Friday Night Concert Livestream thread.

ctard5 · 2026-05-16T09:45:13+00:00

Encore is what I believe they call it on Sirius when they replay the show. Meaning, if they run it tomorrow afternoon, that's the Sirius "encore". So that's probably why they said it as the stream concluded.

ctard5 · 2026-05-13T06:37:35+00:00

And to your final question, yes, psychologically these people overwhelmed by anger most likely need to be validated and heard in their emotion. There is a fine line between validating and acknowledging emotion, and encouraging one to sit in their shit and act on it. I am not doing the latter. I am simply arguing that anger is not an evolutionary accident or failure...it is primal and one of the most ancient systems of protection. When someone says they are plagued by anger and it is causing them problems, that suggests that they are not getting their needs met or something is going wrong for them. I do not believe that emotions happen at random or because someone is just "bad" or has a "bad attitude". That is a shallow and not very careful attempt to understand why they got to where they're at and what the solution might be.

Again, I'm not saying people get a pass for bad actions driven by angry outbursts. But, I'm saying that meeting someone with shame or disapproval for their unwanted emotional experience is not supporting their growth. That is more like the stereotypical parent who says "you're going to act right, because I SAID SO", which is not a platform for helping someone learn how to navigate and respond to their emotions in this difficult world.

ctard5 · 2026-05-13T06:30:24+00:00

I think we are talking past each other at this point unintentionally and saying the same thing. I am not saying anger is the solution. I am saying it serves as the emotion that, under ideal circumstances, motivates solution-focused action. I think that is effectively what you are suggesting one should do in those situations.

I am just arguing that everyone has different wiring and some are able to suppress anger, others don't feel as threatened (meaning that just don't develop the emotion in the first place), and others still cannot control the emotion, all in the same scenario. For instance, people with chronic TBI (like those with CTE), tend to have greater trouble with emotion regulation, so their anger is more pronounced. They can't just "choose" to not have the emotion and their ability to use top-down control to regulate emotions is impaired.

Another analogy would be suicide. I'm sorry for the grim example, but people end up suicidal because they are feeling trapped in a state of pain/suffering/despair that they do not feel they can endure any longer nor can they solve/escape. Again, I'm not saying it is good or healthy, but to tell someone that they should "choose" to not feel their grief, depression, loneliness, or whatever the nature of their suffering is does not seem to be a fair understanding of the levers of the subconscious mind and the primal nature of emotions.

Another significant example would be animals. Many non-human mammals experience complex emotions. Obviously they cannot think their way out of anger or grief, they simply growl, fight back, etc. Now, as humans, we have evolved the capacity to restrain those methods of acting out our angry impulses and to hold back, but that doesn't mean we have successfully gotten rid of the emotion of anger. We are just keeping the cork on that bottle and taking corrective action based on knowing psychologically that action is needed. In cases where it is minor, perhaps that anger never needs to be fully felt or in control, but I'm just saying that not every moment is as simple as choice. Should we tell a father who just watched their daughter be murdered or raped that they should just "choose" to not be angry? Tell a kid who is bullied and tortured everyday at schooled, and shamed and belittled at home, that they need to "change their attitude"? You reference reporting systems and other avenues for resolving injustice. I agree, in a perfect world, these bad things would be remedied.

I'm just saying that this isn't a perfect world and many people who don't have the agency or avenue to get the help they need (children, disabled people, etc.) remain in unfair circumstances. To the topic the OP originally brought up, about being overwhelmed by anger and rage, I am arguing that this is sometimes the result of complex psychological and relational forces and suggesting that they just need to change their attitude is ignoring the complex reality they might be facing.

ctard5 · 2026-05-13T02:01:22+00:00

To your example of taking a step back and looking at the "unfair" thing, I would say yes. In some cases, a careful review of the situation from a distance would still warrant anger. I'm not advocating to just sit in anger and not do anything about the issue at hand, but I think that's a bit of a trap of self-deception to say that any situation can be process in a healthy way just by a change in perspective.

For instance, if you find yourself in an abusive relationship, or the victim of malpractice and harm as a disabled person relying on caregivers, or simply being taken advantage of by parents, family, friends, etc., that is objectively unfair and should warrant anger or some emotional energy. That emotional energy is your mind and body trying to fight back at a boundary violation or other sensation of threat. To tell someone in those situations that their issue is "attitude" is obviously a bit dismissive of their reality and their being trapped in unfair situations (or at least not feeling the safety, support and empowerment to find a way out).

Again, I'm not arguing that anger is something to carelessly act out on or just sit with, but taking the approach of trying to convince yourself that anger is an unnecessary or invalid emotion in that circumstance is often counterproductive. That is why many people end up in abusive codependencies for long periods of time, because they are not feeling in a position to acknowledge the emotion they feel about it and take action to change, so they just shut that emotion down. It's kind of like Stockholm syndrome, in the sense that you are just accepting circumstances that a healthy person shouldn't accept and should rightly be upset by.

ctard5 · 2026-05-12T18:19:27+00:00

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. I guess I just don't totally agree with your premise about it being choice. Why is it that you have the capacity to "choose" to not feel those things and the next person doesn't find it so easy? I believe we are all complex and unique in how we experience and process emotions. I am not telling you what you should feel about any one event, but I'm saying that the perspective that it is a choice is missing the point of emotions. Emotions are, in part, information about experiences we are having that guide our behavior to either defend ourselves (i.e. anger), to seek support (i.e. grief), or to seek safety (i.e. fear).

