Chest pain throwing up

Most people still don't know the essence of meditation practice. They think that walking meditation, sitting meditation and listening to Dhamma talks are the practice. That's true too, but these are only the outer forms of practice. The real practice takes place when the mind encounters a sense object. That's the place to practice, where sense contact occurs. When people say things we don't like there is resentment, if they say things we like we experience pleasure. Now this is the place to practice. How are we going to practice with these things? This is the crucial point. If we just run around chasing after happiness and away from suffering all the time we can practice until the day we die and never see the Dhamma. This is useless. When pleasure and pain arise how are we going to use the Dhamma to be free of them? This is the point of practice.
Usually when people encounter something disagreeable to them they don't open up to it. Such as when people are criticized: "Don't bother me! Why blame me?" This is someone who's closed himself off. Right there is the place to practice. When people criticize us we should listen. Are they speaking the truth? We should be open and consider what they say. Maybe there is a point to what they say, perhaps there is something blame-worthy within us. They may be right and yet we immediately take offense. If people point out our faults we should strive to be rid of them and improve ourselves. This is how intelligent people will practice.
Where there is confusion is where peace can arise. When confusion is penetrated with understanding what remains is peace. Some people can't accept criticism, they're arrogant. Instead they turn around and argue. This is especially so when adults deal with children. Actually children may say some intelligent things sometimes but if you happen to be their mother, for instance, you can't give in to them. If you are a teacher your students may sometimes tell you something you didn't know, but because you are the teacher you can't listen. This is not right thinking.
In the Buddha's time there was one disciple who was very astute. At one time, as the Buddha was expounding the Dhamma, he turned to this monk and asked, "Sariputta, do you believe this?" Venerable Sariputta replied, "No, I don't yet believe it." The Buddha praised his answer. "That's very good, Sariputta, you are one who us endowed with wisdom. One who is wise doesn't readily believe, he listens with an open mind and then weighs up the truth of that matter before believing or disbelieving."
Now the Buddha here has set a fine example for a teacher. What Venerable Sariputta said was true, he simply spoke his true feelings. Some people would think that to say you didn't believe that teaching would be like questioning the teacher's authority, they'd be afraid to say such a thing. They'd just go ahead and agree. This is how the worldly way goes. But the Buddha didn't take offense. He said that you needn't be ashamed of those things which aren't wrong or bad. It's not wrong to say that you don't believe if you don't believe. That's why Venerable Sariputta said, "I don't yet believe it." The Buddha praised him. "This monk has much wisdom. He carefully considers before believing anything." The Buddha's actions here are a good example for one who is a teacher of others. Sometimes you can learn things even from small children; don't cling blindly to positions of authority.
Whether you are standing, sitting, or walking around in various places, you can always study the things around you. We study in the natural way, receptive to all things, be they sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings or thoughts. The wise person considers them all. In the real practice, we come to the point where there are no longer any concerns weighing on the mind.
If we still don't know like and dislike as they arise, there is still some concern in our minds. If we know the truth of these things, we reflect, "Oh, there is nothing to this feeling of liking here. It's just a feeling that arises and passes away. Dislike is nothing more, just a feeling that arises and passes away. Why make anything out of them?" If we think that pleasure and pain are personal possessions, then we're in for trouble, we never get beyond the point of having some concern or other in an endless chain. This is how things are for most people.
…
The practice of dhamma isn't something you have to go running around for or exhaust yourself over. Just look at the feelings which arise in your mind. When the eye sees form, ear hears sounds, nose smells odors and so on, they all come to this one mind, "the one who knows." Now when the mind perceives these things what happens? If we like that object we experience pleasure, if we dislike it we experience displeasure. That's all there is to it.
So where are you going to find happiness in this world? Do you expect everybody to say only pleasant things to you all your life? Is that possible? No, it's not. If it's not possible then where are you going to go? The world is simply like this, we must know the world — Lokavidu — know the truth of this world. The world is something we should clearly understand. The Buddha lived in this world, he didn't live anywhere else. He experienced family life, but he saw its limitations and detached himself from them. Now how are you as laypeople going to practice? If you want to practice you must make an effort to follow the path. If you persevere with the practice you too will see the limitations of this world and be able to let go.
…
These days giving talks tends to be like this, and it's getting worse all the time. People don't search for truth, they study simply to find the necessary knowledge to make a living, raise families and look after themselves. They study for a livelihood. There may be some study of Dhamma, but not much. Students nowadays have much more knowledge than students of previous times. They have all the requisites at their disposal, everything is more convenient. But they also have a lot more confusion and suffering than before. Why is this? Because they only look for the kind of knowledge used to make a living.
Even the monks are like this. Sometimes I hear them say, "I didn't become a monk to practice the Dhamma, I only ordained to study." These are the words of someone who has completely cut off the path of practice. There's no way ahead, it's a dead end. When these monks teach it's only from memory. They may teach one thing but their minds are in completely different place. Such teachings aren't true.
This is how the world is. If you try to live simply, practicing the Dhamma and living peacefully, they say you are weird and anti-social. They say you're obstructing progress in society. They even intimidate you. Eventually you might even start to believe them and revert to the worldly ways, sinking deeper and deeper into the world until it's impossible to get out. Some people say, "I can't get out now, I've gone in to deeply." This is how society tends to be. It doesn't appreciate the value of Dhamma.
The value of Dhamma isn't to be found in books. those are just the external appearances of Dhamma, they're not the realization of Dhamma as a personal experience. If you realize the Dhamma you realize your own mind, you see the truth there. When the truth becomes apparent it cuts off the stream of delusion.
…
Suppose there was a cart being pulled by an ox. The wheels aren't long, but the tracks are. As long as the ox pulls the cart the tracks will follow. The wheels are round yet the tracks are long; the tracks are long yet the wheels are merely circles. Just looking at a stationary cart you can't see anything long about it, but once the ox starts moving you see the tracks stretching out behind you. As long as the ox pulls, the wheels keep on turning... but there comes a day when the ox tires and throws off its harness. The ox walks off and leaves the empty cart sitting there. The wheels no longer turn. In time the cart falls apart, its components go back into the four elements — earth, water, wind and fire.
Searching for peace within the world you stretch the cart wheel tracks endlessly behind you. As long as you follow the world there is no stopping, no rest. If you simply stop following it, the cart comes to rest, the wheels no longer turn. Following the world turns the wheels ceaselessly. Creating bad kamma is like this. As long as you follow the old ways there is no stopping. If you stop there is stopping. This is how we practice the Dhamma.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ati/lib/thai/chah/living.html#living

Played multiple Turbo games tonight, and I immediately noticed Kunkka doesn't feel right. Hot take, but this may be the worst Kunkka has ever felt to me in a long time.
What I noticed during my DotA session tonight:

• I felt less tanky overall throughout the entire game. Was dying quicker to enemy heroes in my Turbo games, with my usual tanky builds. It was a bit shocking to see Kunkka folding like a piece of wet tissue paper against Drow / Sniper when I'm six slotted. I suppose it'll take some time getting used to this, and I'll have to be more careful on approaching enemies within my melee range.
• X-marks felt worse to use in general. Teleporting with it to go back to fountain to regen full health / mana, defending other towers being pushed, or general X shenanigans all feel way more restricted now and sluggish. It's like they want you to go Boots of Travels or blink dagger to utilize the new X-Marks properly. The only time X-Marks felt "good" tonight was during one turbo match where I had Boots of Travel 2. Every other game where I didn't have Boots of Travel 2, X-Marks just felt annoying to use.
• Years and years of muscle memory on X-Marks for perfectly timed Ghost Ship combos were throwing me off. I used to count the X-Mark tick sound effects in my head, and time perfect Ghost Ships. Feels like this has been completely removed. You HAVE to cast X-Marks and then IMMEDIATELY do Ghost Ship. I really dislike how they removed the depth that X-Mark -> Ghost Ship had before. I suppose they want anyone to be able to do Ghost Ship into X now since no muscle memory or elaborate timing is required to "do it" with currently how it is. Also against opponents who have any status resistance, you can never combo X-Marks into Ghost Ship. I guess this was "intended" to add an option to completely counter and nullify the dreaded Kunkka combo.
• Now let's discuss the cool new innate abilities so many heroes got. Kunkka's "new" innate ability is literally a worse version of his Level 1 Tidebringer... It's almost like other heroes got cool and interesting innate abilities, whereas Kunkka purposely didn't get one because they either couldn't think of anything interesting for him, or because he has scepter and other things have to be bad for his Torrent Storm to exist.

