Participant #1: Hello Cupcake, it's me, a podcast with your host, Michael Peterson. Participant #1: Hey everyone. Michael here with Hello Cupcake, it's me. A podcast today is maybe May 26, 2022. How are you? So I'm sorry, it's been like such a lapse in me putting up a new podcast. I got sick with Covet and I'll get into that in a minute. But starting off with Trivia, my Tuesday night trivia, we are now back up to third place Bronze Division after suffering a week actually two weeks worth of losses. So we were able to get back up into a good area and we are taking butts and taking names and just having fun doing the whole Rigor Morrow of it all. So, yeah, we're really hoping that we can end out this season at least first place or even migrating up into fourth place Silver Division. So getting into the whole Covet bullshit of it all, I was given an iPad by a lady off of a local community group called Buy Nothing. And if you haven't ever heard of it or whatever, the Buy Nothing project is communities giving within communities to try to cut down on consumerism and just waste or whatever. And you can actually go check it out on the buynothingproject.org. But you go on Facebook and you just type in Buy Nothing and your local area and you'll see like 400 different groups show up, especially if you're in a popular county like Jefferson County or Washington County or something like that. But anyways, the whole idea is you get on there and you ask for an item. So say like, hey guys, I need some new pots and pans. The ones I have are just like no good anymore. So if anyone by chance happens to be getting rid of a good saucepan and a skillet or something, could you please let me know? And then people throughout the community who see that post, they'll go through their stuff or if they have extra, then they will give it to you. And then you just get set up or you set up a pickup arrangement or whatever and you go from there. So a lady gave me an iPad and she shows up and she's like, I have this little tickle in the back of my throat and I don't know what it is. So you may want to disinfect this before you bring it into your house. And I'm like, well, I don't have any lie sale or whatever. So I guess I'll just take my chances. Well, I took my chances and I lost my ass off because within 15 minutes of bringing it into my house, it legit felt like hot rain all over my body. And I was like, no. And this was on the Friday night of the opening weekend of Doctor Strange and the Madness of the Multiverse. Or the Multiverse Madness, however the title is and I was like, well, shit. So being a bad person, I decided that I was going to go ahead and go to the movies or whatever because I still felt good. It was just that weird hot rain tingling sensation all over my whole body. Saturday morning I woke up felt really good still, so I decided to go hang out with my sister and her boyfriend. We went to Walmart and Goodwill and a few other places and I came home Saturday night and then that's when it hit me and I had the most horrendous chills from about 530 in the evening to about two or 300 in the morning. And I checked my temperature throughout the night and the highest my temperature I had ever gotten was like 100.3. So really low grade temp. But having chills and feeling feverish and everything in between was a very novel sensation. So really, from about Sunday morning to Participant #1: this last Monday, I've just been dealing with being sick and all of the stuff going along with Covet and everything else. I've had a telehealth appointment or what have you and it's almost like regardless of what your personal preferences or what you think about the vaccine or what have you. It's almost like I'm being punished for not taking the vaccine because my doctors will not prescribe me any kind of medication whatsoever. Even though I developed a sinus and ear infection and I'm still battling the sinus and ear infection. You might hear that I'm a little nasally right now, but they still won't give me any fucking medication or anything. So I've had to turn to homeopathic treatments and I went in this last Monday or Monday of this week, I should say. And I was like, look, I'm like two weeks into this bullshit, my ear is still clogged, I have the back of my throat is sore. Like do something. No, we're not going to prescribe you any medications because blah, blah, blah blah. So I'm just dealing with it the best that I can right now. But I do feel 100% better. There are some days where I get worn out really quickly and easily. That is one thing that I noticed with this round of Kovage is last time when I had it back in February of 19, it was not as bad as it is this time around. I am sore, I'm consistently tired. It's been unique, but I'm just doing the best I can and living the dream, trying not to wake up. So while I was sick though, in between my bouts of consciousness, I got so bored that I was like, you know what? I'm going to put the iPad to use and I downloaded my online classes so that I could start doing my classes again. And so far since I've gotten the iPad, I have completed three classes on Alison.com and I just now need to come up with the money to finish out the courses by buying the certificates for them and it's £23, which works out to about $30 American. So I got like $90 worth of certificates that I need to try to buy. I've actually been really enjoying taking my classes again. I took a little break and now I want to head into it full force. The next class that I am going to be taking is a mental health class. And I actually have four mental health classes in my queue right now. And I don't know which one I want to start yet. I don't know if I want to start with helping children with childhood trauma. I think another one is like the addicted brain and helping families cope with addiction and a few other things like that. And if you follow me on the YouTube channel, Youtube.com, Hellocupkee gets me. You will see that I come from a drug addicted family. My father was a trash can drug user, meaning that anything that could or would get him high, he would use and my biological egg carton, she is 71 and still using. Participant #1: Addiction studies is one of those things that I'm interested in. And I've also suffered with my own addictions. When I was ten, they gave me a large bottle of volume and told me to take one anytime I was feeling mad or upset or whatever else. And I was completely unsupervised. And I popped those things like Tic TACs. I was taking four or five volume a day and not even realizing what I was doing to myself. And so I became very addicted very quickly. And there's a lot of people that's going to be all like, no, that's not true. Blah, blah, blah. Because when I shared this story before on YouTube, people attacked me and told me how I was lying and all that other stuff. That shit like that didn't happen. And I'm like, okay, you were there. You were there in the 90s when I was a young kid and growing up in a small town. Yeah. Okay. You were there laying next to me in bed while I went through withdrawals. Okay. I didn't remember seeing you there, but you should have said something to me. But yeah. So I was unsupervised with a huge bottle of Volume and I became addicted to it and had to go cold Turkey. And the egg donor didn't explain to me what the hell was going on or why I was in pain and suffering and everything hurt. And when it wasn't hurting, I was sleeping. When I wasn't sleeping, I was literally just having convulsions. And it felt like it went on for