, build a foundation from which I might begin to accept my new reality by first answering the question, “Why?”

Journal Entry 2 - Life Sucks!
If you don’t know the context, and why would you, here are the basics. My partner and I did a simple waterboarding scene last June 26, 2020 and it went VERY BADLY! You can read both of our posts talking about the details here:

https://fetlife.com/users/6383382/posts/6633202

https://fetlife.com/users/6383382/posts/6650322

It was also covered in this Podcast:

https://soundcloud.com/perverted-podcast/281-ugly-side-of-kink

Here’s the update since the posts. Life sucks a giant bucket of ass! There you have it.

Given that this is my therapy, I suppose I should elaborate. I'm now officially an epileptic, taking seizure medications that give me headaches, make me sleepy as hell, make me dizzy to the point of falling frequently, and make me barf daily. I have permanent peripheral neuropathy in both hands. Meaning, my hands hurt like hell doing simple things like eating, brushing my teeth, typing, dressing, playing the piano or guitar, which has been my #1 love my entire life that I'll never do again. I'm not supposed to drive a car, or a boat, or a bicycle, or swim, or cook ever again due to the uncontrolled seizures - Incidentally, those are literally my favorite activities. I have noticeable cognitive impairment — I can’t focus on anything in my mental periphery. I have memory issues — I can experience an entire day and remember nothing about it. Not good for my job. Fuck it, not good for life. I activated a genetic condition that was dormant until my trauma called, Dupuytren's Contracture. It will deform my hands over time making them less functional. I sleep about 12-16 hours a day, sometimes 48 hours in a row. My right arm and leg shake while I'm sleeping, which keeps me up. I’ve sailed past $250,000 in medical bills with no end in sight. And, I went from being, probably, in the 90th percentile of happiest people on earth to contemplating suicide on a daily basis. All from an anoxic brain injury in my left temporal lobe that could not have been avoided short of not doing the water boarding. Oh, and of course libido comes from the left temporal lobe. So, my sex life is over. Can't forget that little gem of an outcome.

So, there you have it. I spent most of my life badly yearning for a kinky lifestyle. Met my best friend and love of my life, who happens to be kinky. Two Kinky Fridays, one “high-protocol” party, and six months later, my entire life is fucked and my sex life is over… including the kink… because of the kink… Fuck you, kink... Fuck you.

Journal Entry 3 - Sexually-Motivated Minds do Stupid Shit!
Given all of the horrible ramifications associated with my kink-related accident, the fact that it robbed me of my libido is most relevant to my ramblings below. It offers me a unique perspective the likes of which few people will ever experience — Going from someone whose thought-processes were, in part, influenced by a healthy sex-drive for the first 49 years of his life to someone who is inherently incapable of having a sexual thought the very next day.

Sure, we all lose our libido over time. Aging is a dirty whore that makes you less interested in fucking one with each passing year. But, losing your sex-drive over time is far different than losing it over night.

Straight guys, remember being 15? Here was my thought process during a typical hour at the age of 15… “Pussy, pussy, pussy, geometry, pussy, cheeseburger, pussy, pussy, I bet my my geometry teacher has a nice pussy, Cheetos, pussy.” Then, the bell would ring, I would head to the next class, thinking about the pussies of every girl I passed while trying to smell their perfume as I passed them. Sound familiar? I had zero control over my thoughts. I could control my actions... thank the fake Lord. But, my dingledong was in complete control of my thoughts and desires.

At 25, some of my pussy-thoughts transitioned into an awareness that I was probably thinking about pussy too much and should consider getting a job with a future. But, who am I kidding, that was most likely because I simply realized that people with pussies don’t want people like me licking their love muffin unless I have a job and a future. Still no real control of my sexual thoughts or desires. Just a little more time between the whims of my libido.

By 35 I was married and intensely career-focused. Life was about making a home and establishing ourselves in the socioeconomic hierarchy — You know, who has cooler shit? That kind of nonsense. It was still very easy to tap into my healthy sex-drive when called to action. But, much like many marriages, sex became less recreational and more obligational. Meaning, my libido was hailing my left-hand far more often than my wife. At this age, I still didn’t have any real control of my thoughts. My libido merely relinquished its control throughout the day and in public, but re-established its control of my thoughts and desires the moment it was safe.

By 45 I was five years divorced and trying to make-up for lost sexual time. This was the first decade of my life that I feel like I had some control of my sexual thoughts versus the first 40 years when my libido could essentially commandeer my brain whenever it so desired. Sexual thoughts were more deliberate at 45 and had diminished in frequency materially. Most of my day’s thoughts were about bills, work, taxes, politics, regular or decaf coffee and when my mom’s retirement was going to run dry.