Time to address the elephant in the room, I wish they never gave him that braindead scepter upgrade a while ago. I think them giving him that Torrent Storm ability was the day any interesting future for Kunkka regarding gameplay depth was immediately killed. Instead of them removing his aghs, and reworking Kunkka to be a more interesting hero with a brand new aghs that fits his creative style, they doubled down and want to nerf everything around Kunkka's entire kit for the sole purpose of keeping his mindless Torrent Storm aghs.
Please get rid of his Torrent Storm. Give him a new aghs that isn't mindless, that forces the devs to overall limit Kunkka's entire kit because his current aghs is just snooze-fest designed with generic power.
Kunkka has so much potential to be a super fun, interestingly designed, and execution based hero with tons of depth and a high skill ceiling behind it. Ever since his Torrent Storm aghs was introduced, I saw the hero's skill ceiling plummeting, and now they're starting to slowly normalize and tone Kunkka down in all the unique aspects that he's had.
Here's some ideas that I think are cool and can be interesting to give Kunkka in the future, as someone who has poured two decades of time playing this hero since DotA 1:

• His shard is amazing. Make his shard his new scepter. Shard becoming scepter would make it become vector targeted for usage flexibility, have increased damage, and have it toggleable where you can choose to push enemies or allies. With this implementation it already has 10x more depth than his current aghs, and would be WAY more fun to use. You can also ride and surf the Tidal wave with Kunkka if you have auto-cast selected. Would be ton of fun using it as an escape to get up a cliff or make some jukes.
• Make his new shard instantly summon a small wooden post with a Tidehunter doll on it or a Treasure Chest right in front of where Kunkka is currently facing. (can be various different pirate-themed props) This can have a 45 second cooldown, and lasts 6 seconds before it disappears. What does this post do? It's basically an object similar to the training dummy doll in demo hero mode. Kunkka can right click it to activate his Tidebringer and splash enemies in radius behind it. Allies or enemies can also use it to attack or target it with spells. Think of the fun interesting ways you could use this for a bunch of different plays, it also synergies so well with Kunkka's abilities. I can write more on this ability if anyone wants me to elaborate.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my Kunkka rant. I know they added the new Grog Blossom facet that lets him dose allies in rum. Tried it one turbo game and it made me feel like this is more suited for support style Kunkka. And I generally wouldn't be opposed to trying more support Kunkka if it wasn't an instant-report and team yelling at me on the mic when ever I try to humor the idea for a possible POS 4 Kunkka pick. Support Kunkka just hasn't really worked ever since they massacred level 1 X-Marks the spot cooldown many years ago. I'm not sure how "useful" this new facet will be when his other facet seems more reliable as a mid or offlane player. Also in terms of his new damage buff to Tidebringer, I enjoy that they got rid of his old useless level 25 talent, however the current Tidebringer doesn't seem as strong late game after using it in multiple Turbo games. It's slightly noticeable, but I don't think "right click physical damage dealer" Kunkka is coming back over the aghs spell Torrent Storm abusing style.
In closing, Kunkka feels overall worse in pretty much every aspect now. He's still doing the super boring "make aghs for Torrent Storm" with tanky items and not much has changed in terms of load out flexibility and interesting play styles. I really hope they rework Kunkka in the future, remove his Torrent Storm, and make the hero fun to play like he once was. He's still my favorite hero in DotA, but the notion of what "Kunkka" has become in 2024 has been sorrowfully disappointing. And as long as he keeps his dreaded Torrent Storm, the future of a fun-style Kunkka looks grim.

(TRIGGER WARNING)
I don't normally share personal stories on my socials, but I wanted to get this off my chest to spiritual kind of people. Feel free to skip if you're not interested, but I just want to commemorate him in some way. This will be long.
His name was Rocky. We're not too sure what happened but he went from eating regularly one day to not eating at all. We were told to monitor his food intake 24-48 hrs and he passed the next day.
We found him in January, thrown out of a car on the side of the road along with his sister Sophie. Their whiskers were cut, they were bone thin, flea ridden and maybe a month or two old. Sophie let us grab her, but Rocky hid under a nearby shed for two-three days. We left food out for him and he eventually came out of hiding. Sophie warmed up to us quickly, the social butterfly, but Rocky hid, scared of everything and everyone. He hid until his last day.
We tried to get him to relax like Sophie. We ate lunch with him, sitting on the ground, we tried getting him toys, tried bringing him in our room to lay with us. He would watch us from a distance, flinching when we got up or moved too quickly. Eventually he wanted to stay outside, his only comfort the ray of sunshine that is Sophie.
I found him under the porch this afternoon after spending the morning looking for him. Yesterday we brought him inside to enjoy the AC and cool water. He let my spouse grab him. He was wrapped up in a blanket and let us pet him. Looking back, it feels like accepting our love was his way of saying goodbye. We only had him for 4 months and I hate that we couldn't get him to feel safe enough to play around with us. I feel like he stayed scared the whole time we had him, even though we tried to make him feel accepted and loved.
We buried him by the tree line on our property. We took the opportunity to talk to our kids about the cycle of life. How we return to the earth once we die in some capacity. He is buried in the soil to become grass and hopefully flowers one day. One by one, we dropped in a handful of dirt and watched as my spouse covered the hole completely. My children are still very young and this is their first real introduction to the concept of death. They're asking questions that are hard to answer, but it's a great moment to reconnect to my thought process and share my beliefs with them. I don't care if they follow my path, but it was nice to talk to them about something that would "normally" be explained away with heaven.
I find solace in the fact that he didn't suffer long. I'm still processing what's happened; it was somewhat sudden. I wish we took him to a vet instead of waiting like they said. We still don't know quite what happened. We can speculate he may have eaten something he wasn't supposed to, but we aren't even entirely sure that's what transpired.
We are coping by pouring all our love into Sophie. We set up a spot for her inside. Her crate is positioned across from us in bed, but she is currently asleep at our feet. I'm so sad Rocky is gone, but I take comfort that he is no longer in pain and no longer scared. Wherever he went, he is free from his fear and can accept our love as we send it out into the universe.
Every full moon I try to reflect on the last cycle of my life and what it has taught me. What all is the full moon shining it's light on in my life? I have a side gig that has me particularly busy this week after months of production that has gradually increased. We have dealt with some problems with our kid in school that I feel like we are handling well. I've spent some much needed personal time in a way I haven't in years and lastly I have lost Rocky. As awful as it is, it has brought my spouse and I closer. This is our first pet together that we have attempted to nurture and now lost. He will always hold a special place in our hearts. I will think of him when I see wind rolling over an open field of grass. How regal he looked taking in the breeze while the rest of us played 30 ft from him. I will miss his physical presence.
Goodbye, my sweet boy 💙

Hello everyone, first I want to clarify why I'm posting so much in this sub: I relapsed, and with that, incel thoughts are coming back and I feel like the people here are the only one that can understand me because the people here know about all the incel ideology (I try to not self-identify as an incel, though). I'm sorry if this post feels more as a vent than a post asking for advice, but my emotions have been really heavy these days.
Also, factually I know it's unlikely that I kill myself because I'm truly scared of death, but suicide is an impulsive action and I'm scared that one day I'll just jump out of a building and die out of an action taken under emotional influence.
Since I posted for the first time here I've tried really hard to change my life. I started working out, eating healthy, studying more, being more social, talking more, smiling more, trying affirmations, everything, but suicidal fantasies are back again.
Last night I had a dream where I was really tall and muscular, I felt so strong and attractive, and girls were talking to me. Then, I woke up. As soon as I woke up I looked at myself in the mirror and I felt so physically inferior that I felt physically sick when I saw myself, I was disgusted. On top of that, this dream made me remember when I was in middle school and two guys taller than me used to bully me and make fun of me all the time. I met the first kid in 2nd grade, he was maybe 5'8 when I was 4'11, he was fucking violent, he used to punch me and the teachers, make fun of me and manipulate people so he wouldn't have consequences. I wouldn't exaggerate if I said he didn't have a single bit of empathy within him. I met my other bully in 7th grade and he was both annoying and violent. He used to make fun of me because I'm of arabic descent so he would say that I was a terrorist or a bomb or something, he used to punch me in the ribs really hard and be on my ass all the time just yelling and punching me on my back or my chest. I consider these experiences a factor that induces my insecurities.
I have this feeling of being physically inferior, like I'm just a weak short guy that is a mistake of nature that shouldn't have been born. I've been trying to be rational about this, that in the modern world I can defend myself due to some self-defense objects or someone could help me, but nothing can get me out of the mentioned conclusion: I'm categorically physically inferior than a taller man. The fact that a taller man can just pick me up and murder me in a second if he wants to makes me feel uneasy.
This, as I said, makes me feel like a mistake, and makes me fantasize and consider suicide as an escape of my inferiority.
The thought of not being as privileged as a tall attractive man kills me in the inside and makes me feel like a worthless piece of shit.
I feel like crying most of the time, I can feel my eyes watering all day, I feel emotionally destroyed and just exhausted of everything: my emotional state, the unfairness of life, the fact that some people are just born with the right genes and have an easier and bullying-free life, the halo effect, the bullying I went through, it's just like a massive spiral of negative thoughts and traumatic memories.
Whenever I'm at a place with a considerable height, I think of just throwing myself and dying so I wouldn't have to fight with all of the things in my life anymore. I also imagine myself blowing my brains off pretty often (even though I don't have access to guns, so I wouldn't consider these thoughts dangerous).
I don't know what to do, I tried to abstain from social media, to be kinder, to be healthier, to be smarter, but I can't, I genuinely can't go much longer with this hopelessness.
I would be grateful if you decide to leave some advice on how to manage all of this. Even though I appreciate the intention when people suggest therapy, in my current situation it's not available, so I can't manage to treat this clinically.

