14 Extremely Self-Destructive Stories About The Ramones That Prove They Were Insane – Weird History

18 Unforgettable Countries Where You Can Roll Big For Less Than $50/Day – Thrillist

Social Media Is Making Us Dumber. Here’s Exhibit A – NY Times

Alleged Footage Of Nicki Minaj’s Brother Getting His Azz Whooped In Jail – Worldstar

Addicted to your Smartphone? This Formula is Why – Wired

5 WTF Book Scenes Wisely Left Out Of The Movie Version – Cracked

Elizabeth Hurley Goes Wild on Instagram in a Sexy Leopard Print Bikini – Maxim

Ten Job Search Hacks Everybody Needs To Know – Forbes

I Creeped Around My Local IKEA to Find Out What Couples Argued About – VICE

If you’re in bad debt and want to fix your credit, check this out – Repay Reports

Crazy Intense Female Arm Wrestler (video) – Leenks

14 money lessons rich parents teach their kids – MSN

A blood test to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease has been developed – Futurism

Tesla is installing Powerwalls and solar power on 50,000 homes to create biggest virtual power plant in the world – Elektrek

Colts’ Linebacker Edwin Jackson killed after being struck by suspected drunken driver – ESPN

Alexis Ren’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Sneak Peak – Hollywood Tuna

Bill Belichick’s Super Bowl LII decision could go down as one of the worst ever – Fan Buzz

Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry and Other Random Women – G-Celeb

7 Signs That a Child Will Be a Psychopath in the Future – Bright Side

Google Flights will now predict airline delays – before the airlines do – Tech Crunch

Hot Girls in Nature (34 Photos) – Radass

How and why you should start an emergency fund – Get Rich Slowly

If you like to see Emily Ratajakowski newd, check this out (nsfw) – Celeb J

The post Linkage appeared first on Caveman Circus.

Instagram

The post Hot Instagram Girl Of The Day: Melanie Pavola appeared first on Caveman Circus.

That’s a dude, dude

Impatient Dumbass

Don’t you dare touch my human

Awesome dog owners right here

Woman rips off burqa after ISIS is driven from Raqqa

Bush cracks joke to Obama while Clinton makes a speech 

Boom goes the dynamite!

Precision

This is SPARTA!!!

Sophie Turner checking you out 

How my life is going right now

The post A Few Glorious Clips For Your Consideration appeared first on Caveman Circus.

I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gorged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

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Phil Basser, a 99 year old Eagles fan since their inception in 1933: “If I live to be 100, I might see the Eagles win a SuperBowl.” He was at the stadium & turns 100 next month.

Nick Foles Catches TD Pass on INSANE 4th Down Trick Play! 

Tom Brady looks like a single, divorced mother that just won full custody of her kids and is leaving the courtroom

Butterfingers shows no mercy 

NOPE

Brandin Cooks Gets Destroyed

JuJu Smith-Schuster Vicious Block on Vontaze Burfict Which Was Retribution For The Antonio Brown Hit

Antonio Brown knocked out by Vontaze Burfict

Superbowl Concessions Prices

Average Ticket Prices Of Sporting Events

Kobe Bryant’s reaction to the Eagles winning

Classy Eagles fan celebrating the win by eating horse poop

This elementary school Super Bowl chart has a column for “not my thing.”

Early 90s Cleveland Browns fans urging team owner Art Modell to fire head coach Bill Belichick 

Usain Bolt was offered a position as wide receiver in the NFL and rejected it due to the hits NFL players take (article)

“I used to watch [football] when I was younger, and the hits that the guys used to take…I know that it is not as bad now, but the hits that the guys would take kind of turned me off,” Bolt said.

14 year-old Sam Gordon won the inaugural NFL Game Changer award Saturday night

In 2015 Sam co-founded the first girls-only tackle football league in the United States with the help of her father Brent Gordon and Crystal Sacco. The Utah Girls Tackle Football League is now in its fourth season. Many other leagues have since been established in other states. Sam and her father are now fighting for high schools in Utah to offer Football for girls as well as boys. 

Special needs high school basketball player drains her first career shot

In one of the most touching sports moments of the year, a young woman with Autism drained her first career shot during a high school basketball game against a rival school.

Kristian Shouse, a student at Christian County High School in Kentucky, has developed a close bond with Laderia Gold, a senior girls’ basketball player who serves as a student aid in Shouse’s gym class. Gold invited Shouse to participate in her team’s Senior Night ceremony held on Friday.

Shouse was made an honorary team captain against Hopkinsville, one of Christian County’s biggest rivals. At the start of the game Shouse received a pass from Gold and took the game’s first shot attempt and the first official shot attempt of her career.

It swished through the net and the crowd went crazy.

Dick move! 

Robert Bobroczky could be the tallest NBA player of all time. He’s a 7-foot-7, Romanian-born prospect 

Fan gets picture with Cristiano Ronaldo before being escorted off the pitch 

Bend it like Adriana Leon 

hodes Scholar Myron Rolle Went From NFL To Neurosurgeon

Myron Rolle was once rated by ESPN as the #1 football recruit in the United States back in 2006, but now the footballer is transitioning into a completely different career. The athlete retired early from a successful NFL career to become a neurosurgeon.

Rolle was so sure of his medical future that he Rolle decided to delay his entering the NFL draftafter graduating from Florida State Univerisity for a whole year to study medicine in Oxford, England. The baller was later named a finalist for a Rhodes scholarship during his academic tenure in England.

The post A Damn Fine Collection Of Fascinating SPORTS Photos And Videos appeared first on Caveman Circus.

Anthony Graves was convicted in 1994 for killing six people in 1992. He was exonerated in 2010 after having served 18 and a half years in prison, 16 of which were spent in solitary confinement and 12 of which were on death row. The prosecutor in Graves’ case was eventually disbarred for misconduct, and Texas had to pay Graves $1.45 million in compensation for the damage the state had done to him.

Below is an excerpt from Graves’ recently published book, “Infinite Hope: How Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement, and 12 years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul”

Early November 1994: Entering the Lion’s Den

I arrived at death row on November 1, 1994, the same year director Frank Darabont turned Stephen King’s novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”into the now classic movie about a wrongfully convicted banker and his wise black friend. A green stone tower at the entrance to the Ellis Unit prison looked a little like the structures that rose from the Maine dirt in that film. A white female guard stood atop the tower. A pistol holstered to her hip, she also held a rifle in her right hand. She looked to be in her 50s, and her Southern drawl told me she’d been plucked from a roster of job applicants who lived somewhere nearby.

“You’re in the wrong place!” she hollered down from the tower to the officer that brought me to the gates. “You’ve got to run him over to the diagnostic unit. They’ll process him there.”

Processing took a few minutes. Agents of the state asked my name. They took down some information and scribbled a few indecipherable words onto paper. I did a lot of waiting. A few minutes later, we returned to the green tower with the female overseer. The officer who brought me there placed his gun and some paperwork into a plastic bucket attached to a rope. The woman in the tower pulled up the officer’s supplies like a banker sucking a drive-through deposit through the magic transport tubes.

