Winter is coming. I can feel it in the cold chill of the morning when I wake up for work and the last echoes of the night are clinging to the coat tails of morning. Sometimes when I wake up I feel a sense of unease or a physical symptom manifesting itself but then I say a gratitude prayer and give thanks that I'm not waking up dopesick or having to use just to drag my broken body out of bed.
I can taste food properly again but, most of all, I can taste my emotions. At first this is a frightening prospect as they tend to pinball around you bumping against the corners of your soul without any regard for whether you want them there or not. This is a blessing not a curse but if you're the sort of person who uses drugs to mask and hide your emotions, it's bound to come as a big shock.
Just recently I relapsed after 3 months clean and this had a devastating effect on my personal life, work life and involved an encounter with the law..again. In the words of my sponsor, I got past the "little fluffy clouds" stage where the relief of being clean began to pass into the cold reality of having to micro manage your life and addiction on a daily basis. Recognising what went wrong when you encounter a relapse is one thing but acting on it and putting things in place to prevent it happening again is another thing altogether.
For me, each relapse feels like a little fragment of my soul comes loose
never to be seen again. I wonder how many pieces I can lose before I
become unable to put myself back together again.
Sometimes your actions result in devastating consequences and the ripple is felt for a long time to come. Other times you fall over and pick yourself up again with not so much fuss. I know that once you start to isolate yourself and believe that the addiction voice is your voice. Well, that's the moment that things truly begin to unravel. And if you don't pick up the phone then relapse becomes more than just a thought but an inevitability.
But what happens when your sponsor isn't available and the feelings of wanting to use begin to cascade and feel like they are taking you over?
Let them.
Sorry, say that again?
Let them.
They are happening for a reason and the more you try to resist them and follow them then the more likely you are to build up the levels of frustration and anger that will make a relapse more than likely.
Yet, a strange thing happens when you sit and observe your thoughts rise and fall like your breath. You start to accept them for what they are. No more and no less. Advocates of mindfulness will know what I am talking about here.
It isn't easy to accept damaging thoughts when your cunning addict brain wants to act on them but one of the paths to recovery is discovering that you have a real choice when it comes to how to look after yourself. A question you might want to ask yourself when in the grip of consuming thoughts about recover is this: Will using drugs make things better for me?
The answer is a resounding "No".
Tuesday 17 December 2013
Thursday 3 October 2013
The fall of the Silk Road: The Aftermath
So, the silk road has fallen and its so called leader, the Dread Pirate Roberts (hereafter referred to as DPR) is in FBI custody awaiting arraignment. I can't help but wonder what the repercussions are of this development in terms of TOR anonymity and security and also how it sits as an incident in the continued spectacular and catastrophic failure of "The War on Drugs".
No doubt the FBI and other involved law enforcement groups are giving themselves a collective slap-on-the-back right now. They did, after all, take down a site that may have generated upwards of $80 million in illegal revenue in the two and a half years it was online. In the process of taking it down it has been reported that they seized $3.6 million in Bitcoins - which may have been DPR's commission earnings from the site. Taking this many coins out of circulation is no small blip especially considering there is a finite supply on the open marketplace. The reality is, however, that this is not a large bust in the grand scheme of things and is designed more to frighten inhabitants of the dark web who think they can discreetly and anonymously involve themselves in illegal trade without consequences. Right now, on the Silk Road forums, a lot of the site's former vendors are scurrying away to the nether regions of the TOR network to lie low or, in some cases, giving up their trade altogether. As for the site's moderators, who were reportedly paid between $1000 and $2000 a week - many have gone into hiding, not surprisingly fearing for their safety.
A lot of questions have arisen now that the news of the bust has settled. Namely, what will the FBI's next move be? They have already taken an image of the site's server and have had this in their possession since July 2013. No doubt they will be examining the server for clues relating to the location of the site's vendors and those who did not encrypt their communications using PGP or Privnote are probably wondering when the knock on the door is coming.