I am a 58-year-old male - culturally Greek, raised in Australia, migrated to the U.S. and have lived in NYC for over 20 years now. My parents raised my two older sisters – 9.5 years older with 3 children and 4 years older with two daughters, and myself, the only son and youngest of three, Down Under. I left my family in Australia upon moving to NYC in 2004 with my partner. It was tough leaving them behind because as dysfunctional as we were, we all loved each other.
Unfortunately, in the 8 year lead up to the pandemic – first, I lost my father to colon cancer; 2 years later my beautiful mother to vascular dementia; 2 years after that my 14 year marriage dissolved after my partner admitted he had been having an affair with a work colleague for several months; 1.5 years after that my middle sister and dear friend died from a brain aneurysm; followed by my eldest sister who died of lung cancer the following year.
I fell so ill from stress that I developed severe IBS and had to have emergency surgery. I thought I was going to die. If that wasn’t enough, I hadn’t even healed when I caught COVID; lost my job a few weeks later; and, then I managed to survived a home invasion during which I was assaulted and threatened with a knife but, somehow, I managed to get the two criminals out of my space in 7.5 minutes, without a single item stolen. I’ve been through a lot but I’ve always battled through.
My middle sister had two daughters, M1 aged 40, and M2 aged 38. Until my sister passed away in early 2018, I had a great relationship with M1. I was always there to support as she tended toward “unlucky in love” and was also diagnosed with lupus over a decade ago. Her mother and I were always solid support for her, and she would speak to me about any personal problem.
Her younger sister M2 is a very different character and was I was unable to build as strong a relationship – it was not purposeful nor deliberate. I made attempts and managed to get closer to her after she was married but she always tended to be more distant. As hard as I tried, M1 & I sensed that she somewhat resented my relationship with her older sister.
After my sister passed away suddenly aged only 56, we were all devastated. I flew in from NYC and was in Australia for 9 days for the funeral. I spent 7 of the 9 days with my brother-in-law (BIL) - a good man – and my two nieces M1 & M2. It was an emotionally draining stay, with a relentless stream of visitors to pay their respects.
I spent the other 2 days house-sitting for a dear friend which I gladly accepted to secure some peace and solitude. I slept at least 16-18 hours on each day. Upon returning to my BIL’s home for my final two days, M1 approached me and asked to speak to me outside in their back yard. She proceeded to tell me how very disappointed she was in me; that she felt I was an “absent mourner" and not supporting her in her grief in the way she expected; I was also not grieving "appropriately," and that her mother /my sister would be disappointed.
I had travelled 24 hours, in a blur, halfway across the globe to bury my sister and was now receiving bereavement advice from my niece. I told her to quit with the nonsense and that she should mourn her mother any way she likes, but she is not to tell me how I should conduct myself when I’m grieving.
Her voice quickly escalated, and she proceeded to then scream at the top of her voice about how disgusting I was that I wasn’t “there” to respect her mother; and be there for her. I reminded M1 that her mother, was also my sister and I knew her for a whole lot longer than she did. I also reminded her that staying for 7 of 9 days with her, does not constitute “being absent” in anybody’s language.
It was midnight, she continued to scream, yell, abuse me with neighbors being woken up on all sides. I stood up and decided to leave and not put up with her bullshit any longer. I walked inside and caught her sister, M2, ears to the door, listening to everything … and it made me realize they were bothin on this effort to publicly “dress me down”.
M2 proceeded to "stand with her sister" and yell at me, too. I was seriously flabbergasted by their accusations. My BIL certainly did not feel the same way and he told the girls to explain to him what their problem was!?! If there was a real problem – he should be the first to be complaining about me. Their anger and resentment was shocking, inexplicable and totally unfounded. I flew home to NYC two days later devastated not just at losing my beautiful sister - but at my nieces’ disgraceful performance.
In November 2020, I flew back to Australia to visit family for the holiday season as COVID enveloped the globe. I struggled to feel fully comfortable with my nieces, and one thing is for sure: they never apologized to me for their outburst at me less than two years prior. This time it was the festive season and I decided to stay some of the time at BIL's house. Upon arriving, I was shocked - the house was spotlessly clean, as my sister liked to keep it, and everything in the house was unchanged - everything was in the exact same spot, as the day my sister died. I was concerned, M1 was clearly struggling, not dealing with her mother’s death. Even her father, my BIL had started casually dating another woman, and I threw support behind him which he appreciated. M1, on the other hand, was vehemently against this, and refused to give her father’s new relationship her blessing.
Eventually, the inevitable happened – M1 starts to relay a story that I recognized as my own, and after a few erroneous details, I reminded her of the facts that she was actually deviating from. She literally exploded for not allowing her to relay my story… incorrectly.
Yet again, her screams and anger were so loud, that I actually saw neighbors peering over their fencing. She screamed at me to leave "her house" and that I was the devil. (I need to add here that both nieces became born again Evangelical Christians.) I reminded her that the house belonged to my sister & BIL, and she had no authority over whether I stay or not.
Her screams & verbal attack, (the second one now), was so loud, aggressive, and her enraged face so red, that she looked unhinged. I went to grab a mug to make a coffee and get as far away from her as I could. As my hand reached into the cupboard for a mug, she used the cupboard door to p.a. me I saw stars.I stared at her in shock and said: "You just p.a. your mother's brother," at which she just screamed even louder
My BIL arrived shortly after and I told him that I needed to leave. I gave him the facts and then told him: "She doesn't support your new relationship - not because its "too soon" - but because she's miserable and unhappy… and she begrudges anyone their happiness - it eats away at her." She screamed at him to throw me out until he yelled "Shut up!" at her. She then called us both devils and stormed into her room.
Now, a brief focus on M2. It was summer 2017, and M2 was due in November with her second child. Her husband is American and M2 moved here from Australia and were living in the Midwest. I attempted to build a closeness with her since she was living in the US. During a call to her in July 2017, she invited me for Thanksgiving that year to be with her family, as well as see her mothemy sister and BIL who were spending several weeks there to welcome their new grandchild.
I was so excited. I even told M2 that I would stay at a nearby hotel, so as not to burden them with a newborn at home. A few weeks prior to Thanksgiving, I called to confirm my dates, etc., and without missing a beat, she proceeds to tell me that it is now all too much for her and she retracted her invitation …I was dis-invited. I sat there in silence, in shock.
I had discretely asked my sister several weeks prior, whether she would consider visiting NYC with my BIL, even for a weekend, as they were going to be with M2 for over 6 weeks and were so close!
She said to me, "Do you think we haven't thought of that? We'd love to come to come to NYC and see you. But we'll never hear the end of it from ‘you-know-who’."
So, I spent Thanksgiving on my own, with no family in NYC, less than 1.5 hours flying time away from a warm, festive house that contained M2, her family, my BIL and my dear sister.
Less than 3 months later … my sister was dead. And I never got a chance to see her one last time.
That opportunity was taken from me without so much as an "I'm sorry that I did that to you." In fact, I never received an apology from either M1 nor M2 for all the things they did to me.
When I got back to NYC from the disastrous Aussie trip, M2 refused to communicate with me any further, so I knew M1 had been in her ear about our fallout and likely never even mentioned the p.a. I contacted her and mentioned that minimally, I expected her to at least hear me out.
Her response???
"In my experience, I would describe you the same way my sister would, so I tend to believe her, and my role now is to protect my family."
I replied, "What, so your family is in danger now? From me?!"
She curtly wrote: "I wish to focus on my family, my sister, and the Lord." ...or something to that effect.
I can genuinely, authentically state that I still have no idea why they turned so viciously nasty, so vindictive, and without sounding too dramatic – so evil towards me. I have my other nieces, family, friends to back me up wholeheartedly. It was ironic to me that the two evangelicals ended up being so mean-spirited, and emotionally abusive.
I knew I had to make a big decision, so I sought the counsel of some wonderful loved ones in my inner circle, and their guidance was unanimous: walk away from the toxicity. I knew I had no other choice. I have not spoken to my two nieces for four years now.
My Question: have others walked away from toxic family members and how did they have dealt with any sadness, grief, hurt, pain, etc that they may experience??