The point I’m going after is that losing your libido over time is virtually imperceptible. It’s only upon reflection that you really realize the change. Had my accident never occurred, I would have expected the next 30 years of my life to simply continue the slow and persistent decay of sexuality and thereby the slow and persistent decay of libido influencing my thoughts. But that didn’t occur. Instead, my kink-related anoxic brain injury broke the trend and catapulted me from having the libido of an extraordinarily ordinary 49-yr old to the libido of an old shoe in less than ten minutes — In relative and metaphorical terms, I went from being sexual to asexual in the blink of an eye.

That change in my thought process is very eye-opening. It allows me to directly compare sexually-influenced thoughts to non-sexually influenced thoughts without the slow persistent decay of sexuality distorting my memory. Said more simply, because of my accident, I’m medically incapable of having any sexual desire. However, I distinctly remember what it feels like to be horny and excited about sex because it was so recently that I felt that way.

Given this unique and newfound awareness, let me tell you something I quickly realized about our little friend, libido... It’s an asshole that does not have our best interests in mind. A sexually-motivated mind might be a healthy mind, but, if so, it’s a healthy mind with a severe safety, logic, responsibility and accountability deficiency.

This news clearly won’t shock to the two people reading this. We make decisions all the time that prove the stupidity of our libidos. Ladies, that time you forgot to take your pill but slid your juicy sleeve over his meat roll anyway. Fellas, how about that time you realized you didn’t have any condoms but went to Pound Town regardless. Perhaps it was that time you accidentally cheated on your partner - You didn’t want to. You didn’t plan on it. You just got wrapped-up in the moment and your sexual impulses took control. Or, how about all of those times you promised yourself you’d never sleep with so-and-so ever again and then, whoops, your vagina falls on his dick the next time you see him. Hell, there’s hundreds of ways our libidos routinely make us do stupid shit to which our non-sexual, rational minds would say “What the fuck?”

Want more proof? Ask yourself how you felt about your own actions the morning after something like the above examples occur… Pretty shitty and/or scared about the ramifications of letting your libido take over, right? What if it results in an unwanted pregnancy? What about a sexually transmitted disease? Did I get one? Did I give one? What if my behaviors hurt the person I love? What if it results in a divorce? How will that impact the kids and the family? Jezuz Christ, what have I done? Sound familiar? Made sense when your libido was in charge. But now that the sensible, rational brain is working again, not so much.

Still having a hard time accepting this? Read this abstract that scientifically measured an increase in risky behaviors when we’re horny:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26310879/

Or this one that reports that there is a level of “functional connectivity” that happens between parts of the brain that impact your sense of clarity when your sexual response is activated:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5711964/#

Or this one that essentially says when sexually aroused, cerebral activations and inhibitions in the brain influence cognitive, motivational, emotional, and autonomic networks. Meaning, brain signals can override our mental clarity when sex drive is high:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26003236/

Or this one that suggests being aroused is equivalent to being on certain drugs.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22609047/

Or listen to Dr Carla Manly, clinical psychologist, sex & relationship expert that says, “Much of this sense of passion and attraction occurs in the primitive brain—the limbic system—and, thus, often produces reactive, primal behavior that ‘doesn’t make sense’ to the rational mind,.” And, “When turned on, our bodies are flooded with stimulating phenylethylamine,“ reward hormone “dopamine,” and feel-good cuddle hormone “oxytocin,” Dr. Manly says, adding that our sexual behaviors follow similar principles associated with “wanting, liking, and satiety involved in the pleasure cycle of other rewards, such as food, sugar, caffeine, and certain drugs.”

I don’t really care if you read any of those links or do your own research. I’m not a scientist and I’m not trying to make a scientific case. I’m merely trying to tap-into your own experiences, as I have mine, with asexual clarity, to ask whether it makes sense. If you think about it carefully enough, you’ll have little choice but to agree… Sexually-motivated minds do really stupid shit!!!

Journal Entry 4 - Changing is Hard!
Harvard University recently published the results of a graduate study proving that Donald Trump was the greatest President in the history of the United States.

…oh wait

Stanford University also recently published the results of a graduate study proving that Donald Trump was the worst President in the history of the United States.

If you’re like nearly 100% of human beings, you’ve already decided which one of those studies is more likely to be correct. I find that fascinating.

I actually work as a macro behavioral strategist in the health care industry. My background is economics, a social science, and statistics, a mathematical science. I’ve taught University courses in both statistics and econometrics. My expertise is in aggregate, macro behaviors of large populations, not micro behaviors of individuals. But I can’t stop myself from being captivated by individual behavior.

The Donald Trump example I just provided illustrates something from the world of behavioral science called, “confirmation bias.” Most of you probably already know about it. It’s a propensity for people to favor information that confirms or supports one's preexisting beliefs, values or desires. It is the crack-cocaine of behavioral tendencies. In fact, it’s so potent businesses, news outlets, and politically-motivated entities try to elicit your confirmation biases on a daily basis in an attempt to either amplify, re-direct, or substantiate your beliefs and/or behaviors — Not modify them.