And what about the site buyers? Will the FBI be drilling down into this data and passing on what they find to police authorities across the world or will the sheer task of trying to piece together the ebb and flow of Bitcoin transactions amongst what is estimated to be nearly 1 million users prove too overwhelming and beyond their resources? We can only guess and over time I am sure the picture will become more complete.
It seems that DPR made some catastrophic errors of judgement in terms of concealing his identity, especially in the early days of trying to promote the web site - leading the feds to a simple gmail address and, ultimately, to the identity of the man himself. This seems inconceivable from someone who was so concerned about keeping a tight ship in terms of the site security and safety of its vendors and customers. Why didn't he practice what he preached? Well, to a great extent he probably did but he got sloppy and careless when it came to covering his tracks which lead to his undoing.
As I have already mentioned above, at the time of writing the Silk Road forums are still open and full of confused souls trying to make sense of the fallout from the site's collapse. Questions are being raised as to how truly anonymous the site's transactions were. It is alleged that once an order was marked as shipped by a vendor, the buyer's address was deleted from the server. It is not inconceivable however that this data could be recovered by law enforcement and possibly used to justify a raid or ten. Also, questions are being asked about how truly anonymous you can remain on the darknet as a result of this raid. Although the smartest buyers and vendors encrypted communications using PGP, even the strength of this encryption method is being called into question by some forum users in the current atmosphere of paranoia.
"Maybe the NSA have cracked PGP already?", wrote one user.
"We should be worried," wrote another.
How worried they should be remains open to debate for now. There will always be those who take their digital security so seriously as to be ultra careful when it comes to concealing their online identity and covering their tracks. So much so that it would prove futile, expensive and time consuming to try and uncover them. Unfortunately for the million or so users of the Silk Road, the Dread Pirate Roberts wasn't one of them.
No doubt the FBI and other involved law enforcement groups are giving themselves a collective slap-on-the-back right now. They did, after all, take down a site that may have generated upwards of $80 million in illegal revenue in the two and a half years it was online. In the process of taking it down it has been reported that they seized $3.6 million in Bitcoins - which may have been DPR's commission earnings from the site. Taking this many coins out of circulation is no small blip especially considering there is a finite supply on the open marketplace. The reality is, however, that this is not a large bust in the grand scheme of things and is designed more to frighten inhabitants of the dark web who think they can discreetly and anonymously involve themselves in illegal trade without consequences. Right now, on the Silk Road forums, a lot of the site's former vendors are scurrying away to the nether regions of the TOR network to lie low or, in some cases, giving up their trade altogether. As for the site's moderators, who were reportedly paid between $1000 and $2000 a week - many have gone into hiding, not surprisingly fearing for their safety.
A lot of questions have arisen now that the news of the bust has settled. Namely, what will the FBI's next move be? They have already taken an image of the site's server and have had this in their possession since July 2013. No doubt they will be examining the server for clues relating to the location of the site's vendors and those who did not encrypt their communications using PGP or Privnote are probably wondering when the knock on the door is coming.
And what about the site buyers? Will the FBI be drilling down into this data and passing on what they find to police authorities across the world or will the sheer task of trying to piece together the ebb and flow of Bitcoin transactions amongst what is estimated to be nearly 1 million users prove too overwhelming and beyond their resources? We can only guess and over time I am sure the picture will become more complete.
It seems that DPR made some catastrophic errors of judgement in terms of concealing his identity, especially in the early days of trying to promote the web site - leading the feds to a simple gmail address and, ultimately, to the identity of the man himself. This seems inconceivable from someone who was so concerned about keeping a tight ship in terms of the site security and safety of its vendors and customers. Why didn't he practice what he preached? Well, to a great extent he probably did but he got sloppy and careless when it came to covering his tracks which lead to his undoing.