I closed my eyes to block the shining sun. The gate opened and three officers placed their hands on me. They let me walk at my own pace toward death row. I tried to take in the scene. It wasn’t much to behold. Death row is intimidating. It’s designed as a testament to the ultimate power of the state to kill and control its citizens. I knew what had happened at my trial, but I still wasn’t quite sure how I ended up there.

Coming to death row is like stepping back in time a few hundred years. When slave traders transported men and women from Africa across the Middle Passage, they’d drop those slaves off in cities like Charleston. Four in 10 African slaves passed through Charleston, where they were sold publicly, in the streets, until the city banned the practice in 1856. Thereafter, slave inspection and buying moved to the local slave mart. The slaves were stripped and weighed, their distinctive qualities noted for potential buyers. A light-skinned female slave would go for $50,000 or more in today’s dollars. A slave with a skill like carpentry would also command a high price. The caretakers of death row learned from that legacy. I stepped inside a pen. I was strip-searched in case I’d managed to pick up a gun or knife on the ride over from my previous jail. I had become used to the strip searches. It was just a routine of humiliation that had run its course. If a man can stand there and watch me move my private parts around for him, then that’s what I would do. My mind-set was to follow all the rules and keep it simple. Next, an officer handed me prison clothes, which consisted of a white jumper and a white pair of cloth slippers for my feet. I finally got a haircut. A shower would follow. Once sufficiently clean, I was ready for the short ride to Ellis One Unit. Named for a former Texas prison administrator, it housed the state’s death row.

Like most Americans, I hadn’t given much thought to death row before my arrest. The writer and anti–death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean famously said that support for the death penalty is a mile wide but only an inch thick. She meant that the death penalty’s many supporters rarely investigate the basis of their own beliefs. As I walked into Ellis One Unit, I didn’t know what to think. People typically focus on the death part of a death sentence. What they don’t tell you is that life on death row is a torture all its own. I had no idea that I’d be living in a six-by-nine-foot cage, or that I’d do my business in a steel toilet in plain view of male and female officers alike.

If the officers didn’t enjoy making me take my clothes on and off, they surely acted like they did. It was a routine that quickly grew old. In a back room, officers helped me lose the clothes I’d worn for just a few minutes during the intake process. I got a new outfit. The shirt featured large stencil lettering on the back that read “dr.” Once I was freshly dressed, officers handcuffed me and led me down the long road to perdition. The prison buzzed with energy. At that time, death row wasn’t set off in some distant facility. It was just another wing of a functional penitentiary. Inmates came and went. Some stood around. The officers that led me quickly seized control of these inmates.

“Turn around and look at the wall!” one officer yelled. The officers didn’t want general-population inmates looking at me. I’d later learn it was for my own protection. Even inmates in prison have an opinion about those sentenced to death, one officer said.

You didn’t have to guess when you’d crossed the line between the ordinary prison and the place where Texas placed the worst of the worst. At the end of a hallway that seemed to go on forever, a gate with an emblem spread the news, seeming almost proud with its pronouncement: Texas death row. I was scared. Thoughts of my family flooded my mind. No place contrasts as hard with home as death row. When I crossed over that threshold, it was hard to believe I’d ever make it back. I thought of my children. I thought of my mom.

Death row has rules. A captain sitting behind a desk inside the gate peered at me over a stack of papers. He must have been trying to determine if I’d cause him problems or not. His expression never changed as he looked through my file. Finally, he reached for a handbook that sat amid the mess on his desk.

“Read this,” he said. “All of it.”

I thumbed through the first few pages as he explained the dos and don’ts of death row. I nodded because nodding was the only thing to do. He handed me a sheet of paper that included my housing assignment. I’d be living on Wing J-23. It all seemed the same to me, but as it turns out, death row has its share of troublemakers too. That’s where they put me, right in the middle of known gang members and those who’d opted out of the prison’s work program. The work program was an incentive for good behavior. We could become eligible to work as trusties around the officers. The prison also has a garment factory where, as part of the program, death row inmates were allowed to make and sew the officers’ uniforms. You had to be there at least six months before becoming eligible for the program, so it was too early for me to opt in.

The captain explained our schedule. On the weekdays, we’d spend 22 hours alone in a small cage, only a few feet long and wide. Weekends brought 24 hours of solitary confinement because many officers took the weekends off. To save money, the prison would simply reduce manpower and keep us in our cells all day Saturday and Sunday. We weren’t worth the substitute guards’ wages that would be required to move us to the rec yard and back.

As an officer led me to my wing, I asked him why I landed on J-23. “It’s the only place we’ve got, Graves.” Texas’s death row was almost out of vacancy. Five hundred men were waiting for the state of Texas to kill them. My cage had an address of sorts: Tier 3, Cell 10. The cage doors had bars and wire. They seemed designed not only to keep me in but also to make it as hard as possible to see the television. Maybe it was just my part of the neighborhood, but the third tier in J-23 was far from quiet. I looked around at the sparse accommodations as my neighbors hollered. It reminded me of the jails that held me while I’d waited for trial. Every inmate had something to say, and most wanted to say it louder than the guy next to them. One guy wanted aspirin. Another screamed for an officer to bring him a sick-call request. A few whispered to the trusty, himself a general-population inmate, to bring them newspapers, magazines, food. The trusties often became couriers, moving items from cell to cell out of view of prison personnel.

My neighbors went to great lengths to devise any source of entertainment. Rivals bet on whatever sporting event happened to be on television. It wasn’t just the outcome of the game either. They bet on every single play with whatever currency they’d bartered for. I remember thinking that they’d bet on two crippled cockroaches racing on crutches if ESPN was foolish enough to put it on television. Death row was alive with men doing whatever they could to stay sane.

The sound of my cell door slamming closed behind me cut through the surrounding noise. I backed up to the door and placed my hands through the bean slot, the horizontal opening that would later serve as a portal for daily meals. An officer removed the cuffs. I was at least free to roam my space. There were no windows in my cell; the little light that filtered in came from small windows out in the hall area, through which I could just see a pond in the distance. The cage was filthy. Wet toilet paper and trash covered the floor. It seemed that whoever had the room before me didn’t know what toilet paper was for, because the toilet was smeared with feces. I tried not to think about who might have left the mess. My emotions were already all over the place. There were so many things I missed. I missed home, I missed my life, I missed having sex; it had been two and a half years since I’d had the company of a woman, and I longed for it. If this continued, my penis would be sharp as a needle or as dull as a cucumber; I wasn’t sure which, but I didn’t want to find out. But more than anything, I was sad and confused in between bouts of determination.

I had been given powdered soap and a rag. At least I had something to do. Cleaning that awful filth wasn’t the sort of task I’d have signed up for in my previous life. But that cage was going to be home, and I’d have to make the best of it.

My tiny cell didn’t take long to clean. I scrubbed the floor while the floor scrubbed my knees. After 20 minutes of this labor I’d worked up an appetite. An officer and trusty brought by my first meal on death row: chicken and dumplings. This homey dish combines meat, dough, and gravy in a charming little glop. The way death row served it up, the chicken must have been of advanced age and a long time dead before its guts went to make that meal. Something passing for juice accompanied the meal, offered in a plastic bucket. I later learned that the juice served many purposes on death row. Some inmates used it to clean the stains from their coffeepots.