Hi. I’m a 28-year-old female with asthma. Steroid medicine helped me breathe and stopped my wheezing for about four months. However, in the past few weeks, I've been coughing a lot. The other night, I coughed up blood twice. At first, I thought it was just my gums bleeding, but it was from my cough. The second time happened five hours later. Last night, I coughed more often with blood, but it was less blood than the night before. It's more phlegm than blood. I also have a minimal lightning pain in my chest, near my right breast. Any thoughts? I’m going to the doctor this Friday, but your opinion/experience would be helpful.

So this, this takes a lot of contextual details into account, so strap in.
I (27F) have a brother, (33M). The age gap between us is relevant. Growing up, I just wanted to be friends with my brother, he was one of my favorite people in the world even if he did bully me sometimes.
I'm going to provide some examples of his treatment.
When I was about three, he came into my room after I had been put to bed, wearing a mask and holding a butter knife above me. Still afraid of masks to this day.
He would always drink every pitcher of something I made and never make any after finishing it. Sometimes I wouldn't even get a glass. My mom was busy fostering other kids and didn't have time for 'petty squabbles'. Once, I spit in the top of the pitcher and left the lid off so he could see it. He yanked away the bowl of cereal I was eating and spit in it, shoving it back so hard some spilled on me. I had just hit preteen age and was really sick of just taking his crap, so I splashed it back at him. He threw me to the ground and started hitting me. My mom heard the fighting and told us we were both at fault, so he never got punished.
One time, my parents busted him with drugs. There was a screaming match and he was only home from college for the holidays. Once he left, I felt safe to come out of my room again and was at the dining room table drawing or doing winter break worksheets or something. I think I was around 14. My brother came back in and got something from the kitchen before going back down to his room in the basement, but he said some snarky comment to me before going down. I hadn't even said anything or made a noise to warrant it. What I said in turn was 'At least I don't do drugs.' The next second, I was pulled up by my neck and my brother slammed me into the wall. Things are kind of foggy, but my next memory is waking up on the floor and crying for our parents. I'm not really sure what the punishment for that was. I think he just left and went back to college early to avoid it.
After the fight this post is actually about, I learned from my mom that he actively denied that this ever happened. I was really traumatized about it. The drug he claimed to be on became an almost catastrophic trigger. I would feel hands on my throat and the darkness closing in again at the mere mention of it, it could send me into a panic attack. I've gotten better about my reaction to it, but I still refuse to have it anywhere around me or in my life. It's a socially accepted drug, so it's cost me more than a few relationships. When I heard he denied it, I looked at my mom and said, how many times have I lied versus him? And why would I make up something like that? She's seen the reactions. I broke up with a guy I really liked because he refused to keep it away from me. If I saw a scene in a TV show when it was more recent, I would curl up into a ball and couldn't talk, my throat felt so tight, I just cried. I'd like to know how or why I would have faked reactions like that. She never really believed him since he was known to lie, but it was still appalling he tried to lie about something so severe.
And that's not all! Once, my mom kicked him out when she snapped at him for his dog hurting our dogs and he called her a bitch, living rent free with our parents at 27 after failing through college due to partying. My mom had enough and told him to get out. He texted me and asked if he could stay with me for the night, despite me being away at college 2 hours from our town. I didn't think my mom did anything wrong, but I couldn't bring myself to leave him alone like that. I still loved him, even after all that up there.
So I said yes. I lived in an apartment near campus with a roommate, and we each had our own bedroom and ensuite bathroom, plus the kitchenette and a living room we shared. I had a 'friend' at the time- I asked him if he could possibly bring some booze over for my brother, giving a quick run down of the situation, and he agreed that yeah, the man probably needed a drink (I wasn't old enough to purchase alcohol, so I asked him). All three of us hung out on the porch to make sure we didn't disturb my roommate until around 3 AM, where my brother's drunk comments are making me really uncomfortable so my 'friend' suggests we head to bed, since we have class in the morning, too. Friend regularly sleeps with me in my bed, so its not an issue. And I cleared the couch in the shared living room with my roommate before I told my brother it was okay. So I go in first, change into pajamas, and then let my brother in to do all the bathroom stuff he needed before bed. I'm laying down and half asleep when I'm yanked out of bed by my arm and forcibly pushed through my own door, my brother demanding my bed. 'Friend' gently stood up for me and reminded him that I was already being generous by letting him stay at all, he could at least respect me. My brother did not like that. He started slurring angry stuff at both of us and collecting his dog's toys, saying that he'll just drive all the way home if I'm going to be like this. This is after he consumed like, half a bottle of fireball. So that was NOT happening. I'm standing in the way of the front door and blocking it once my brother finally finds his keys and he starts pulling me away and hurting me. 'Friend' tackled him and pinned him to the ground in an old highschool wrestling hold. I snatch the keys and run into the kitchenette, remove the sink filter, and hold the keys close in case I have to throw them down the drain in desperation. My brother is screaming and hurling insults left and right and I'm deeply traumatized already because of his violence towards me and from the vitriol just makes me cry really hard. My roommate knows I'm quiet and the noise wakes her up and she asks what the hell is going on. I try to explain but I'm basically in hysterics and 'friend' explains for me, while calmly still pinning my brother. Roomie was in nursing school and turned on the Nurse Voice immediately to address my brother. She tells him she just lost a friend to a drunk driver, and it is not responsible to drive in this state. She'll perform sobriety tests periodically and when he passes, he can go. And if he continues and tries to leave, she will call the cops on him for drunk driving, and my 'friend' and I could probably tell the cops about the violence, too. Around 5 AM he was finally sober enough to pass and his last words to me were 'I hope you fucking like mom and dad, because we aren't family anymore'. It shattered me.
He didn't talk to me for 2 years.
I got presents when I came home on my birthday and christmas from him during that time, and my parents said he was busy working and left the presents early with them, he was still annoyed but we were family. I believed it. I later realized that my parents were lying and covering up for him because they knew it would have broken my heart.
At some point after that, he started turning himself around. He never really apologized for any of the things he did to me. But I let him back into my life anyway, because I loved him, and I had always wanted my brother to be my friend. Our family is really small. I was just happy to jump at the chance to hang out with him again. He ended up with a girlfriend and he bought a house where they both stayed, so I finally had a place to actually visit him since he had been more or less couch surfing until then. I was so excited. My brother was older and more mature, and he had his own house now! We could finally be close!
Obviously... That wasn't how things turned out.
Why exactly none of us like his girlfriend is a different, long story. But suffice it to say, we all pretty much hated her and hated that he was with her. She basically forbade us from being over at his house very much. I tried to overlook the crappy things she had done to us, because she and I shared a lot of traits and interests. I would have a cool sister! Now? It disgusts me that we share anything in common. Point is, I would still keep trying to be friendly with both of them. There came a day when I sat my brother down and had a real conversation with him. When he was truly sad, he seemed to come to me. He told me he wasn't happy with her. He just was terrified of being alone. He was really afraid of her being a mother, due to her mental and medical state, and the fact that she was so lazy around the house (working from home, too). And that was the last time I was over at his house, because we heard the girlfriend's comforter rustling and he panicked and shoo'ed me out of the house before she realized I was there. That was about 3 years ago.
I kept being really excited when he was over for holidays. But he was over for less and less, because they went with her family more, or she wanted to go home. He wouldn't show up on birthdays the day of, or even the weekend. It'd be like two weeks later, and it was almost always gift cards for my parents. Like jesus christ, the least you could do is hand your parent the card on their birthday. Anyway, I would always ask him to hang out later on and he'd say yeah, then back out at the last minute. It stung every time. I started asking less and less. It got to the point where he would even back out of playing animal crossing with me online, from the comfort of his own home. That's when I gave up. He used to text me once in a while with memes, at least. But that stopped long ago. I realized that I was the only one putting effort into our relationship, and it crushed me.
I'm not going to lie, I became really bitter about his girlfriend. When he announced they were engaged, none of our family was happy. But I managed to save the relationship between all of us by apologizing over text and pointing out that all our faces dropped with pain and confusion because he was referring to his fiancee by a nickname, that was also the name of our dog that had passed only a month ago. Which, that's partially true, that's definitely why my face looked shattered. I wasn't happy, but I wasn't going to bring it up.
As my brother got older and started making healthier decisions, I kept up hope that one day he'd come to his senses. Either ditch the fiance or put more effort into family relationships. But I started losing hope really quickly. I dreaded the day when they would tell us a wedding date or that a baby was on the way.
Mother's day came, and my brother backed out of brunch with my mom, stating he was tired from having breakfast with fiance's mom (yeah. yeah, that was a pretty common theme and just one more reason we didn't like them together). So he'd take her out the next weekend. Last year he backed out after being twenty minutes late because he took his fiancee to urgent care for one of her usual and frequent migraines. He kept telling us he wouldn't be long. Get her a refill on the injections she would use and come to us. An hour and a half later, he said to go home and that he was sorry, we'd reschedule.
He never rescheduled.
So, up comes the make up brunch for my mom this year. I had already given her my present, so she had at least some mother's day celebration. I woke up with a pretty bad headache and immediately downed allergy pills and advil so I could make it through brunch at least, for my mom's sake and to see if my brother had changed any. At this point in the relationship with my brother, I'm pretty bitter. I went back and checked my texts while we were waiting for him in the restaurant. The last text between my brother and I was January of this year. And it was me asking if hypothetically could I stay with him if my mom threw me out (I've asked it before many times, and he would say yes-- It's not really likely that my mom would throw me out, but I have kind of bad anxiety and it makes me feel better to have back up plans). He said 'uh maybe very short term it would be hell with my dogs and schedule lol' and I just stared at the text. He asked if I had considered getting my own place-- Well, yes, I have, but I really can't bring myself to do it because it would mean separating my family's two dogs (technically one is mine, ones is my parents', but they're so attached to each other) and I couldn't just leave my dog behind either. I told him not to worry, because mom had calmed down.
