Hello! You may call me Kleric. I have done and seen a lot of shit, crawled my way from the bottom, led a very diverse life. I would like to share with you my life story. To anybody who reply's to this post genuinely seeking any sort of advice, I feel I can be of help to ANYBODY, and am happy to do so.
First, some TL;DR
I am 33
I work as a school teacher.
I am former USMC
I am a former full blown problem alcoholic - will write an article on this another day - but I conquered my alcoholism
I suffered from MASSIVE anxiety attacks for 7+ years, have called 911 on multiple occasion, but have CONQUERED my anxiety
I used to have a TERRIBLE diet, didn't take care of my self whatsoever, but now have an incredible diet and am very health oriented.
I've worked as a personal trainer, and can help you toward any fitness goals you may have , will answer any fitness related questions you may have.
Have been painfully, happily addicted to games / video games my entire life, have played just about everything from nintendo forward.
I played online poker professionally for 6 months before USA made it illegal
worked as a poker dealer
have had 15 different jobs since i was 17
love to rock climb / climb anything and everything
so much more, am sure im forgetting shit.
Recently I have been balls deep into crypto~ ( new to crypto? AMA )
Since i was about 5 years old, I was addicted to video games. It started with me playing nintendo. My name is Nick. My dad nicknamed me "nick-tendo" and got a caricature of exactly that. some day ill have to take a picture of it and post it =) As a kid, even back then I loved to climb anything and everything. I used to climb to the top of tree's at a very young age. I could climb to the top of a basketball hoop, just go straight up the pole since i was 7 ish. After my first tee ball game as a kid, I climbed to the top of this old jungle gym thing.......picture below.....this was some shit that only existed in the 90's and doesn't exist anymore probably because of me.....
( fair warning , I like to do terrible MS paint drawnings )
So the point of this thing is, you swing form ring to ring, in a circle, and as you do the upper ring goes around too, so you could swing indefinatly.
( below, googled a better image )
So, stupid me, I climbed up the middle and some parent was playing with their kids below.......and there were huge bolts sticking out....and ripped my leg wide open. I was 7-8 ish? I could see my flesh, inside my leg. It was brutal.
My parents got divorced when I was in I wanna say 1st grade? That was shitty, but as I work with kids and the divorce rate is so hi, it has given me a lot of perspective to help the kids I work with. I like to think all the hardship I've gone through has made my life more interesting and gives me good insight. This is the first of many interesting / shitty things I have experienced.
My parents mostly hated each other, fought a lot. I had the typical see one parent on weekends, other parent during the week childhood. The crowning moment was when my dad tried to surprise move in with my mom, and that went about as well as you would expect. After much crying, yelling and fighting, somehow the decision was that the children ( my older brother and I ) were to pick what parent we wanted to live with. Note - if you ever have kids and a shitty breakup, don't do this to your kids =) Its fucked up. Oddly enough later that night I was playing some super nintendo. Gaming was and always will be my life!
I was in 6th grade the first time I drank alcohol. I remember because I had an older cousin who I idolized ( and oddly enough who both catered to and participated with me, in my video game obsession ) who took me and my older brother with him drinking that night. We drank at my elementary school. Old english and V0
I remember peeing on the door ( it was a sunday ) to my classroom, my brother drinking way too much, and puking up some moms spaghetti that night lol.
At first I drank once every other month or so, whenever my cousin would let me. But that turned into once every two months, once a month to multiple times a month, to, asking my cousin to buy me alcohol for my friends and I.
To this day, I think i have dranken into being blacked out well over 100 times. I'll write another some day talking about my alcoholic days.
I was at my worst from age 18 to age 22. By age 23, I had an epiphany moment. I don't remember the exact details, but I decided this was not where I want my life to go. I went sober for a year, got a decent job. Moved to san diego and began my career dealing poker ( well, I quit poker after 2 years to join the marine corps, but thats for another article ).
When i was age 14 or 15 or so, I had my first anxiety attack. I will never forget that day. I was in my room ( upstairs ) and for , to this day i have no idea why , whatever reason i lost circulation in my hand. My mind decided i was having a heart attack and I was dieing. My pulse began to race. My mind started to freak out. I was getting dizzy......light headed....lost feeling in my left arm....this was it I though....I slowly got up, slow walked down stairs to go say goodbye to my mom. I as about to die.
I didn't die. It was my first ever anxiety attack, and fuck me it was not to be my last. Over the next 3-4 years I would begin having them from once every two months to every month to every week. Little ones, big ones, in school, middle of the night. It was fucking miserable. I had no control.
For whatever reason, I am truly blessed in my ability to take control of my life through sheer willpower. Same as my alcoholism, I had one glorious day I will never forget. however this day I remember more vividly. I was driving on the freeway one night, when the telltale signs of an anxiety attack were coming on. My mind froze.....I became fixated on my rising pulse.....my breathing was shallow....my mind was going through scenarios of heart attack / etc. I was about to have an anxiety attack while driving on the freeway. This wasn't the first time this had happened while driving....I knew I needed to pull over until this passed and I could calm down. In the past , I had pulled over to call 911, to have a fire truck show up after I calm down only for me to apologize....its just an anxiety attack.
This glorious day, I tell myself.......NO. FUCK THIS, I WILL NOT SUFFER THIS SHIT MY WHOLE LIFE. I refuse to pull off the road....I keep driving......and it passes......I wish I had cured myself there and then, but it was the start. I started to have anxiety attacks much less frequently.....and they were less severe....To this day, I've had one or two anxiety attacks in the last 5 years.
I will post a part two to all of this if anybody is interested. If you wanna trade alcoholic stories, or my life was worse stories, I'm all ears =) If you need help with literally anything, reply and I will talk with you! I quite being a poker dealer, where I made 60,000$ a year after taxes, to join the military, to then become a teacher because I knew I wanted more out of life then just money. I want to die knowing I lead an interesting life, set a good example, became a better person.
Cheers~