As I have already mentioned above, at the time of writing the Silk Road forums are still open and full of confused souls trying to make sense of the fallout from the site's collapse. Questions are being raised as to how truly anonymous the site's transactions were. It is alleged that once an order was marked as shipped by a vendor, the buyer's address was deleted from the server. It is not inconceivable however that this data could be recovered by law enforcement and possibly used to justify a raid or ten. Also, questions are being asked about how truly anonymous you can remain on the darknet as a result of this raid. Although the smartest buyers and vendors encrypted communications using PGP, even the strength of this encryption method is being called into question by some forum users in the current atmosphere of paranoia.
"Maybe the NSA have cracked PGP already?", wrote one user.
"We should be worried," wrote another.
How worried they should be remains open to debate for now. There will always be those who take their digital security so seriously as to be ultra careful when it comes to concealing their online identity and covering their tracks. So much so that it would prove futile, expensive and time consuming to try and uncover them. Unfortunately for the million or so users of the Silk Road, the Dread Pirate Roberts wasn't one of them.
Thursday 6 June 2013
Authority figures - Elliott Smith lyrics Part 2
What I find curious when I dive into Elliott Smith's lyrics are the plethora of references to institutions of authority in some way, especially the army or the police. Figure 8 is particularly awash with such references in the form of metaphor or more explicit referrals:
Now I'm a policeman directing traffic
Keeping everything moving, everything static
I'm the hitchhiker you recognize passing
On your way to some everlasting...
(Junk Bond Trader)
This metaphor of a policeman directing traffic reoccurs towards the end of the album in the song "Happiness/The Gondola Man"
Activity's killing the actor
And a cop's standing out in the road
Turning traffic away
Now the title of the album is "Figure 8" and the later reference is probably deliberate as Smith explores the movement of life and the idea of infinity. We can almost imagine this constant flow, constant movement. The policeman in "Junk Bond Trader" is Smith himself, acting as a living contradiction because the traffic is both moving and static, illustrating how we are almost perfect contradictions as human beings. Later on in "Happiness", the traffic is being turned away which could hint at an accident or on a symbolic level an attempt to deflect away from finding the deeper, emotional meaning to the situation at hand. We are not led to understand what truly happened in the song although it touches on regret, and the importance of listening to friends and receiving advice properly when it comes to how to handle an emotional situation. Then Elliott picks up the third party references and transfers them onto his own view of his own mortality and the root of his true desires:
What I used to be will pass away and then you'll see
That all I want now is happiness for you and me
"Happiness" is certainly one of his most moving songs as it reaches us on so many levels and is, for me, one of his best lyrics because it starts off with what seems a simple theme and delves deeper - stretching out to touch our hearts with the final, emotional plea outlined above.
Continued in Part 3 (Coming Soon)
Now I'm a policeman directing traffic
Keeping everything moving, everything static
I'm the hitchhiker you recognize passing
On your way to some everlasting...
(Junk Bond Trader)
This metaphor of a policeman directing traffic reoccurs towards the end of the album in the song "Happiness/The Gondola Man"
Activity's killing the actor
And a cop's standing out in the road
Turning traffic away
Now the title of the album is "Figure 8" and the later reference is probably deliberate as Smith explores the movement of life and the idea of infinity. We can almost imagine this constant flow, constant movement. The policeman in "Junk Bond Trader" is Smith himself, acting as a living contradiction because the traffic is both moving and static, illustrating how we are almost perfect contradictions as human beings. Later on in "Happiness", the traffic is being turned away which could hint at an accident or on a symbolic level an attempt to deflect away from finding the deeper, emotional meaning to the situation at hand. We are not led to understand what truly happened in the song although it touches on regret, and the importance of listening to friends and receiving advice properly when it comes to how to handle an emotional situation. Then Elliott picks up the third party references and transfers them onto his own view of his own mortality and the root of his true desires:
What I used to be will pass away and then you'll see
That all I want now is happiness for you and me
"Happiness" is certainly one of his most moving songs as it reaches us on so many levels and is, for me, one of his best lyrics because it starts off with what seems a simple theme and delves deeper - stretching out to touch our hearts with the final, emotional plea outlined above.
Continued in Part 3 (Coming Soon)
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