But back to breakfast. I'm usually a little more lively around my brother and usually try to talk to him a lot, about anything, or something I'm excited about. Between my bitterness and the headache, I didn't say more than 40 words through the whole meal, I think. The two times my brother spoke to me at all were to mansplain to me about my favorite Fallout character (its Hancock, he uses drugs, but you can get him off them if you do his friendship arc). He asked me if I'd seen the show yet. I told him no, because I asked a friend to watch through it and see if Hancock's drug use was too frequent or severe before I started it. And then he asked me who Hancock was. And I was like??? The guy with the lasagna face? Turns out Hancock is actually the main character of the show. He pretty much talked down to me 'you know they're not real drugs, right, they just exist in the universe. he takes his inhaler everyday'. Internally I'm like 'No you fucking moron, they're real drugs, with different names. If you paid attention to crafting or lore, you would realize that. You need fertilizer to make the drug you're talking about (jet)-- you know, like people who will shit in a bag and huff it. Buffout is basically steroids. And Hancock decreases his drug use if you become close with him, but sure, tell me about my favorite character you know shit about, not even his fucking name.' But I say none of this. I just return to being quiet and slowly eating my food. The other time he talked to me was when I asked the waitress if my mom could have a redo on her eggs because they weren't the cook she asked for (which, also, this is big for me! I have severe anxiety and ordering food is so hard, much less speaking up about an inconsistency) and my mom was so grateful. She didn't want to make a fuss, but I would, for her. When the lady took the eggs back he's all shitty like 'you know that if they fuck it up the first time, then they probably can't make it right, don't you' and I just looked at him and didn't bother responding. Like, okay. You assume its just one person back there making eggs? If one was screwed, either they would just refire it with extra care or one of the other line cooks would do it. I watch a ton of Kitchen Nightmares and Hells Kitchen, so I think I'm a little more familiar with the back of house or how the line works than my brother. And that people don't actually usually mess with your food for simple or reasonable requests. But he doesn't know that (actually, I roped my mom into Hell's Kitchen, and we then further roped my dad in, so Hell's Kitchen is now a Family Event), because of course he doesn't, he never asks about me or my interests. By the end of brunch, I'm just kind of pissed off, and my head is aching. We're walking out and my brother hands my mom a card. She opens it up and it says something something something grandma and opens on a sonogram. And I'm just so done with everything. I mutter to myself 'are you fucking kidding me'. My mom is putting up a good effort in being nice to soon to be wife and while personally, this disgusts me and crushed my spirit, I was not focused on the baby talk. I did manage to pick up his fiance saying 'oh yeah well i'm not on speaking terms with my family at the moment, so i have to talk to SOMEONE'S family haha' (like wow, okay, tell us you don't consider us family until we're a back up plan a little louder). We were out in the sun, it was hot, and my head was pounding. After a few minutes I asked 'can we go now' and my brother got shitty with me, because the world revolves around him (god forbid he had sympathy for a migraine given his own fiancee, but he didn't even notice to care that I said less than 50 words) and snapped at me that 'You don't have to be here, no one invited you'. And I was just done. I walked away closer to the car and I didn't catch it but my mom glared daggers at him and said that she had invited me. Then my brother said the thing that was the last straw.
'That's some fucking family for you.'
I was engulfed in rage. He put us on the back burner, barely spoke to us, minimized visits for his girlfriend's comfort, and yet somehow, he decided I was shitty family? I did his homework for him when I was a child and he was in high school. I always was there for him when he got depressed or existential crisis now and then. I advocated for my parents to make up with him after the fight where my mom kicked him out. When he tried to finish his degree since he only had one semester left when he really fucked it up, he asked ME for help, because he would need the help in the last core class he needed- Calculus. I was STILL IN HIGHSCHOOL. And I agreed! (He never ended up going, but that's not the point). I was the one who reminded my parents of what desserts he liked for family gatherings. I was the one who would dogsit for him when he would just leave without telling anyone, because he knew if I heard the dog cry in its crate I would feel bad and release it, and that I wouldn't put it away in a crate if I was home because I felt bad. I was the one that tried to convince my parents to give his fiance a second chance. I made 300 fake facebook accounts years ago before verification was a thing to vote for his band to headline a medium large concert for a decently known band.
He used to steal my things to pawn them for drug money. He would threaten to say goodbye to my chao when I reminded him it was my turn to play. He would call me a dependent loser for not having 'x' life skill already when he didn't have it at my age either, and long after that! He used physical force against me several times. He would purposely taunt me with things I was afraid of. He repeatedly cut me off and didn't talk to me for a while over some petty thing he got angry about, but 2 years was the longest ever by at least a year. He would use me as a kid to ask our parents about something he wanted, and me being a kid, would go along with it because I loved him and wanted to make him happy. He decided to spend one summer with his girlfriend in California or whatever during highschool and I was crushed and asked him if we would be able to hang out any before the next school year started because he would go away for college and he laughed in my face. He always used me as the soundboard to vent about my parents (again, I am much younger than him)! He would constantly make fun of me that I had no friends and that I would be alone all my life, and that continued through adulthood, too. He would talk down to me about my chosen second family/people I met online long distance. He would make fun of things I liked all the time knowing that I found his opinion important.
I had done nothing but love him my entire life, and he barely acknowledged me in his.
So I fucking lost it. I started screaming back at him (in public, in a parking lot, loud-- all things that are important because I have severe anxiety and hate making a spectacle, this was how far things had gotten) about how he was an ungrateful piece of shit and he had personally told me he wasn't happy with her and that she would be a terrible mother and all I wanted was for him to be happy but I'm shitty family? He resorted to his standard argument when he has no argument- Puff out his chest and say 'lay a hand on me, lay a hand on me'. My parents were so shocked by the fact that I had an outburst like that, they couldn't react for a moment. Neither of them told me off, at any point. My dad started to redirect me towards the car to end the argument and my brother has one last clapback 'remember when you asked to move in with me? yeah, this is wh--' I cut him off by screaming about when he asked ME to stay with me in my apartment and threw me out of my own room, and his only comeback was 'it wasn't YOUR apartment, it was THEIR apartment' pointing to my parents, because like for him, they paid for my accommodations in college. I had enough. I told him to never fucking contact me again, because he is NOT my fucking family, he chose his family and he is dead to me. And I got in the car. Didn't listen to another word.
My parents stayed out there with my brother and his fiance for a while. I hadn't known anything that had gone on until later when talking to my mom.
Again, neither one of them scolded me a single bit when they got in the car. They just gave me this really apologetic look because they knew how sad and hurt I had to be to finally cut him out of my life for good. I was really wound up and stressed out and I sort of asked my mom to choose between us-- Poor wording on my part, but I needed to be supported. My brother always got away with treating me like shit without any consequences-- And me not being in his life wasn't a consequence either, because his life would not change without me in it. She kinda got cross with me by saying she would never abandon either of us and I took it as 'you're enabling this by keeping contact, and saying that it's okay for him to treat me like this' and I went to my room. I shut my door and started sobbing my eyes out. My mom had heard me through two door and down the hall and she came to hug me. And I asked her straight up like 'what's going to happen at the wedding? are you going to go if he doesn't invite me?' Because like I said, he never had consequences for treating me like garbage my entire life. I wanted there to be SOME form of consequence. She did reassure me that if he pulled that move, neither one of my parents would go. We had a long talk about how it really hurt my feelings the way she said she wouldn't abandon either of us because, you know, at the time, it really felt like she wasn't supporting me with that choice. But I had also worded my question really poorly, being so upset and all. I told her how I felt about him not ever having any repercussions so I needed my parents to at least back me up on that. They don't plan on contacting him much, but won't outright abandon him if he needs something. But if it comes down to it, like if the wedding invite doesn't come, they would support me over my brother. And she had made it clear to him that family is like a totem pole, and on that totem pole, I definitely was higher than him.
A few days later, I was telling her how it still really hurt. I don't regret what I did and I will never take it back, but it pained me to know how little I really meant to him. I think I was hoping that the shock of me finally giving up on him would ring some alarm bells in his head. We were talking about it and she ended up conversationally giving me more details about what had happened after I got in the car and the aftermath. Apparently after my outburst, the fiance started walking away crying that 'first she didn't have her family, and now she doesn't have his family either'.
Remember how she said she wasn't on speaking terms with her family? Her older brother and his wife have a child that their mom babysits sometimes. They're considering another child, via IVF. The fiance is mad that her baby won't be her mom's priority if they have another child and that her brother was hogging their mom to babysit.
Yeah. Gee, wonder why they won't talk to you anymore either.
And she told my mom about the moving in comment, that it was just because she didn't want their large dogs to shred my small dog, or anything worse, because she would feel horrible (I don't believe this for a second, it was another convenient excuse). My mom looked at her and asked if she was serious, because I never would have brought my dog over there. Again, because of how happy she is with her sister. The fiance actually looked shocked at this information, indicating that my brother was up to his old lying was again.
Speaking of my brother, apparently he told my parents that he would never come over here again as long as I live here. And honestly? That's fine with me. I don't want him in this house. I am agoraphobic and my home is like a sanctuary. My mom and I were talking about how ridiculous this all is and how entitled they are, and I mention that it occurred to me that they were suddenly invested in being a family now that she's pregnant and definitely getting married (and after she won't speak to her family) and I wouldn't be surprised if they only told us and played the 'family' card because they had expected me to be my normal gentle and loving self. That it seemed convenient, and I couldn't help but think they had only allowed us in on the news expecting a baby shower gift or wedding gift. Or for me to arrange the baby shower-- Fiance doesn't have a sister, isn't talking to her mom, and doesn't have that many female friends (shocker). My mom sighed and said it wouldn't surprise her either if they had expected me to be their baby sitter for the same reason, just like I took care of his dog because I couldn't refuse it with my soft heart. And honestly, I had thought that too, but I dismissed the thought because it seemed too much like they would consider me for that. But my mom had the same idea, so it couldn't be that far off.
She told me she had reached out to my brother one last time, after the initial fight, after she had comforted me from the violent sobbing and saw just how much it hurt. The gist was just 'you should really apologize to your sister, all she ever really wanted from you was for you to acknowledge her as part of your life. our family is small, and it hurts to see you two like this. All it takes is an invite to hang out now and again, that's all she wants. I hope you can figure this out. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, I love you'.
My brother's response was 'I am not handling this situation right now'.
And it really hit me. He wasn't willing to do the bare minimum of an apology and spending any time with me at all. I laughed bitterly and told my mom he probably thinks that by the time his birthday rolls around I'll feel bad and come back to him-- He'll have a nasty surprise coming.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the asshole here. But between my anxiety, my hurt, and just the long history of me forgiving my brother because I love him, I keep wondering if maybe I shouldn't have. I go back and forth between thinking that I was wrong and that I was just showing off my shiny new backbone.
So, AITA for cutting contact with my brother and his pregnant fiance?