The most amazing aspect of confirmation bias to me is its ability to alter one’s own thought-processes. By that I mean, even if the Trump article you wanted to believe had an incredibly weak argument, as determine by YOU, if not for the confirmation bias — And, even if the Trump article you did not want to believe had absolutely bullet-proof arguments, again, as determined by YOU, if not for your confirmation bias — Even then, most peoples’ confirmation bias has the ability to modify their own logical thought-process to make what they want to be true, true. It’s as much incredible as it is disturbing given how impressively difficult it is to escape the effects of, even when you’re aware of it and don’t want it to be in control.

What does confirmation bias, as well as a small mountain of other widely understood behavioral propensities, tell us? Amazingly, albeit sadly, we actually don’t have much ability to alter what we want to do or believe. Our beliefs, values, desires, and the actions that are a derivative thereof, were developed and solidified at a very young age. Changing them is surprisingly hard and quite uncommon.

Want proof of how difficult and rare it is to alter a belief structure? How many people do you know that changed religions over the course of their life? Oh, and you’re not allowed to include changing from one Judeo-Christian form to another. That doesn’t count given that they’re all derivatives of the same belief structure. Also, please remove people that convert for purposes that exclude changing their actual beliefs, such as marriage. We’re talking about people like Richard Gere, who changed from Christianity to Buddhism because he believed Christianity and now he doesn’t. He believes Buddhism instead. I bet you don’t know too many of those, do you? Last I saw, the number worldwide was far less than 1%.

Our minds don’t want to change. They want to believe what they want to believe. They want to do what they want to do. And there are very few things that will be able to materially modify the brain’s intent to remain unchanged. If that wasn’t true, there would be no need for psychotherapy, psychiatry or many other mental health professions as people could simply change their behavior and desires as easily as they change their undies. Changing your values, beliefs and/or desires is hard!

Journal Entry 5 - The Perfect Storm
I was only in the “community” about six months before my life-ending accident, and four of those were COVID months. Yet, in that remarkably short amount of time, I must have heard about 30 kinksters use the “everything has risks” argument. Kinksters then support that argument by providing examples like motorcycling or skydiving to illustrate their point? If you listen to the podcast that covered our accident, they made a pretty convincing argument that, yes, kink is risky, just like piles of non-kinky activities. It’s simply about mitigating the risk you can and accepting the risk you can’t. Just like motorcycling or skydiving

I need some real help understanding the logic of that argument. I’ve never questioned someone that has presented the risks of kink to me that way precisely because I know they have a confirmation bias — they severely want what they’re saying to be true. So, there’s really no point in me trying to convince them otherwise. Nevertheless, even before my accident, I didn’t understand this one. Everything else I’ve written about so far definitely applied to me before the accident, big time! But not this one. Allow me to therapeutically explore it. Remember, this is for me, not you.

Kinksters are frequently talking about something not causing any “real damage” or “long-term” damage. You know, “You’ll probably only bleed a little bit and you’ll only be bruised for a couple days. So, don’t worry — nothing permanent.” I’ve been a motorcyclist for 35 years. I have nearly 500,000 miles under my ass. In that time, not only have I never had any “real damage” or “long-term” damage, I’ve also never had any “faux damage,” or “short-term-damage.” No blood. No bruises. Certainly no anoxic brain injury.

So, 35 years of motorcycling, nothing. 6 months of kink play... bruises and/or blood essentially every time we played and a life-ending anoxic brain injury. Are you starting to understand my struggle with the comparison of kink to motorcycling or other forms on non-kinky, high-risk behavior? Let me go further by being more fair to the position of the kinkster.

You might be inclined to say, remove the anoxic brain injury since it’s not a “normal” outcome. Fine, then remove severe injury or death from skydiving or motorcycling when comparing to kink because they’re not normal outcomes either. Let’s be fair in our comparative evaluation of risk and not succumb to confirmation bias. If the worst outcomes are off the table because they’re rare, what are we left with? Motorcycling and skydiving you’re left with happy, healthy people with a satiated spirit. Kink, you’re left with bruises and/or blood nearly every time (don’t worry, it’s not permanent), frequent experiences that risk someones psychological health, and occasionally some nerve damage — you all seem to know someone that has happened to from ropes/rigging. I don’t know anybody that’s happened to amongst my motorcycling friends.

Even if I’m off on the severity of the damage caused by kink by 95%, you’re still nearly 100% worse-off than if you are motorcycling or skydiving. Seriously, how can anyone suggest that kink is comparable to other non-kinky, high-risk activities? That’s fucking preposterous beyond measure! The only thing that can possibly make that true in a Kinkster’s mind is their confirmation bias — they simply want it to be true and it will be a cold day in hell before you convince them otherwise. Heck, I bet the confirmation biases of the two of you reading this are already in overdrive, desperately figuring out a way to redefine your own logic to make what I’m saying not true.