I couldn’t have been more than two bites in when I decided I’d rather go hungry that night. I walked to my cage door and slid the tray under it, passing my uneaten food to the porter, the trusted prisoner lucky enough to have been given the job of clearing my tray. It was his problem now.

I toyed for a minute with the thin blue mattress that sat atop my steel bed. It seemed like everything was steel. Not the mattress, though. It was the kind of plastic that would stick to your skin when the temperature rose. I lay down and put headphones over my ears. I was surprised that the officers had given me a pair of headphones since, after all, this was death row. When I first arrived here, we were able to watch television, and the headphones were given to us to plug into a portal in the wall that would allow me to hear the television from afar. Or I could turn the knob and listen to a radio station that had been preset. I think the headphones were a little thing that they could give, with a pretty big impact on the environment in there: It made it a lot quieter and caused the guys to chill out rather than be at one another’s throats all the time.

Music gave me some semblance of peace. I’d pull a blanket over my head. My fellow inmates might have thought I was scared. I was actually trying to escape the doom for a while, by blocking out the present, and thinking about exactly what I would be doing at home. Literally, I tried to live minute to minute in another place, rather than one second in this one. I spent most of those early days lying on my bunk with my headphones on, checked out. I thought that if I just resisted the environment, it might not feel so real. I didn’t want to talk or make friends. The food offered no distraction. I remained mostly a mystery to the men who weren’t immediately a cell door away from me. Who is this new guy? I heard them ask.

The following week, my mom came down to visit me. We were sitting in front of each other for the first time since I had been given the death penalty. We didn’t really know what to say, so I took control of the conversation and let her know that I was OK. I needed to assure her that people weren’t just back there trying to kill each other since this was the first time I did not have access to a phone to call her every day.

My first trip to the shower was better than I expected. A beautiful black woman approached my cage. “Are you ready to take a shower?” I was taken by her eyes. For a couple of years, the faces above the badges had been almost all white and male. She was different. Her hair wasn’t fancy. Her demeanor suggested that it didn’t need to be. It sat in a bun, revealing light brown skin and perfectly symmetrical collarbones. She was more relaxed than most guards, smiling more than the men who believed that intimidation was a part of their job description. I walked with her to the shower, wearing only white boxer shorts and socks, with my towel and soap dish in my hands, which were cinched behind my back.

A door separated the interior of the shower from a makeshift viewing area in the hall outside. Little other than mesh obscured the view. She sat on a trash can just beyond the door and didn’t pretend to look the other way. It was a part of the deal down there. Privacy was not an option. I stood in a pair of white socks and nothing else, and the socks served as makeshift shower shoes to protect my toes from the fungus that surely lurked on the faux-tile floor.

As we walked from the shower back to the third tier, inmates cat-called her. They hollered whatever came to mind in the moment. All were in search of the same thing — a distraction from the tedium of our condemned condition. She turned to me, as if to explain why she hadn’t responded to their nonsense.

“I am not going down there just so they can look at my ass.”

I smiled.

“You can’t hold it against them.”

“Yeah, well, this is all day long,” she replied.

The place didn’t suit her. Back in my cell, I wondered how she got there, why she’d taken a job walking inmates from their cages to the showers. I imagine this woman knew some of the things I was thinking about while looking at her, but she never acknowledged it. It was wishful thinking on my part that she would.

I later found out she wasn’t as innocent as I thought. She was trafficking in all the ordinary contraband that took on greater value in prison. Inmates paid her hundreds of dollars to deliver cigarettes and weed. One guy even arranged for her to bring him $500 from a friend on the outside. She had taken the money for herself. Those sorts of deals could be dangerous even for female officers. Some of the men on death row were there specifically because they didn’t discriminate in their crimes between men and women. Our trip to the shower was the last bit of meaningful time I spent with her. She transferred to another unit after a couple of weeks.

However, she got me thinking more about everything I was missing on the outside. I would often lie in my bunk at night listening to Majic 102.1, the radio station out of Houston. The DJ Rudy V, host of a program called “The Quiet Storm,” played all the old-school slow jams, like the O’Jays’ “Stairway to Heaven” and Prince’s “Scandalous.” When that song came on, you would hear guys holler out to one another from their cells. Being with a woman was definitely on everyone’s mind. I would lay there and imagine myself back at the little bar I used to go to and dance. I fantasized about the kind of life I wanted to live when I was free again. I envisioned having a wife and kids, and the great life we’d have together.

I had this one scene in my head that would replay itself over and over again. I would have a wife and daughter. I would be at the park playing basketball. My wife would pull up with my daughter, who in this particular fantasy was always about three. My daughter would see me and take off running toward the basketball court for me. I would stop and pick her up all sweaty while she would hug my neck. I used to think about my own sons and going to a game or them coming to talk to me about girls for the first time, and how I would respond. Now I was missing it all. I’d been kidnapped by the state of Texas.

The post My First Night On Death Row As An Innocent Man appeared first on Caveman Circus.

Gig economy apps like TaskRabbit, Postmates and DoorDash have made paying a stranger to go out and run errands for you increasingly easy, and now the ultimate couch potato’s dream has come true: “ChameleonMask,” (Human Uber, on Twitter), a new technology in which someone straps a screen to their face and acts as your surrogate at events.

For all you so-called introverted extroverts out there, this situation is pretty ideal.

ChameleonMask hopes to provide people with human surrogates who would interact with the real world on the customer’s behalf. To do this, each surrogate would wear a screen on their head that displays the customer’s face and plays the customer’s voice. The service would theoretically allow you to attend parties and other social functions from the comfort of your bed, achieving something known as telepresence, while you give directions to your surrogate — even so far as telling them what to wear.

If the technology seems incredibly complex, it probably shouldn’t: it seems little more complicated than taping an iPad to your broke friend’s forehead, switching on FaceTime, and then paying him to attend a work party on your behalf while you try to act like it’s all normal, presumably by ordering your surrogate to strike a nonchalant pose.

ChameleonMask creator Jun Rekimoto, a Japanese AR/VR researcher affiliated with Sony, showed off his new tool at At MIT Tech Review’s EmTech (the em for emerging) conference in Singapore last week. He reportedly called it “surprisingly natural.”  

In the past, telepresence technologies have used robots as surrogates. But Rekimoto claims that using human surrogates makes for a better experience, and “also eliminates many difficulties of teleoperated robots wandering in the environment.”

Still, Rekimoto’s service isn’t exactly brand new. The writers of Arrested Development came up with a very similar idea more than a decade ago in episodes where a man on house arrest hired a “surrogate” who wore an earpiece and webcam so he could be the man’s stand-in for the real world.

The post You Can Now Successfully Avoid Social Contact with ‘Human Uber’ appeared first on Caveman Circus.

How to use an Enigma Machine

Falcon Heavy Test Flight…The Boosters Re-Landing Is A Sight To Behold!

Meet The Florida Homeschooled Kids Who Shoot To Kill!

How To Avoid Embarrassing Yourself In An Argument

Intel’s new smart glasses hands-on

The post The Dumping Grounds appeared first on Caveman Circus.

Why Do You Not Own A Swiss Army Knife Yet???