TL;DR: Non-stop personal and family health issues, financial strain, work stress, and an uncertain pay hike have made this year incredibly tough. Just needed to vent.
Hey everyone, I'm not usually one to vent on the internet, but this year has been incredibly hard for me, and I need to get this off my chest. Here's a rundown of the chaos that's been my life since January: January: I had to rush my mom to the hospital due to continuous nosebleeds. It turned out she was diagnosed with high blood pressure. The fear and uncertainty were overwhelming. February: I slipped off my scooter and injured my knee. Even after medication, my knee pain persisted for two months. Thankfully, it was just a bruise, but it still hurt for a long time. March: My company messed up my payroll, forcing me to urgently invest 1 lakh from my emergency fund to avoid paying income tax. This means for the financial year of 2023-24, I've spent more than I earned. April: My dad's brother passed away. The emotional shock caused my dad to develop vertigo. After a full body checkup, we found out he also had thyroid issues and his lipoprotein levels were twice the normal amount. He also had a bike accident, where his arm got caught in the spinning wheel of the bike, but thankfully, there was no bone damage. In the same month, I had a brutal argument with a relative and experienced pain in my lower abdomen. The primary health center diagnosed me with four kidney stones, but a second opinion revealed I had Grade 2 fatty liver and no stones. Trying to secure health insurance for my parents was a nightmare. Twice, my mom's application was rejected due to her multiple health issues. My 90k got stuck, and I had to wait three weeks for a refund. Since I paid via credit card, I was terrified of late payment penalties. Thankfully, the refund came through on the last day before my credit card due date. May: Took my dad to the doctor, who prescribed him three medications for a lifetime and additional meds for three months for his vertigo and other health issues. A relative suggested we consult Jiva Ayurveda Center. I wanted my dad to take the prescribed meds for a week before trying alternative treatments, but he went into denial mode, insisting he would exercise and get healthy on his own. Thankfully, my mom convinced him to take the meds. To top it all off, at work, we were supposed to have our appraisal discussions by May 18th. Instead, there's been no communication, and many of us are running between managers and HR with no response. Rumors are flying that the hike percentage might be low, which could be why there's been no discussion. I took a leave today, and now I'm hearing that we might have the hike discussion, meaning I might have to go in and waste my leave just to hear bad news. Honestly, I'm exhausted. It feels like life just keeps throwing punches, and I'm struggling to keep up. Thanks for listening. Any advice or words of encouragement would be greatly appreciated.

