Is it possible to be "born again" without faith?

[naturestubbs1]

I am a 42-year old father of two and husband. I have a B.S. in Biology and have taught science in one form or another for the last twenty years. I am so rooted in the scientific method that it has become my "default state" for absolutely anything unfamiliar. I consider myself an Atheist who feels that religion is standing in the way of the human race becoming a more intelligent, reasonable and accepting species. With that being said I have experienced what I could only classify as a "rebirth." I stopped drinking and quit the pshychiatrist-based xanax-prozac-ambien-adderrall cocktail over a year ago. It has been a shitty twelve months but in May I whacked my head when I fell off a ladder and suffered a concussion. I had two days of non-drug induced hallucinations filled with a myriad of things wiggling on the wall and in my ears. The doctors thought it was just another OD case but were proved wrong when the toxicology screen came back negative. I KNEW I had taken nothing! But slowly over the last 6 or 8 weeks I have experienced a happiness and clarity of thought that I have only seen in Hollywood. ALL of the science and math that I have learned in my life (of which I teach) has come together and allowed me to see the world in a way that makes me feel like a genius. I can fix cars now, just finished siding my house and re-doing the plumbing and electric. Biochemistry, Calculus, Organic and Inorganic Chemistry, even parts of Quantum Physics make sense to me now. I am actually inventing ways to make my life easier and am having fun doing it. I don't give a shit about money or what anyone else thinks of me. I have the most incredible relationship with my kids and my wife and hell even my dogs. Its like I am seeing the world in slow motion with intense clarity. This is from a guy who has had tremendous difficulty putting on an outlet cover or coming up with lesson plans for the last twenty years. I know that somehow, some way my brain has just gone through a "rewire" from years of filling it with crap. It almost seems insulting to place a tag like "born-again" or "jesus" on something like this. You can have your AA and NA that stuff is just a load of crap that you smear on your face to show your family that you are trying to do something to figure it out. All it took was "baby steps" and a slow process of trusting in myself and my knowledge and my character. I have to give credit to drugs themselves because they opened up my mind and allowed me to tap into something that I no longer need them for. Who needs a Deity or a Jesus doll? Thanks drugs. Anyone have a similar story?

[Whateverist]

Beware of mania if you had been depressed before. The contrast can be quite striking. While I do think the improved brain functioning you report can be true, it can sometimes shift and become less functional without your noticing. Once you experience mania, when it dissipates you can end up feeling dissatisfied with normal functioning. Mania doesn't always endure. Enjoy and use it to notice and learn all that you can. But be prepared when the tide goes out. Better yet, if you have dependents, talk to the doctor who had been giving you all those meds. Let he or she advise you.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Who knows what you could have accomplished if you had whacked your head when you were 20?

Head injuries are very dangerous and they can kill you. Glad you weren't injured.

[naturestubbs1]

Beware of mania if you had been depressed before. The contrast can be quite striking. While I do think the improved brain functioning you report can be true, it can sometimes shift and become less functional without your noticing. Once you experience mania, when it dissipates you can end up feeling dissatisfied with normal functioning. Mania doesn't always endure. Enjoy and use it to notice and learn all that you can. But be prepared when the tide goes out. Better yet, if you have dependents, talk to the doctor who had been giving you all those meds. Let he or she advise you.

I sincerely appreciate your response and know exactly what you are talking about. I have been through mania both drug and non-drug induced and this is entirely different. I know I sound like just another crack pot but I assure you that I have done VAST amounts of homework. I am confident that I can recognize what is going on biochemically and am in tune with the "whats" and the "whys" of what doctors have given me in the past. I am not going to go into to the psychology of everything because at the core of everything is that my crappy childhood led me to enjoy being on medication (namely alcohol) because the old "escape" mantra is true. The alcohol so fundamentally changed my brain chemistry at a such a young age that I had no clue. Through 27 years of mostly alcohol and later on prescription and over-the-counter abuse to boot my brain was way too clogged to deal with everyday life or the trauma of my childhood with any modicum of health. My nucleus has always been grounded in reason and I was just a good liar to myself and everyone else. I can honestly empathize with people who feel "born again" because had I not been such a skeptic and deep thinker all of my life I would have EASILY taken the bait on that one like it was a bottle of xanax. This has not been a mania, it has been a reinvention starting quite literally from the ground up. By that I mean instead of going back to teaching after rehab I began to scrap copper for money. I wasn't in financial straights or anything, I just have always thought that it was cool to recycle precious metals for cash. This was about four or five months into sobriety with occasional bouts of "i'm gonna change the world" and "I feel like shit and can't get out of bed this week." I have been there for decades only sober this time. It took months but as I weeded through local dumping hotspots collecting various appliances and cans and such I really had alot of time to think. As I started tearing things apart to recycle their guts I started to become curious how everything worked. Fast forward several more months and my "science" knowledge has combined with some previously unknown "artsy" side and things are just going apeshit. Not apeshit in a bad way. Like I said, I have experienced "money mania" in the past and for some reason I now am just letting life come to me and I could care less about material gain. I now keep quiet about my stupid ideas and just make them happen for people to discover rather than parading them around looking for attention. That's partly why I have been hesitant about starting a thread about this. I have always been wildly outspoken about the absurdity of organized religion and honestly have just never understood the whole thing. I always got attention by being the one who fanned the flames and could stay up all night drinking and arguing about god. My thirst for knowledge has cost me alot of friends but within that I am proud that I am at least honest with myself. Rehab and AA really got under my skin because there were alot of people who had been down that road for decades that just chalked themselves up as failures because they just couldn't "stick to the program." Maybe I am just an extreme oddity but I needed almost the exact opposite of what those programs offered to make me healthy. I am really concerned that there are other people out there who are just stuck on that merry-go-round when all they need to do is just jump off, throw away the "big book" and "the bible" and hit the reset button. Tell everyone to go to hell and go off into the proverbial wilderness to save their lives. Nobody needs to take advice from me on anything but Biology but I think there are way too many people who are being written off for dead because they are not embracing their religious life vest (AA, NA, or any other cult). They already know how to swim, and there are many different ways to swim fast. They just need to figure out how to approach the water.

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Who knows what you could have accomplished if you had whacked your head when you were 20?

Head injuries are very dangerous and they can kill you. Glad you weren't injured.

Wish I would have done it 25 years ago

[Wyrd of Gawd]

You gotta start using paragraphs!

[vorlon13]

The character Lionel Cosgrove, in the film Dead Alive, was reborn from his mother's womb as an adult. The scene in the movie did not include religious themes.

So, in fiction at least, the topic has been explored.

[ShaMan]

I was an angry prick for most of my life. Then I started working with plant medicines.
Now I am much more balanced and clean. This alkaloid saved my life.

[The Grand Nudger]

Better watch out with those alkoloids buddy. They can mess you up.

[ShaMan]

Better watch out with those alkoloids buddy. They can mess you up.

Proper respect and moderation are key.
As for the legality of it, well... I'm protected as a member of the NAC

[Faith No More]

I experienced something similar to what you are talking about after finally being able to manage my depression. I think it's a natural reaction when you've dealt with something for so long and finally get it under control. I felt like a completely different person for a while when I stopped feeling depressed on a daily basis, almost as if I had been transported into someone else's mind.