For the time you need to cut off your own leg when a massive boulder falls on your leg, trapping you in a secluded part of the woods, you’ll be glad you had bought a Swiss Army Knife to help faciliate your amputation.

But seriously, this thing has 15 functions, the build quality is excellent and the price is right!

The post Caveman Approved Product Of The Day appeared first on Caveman Circus.

Common “Debt Traps” That Keep You Living Paycheck-to-Paycheck – Life Hacker

FEMA Contract Called for 30 Million Meals for Puerto Ricans. 50,000 Were Delivered…For this huge task, FEMA tapped Tiffany C. Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past – NY Times

The 100 best movies on Amazon Prime right now – Business Inisder

21 Questions Amazon Asks Its Job Candidates – INC

LA parking meters will accept donations for homeless outreach program – Curbed

20 Creepy And Disturbing Audio Recordings You Can Listen To Right Now – Graveyard Shift

Planet Fitness, which charges between $10 and $20 per month, has, on average, 6,500 members per gym. Most of its gyms can hold around 300 people. Planet Fitness can do this because it knows that members won’t show up – NPR

Medical Marijuana passes VA Senate 40-0 – News Leader

We Might Have Just Witnessed the End of the Patriots’ Dynasty – Maxim

Hot Instagram Pictures Of Kristina Chai – Lurk And Perv

How To Fix Your Fatigue (Do This Once A Day) – Gundry MD

The Daily Picdump – Leenks

In 1965, a morbidly obese man didn’t eat food for over an entire year. The 27 year old was 456lbs and was put under an experimental fast by doctors. He ingested only multivitamins and potassium tablets for 382 days and defecated once every 40 to 50 days. He ended up losing 275lbs – Thought Catalog

Alabama sues OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma over opioid epidemic – Reuters

21 Questions Amazon Asks Its Job Candidates – INC

Natalie Portman, Stella Hudgens and Other Random Women – G-Celeb

How Much Sex Are Athletes Having In The Olympic Village?…. A Lot – Elite Daily

Rachel Bilson looks damn good in a bikini – Hollywood Tuna

Is Organic Really Better? 4 Food Myths Debunked By Science – Futurism

Artist Illustrates Everyday Life With His Wife – Sad And Useless

Fuckboi Completes Rite Of Passage To Become Fuckman – Runt Of The Web

The World’s Best Party Cities That Aren’t Vegas – GQ

Kim Kardashian’s Ass Needs a Lot of Help to Get Ready – The Blemish

The post Linkage appeared first on Caveman Circus.

Instagram

The post Hot Instagram Girl Of The Day: Betsy appeared first on Caveman Circus.

At UFC 188 vs Kelvin Gastelum, Nate Marquadt told his corner “I got nothing left.” His coach, Trevor Wittman, immediately called the fight with no hesitation: “It’s over. It’s over. I’m gonna stop it. He’s done.” 

Matt Brown gets dropped by a brutal body kick from Erick Silva, yet emerges past the jaws of death and pounding Silva into unconsciousness 

Yoel Romero vs Chris Weidman

Nate Marquardt perfectly times Daiju Takase’s takedown attempt 

Kevin Randleman playing catch with Kazuhiro Nakamura 

Ryo Chonan submits Anderson Silva with flying scissor heel hook

Michael Chandler lands a HUGE slam on Benson Henderson

Big Nog overcomes a 150lb weight difference and a slam on the head to submit prime Bob Sapp

How NOT to celebrate a win

John McCarthy checks to see if the fighter is ok to continue

Bad idea to road roage an MMA fighter

The post Welcome To Caveman’s Fight Club! appeared first on Caveman Circus.

When I was 13 I wanted to learn guitar but I saw on TV some kid who was 11 and a child prodigy and I thought "I waited too long, now I’ll be a beginner while kids like that already are great".

Then I was 23 and thought "oh man if I had just started at 13 I would have ten years experience by now! But now why bother?"

At 33 I realized, damn if I had just started at 23 I would probably be pretty good at this by now, but now I’m old and would feel weird in a beginner class at this age, so I didn’t.

At 43 I thought, why did I ever care about what people would think instead of realizing I wanted to do something, but didn’t out of fear and regret, and because I kept thinking about the amount of time I’d already wasted, instead of the fact that RIGHT NOW is simultaneously the oldest I’ve ever been, and the youngest I will ever be again. Now is the time. For everything. Always.

Just start a new game.

The post The Daily Man-Up appeared first on Caveman Circus.

To be fair, the activities that bookend your shift are usually fairly standardized. I would get to the station about an hour early and start the process of dressing out. First I checked the polish on my boots to make sure they’d pass sergeant’s inspection, which occurred unannounced every couple of weeks. I then dressed out and went to the briefing room.

In the briefing room, there was usually a daily digest of what had gone on in the last 24 hours regarding critical incidents, notifications from surrounding agencies, missing person reports, and added patrol requests. Our lieutenant (or sergeant acting as lieutenant) would then come in and conduct briefing, which typically consisted of a fleshed out version of the digest plus additional information that had come to light since the digests had been printed. He or she would then distribute subpoenas for squad members and dismiss us to load our vehicles out.

The first part of loadout was a vehicle inspection – checking oil and fluids, ensuring radio and emergency equipment (lights and sirens) were functional, and ensuring there was no contraband in the prisoner transport area. (This contraband search was an important step in the process, and also needed to be conducted after every arrest you made. That way, if you find drugs in the seat after you take somebody to jail, you can confidently testify that they were indeed in the arrestee’s possession, as you had searched the area in question before transport.) You then loaded your gear bags (holding everything from PPE gear to flashlights to extra forms to traffic vests to legal manuals) and your long arm (shotgun or rifle) before heading out on patrol.

This is where the randomness begins. Depending on the part of town and time of day, you might be sent anywhere to address anything. They may tone out an active shooting in progress as soon as you enter service. There might be eleven priority calls holding. There may be a couple of ticky-tack calls holding in your beat. You may enter service and find a “clean board” (no calls pending). 

The shift progresses with the same randomness. There were nights when I went to one or two minor calls, and stopped multiple cars without finding any warrants or drugs. Then there were nights when I was slammed, working call after call back to back to back. One night I worked four accidents in a row, two of which featured a driver who left the scene; I spent the first five hours of my shift investigating accident scenes and the second five doing nothing but paperwork (we worked four 10-hour shifts per week). Then there is every kind of night in between.

You have to strike a balance in the midst of the chaos somewhere, though. There will often be calls coming out all night, but at some point you have to stop and work on reports. This kills you, because your brothers and sisters in arms are getting in fights and scaring up foot pursuits, but the cat and mouse side of things is only half of the battle. If you get your guy but write a craptastic report, there’s a chance he’ll slide in court, which defeats the purpose and isn’t fair to anybody. Sometimes you find yourself five and six reports behind, so you’d better have taken awesome notes – because as memorable as that first call seemed to be at the time, five calls later you’ll have trouble remembering what the basic complaint was, much less names, addresses, relationships, statements, elements of the crime, and so on.

You’ll see many, many things during the course of a shift. Some of them are awesome – a little girl giving you a flower and a hug, a domestic violence victim defiantly pointing at her attacker in court, paramedics, firefighters, doctors and nurses spinning into action in their respective duties alongside you. At these things, you rejoice inside, and take a small measure of comfort from them as you go. 