Has anyone ever had the EXACT SAME hallucination as the person they were tripping with?
Let me tell you what you need to know first. I’m Aaron, and I’ve been on bullshit house arrest for about a month now. I live with my aunt and uncle in a boring ass suburban town and there’s been fuck all to do lately. I was tired of beating my meat and watching Hulu so I started spying on my next door neighbor. Yes like in that shitty Shia Labeouf movie.
I’ve never bothered to learn his first name but everyone in the neighborhood calls him Mr. Talbot. He moved to the area only about a year ago. No wife. No kids.
My aunt spoke to him a few times around when he first moved. She said he used to work for the movies or something and that he was nice. You know…the kind of nice you use when someone is so forgettable that you have nothing else to say about them.
I’ve never had a conversation with the guy. Only exchanged the occasional wave or head nod. And to be honest I don’t know what I expected from a 50-something year old loner who barely leaves the house. But everyone has their secrets right?
After a few weeks of spying on him, I really only learned where he keeps the spare key to his backdoor, that he changed the chlorine in his hot tub yesterday morning, and that he waters his back garden every other day around dusk.
But after what I witnessed tonight…I think Mr. Talbot is more interesting than he’s letting on.
My aunt and uncle are on a cruise until next week so my friend Charlie came over. Charlie is short for Charlotte. She lives a few houses down and before anyone asks, NO it’s not like that. We’ve been like brother and sister since I moved in with my aunt and uncle when I was 8. Plus she’s gay.
It was supposed to be a chill night. Charlie brought over a few grams of shrooms and we were going to trip for the first time in months. I’m not the biggest psychedelic guy because I tend to get in my head. Even before my probation, I cut back on weed because I kept having panic attacks. But shrooms are pretty much the only thing that doesn’t pop on a drug test and we were only supposed to do a low dose.
At first, we only took maybe 2 grams each. But after an hour, we didn’t feel shit. Charlie figured we just didn’t take enough so we took more and after about 30 minutes…
Holy Shit. I took way TOO MUCH. It was like I was on the deck of a crab boat. The entire world was swaying. And if you’ve ever tripped absolute sack before you know the feeling of not really knowing what’s real life. I started panicking. Convinced we were stuck in one of those old rubber hose cartoons so Charlie thought it’d be a good idea to lie on the front lawn and watch the stars.
I’m just realizing now that it’s a full moon tonight…
It worked at first and I started to calm down. Then I noticed that all of Mr. Talbot’s blinds were shut. I thought he had caught onto me and was going to call my probation officer and tell him that I was on drugs.
“Just focus on the sky,” Charlie said.
That’s what she tells me whenever I get nervous and start having a panic attack. It worked this time and I was fine for awhile as the shrooms started to wear off.
Around 10:30 I think, we noticed a Lyft pull up in front of Mr. Talbot’s house and drop off some chick. She was probably a few years older than us. Pretty hot and was rolling that kind of suitcase you bring on a plane. Mr. Talbot usually doesn’t have guests so I kept watching.
He answered the door with a big smile and they hugged and went inside. I didn’t think too much of it after that and figured she was his niece or something visiting for a few days since there’s a big concert in the city this weekend.
An hour or so later, Charlie and I were watching music videos in my room when we heard a girl’s scream that sounded like it came from next door. We ran to my bedroom window and looked over to Mr. Talbot’s. His niece was standing in the middle of the backyard. Barefoot. Wearing this weird red dress sorta thing. Charlie said it's called a corset.
The girl was slowly backing away from the house toward the hot tub at the far side of the backyard. Her eyes were fixed on the backdoor and she looked really scared.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
I think that’s what she said but it was hard to hear over the music so I had Charlie mute the TV.
The girl’s eyes stayed glued to the backdoor.
“What’s she looking at?” Charlie asked nonchalantly.
I didn’t know why but my heart immediately started racing. Like I went into fight or flight mode. Was she in danger?
I could feel myself starting to panic again and Charlie must’ve sensed it too because she put her hand on my shoulder.
Just focus on the sky.
We watched the girl hurry over to the hot tub. Her head on a swivel. Constantly checking behind her.
“Is someone following her?” I asked. But Charlie didn’t say anything. Just kept watching.
The girl quickly climbed up the hot tub steps and stopped at the top. That’s when she…started…taking off her clothes…?
What the fuck.
Even though I didn’t understand what was going on, it still seemed like a weird fucking time for her to start stripping down to her skivvies.
But as long as Charlie was calm I thought things would be fine. In all the years I’ve known her I don’t think I’ve ever seen her freak out once.
I looked back at the girl. Her eyes widened before she jumped into the water and scurried toward the far corner of the hot tub.
Suddenly Charlie gasped. I turned to her and saw that she was covering her mouth with her hands.
“What?” I asked. Then I followed her gaze to Mr. Talbot’s backdoor…
And there it was.
I swear my brain short-circuited when I first saw it.
Fur.
That was the first thing I was able to process. White, wispy fur that covered this…THING from head to toe.
Then…the claws.
These curved, black claws. As long as candlesticks.
The teeth.
Sharp. Jagged. Jutting out from this ugly, snarling mouth.
It was some kind of animal. A wolf I thought at first. But it was standing upright. A bear. A white bear? A polar bear! But that doesn’t make any sense. We don’t have any of those in this part of the country.
Then I noticed something else…
THE COCK! Holy Shit. It was like a foot long. And soft too. Just dangling there between its legs.
I rubbed my eyes and tried to remind myself that I was still tripping. That whatever was going on was probably completely normal. Except…I wasn’t tripping. Not anymore. At least I don’t think so. I swear the shrooms had worn off at that point. But what I was seeing didn’t make any goddamn sense.
Before I could really process anything, Charlie whispered…
“Is that a fucking werewolf?”
Whatever it was, it stood in the doorway of the backdoor for a few seconds. Just looking at the girl in the hot tub. She stared back. Frozen. With fear in her eyes.
After a moment, the werewolf slowly approached her. Walking upright. Until it stopped at the edge of the hot tub.
The girl stayed in the far corner.
“Please don’t hurt me daddy,” she said to it.
I looked at Charlie confused. Did I hear that right? Did she just call this thing…daddy?
IDK maybe that isn’t what she said. Again it was very faint.
The werewolf just stayed at the edge of the hot tub. Not moving. Still just staring at the girl.
After a minute or two she started slowly approaching the thing, shuffling through the water with the back of her hand raised. Like you do when you go to pet a dog. She held out her hand in front of it for a moment.
The thing moved its head slightly toward her hand. And the girl jerked her arm back.
The werewolf remained like a statue. Eyes never moving from the girl. After a few seconds, she tried again. Holding her hand out in front of the werewolf’s snout. It seemed to sniff her hand for a second then lowered its head toward her chest.
The girl then began fucking CARESSING the werewolf’s head. Like you would a pet. And I guess that gave her the courage to hug the fucking thing.
She pressed her wet half naked body against it and rested her head against its chest so it kinda looked like they were slow-dancing.
“Aaron, are you seeing this too?” Charlie asked.
“A werewolf dancing with some chick like they’re at prom?” I said without looking at her.
“Yeah.”
My eyes stayed on the werewolf as it nestled its snout between the girl’s neck and shoulder.
When SUDDENLY the girl pulled away and rushed back to the far corner of the hot tub, splashing water everywhere. The werewolf stood in place SHAKING. Steadying itself against the rim of the hot tub. It started making these loud GRUNTS. Like it was in pain.
Whatever was happening, it ended after idk maybe 30 seconds. The werewolf seemed to regain its composure and stood upright at the edge of the hot tub, locking eyes with the girl again. Its dong was now ROCK HARD. Like a baby’s arm pointing.
After a moment the girl approached again. Hand raised. Just like before.
One step. Two steps. Three. Her hand inched closer and closer to the werewolf's snout until she was almost touching it.
But this time…it didn’t sniff her. It just stood there. Motionless. Staring.
The girl’s arm began to shake. And as she tried to move back SUDDENLY the werewolf LUNGED at her. Locking its jaws around her collarbone.
The girl shrieked in pain and pounded on the werewolf’s back with her fists.
“GRANDMA! GRANDMA!” she screamed.
What the fuck. Is this thing her fucking grandma? But it’s got a cock!
The werewolf wrapped its arms around the girl and ripped her out of the hot tub. She tumbled down the steps and onto the concrete patio.
“GRANDMA!!!” she screamed as she tried to crawl away.
Every hair on my body stood up like I had been electrocuted.
The werewolf snatched her by the ankle and dragged her toward the house.
“STOP! PLEASE! she screamed, clawing at the ground. She kicked her legs, trying to escape but it wasn’t enough. The werewolf tried to drag her through the backdoor but she latched onto the doorframe with her arms.
She screamed at the top of her lungs. Straining. And I swear. She saw me. Watching. In the window.
Our eyes locked. For a split second. I swear. And the look she gave me. It was…familiar.
But before I could even think about where I’d seen it…she was gone. Vanished. Her body dragged inside.
The night sunk into an eerie silence. Charlie and I didn’t say anything for a while. We just stood there until the crickets started chirping. Like nothing had happened.
Had anything happened?
“Should we call the police?” Charlie finally asked.
“And tell them what?” I said.
“I don’t know. What we saw.”
What we saw. The words seemed so ridiculous. I mean what did we see? Beauty and the Beast GONE WRONG?! How the fuck are we supposed to explain this? I mean how do we even describe the suspect?!
Mythological creature. Muscular build. Fat cock.
Charlie grabbed her phone from my bed. “What the fuck are you doing?!” I yelled at her.
“Calling the police,” she said.
“Are you fucking nuts?” I shouted. I was panicking again and tried to rip Charlie’s phone out of her hand but she shoved me hard into my bookcase.
“I’m on probation! I can’t be involved in some crazy tweak 911 call! You know what will happen to me!” I pleaded.
Charlie looked up from her phone at me.
“We have to be hallucinating. That’s it. We’re hallucinating. We have to be! What we saw made no fucking sense,” I said. I was freaking out. Pacing around the room. Pulling my hair. All that shit.
“Just focus on the sky Aaron,” Charlie said.
“HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT CHARLIE?! WE’RE INSIDE!”
Charlie slid her phone into her pocket and put both hands on my shoulders.
“Aaron, calm down,” she said. “You’re probably right, okay? Maybe this was all a second wave trip or something. Everything will be fine.”
I asked Charlie to recount what she saw. Every single detail. And her story was the exact same as mine. EXACT SAME.
“We hallucinated the same thing?” I asked her.
“Probably just a bad trip,” Charlie said, closing the blinds to my bedroom window.
“We just need to sleep it off,” she added and helped me into bed.
I turned away from her and closed my eyes. But all I could see was the look on that girl’s face. This almost blank look. Like she knew she was going to die…PLUS the image of the werewolf’s fucking boner.
I tossed and turned for a bit. I don’t know exactly how long. Once I heard Charlie snoring on the air mattress, I snuck out of bed and tiptoed over to my window to look next door.
It was dark. But in the moonlight, I could tell something was wrong with the water in the hot tub…
It was RED.
I tried taking some pictures but none of them came out well. My phone's zoom doesn't go that far and it's too dark for the camera to pick up anything clearly. But I'm absolutely certain about what I saw.
I don’t know what else to do now.
Can someone help explain this?
Two people can't have the exact same hallucination right?
What we saw had to have been real.
Right?
Will update tomorrow.

