Pattern Breaking
But pretty much a status report.
Getting uncomfortably public about addiction and mental health (and other random stuff) through unfiltered stream-of-consciousness writing [is that redundant?].
Introductory Remarks
Dear Zesters,
In last Friday’s post, Getting Graphic #67: The Brain, we looked at a chart that showed how dynamic the brain is—and I started to talk about like neural pathways and stuff like that. I thought overall some pretty fun stuff! Although tbh it wasn’t all that substantive. In any case, you win some and you lose some. Moving on!
Patterns
In today’s post, I just wanted to quickly talk about how I’m starting to think more about addressing and breaking free from patterns that have sort of driven my behavior for most of my life. I’m going to specifically talk about my recent sexual patterns—and then we’ll see where things go from there.
Backdrop
The general backdrop, I think, is that I had the terrifying shroom trip on 8/9/25, and I think that sort of shook me and really like blew up my worldview and sense of self in some ways. Since then, it’s been a process of reconstruction and self-evaluation, and sort of questioning a lot of things that I took to be true—and in that process I think I’ve started to build a new foundation for life and for the self. The other more recent development was changing my relationship with food and focusing on nourishing my body—and that was a big wake up call I think just because I was so bought in to the one meal a day thing, but I realized that it wasn’t healthy for me over such a long period of time. So I think I’ve started to more critically examine many other domains of my life and then also building trust with myself that I can experiment and grow and learn and try new things and that I won’t like spiral out of control or something. Because I think post-addiction that was a big theme, is just a pretty intense lack of self-trust and fear that I would “spiral” in some way or just that I couldn’t trust myself. But I think now I’m operating from a stronger place of trust and support and love for myself, and I can have some more freedom and a longer leash to think about what is healthy for me and how I can improve my workouts or what I eat or my relationships etc.
Relationships
So this is the context that I’ve started thinking more about my sexual patterns and behaviors—and I’ve also embraced some of the philosophies of Carl Jung as part of this process, and have found them quite compelling. The basic tenet that has stuck with me is that our sexual desire (or maybe desire in general) reveals information about our subconscious (and our “shadow”). And I think I realized that I never really let myself sit with my desire because I almost like was scared of being horny or just built compulsive habits around schedules and stuff that I think was meant to dull my feelings of desire and so on and so forth. And so I’ve started to try sitting with my desire and really feeling it and reflecting on what it says about me and my subconscious.
From there, I also reflected on my general sexual patterns of late. The general pattern is that I’m drawn to sort of outcast and/or odd women, and then I “woo” them, and then usually sleep with them, and then I’ll slowly ghost them or just fade—because I think I know they’re not “the one” and I feel sort of shameful or something or that it isn’t really constructive to my soul or whatever—and so then I just sort of bounce from shallow encounter to shallow encounter as this like ghost—and really there’s been virtually no intimacy in my life for like years. But I use these shallow sexual encounters as like surface-level facsimiles of intimacy, and try to numb with them, etc.
But what I realized is that, I think, the pattern whereby I identify outcasts and/or oddballs, or more sort of downtrodden or in-pain women, and then pursue these women and seduce them, really is me sort of projecting this sort of savior-type behavioral pattern on them. Because really I want them to feel like so enamored with me and so thankful for my attention and so fortunate to be with me, like I’m the second coming of Christ or some shit like that, and then we have a fun time together—and I sort of slowly fade from their life. Obviously this is unhealthy to me and hurtful to the women.
The real realization here, however, is that I’m actually sort of playing out my own childhood trauma in this relationship-pattern. I was born into a famous-feeling household, where I mattered and where it felt like a lot of people cared about me. And then as those sort of external status symbols faded, I was really really angry and confused and sad at the world—but I was waiting for something to save me, or for some song to be released, or for some movie to be made that would (in my mind) rectify the wrong that I felt had been perpetrated against me and then I would saved from the despair of irrelevance and restored to my rightful position on some throne of relevance and renown. I want to explicitly acknowledge that this is ridiculous and unhealthy, but it is pretty much lived experience filtered through a childhood and adolescent psychology.
But so this is exactly the same narrative arc that I effectively aim to perpetrate with the women I seek and seduce. I want them to feel the warmth of my light and the joy of my presence and stuff and want to make them feel so special, and then (I think) I want them to experience life in the shadow of that warmth. Again, this is super unhealthy and not nice and hurtful—which actually probably adds to the thing I said way earlier about not trusting myself and stuff and not wanting to feel desire because I feel like I’ll use it for harm and not for good.
But so I think this is the pattern and I think it’s what my subconscious is trying to tell me. And this is the pain I haven’t yet healed. But this is also why I continually live out the same experience over and over again, and why I feel so drawn to women that I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life with, and why I’m stuck in this interstitial state of shallow encounters and deceit masquerading as intimacy.
And the point of this whole post is that I want to finally acknowledge, identify, understand, and break this pattern. And this is the first step in doing that. The most fundamental and darkest truths are the most difficult to acknowledge.
Concluding Remarks
I know I promised some “Activities for 2026” thing for today, but this has been on the forefront of my mind for quite some time now so I wanted to put finger to key and see where things went.
Have an awesome week! You’re amazing!
With infinite zest for life,
Luke