Many of them, though, are awful – a man decapitated by a train; the blue-gray body of a college student who hung himself in his garage; a teenage girl, in clinical shock, blindly groping at her lifeless boyfriend after being hit by a drunk driver (as the drunk driver tries to crawl away from the scene); a baby girl breathing her last after being drugged with codeine because her crying was disturbing Daddy’s very important video game session. At these things, you seldom know how to respond inside. Horror? Anger? Despondency? It doesn’t really matter – not there, anyway, at the tracks, the garage, the scene, the hospital, because stoicism is all you can exhibit. You’re in charge. If you’re horrified, everyone around you will descend into delirium; if you’re angry, people will feel license to vent their rage; if you’re despondent, you won’t be objective enough to investigate the incident.

People will misinterpret this, of course. They’ll think you distant at best, an unfeeling mechanical bastard at worst. That’s painful, but unavoidable, because keeping yourself above the fray is what allows you to keep yourself above the ground. So you’ll run into a lot of people who don’t really know how to regard you. The crooks, pimps, mopes and dopes are a known quantity – many of them would spit in a cop’s face after he pulled their children from a burning building. What’s bothersome is the fact that the only time you tend to have contact with law-abiding people is during traffic stops, which tends to not curry a whole lot of favor with them. Cops are like umpires – you don’t root for them, and you tend to only notice them when you feel they’ve made a grave error. You really tend to tolerate them as a necessary evil so things don’t get completely shot to hell.

Maybe most draining of all, though, is the sheer stupidity:

• You arrive on scene to a “domestic disturbance.” You find a male and female and ask what’s going on. She says, “He took my keys.” You stare for a moment, then ask for clarification. She says, “I was going to leave, and then he took my keys.” You ask where the keys are now. “Well, he gave them back.” You ask why she called 911 to report this. “Well…because he had my keys and wouldn’t give them back.” You tell her 911 is for emergencies. You leave. You go to your patrol car and slam your head against the steering wheel, knowing you have to write a complete police report on this nonsense, because Missouri law mandates that “domestic incidents,” even lacking any semblance of violence, must be documented.
• You arrive on scene to a shoplifting call. A teenage female stole a bracelet. Value: $1.65. The store declares that they are pressing charges. You begin by asking the suspect how old she is. She says she is seventeen, which means she can be cited criminally. You read her Miranda warning to her and begin asking identifying questions. She gives you her date of birth. It puts her at sixteen years of age. You mention the discrepancy and ask how old she is. She says seventeen. You ask her date of birth again. She gives you a different one. You ask for parents’ information, only to be told that her mother is dead and her father left her to her own devices when he went to Reno, Nevada for an unknown length of time. He cannot be contacted. Smoke screens continue for the next three hours until a lieutenant researches your reporting system to find that the suspect is a juvenile who is a habitual runaway with a mother who, far from being dead, lives on the north side of town. You take suspect home. Mother is pissed to have been fake killed. You end up spending well over $100.00 in department resources investigating the $1.65 heist.
• You respond, for the third time, to the scene of Black Friday midnight at Toys-R-Us. Fifteen hundred people are in the parking lot. A line originally formed to the west, wrapping around the building to the north. On this visit you find that somebody, an unknown genius, decided they didn’t want to go to the back of the existing line, and proceeded to begin a second line. This line expanded in seconds, and began stretching to the southwest. People at the front of the original line looked up and suddenly saw latecomers were poised to beat them into the store, and started raising holy hell to the point of approaching a riot. Store employees mill about inside, fear visible on their faces. A woman walks up to you and asks, “What is the store’s strategy for when they open the doors?” You dryly respond, “To not die.”

It’s all a mix. There’s the boredom of a slow shift spent checking back lots, the adrenaline of a foot pursuit and subsequent street fight, the fear of knowing there are three suspects beating a victim and your backup is blocks away, the headache-afflicted righteous fatigue of processing a DWI. After doing all of that, then writing about it in a manner that somehow perfectly describes obscene things in a non-obscene way, you return to the station to your second bookend: refueling the car, unloading it into your POV (personally owned vehicle), and digesting your shift with your squadmates, who shared in some of your exploits and had plenty of their own. 

Before you go home, your sergeant tells you that there was an accident / a traffic stop gone bad / a critical incident in another agency in which an officer was killed. He had a wife and two kids – he always does. You drive home with a heavy heart, mourning someone you never knew because he does what you do. They’ll have a nice ceremony for him, gloved hands squeezing off a few blanks at the funeral as a new widow gets her crisply folded flag. For what that’s worth.

You arrive home. After stripping off your matted, sweat streaked clothes, you slide into bed with your wife, trying to keep from disturbing an already fitful sleep she resigned herself to in your absence. She rouses anyway, but just enough to acknowledge your presence before she goes back under. You edge closer, reassured by her warmth, knowing you could as easily have been on a stretcher. Or a slab. 

You try to keep the horrors in your mind at bay long enough to go to sleep yourself. You’ve got a subpoena to testify in a jury trial in three and a half hours – if they don’t call to cancel when you’re halfway there. But that’s there and then. This is here and now. You’re content to cherish what you’ve got in this place:

Prayers of thanks that your shift was typically atypical.

– Justin Freeman, Former Patrol Officer

The post What’s It Like To Be A Police Officer appeared first on Caveman Circus.

Having to go up on the witness stand in a courthouse can be a frightening and intimidating time for anyone. For an adult or child that has experienced a traumatic event, it can be even worse. To lessen the anxieties and tensions in the courtroom, the foundation Courthouse Dogs was created by Ellen O’Neill Stephens and Celeste Walsen.

They knew from the get-go it is the perfect solution to helping children and adults feel better and more confident when they have to testify in court. Ellen and Celeste make a strong team for the cause, Ellen is a retired prosecutor and Celeste is a veterinarian.

O’Neill explained to Upworthy, “When a person is reliving a traumatic event, they experience physiological reactions similar to what they had when the event was taking place. This adversarial system [of testifying in front of your attacker] is brutal. A lot of people come out damaged by it.”

This is especially true for children who are often too traumatized to speak of their abuse, especially in front of their attacker. Many kids shut down and don’t want to talk, especially if their parents are not allowed in the interview with them. When you introduce a dog to the situation everything changes, the child begins to pet the dog, calm down and is much more likely to open up.

Courthouse Dogs are there for victims in and out of the courtroom, such as in child advocacy centers and during prosecutor interviews as well.

“These dogs should be available to any vulnerable witness that would have difficulty talking about what happened. That could be an adult rape victim or family member whose child has been murdered and have to testify in court.”

Simply being in the presence of a relaxed dog reduces anxiety and makes us feel safer. That’s because, “We count on dogs to tell us when there’s a bad guy around.” When a dog seems calm we naturally feel more at ease.

Not just any dog makes the cut, it takes around 2 years to train a dog for the job. Training starts when they are just a puppy.

Over the past 11 years the non-profit organization has grown to include 87 working dogs, mostly golden retrievers and Labradors, comforting witnesses in 28 states. The awesome impact these dogs have had is now going global with dogs stationed in Chile and Canada.

