Before I knew it...

Things were beyond bad

You could say I’d lived a semi-charmed life to the time I turned 48. Born into an educated family in the Philippines, I and my siblings had the benefit of an education-prioritizing family as well as good schools.

My parents separated when I was 10 years old, which threw a bit of a spanner in our financial works. My mother was forced to emigrate to Canada to join her mother and siblings in the absence of a support network at home.

Privilege gave way to struggle, but we hardly felt it. Mom was the proverbial provider. Bred to be wed, she found herself raising four of us by herself. She learned to type, and took clerical jobs to keep our collective heads above water. She worked bingo nights to get a break on tuitions at the Catholic school she insisted we attend.

Fast-forward past high school and a rather turbulent-yet-typical teenage existence, I wound myself into University and graduated with a degree in Communication (a major I felt was sufficient to get me reasonable jobs).

Then came the kids and a marriage - in that order - in my 20s.

I moved back to the Philippines in my early 30s to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities.

They worked out. I was fortunate enough to get in with the right people and built the first of a number of successful businesses.

The work and the culture took its toll on my marriage, and we split up. It was all pretty acrimonious, and my oldest daughter took the brunt of it. I still don’t forgive myself for that.

What followed was over a decade of too much money and an ego that expanded with my bank account. Hedonism ruled, and I thought I had found a perch from which I would not topple.

There was drink, there were women, there were drugs. Copious amounts of all three.

I successfully dodged the “second family” bullet until I was forty-six, when my 5th daughter, Holly was born. Her mom was a single mom who moved in the same circles I did. I have a bit of a savior complex, and I felt it was my job to rescue her from the struggles of single-motherhood; struggles I watched my mother endure.

Then the pandemic came, and among other factors, my fortunes went into full reverse. Perhaps because I didn’t have the correct tools to deal with adversity, I wallowed.

I wallowed in drink (from the moment I awoke to the time I went to sleep, passed out more often than not). I got sick. I stopped being productive. I let people without my best interests at heart run my businesses to the ground. I gave my partner the keys to all; power of attorney, access to my bank accounts, even the keys to my crypto wallets.

I became sick. Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I also developed advanced liver disease. My partner convinced me to check myself into the hospital, where I spent a month.

During that time, she disappeared. Access to my kids became difficult (we had a son in two years prior). I cast about for her whereabouts, and learned she had taken up with a former business partner. What a guy.

All my liquid assets were gone.

Here I found myself, recovering, depressed, and alone. I wallowed in this state for over a year.

So I did what any self-respecting guy who’s down on his luck would do. I decided to run away. Well I suppose I could say I decided to run back to my family in Canada.

I’ve been on a process of healing, learning about myself, making sense of what’s happened and why. As a good friend said, I’m on my personal redemption arc.

This blog is my stab at making sense of things, as well as growing as a person. Three things have consumed my time of late: Technology, Psychedelics-as-therapeutics, and Art.

I’m finding a way to weave those three elements together to build a new person. I’ll be exploring the macro concepts and the minutiae of operationalizing the idea that these elements can be my perfect rehab.

Hoping you guys can follow along. I won’t be holding much back; but as those of you who know me are aware, I didn’t come with a filter.

If you want to follow along, I’ll make sure this is a show-and-tell. You’ll see where I succeed, and where I stumble. You can help me get back on path if I stray.

In the poker club I co-founded Metro Card Club, Philippines

I wasn’t too shabby of a card player back then.

And this is what I look like these days (Okay, I clean up to a slightly better version of this).

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