Allow me to make your confirmation bias work a bit harder before I’m done. Don’t worry, it won’t fail you. You will be right by the time it’s done distorting your objectivity.

Kink pushes limits. That’s part of what makes it fun. I realize that your confirmation bias might disagree. But why then have piles of you told me that the kink community feels like a giant game of oneupmanship? “Your Dom tied you up and suspended you from a tree in the woods? Fuck that, my Dom is going to do the same thing, but during the middle of the winter.” “Oh yeah, well my Dom is going to do it while jamming icicles up my cooter.” “That’s so last year. My Dom does it with his own frozen piss. That’s right, pissicles baby! But he makes me suck on them until I have to piss, then he freezes those and stuffs my own pissicles up my twat.” And so on…

My partner certainly pushed my limits. I wanted her to! I asked her to. Excuse me, my dumb-ass libido wanted her to and asked her to. My sensible, rational mind always knew it was an insanely stupid idea. Whose wouldn’t? She’d sit on my face until I passed out for gods sake! It was awesome! I’ve never been so rock-hard in my entire life. But try to explain to me how that’s not pushing limits. The entire point of the safe word recognizes that there is a limit. The goal of kink is to flirt with that limit, and in some cases, exceed it, which is when the safe word is called into action.

Motorcycling and skydiving don’t do that. There’s no safe word. Motorcyclists or skydivers that push limits are either professionals or dead. Day-to-day motorcyclists are some of the most timid and risk-adverse people I’ve ever met. Their every effort when on the motorcycle is to NOT push limits. If some crotch-rocket was to go tearing past you in a tight corner, nobody would try to keep up or pass, like the behaviors seen in the world of kink. We’d all say, “What a fuckin’ idiot!” No oneupmanship.

Despite the fact that this might conflict with your confirmation bias, it shouldn’t be surprising. Motorcycling and skydiving are not modeled after methodologies specifically designed to inflict physical and/or psychological pain and sometimes death. Kink is. That is literally what its trying to emulate. Whipping, canning, flogging, waterboarding… all designed to be torture. Shibari, torture/death for god-sakes. DEATH! My partner taught me that. Cutting, branding, burning, choking… all of it. It’s all modeled after torturous practices. Nobody ever said, “You know what we’re going to do to this son-of-a-bitch prisoner that committed acts of treason against the state… We’re going to give him a motorcycle and let him take a nice peaceful, leisurely, emotionally fulfilling ride through the woods. That’s how this fucker is going to pay for his terrible crimes.” WHAT?!?!

There is absolutely no way that someone can objectively support the position that kink is comparable to other forms of non-kinky, high-risk behavior. To do so is unfathomably ridiculous. Kink is the only high-risk behavior that is specifically intended to create physical and/or psychological pain to the average participant, albeit consensually. Pain and suffering is NOT the intent of any other high-risk activity. So why do kinksters try to support the argument that kink is comparable to other high-risk activities? There can only be one answer — because they want it to be true — They need it to be true — It’s the only way to justify the crazy fucking behavior that their own sensible, rational mind would never allow.

This is getting concerning. Let’s do a quick recap so far:

1. We don’t have much control of our libido — It decides when it’s in charge, particularly when we’re younger and the libido is stronger.
2. Our libidos like to do incredibly stupid shit that we periodically regret.
3. Our confirmation bias make it very difficult to change our predispositions towards deep desires.
4. For many kinksters, our deep desires are risky as fuck!
5. Our confirmation bias kicks-in a second time to distort objective truth by convincing us that our deep desires are not risky as fuck.

Do you see the perfect storm forming yet? What happens when we throw all of those into a pot and sprinkle in an inherent desire to do something sexually-motivated and incredibly risky, like… waterboarding, or suspension rope play, or fire, or cutting, or nailing someones tits to a board? That fact that it’s sexually-motivated means that the libido is doing the thinking, not our sensible, rational mind. The libido is clearly going to do what it wants to do and every piece of information feeding the libido is telling it something that disregards safety, logic, responsibility and accountability — “It’s not risky.” “Come’on, you’ve wanted to do this your entire life.” “It’s gonna be so awesome.” “You’re gonna have an orgasm that hits the ceiling.” “You’ve seen this done by others plenty of times.” “Don’t worry, bad shit happens to other people, not you.” Those are the messages your libido will be making its decisions from. How do I know? Those are the exact messages my libido was being told the entire time that my partner and I were planning our disaster. My sensible, rational mind knew that it was a terrible idea. Who’s wouldn’t? But my sensible, rational mind clearly wasn’t in control.

Added 30 jun 2021   Articles   #Breath control

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