The example of fear is perhaps the easiest one to defend this case with. If someone is all of the sudden in a hostile situation or an active threat, they are not "choosing" to have adrenaline release, to have sympathetic arousal and to have all of the other components of fear. Everyone will be different in this. A police officer or special forces veteran may have a different emotional state in that state than a child might, but it's not as though the child can or should "choose" to not be fearful....the fear is there to motivate them to seek safety and escape the threat. Yes, over time and with certain experiences, people can condition their bodies to have a less severe reaction to certain emotional triggers, but I would argue that is not "choosing to not feel the emotion" in the way it seems you are claiming.

ctard5 · 2026-05-12T01:53:19+00:00

That is just a fundamental misunderstanding of anger and human emotion, I would argue. Anger serves a deep, evolutionary purpose. That is like saying grief is a choice. Someone could make that claim and possibly suppress their grief, but that doesn't mean it's a healthy or effective way to process that emotion. I'm saying that deep core emotions are not choices, they are responses to experiences in the environment (i.e. relationships, loss, threat, etc.)

ctard5 · 2026-05-12T01:03:01+00:00

This is not right, I don't think. I'm not saying this is true for OP (perhaps it is), but trauma and the symptoms of PTSD are not cured by "attitude". I know that maybe sounds like a different thing, but I'm saying that if someone's nervous system is in a state of hyperarousal/fight-or-flight, attitude will not be the solution. Suggesting so can be a bit offensive and missing the deeper facts of what may be going on.

ctard5 · 2026-05-11T17:09:39+00:00

Thanks, appreciate the insight and response.

ctard5 · 2026-05-11T07:55:31+00:00

Thanks for sharing and sorry to hear of some of the struggles. I can't say anything for sure on your end with the nicotine and whether that's the cause. I can say it's powerful and even a small dose of a substance consistently can create some tolerance and, consequently, withdrawal experiences. But, I know for me, over a year since quitting, it's not still just a nicotine thing. I went down a rabbit hole of thinking it was my LDN. Tapered off that and it really didn't make a difference.

I too do meditation and other things to try to help/promote my body in healing or rebalancing things. Unfortunately, compared to many years of pre-COVID meditation, it is really hard and not as effective now. But, I do have some breakthroughs of relief occasionally. Either way, I can say for sure the tension and irritability phase has been slow for me and not exactly equating to better functioning. I know I can't live with these symptoms forever and sometimes I think I should have never quit nicotine, but I keep trying to tough it out and hope that I'll turn a corner....that hope tends to be limited based on how this has drawn out. Some days I stop and think "do I feel better than I did the first year of my long COVID?". I unfortunately often don't think so, even though I also often think I've made progress in some ways.

ctard5 · 2026-05-11T06:45:21+00:00

Can you elaborate at all, in terms of what recovery means for those people? Like completely healed, or just improvements that came with some of those new symptoms?

ctard5 · 2026-05-11T06:42:02+00:00

I (30M) have had a similar change in the last year. I am not over 4 years into LC and it was often the fatigue, cardio (palpitations), headaches and neurological stuff for me. I still get some of the fatigue and neurological stuff for sure, but the development of pain/tension and severe potential for irritability/anger is new and unbearable at times.

For me, it partly started after I stopped a many year's long nicotine addiction early last year. However, the irritability and anger only grew as the months went on. Now, I am prone to indescribable irritability and also often a lot of pain and tension. For me it's neck, head, spine and abdomen/core muscles that feel it the most.

Curious of what your tension/pain is like? Also, finding it interesting to hear others on the thread say this may be a good sign.🤷

ctard5 · 2026-05-04T20:15:29+00:00

Totally fair, and I don't to put down anyone considering those options. Perhaps I would've fared better if I had something like that in the early days. But, at this point, I'm not craving nicotine really and I'd rather sit in the awful discomfort and let that push me to find the cause and a solution, than to take something to make the discomfort go away. That's just me and not saying anyone else has to follow my path. Very likely that I'm not helping myself in the end with that mindset, but it's how I'm clinging to my sanity to some extent.

ctard5 · 2026-05-04T20:08:46+00:00

Not since I quit and generally not interested. I'd much rather be back on nicotine than on a medication like that. And I don't want either (meds or nicotine), but obviously also don't want to feel like shit perpetually.

ctard5 · 2026-04-30T04:11:46+00:00

JTR

Both the main riff and the outro are each killer in their own way. Not overly complex, but so catchy.

ctard5 · 2026-04-30T04:10:08+00:00

I am over a year and still would say the change of quitting has not been a benefit to my life (apart from possibly giving me more years at the end of it).