The overall goal of Courthouse Dogs is for canines to be available to anyone involved in a crime, regardless of age, gender or even innocence. Ellen said, “I think it’s revolutionizing this process. I’m fairly confident this practice is here to stay and it will only grow.”

Learn more about Courthouse Dogs and donate to their pawsome cause on the official website.

The post These Therapy Dogs Comfort Witnesses While They Testify In Court appeared first on Caveman Circus.

1. The way I funded my opiate habit (5 years, clean 2 years) was by blowing my inheritance. Also, my friend who I used with sold them, which makes then more affordable as long as you stay on top of the hustle always (which is impossible). So, never had to rob anyone to pay for the habit.

The way I used functionally was to not take the biggest fucking dose every single time. If I had things to do, I would cut the dose back. As an addict, you fluctuate between Heaven and Hell depending on whether or not you can obtain drugs. If you have to do shit on Earth, you measure your dose to be in the middle. Yes, you can measure your dose…you do a test shot of the batch that you got and go from there. Also, you can judge the potency by observation when you know what it is supposed to be…but you always do a prudent dose when you don’t know.

So if I had somewhere to be, I did a reasonable dose that put me at about a 6 out of 10 and then did business in a pretty good mood. Opiates do not interfere with thought or coordination like alcohol…any fuck ups on opiates are about the same thing as if you were too sleepy, and happen because you took too much. Don’t take too much. Save that for the shot when you get home, and all that needs to be done is to nod off in front of the TV, or play WoW (level grinding is wonderful with smack).

In order to keep my dose at a level, I would wean myself back when I got to about 750mg a day. It’s the same as a diet: you do less than you want to, until it’s been cut back. Instead of doing 3 shots a day, just wait a few hours after you wake up to do the first one, do the second one later, and deal with it. Keeping your appetite in check is important when your buddy does way too much, and you end up being the only one who can function when drug runs have to be made, or if his girlfriend’s kid needs someone to watch him. Someone has to be the least degenerate one, so I would keep my habit around 500mg a day. That’s endurable in case of no drugs, at least. And every now and then, you live a little and treat yourself to a bigger than normal shot. Taste it like they show it in the movies. It’s dessert, like you are struggling with your weight. Like I said, not all the time but every now and then…splurge.

Functioning when you’re in Hell is required when you have no drugs and need to get shit done, or if you need to get drugs. In that case, the trick is to have willpower.

None of it matters anymore, because that game is over.

2. Have been addicted to drugs for over 20 years and been functional the whole time pretty much. Anyways I found you have to use multiple substances for it to at least semi successful. I would use either meth or heroin depending on work load for the day, meth was for days were I had lots of work and heroin was for less work but it was trickier. If I used meth I would always finsh the day with heroin. When I got home I would always drink as it made me social and it was fun. I would finish of with benzodiazepines to knock me out. I would also inject steroids every 2 days to help me keep on weight. This was expensive and fucking soul destroying but I was able to run a business and make a lot of money. Got clean though and life a lot better business is so fucking easy without all the shit and make more money

3. I am a lawyer and a habitual cocaine user. I’m 29 years old. I work at a well-regarded firm, make good money, and by most metrics would be called high-functioning. The problem is that without some form of stimulant coursing through my body I’m listless, dysphoric, irritable, don’t care about anything and want to die.

I didn’t start off with coke, but with adderall, and in many ways I prefer adderall. I began bumming this from friends in undergrad during exams, and discovered that I loved everything about it. I wanted to be on it all the time. So, I researched ADHD, spoke with people who’d successfully gotten prescriptions, and soon had one of my very own.

Adderall contributed hugely to my success in law school and during my first few years as a big-firm associate, where enduring long hours and displaying meticulous attention to detail are essential. Then, a few years ago, there was an adderall shortage in my city. None of my regular pharmacies had any in stock. They would always say it was on order — but by the time the order arrived, my prescription would have expired. Basically there is this kafkaesque web of federal and state laws and corporate pharmacy policies that do everything possible to thwart filling a lawful prescription. If you are already working 80 hours/week and rely on the option of conveniently dropping off an Rx and expecting it to be filled, this can be devastating.

I had a friend at the time who was a casual, recreational user of cocaine, and she hooked me up. The first time I awoke and did a line off my nightstand to help propel me into the office at 7am on a Sunday to prep for a closing, I felt almost righteously belligerent about it: Stupid DEA, keeping my medication from me…now look what you fuckers have made me do.

This was obviously a childish attitude, but I still blame the government to some extent for my drug problem. I’m sure that people in twelve-step programs would have things to say about this.

Anyways, I go through about a gram of coke every few days. I still fill my adderall prescription when I can. Ironically, while there are systems set up to make filling an adderall prescription as inconvenient as possible, coke dealers will deliver at all hours, with a smile. Mine delivers to my office, where I’m pretty sure I’m not her only customer. Sometimes I buy black-market adderall, too, and xanax to help myself sleep when i get the chance.

I will probably die of a heart attack in my forties or fifties. In the meantime, I truly believe that drugs are part of the reason I’m high-functioning. The associates who couldn’t cut it were culled from my class long ago, and if my brain weren’t artificially saturated with dopamine I am pretty sure that I, too, would have given up and gone to bed on numerous occasions instead of triple-checking some inane semicolon.

That’s the uncomfortable truth: hard drugs have negative health effects, but not all of them inhibit “functioning.” I am remunerated very well for functioning in very specific ways that would be difficult, or impossible, without drugs.

4. I used to take 90-150mg of adderall a day for 3 years along with weed, legal weed, Molly and alcohol but really just a lot of adderall. While I did I was regarded as one of the best employees at my work. I bought my house during that time, my credit was the best its ever been and also bought a new car. Eventually though my tolerance was too high to keep up with my finances and I refused to fake it and get a prescription because I didn’t want to be one of those people who claims can not addicted because they have a prescription. I got extremely close to foreclosure and my car got repoed. When I finally came off them my work ethic took a big hit. Didn’t lose my job or anything but the depression that comes with recovering from upper addiction sucks. Oh and I’ve gained 50 fucking pounds which I’m currently working on losing. 1 year sober next month and no regrets

5.  I am a functioning heroin addict. I’ve been using painkillers and heroin about 3 years, now just heroin because I live in Chicago and it is incredibly cheap and easy to get.(Just take the train to the west side and walk 3 blocks in any direction and you can find it.) So I don’t inject for various reasons, I just snort it. When I started I could get high from just 1 10 dollar bag, now I have to do at least 2 every day just to feel normal. It’s an expensive habit. I work a part-time job but that barely covers staying normal. To get high I now have to do 40-50 dollars worth. I also sell weed and pills and I steal from my parents and grandparents, either cash or anything I can pawn(Gold/silver) Nobody knows about this habit except 1 friend who is also an addict. People sometimes think I am depressed or am drunk or high on pot a lot because I am always in bed spaced out listening to headphones. I look totally normal, you would never notice it. My dealers comment on it all the time. Quitting would involve too much time in withdrawal(2-3 weeks) I don’t have that time right now. Basically I am in a constant struggle to stay normal and avoid the misery of opiate withdrawal, only actually getting high 2-3 times a week while snorting lines consistently every couple hours

6. I would abuse benzos and cocaine. My dealer was a regular supplier. He could get me 30-60 benzos (xanax, valium, klonipin) at the beginning of each month. We had a code system where he would text me a superhero comic that he had in supply. Each drug was paired with a superhero.