days. I honestly have no idea how long it had been. But when I finally got through with it all and I was able to get up and come out into the land of the living, I don't remember much after that for a couple of months, but yeah. So the addiction studies is something that's very interesting to me. The other thing that I want to start taking more classes on is LGBT community issues and, like helping people with their coming out stories or their own abuses and traumas related to being a member of the LGBT community. Participant #1: That's something that's really kind of important to me also, because I've had a lot of gay and lesbian friends, and I actually have a couple of transgender friends. And just listening to their stories and how they dealt with having to live in shame or in fear or consistently self doubting and in some cases, even self harm because of it has really given me a soft spot. And it's something that I want to try to help others with. Even though we live in a time where being gay or lesbian or transgender or queer, gender fluid, gender gender neutral, like whatever, it's still very difficult because there are so many aspects and so many things that a person has to go through. And so that's just something that I really want to kind of focus on helping others with that and just giving them that space to talk about their thoughts and their feelings and what has happened to them and how they feel now versus how they feel then and how they could help. If they could talk to their younger selves, what would they say and just try to help them through the healing process of coming out and coming to terms. So, yeah, those are just some of the classes I have going on. The other thing that I wanted to do is Participant #1: I don't know how I can actually do it, but it's a discussion that needs to be made with everyone involved. Like, we need to destigmatize mental health and seeking help when we feel like we're at our edge. Over the last few years, we've had so many shootings in schools, in clubs, in places of worship, you name it, we've had it. And just recently there was the Texas shooting where the kid went and legally purchased guns and stuff and killed his grandmother and then went to a school and I think killed 14 or 19 people total, including faculty members and stuff like that before he was shot and killed. We need to figure out what is causing this. And a lot of people are just going to automatically jump on the well, we need to have stricter gun control laws and we need to have this. We need to have that, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, no, limiting access to legally obtaining firearms and stuff like that isn't going to stop people from getting the firearms. I mean, look at the whole war on drug issue. Like, drugs were outlawed, made illegal, so on and so forth. Yet we still have drugs within our community coming into the country all the time. All it's going to do by limiting access to gun control or like placing gun control or limiting access to being able to purchase firearms, is it's going to make criminals of otherwise law abiding citizens. Participant #1: It's a tragedy. My heart goes out to all the people who have been lost in these senseless violence, but they're not senseless violence. There was a reason that this kid snapped. And that's the thing that we got to do. We got to find out what has caused this. Sorry, guys. Participant #1: Being somebody who deals with mental health issues and is a legal gun owner, I find it reprehensible that mental health is not taken seriously in this country. Participant #1: I've been trying to get some kind of mental health help for the last few months, because up until just recently, as far back as October of this last year, I was not doing well. I was in a very, very dark place. It may not have come across on my videos or in my blog postings or whatever, but I was in a seriously dark place and had thought about all kinds of horrible things. And one of my mental health diagnosis is suicidal idealation. Participant #1: And I hate to say that about myself, but I legitimately fantasize about committing suicide. And because this is still Suicide Awareness month, I want to bring that up. And there's times where I'm in the deepest depths of my darkness, and I just think to myself, would anyone actually fucking miss me if I was to just kill myself right now? How long would it be before somebody came to one check on me? Like, how long would my body just lay there decomposing before I would be found? Would my cat start to eat me? And would they be mad at my cat and hurt him and get rid of him because I wasn't there to feed him anymore? And so the logical conclusion is, hey, this is a food source for me. They don't know any better. So I just start thinking about stuff like that, and then that brings up past traumas and past things that have happened, and that has just caused, like, all kinds of things in my life. And then it just gets harder and harder for me to pull out of that depressive cycle. So not having access to mental health is something that really needs to be addressed. I mean, you can get a pill to get an erection faster than you can find somebody to provide you with help because you're feeling a certain sort of way about something. And I think that's where we need to start is reforming the mental health system and reforming the stigma that is attached to people trying to get help. So just some food for thought. And I know I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for saying this or whatever, but I have lost people to gun violence. I've been shot at. I've actually been shot by a low caliber gun, but I've been shot at. I've lost family members to gun violence. I've lost family members to drunk drivers. I've lost family members to drugs. So I'm coming from a place of understanding and knowing what it is, July 3 would have been my cousin Jesse's 41st birthday and he was killed by his mother who was mentally ill. My cousin Jesse had his own mental health problems but my aunt Bonnie, she shot and killed him. It was quite by accident and it was in the heat of the moment when they were yelling and screaming at each other like they normally did and Participant #1: a guy who was staying with them happened to have a gun and my aunt Bonnie just said, you know, I swear to God if I had a gun right now I'd shoot you. And the dude pulled his gun out, threw it at her and she pulled the trigger in a moment of anger and rage and just being off kilter and killed her son. And when she realized what she had done, she went even crazier and it didn't stop us from loving her because we understood the mental side of it, did we mourn my cousin being gone? Of course we did. His sister took it really hard and she stopped talking to her mom after that and I don't know if they ever had a chance to resolve anything before her mom passed away but it's one of those things that just I understand. Anyways, guys, I'm going to close it off so if you have any questions, comments, concerns please put them in the comments section down below and until next time I will talk to you all later. Thank you so much for tuning in. You have been listening to hello cupcake, it's me a podcast with your host Michael Peterson. Please make sure to check back often as new episodes are released. Biweekly if you have any questions, comments or concerns please feel free to send a message to hellocupcakeitsme@gmail.com and until next time stay happy, safe and keep doing the best you can with what you have been given. Bye.