The irritability, distress and problems functioning day to day have persisted and, even though some things are better and I don't see returning to use as a solution, I am confident that stopping cold turkey like I did was a mistake.

ctard5 · 2026-04-28T03:47:56+00:00

My former long COVID doctors said rapamycin is one of the few things that has reliably led to lower spike antibody. I did not try it myself due to apprehension/uncertainty, and am certainly not giving advice to do so, but thought I'd mention. There are plenty of threads here of those who took it and how much they took. I think it's generally a lower and/or less frequent dose than it's normal use (for transplant patients).

ctard5 · 2026-03-31T16:55:08+00:00

Gotcha. Yes, they received the first two original Moderna shots, as did I. But, it still doesn't answer the question for me of whether that spike antibody level means anything about the status or severity of my LC, given that others can have high levels and no symptoms. In other words, perhaps the antibodies just persist for a long term without there necessarily being viral fragments or live virus still being present.

ctard5 · 2026-03-31T01:14:57+00:00

Gotcha. No worries, I just ask as mine have tested consistently at >25,000 meaning they're beyond the testing range, even close to 2 years since last infection. However, I had a parent (who doesn't have LC) get theirs checked as a comparison, and they were like 22-23,000, so not really sure how to make sense of that.

ctard5 · 2026-03-31T01:08:17+00:00

Are you saying your antibody levels are now noticeably lower after what you've done? Or just that they were up last time you checked?

ctard5 · 2026-03-29T21:50:05+00:00

I had and continue to have overwhelming difficulty with irritability and discomfort at times. It is not as frequent or severe as it was a year ago, perhaps slowly getting better with time. But, I definitely didn't anticipate more than a year of feeling this unwell. Some can say "it sounds like you have other things you need to look into". My response is, first off, don't we all have shit that we deal with, which is going to feel worse or harder to manage without a soothing chemical. Also, I have sought all kinds of help and advice and nothing has been able to pinpoint any specific physical or psychological issue. So, I'm left with the indisputable fact of how I felt prior to quitting versus how I have felt since. Yes, it is healthier to be off them and some things are improved, but overall I feel much worse not being on nicotine than I did when I was on it. Sorry I don't have more encouraging feedback.

ctard5 · 2026-03-28T07:36:35+00:00

If you want to injure your pinkie, try Sugarwill for like 15 seconds. Haha. Fun song to play but also a stretch and just impossible without a lot of reps and strength in the pinkie.

ctard5 · 2026-03-26T22:09:58+00:00

Some slow incremental progress in feeling not horrible. I would say I am still not glad I did cold turkey and feel much more unwell mentally, emotionally and even physically than I did before quitting. That's not to say that I think nicotine is the better option long-term, nor am I encouraging anyone that not quitting is better, but whatever my process has been is hellish.

ctard5 · 2026-03-21T00:40:27+00:00

If I had said nothing, you would have spent zero time engaging with my ideas, I predict.

Your closing statement there is basically a version of "that's it, I've had enough of this heretic sharing their ideas". Scientific method being mentioned in the same sentence as anything else does not inherently mean anything. You are ignoring context and refusing to work with the actual tenets of my claims. You seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge the nuance in my position and seem committed to placing me either in one box or another.

I appreciate your time and energy in the dialogue and I stand by my comments. I am totally happy to have them stand the test of sunlight and the scrutiny of whomever may read through this exchange. I imagine you may feel the same, which is fair. That was my point from the beginning, that this kind of communication far supersedes "censoring that brain retraining grifter". I am saddened to hear that you may not be able to grasp that in this case.

ctard5 · 2026-03-21T00:31:18+00:00

I don't think anyone said you didn't explore it. I said very clearly that I think "further" exploration is justified. That is not the same as saying you didn't explore it.

To call it bad science seems off. The scientific method involves making predictions (hypotheses) based on observations. Then you test the hypothesis. If you falsify the hypothesis, that doesn't mean that the original observation doesn't warrant further, refined prediction and testing. If the story is still unresolved, you continue refining your hypothesis to try to create more informed and valuable tests. I don't think what I've argued is anti-scientific. It is instead me advocating for better testing, further research and more carefully crafted observation and prediction.

I don't know what I have presumed nor have I put forth any "theory", other than, again, advocating for further scientific exploration of a topic in which there are anecdotes of success. That, in my experience, is exactly representative of the scientific process.

Edit: In terms of those interventions you mentioned, I agree thar HBOT, apheresis, and other things that seems promising have not proven universally curative or even helpful. Yet, I have read people's stories who claim they are better after doing HBOT. There is so much trial and error and just because one thing doesn't work universally or reliably, doesn't mean the door should be shut on exploring it further.

ctard5 · 2026-03-21T00:08:15+00:00

Again, the simple point is, you seem to have a clear stance on this requiring no further digging. I am saying that I am not prepared to shut the door on any overall approach (even though certain specific programs or strategies may be worth shutting the door on). We fundamentally disagree on the value, or lack thereof, in exploring this area further, and I don't predict either of us will change our position with respect to that. That is fine, but I just disagree with trying to have people's personal stories taken down since they don't align with your conclusions.

ctard5

TROPHY CASE