I would always imagine selling the benzos (I would to one friend) but would take the majority myself and combine it with drinking. For me, I had a job, a car, school and tons of responsibilities. This helped me control my addiction. Also, when you take benzos, the effects last for some days afterwords so I didn’t need it everyday.

It became really bad when I began pairing these drugs with cocaine. I sought treatment on my own with a therapist, and have been clean since September, from benzos.

I used cocaine only three times this year and every time it was while drunk. When I drink, I still think about using. I don’t think that will ever go away. This is the hardest and scariest part about using hard drugs. Giving up weed while drunk is easy. But once I get to a certain point I begin to crave cocaine or benzos. Luckily I deleted my benzos dealers number and he hasn’t hit me up to figure out where I am. The cocaine dealers are the cab drivers in the neighborhood and are literally a phone call away. The best method of prevention has been to surround myself drinking with people who don’t use cocaine. As I don’t have a number I am unable to get in contact with them anymore. But the times I had relapsed was when I was with someone who had access to a number. Cocaine is a hell of drug

7. I was a functioning opiate and benzo addict for about 4 years. I was addicted to both percocet and klonopin/xanax (whichever I had). I was prescribed klonopin for anxiety, but would lie to my doctor to get the dosage upped…at my worst point I went to 2 doctors and had a script for 90 klonopin/mo 60 ativan/mo and 30 xanax/mo. And my boyfriend at the time sold percocet so I had a constant supply. But to answer the question…I functioned the whole time (kept a full time job and apartment) I would take a small amount of opiates before work to get me awake and in a decent mood (not high-thats the difference!) And would take a small amount with me in case I got stuck at work. When I would get home I would do a lot, plus benzos and alcohol. Weekends I wouldnt sleep and would get high day and night. By the end bills started to slip…our cable got shut off, the place was a disgusting mess and was always pitch black…so depressing. My bf lost his job and was literally in bed all day. I had a moment of clarity and tried for a week to get him to ‘come with me’ so to speak… He wouldn’t. He was deep in it. I ended up coming home one day to a black, smelly, filthy apartment and he was dead asleep at 4 in the afternoon. I packed a bag and left. Never went back, never got high again (its been a year) I quit cigarettes, weed and my prescribed benzos. Feel pretty damn good. He claims to have gotten his shit together but I’m not going there again.

8. I am 32 years old, have a well paid job as a professional, live in a huge house with my fiancée and am very comfortable financially. I am also a drug addict.

I work in the healthcare sector in the U.K. as a professional and it took me 5 years to get my degree. My addiction started about 2 months into my first job. I had a really bad headache and as I had access to all sorts of medications, I decided to take some co-codamol (para 500mg and codeine 30mg) for this. This was the worst decision of my life. I instantly felt like I was on top of the world. My body felt light, I was overcome with happiness and everything just seemed so easy and problem free. I told myself this was a one-off but as you have already probably guessed it wasn’t.

Over the next year I gradually had to take more and more of the co-codamol to recreate that “first feeling”. The problem was, I never really achieved this. I went from codeine (which wasn’t monitored very well where I worked) to tramadol to the occasional sip of morphine liquid. I told myself I wasn’t addicted and I could stop whenever I wanted. Nobody at work ever suspected I was stealing drugs or that I was constantly high.

After about a year of this I decided I had to stop doing what I was doing as I was going to lose my job if I got caught. I went cold turkey for 1 week and it was honestly the worst week of my life. On drugs, the whole world seemed so rounded and smooth, without them I constantly felt like everything was sharp and too rough. At the end of the week I decided my life felt better with the drugs and I started using again. That first dose after going cold turkey was just sheer bliss.

I haven’t tried quitting again in 9 years now but I have almost been caught on a few occasions. As I started to need more opiates to feed my addiction, I had to start stealing larger quantities from work. Of course they finally twigged drugs were going missing but I was pretty crafty and the investigation went nowhere near me. I have moved jobs since and I am very careful about what I take and when. I know when suspicion is aroused and I just back off stealing for a few weeks.

There have been some low moments. Going on holiday is a nightmare for me as I don’t want to risk taking prescription drugs through customs to any country. Usually my holidays are me withdrawing badly whilst feigning a “local bug”. 5 years ago I got desperate and smuggled 50 tramadol capsules through Mexican customs. I didn’t get caught but I thought I was going to have a heart attack trying to get past security. Nowadays I just suffer on holiday for a week rather than risk being caught. I have also collapsed twice at work after taking extra strength codeine and dropping my resp rate ridiculously low. Again, I have passed that off as exhaustion and I’m 100% confident nobody suspects I’m a drug addict. I’m excellent at my job as well which helps me keep up the ruse.

Fast forward to today. I’ve been using for 10 years now and I still live in dread of being caught. I just can’t imagine a world without the drugs to keep everything smooth. My fiancée has no idea I’m an addict and I keep my stolen supplies well hidden in our house. I’m actually far too good at lying and being deceitful. In life, I have a great partner, a big house, loads of friends and a decent amount of money. Everything is perfect apart from my opiate dependence.

I’m writing this at home, feeling a nice buzz from the strong oxycodone tablets I’ve just taken (I procured them from a patient who had hundreds of boxes lying around her house). Nobody on earth knows the mess I’m in right now and quite frankly the shame of it makes me feel sick. One day I hope I have the courage to face the world drug free, praying to god I reach that part of my life before my fiancée finds out or before work or the police find out. I know I need help but I’m too ashamed to admit this to people I know.

I really don’t know what to do. I know I have a problem and need to stop but at this stage, I’m ashamed to admit I don’t really want to. Taking drugs is normal to me and stopping and withdrawing again makes me feel sick. I’m looking for advice from anyone who is/was in the same boat. Believe me, I know I have a problem and the best thing to do would be to come clean but I’m petrified.

9. I’ve been a functioning meth addict for a year and a half for the most part fairly successfully. I feel I differ from other meth addicts because meth is not my drug of choice… alcohol is. I was raging alcoholic from the age of 21 to 23. Not a long time but long enough to total two cars, drop out of school, obtain a DUI, lose all my friends, humiliate myself on well more than one occasion, screw my liver up, and suffer crippling withdrawals that would send me into convulsive seizures. If it were my last day on earth and I had the option to take any drug in the world, I’d twist the cap off a bottle of vodka and feel that eurphoric sense of calmness I so desperately sought for my entire childhood.

I smoke meth because it keeps the cravings for alcohol at bay. I started in August of 2016 and still actively smoke. When I run out of meth I crave alcohol just like I did when I was actively drinking. I do not wish to be an addict, I want a normal life where I don’t have to slip into the bathroom every few hours to take a hit but I do not get to have that luxury. I begged my parents to take me to treatment, I pleaded and they responded with, “you’re not an alcoholic, you’re over dramatic.” When I’d have a seizure my mom would angrily tell me to stop pretending then walk away. At this point I’m sure you can see why I become an alcoholic. My parents were in my life physically but emotionally I was at their mercy. When I was a teen I told my mom I was depressed and she told me no I wasn’t. When I tried to kill myself she told me I looked like a fucking idiot and to hide the rope marks on my neck because the grandparents didn’t need to see that bullshit. When I came out as gay I was terrified to tell them. They didn’t care I was gay. My dad actually hugged me and told me he’d love me no matter what. My mom on the other hand made me apologize to her. Not because I was gay but because I texted her. How could I text her? What would people think of her as a mother knowing her son couldn’t even tell her to her face? I had to apologize and console her for hurting her even though I was in the most vulnerable state I had ever been in.

Now, those are the extreme case scenarios I endured. Overall I was a pretty normal teenager who was extremely outgoing and charismatic. I did well in school and graduated on the honor roll. I was well liked and had a lot of friends, I loved high school and wish I could go back. When I turned 21 I drank alcohol for the first time. My parents drank but I was an obedient child that never defied them so I never drank or used any drugs including pot.

Within 2 months of turning 21 I was drinking daily and within a year I was drinking nonstop and if I started to get sober would start battling withdrawals. It was a living Hell. After totaling my second car I was ticketed with a DUI and my mother told me she would never help me with anything again and she kept that promise. If I didn’t have a ride to work I had to pay for an uber even if she was home on the couch. I ubered everywhere I went wether it was probation, classes, piss tests, work, etc. she never once helped me. Which is fine, I made the mistake but just more evidence of her character.

After I smoked meth and started doing it regularly (I was on probation as well and got off 6 months early for outstandingly good behavior and never got caught. I even pissed dirty and talked the PO into throwing the test into the trash as a false positive) I started to shows signs of improvement. I got my license back, my performance at work improved and came the day, almost a year ago today, that I made the choice to move out of my moms. Oh god was she pissed.

It was the best decision I ever made.

I moved in with a friend from high school. It was really hard adapting to living away from my mom. She was controlled every aspect of my life. All through high school all my paychecks went to her and she would give me money when she allowed it. Looking back she probably kept close to $2,500 that she claims was given to me. She did all my laundry, us kids were not on her insurance because she couldn’t afford it but her hair, nails, and eyelashes were always done and her phone was always brand new but anyways, so we never went to the doctor. I had to learn how to function for myself and it was really difficult.

But I got back in school and I graduate this Fall, I raised my credit score 100 points, I learned some new skills, I found a hobby, I acquired a thirst for knowledge and would research everything. I turned my life around and smoked meth the entire time I did it and no one had a single clue.

I’d be on the fast track to success right now but it all went up in flames this last November when I fell for an employment scam that has basically stripped all the success I’ve made and has left me jobless and almost bankrupt. I still smoke meth and still have kept it a secret. I’m currently living with my father who is increasingly growing more frustrated that I can’t find work. He’s an educated man that has matured a lot (my mother controlled him too because he’s fairly passive) so he’s a little harder to live with and maintain my secret. I was Savin my money so I could do outpatient testament and still go to school but the bank took all that money for the debt from the scam.

So, I guess I’m not the most functional of a meth addict but the meth didn’t strip me of my functionality, some piece of shit in Turkey did. And that piece of shit from Turkey May have cost me so much more than a couple thousand dollars, but also my education, my self esteem, my trust in others, and my one chance to finding sobriety.

But all anyone ever says is, “you should have known better.”

Yeah, and they all should have known that their emotional abuse caused me to turn into a self destructive addict but that doesn’t matter because I’m the one losing everything not them.

If anyone’s reading this I want you to take one thing from this.

You are not your parents. You are your own individual and sometimes we have to upset them to better ourselves. I was terrified of making them angry that endured their emotional abuse for almost 24 years. I turned to alcohol to calm my anxiety and almost lost it all. Then I turned to meth as a way to escape alcohol and almost recovered triumphantly and just short of being able to get the treatment I needed to quit substances forever, my trust in others caused it to all go up in smoke. Learn from my mistakes and seek help if you are the victim of emotional abuse. Get away from the abuse, you are not dependent on others for your success.

You are not powerless

you are not worthless

I’m rooting for you

I want you to succeed

I want you to fulfill your dreams

If you are a struggling addict like me – you will not get sober until you face your past. It took me 3 years to even realize what made me addict, what I was so scared and angry of. 3 YEARS! And now that I know, I’m not as scared anymore but I’m still fucking pissed and what I wanted from treatment is those coping skills to be able to forgive and accept what happened.

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Bad Hair Day

Bill Burr Got In Trouble For Making Fun Of The Military

Elon Musk on how Falcon Heavy will change space travel

Drowning puppy shows pure joy after rescue

An African pastor arriving at church

Succeed by 25…OR FAIL FOREVER?

Really Good Wrestling Match: Eddie Guerrero vs Rey Mysterio @ Halloween Havoc 1997

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The Best Steaks I Ever Cooked Have Been With A Cast Iron Skillet

Cast iron is a very dense metal, making it nearly impervious to damage and the king of holding on to heat. Even heating means that meats brown better and vegetables cook faster without having to constantly manage the heat source or rotate pans in the oven. Cast iron is ideal for frying and baking because it holds and distributes heat so well. The same cannot be said of your favorite pasta pot or baking sheet.

Cast-iron is super versatile, affordable and lasts a lifetime or two if you care for it properly. 

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You’re Not Lazy – Medium

Game of Thrones Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to Write and Produce a New Series of Star Wars Films – Deadline

When James Jameson, Heir To A Whiskey Fortune, Bought A Girl To Be Cannibalized – Weird History

Quincy Jones is the best interview in the world – Vulture

US Postal Service to unveil Mister Rogers stamp next month – AP News

Mystery Website Attacking City-Run Broadband Was Run by a Telecom Company – The Register

Trophy hunter killed while aiming rifle at lion in South Africa – Raw Story

Prisoner Calmly And Logically Explains Why He Had To Murder His Cellmate (video) – Leenks

Yup, Flat-Earthers Think the Falcon Heavy Launch Was a Conspiracy – Live Science

Here’s What the Children of the 22 Most Attractive People Look Like – Bright Side

Hot Pictures Of Super Busty Angela White – Lurk And Perv

If You Have Thinning Hair, This Might Be Of Value To You – Thinning Hair

After Winning $559 Million, Lottery Winner Refuses To Claim Prize – All That Is Interesting

10 Lightning-Fast Facts About The Flash – Listverse

Hot Golfer Paige Spiranac in a Bikini – Drunken Stepfather

10 Things I Learned Working As A Male Domestic Violence Counselor – Return Of Kings

Happy Happy Hump Day! (37 Photos) – Radass

How to Talk to Your Kids About Porn – Life Hacker

The Red Witch And The Valerian Translator newd on Game Of Thrones – Celeb J

Why Costco’s Vodka May Be Your Best Bet – Munchies

1,600 Occult Books Now Digitized & Put Online, Thanks to the Ritman Library and Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown – Open Culture

Ariel Winter at a gym in Los Angeles – G-Celeb

UFC reportedly discussing potential second fight for former WWE Champion CM Punk – Fan Buzz

The Best Financial Decision I Ever Made (Hint: It Wasn’t Investing in Bitcoin) – Knowledge For Men

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Instagram

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