The title kind of says all you need to know. I (21M) have a boyfriend (21M) who, evidently, is actually allergic to kiwi. My only defense is that he has always described to me as a “kind of” allergy because it’s oral allergy syndrome. That means a bunch of different fruits and vegetables can cause him some discomfort. He described it as being like he ate a bunch of sour candy, and said one time his tongue even started bleeding after he ate a bunch of carrots. I want to be clear that he really downplayed it, he still eats most of the stuff he gets reactions to because it apparently isn’t that bad and he really loves fruits and veggies.
The one exception to his casualness about it is kiwis, which he said he gets the worst reaction to (ie throwing up and really bad mouth pain). I figured he was just kind of being dramatic because I looked up the stuff on the list for oral allergy syndrome and most of it he still eats pretty regularly and it never makes him nauseous, just makes his mouth sore. Because of that, I didn’t take it super seriously until today. I got us smoothies from a place near us and sent him a picture of the menu with all the ingredients. He picked the smoothie and he wanted and told me to “make sure they don’t put kiwi in it, sometimes places will do that without listing it as a main ingredient because it doesn’t taste like much, like with bananas”. I took this as a joke and just ordered the smoothie without checking.
Lo and behold, about twenty minutes after drinking his smoothie, my boyfriend goes to get some ice water because his mouth was feeling sore. And a couple minutes after that, he’s in the bathroom, leaned over the sink, and gagging. I checked the receipt from the smoothie place, where they listed all the ingredients in each smoothie, and his did indeed have kiwi in it.
He was mostly fine after about an hour, though his mouth still hurt and he didn’t want dinner after because he was still a bit nauseous. I showed him the receipt and he immediately assumed that they just hadn’t listened to me when I told them not to put kiwi and reassured me that it wasn’t my fault because he wouldn’t have thought to check the receipt either. Then he said we’ll just have to be more careful if we go there again to make sure they listen. Now I don’t know what to do because I feel so guilty and I basically lied by not telling him it was my fault. If I tell him he’ll probably be super pissed, and if I don’t I’ll probably feel guilty forever for not taking him seriously.
TL;DR: I didn’t take my boyfriend’s allergy seriously and it made him sick. He assumed the smoothie place was at fault and I went with it like a coward.

I sit in my room, lost in the blocky world of Minecraft, the sound of my pickaxe digging into diamond ore and the melodies of XP collection my only comfort. Even this escape can't block out the silence of the summer night or the pain of your betrayal. A sharp knock jolts me. I glance at the clock—2 AM. Who could it be at this hour? The knocking grows louder, but it isn't coming from the door. My heart pounds. It's the window. I turn slowly, dread pooling in my stomach. A dark figure stands there, silhouetted against the pale moonlight, glowing white eyes piercing through the darkness. I choke back a sob. "W-who are you?" I whisper, but I already know. It's you, Ralsei. My voice trembles. You point at me, your mouth curling into a sinister smile, revealing razor-sharp teeth. Panic grips me as I grab a kitchen knife, my only defense. "Please, leave me alone!" I cry, my voice cracking. But you laugh, a sound that chills me to my core. Without warning, you shatter the window and step inside. I scramble away, breath coming in short, frantic gasps. I dive under my bed, clutching the knife to my chest. The floorboards creak under your weight. An eerie tune hums from your lips, growing louder as you get closer. I squeeze my eyes shut, holding my breath, praying you won’t find me. Silence. The humming stops, and I feel you standing right above me. My heart pounds, each beat a deafening drum. Slowly, you bend down, your glowing eyes locking onto mine. I scream, raw and primal, as you grab me and throw me to the floor, pinning me down with inhuman strength. "Leave me alone, please..." I whimper, tears streaming. You lean closer, your cold breath chilling me. You whisper in my ear, a cruel parody of the voice I once found comforting, then laugh, savoring my fear. "I made you love me, made you trust me," you hiss, eyes gleaming with sadistic pleasure. "And then I ripped your heart out and crushed it. Your pain, your tears, they’re delicious to me. I’ll never get enough. Now, I’ll break you even further. I’ll make you beg and cry for mercy, and when you finally break... when your soul shatters into a million pieces... that’ll be when I’ve truly won." You grab the knife I had hidden and hold it against my skin, drawing a tiny bead of blood. I flinch, my whole body trembling. "P-please don’t kill me," I beg, voice barely a whisper. You laugh, the sound reverberating through my bones. You raise the knife, ready to plunge it into my heart. I wake up with a gasp, drenched in cold sweat. The room is dark and silent. I take a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. Just a dream, a horrible nightmare. But the relief is fleeting. I scream into my pillow, "Get out of my head!" The images haunt me, vivid and terrifying. I start to see you everywhere—in the shadows, in the corners of my vision, always with that sinister smile. Your voice whispers in my ears, taunting me, playing with my mind. The lines between dream and reality blur. My sanity slips away. Your laughter echoes in my mind, a constant reminder that my torment is far from over. Everywhere I turn, there you are. Watching. Waiting. Smiling. The walls close in. Your voice, your laughter—unceasing, relentless. I'm trapped, drowning in this madness. I can't escape. I can't breathe. Your face, your eyes, your smile—they're all I see.
Help me. Someone, please. Make it stop. But no one comes. No one can hear me. I'm alone in this hell, with you.

Until now, people have little understanding of how Kengan’s fights generally take place and end. Trying to translate everything into one specific character ability, be it pre-initiative, techniques (god glow, blast core or any niko style technique) or physical durability. Demanding against all this, direct and tangible, named techniques or similar physical indicators.
But many, many fights show that all this does not matter and, on the contrary, can play against the fighter himself:

1. Agito broke his arm due to his own dragon shot.
   
2. Okubo was caught by Sekibayashi during his dash and his head was driven into the ground by his own force.
   
3. Saw Pain was put out of action by the Myanmar hammer in both of his losses.
   

Even in this fight, Jurota and his most terrible throw in series, which is faster than the reactions of even top fighters and which only requires rubbing a finger on the skin, led to his defeat precisely at the time of its use. And he was taken out with one precise blow to a weak spot, despite everything, he had withstood every blow from Gaolang before without any visible fractures.
In other words, every argument that before this fight put Arashiyama above Gaolang, effectively making him unbeatable for the Thai: Throw that can cause fatal damage to him (from which Gaolang has no protection). Strong endurance (none of Gaolang’s blows will cause visible damage to him). On the contrary, Gaolang's God Glow made him more open to a throw.
These fights actually show that you need to think not only about fighters winning due to their specific strengths, but also how vulnerable they are to simple and precise countermeasures (which do not deserve the title of "technique" or are a physical advantage) of their opponents.
Blastcore can cause Takeshi's defeat, and one precise hit to his weak point will negate all his durability. Hatsumi can, instead of using his opponent's strength against him, make him even more dangerous for himself by giving the fighter a too convenient position to carry out an attack. Even Gaolang/Lolong can be incapacitated with one simple blow.
Don’t limit yourself, go through every possible battle scenario in your head, assessing every moment in which one or another fighter can win. Make up every possible scenario and only then decide which fighter has the safest techniques, the most convenient timings, which fighter is good at counter-attacking and which fighter is better at dealing with someone else's resilience.

I sit in my room, lost in the blocky world of Minecraft, the sound of my pickaxe digging into diamond ore and the melodies of XP collection my only comfort. Even this escape can't block out the silence of the summer night or the pain of your betrayal. A sharp knock jolts me. I glance at the clock—2 AM. Who could it be at this hour? The knocking grows louder, but it isn't coming from the door. My heart pounds. It's the window. I turn slowly, dread pooling in my stomach. A dark figure stands there, silhouetted against the pale moonlight, glowing white eyes piercing through the darkness. I choke back a sob. "W-who are you?" I whisper, but I already know. It's you, Ralsei. My voice trembles. You point at me, your mouth curling into a sinister smile, revealing razor-sharp teeth. Panic grips me as I grab a kitchen knife, my only defense. "Please, leave me alone!" I cry, my voice cracking. But you laugh, a sound that chills me to my core. Without warning, you shatter the window and step inside. I scramble away, breath coming in short, frantic gasps. I dive under my bed, clutching the knife to my chest. The floorboards creak under your weight. An eerie tune hums from your lips, growing louder as you get closer. I squeeze my eyes shut, holding my breath, praying you won’t find me. Silence. The humming stops, and I feel you standing right above me. My heart pounds, each beat a deafening drum. Slowly, you bend down, your glowing eyes locking onto mine. I scream, raw and primal, as you grab me and throw me to the floor, pinning me down with inhuman strength. "Leave me alone, please..." I whimper, tears streaming. You lean closer, your cold breath chilling me. You whisper in my ear, a cruel parody of the voice I once found comforting, then laugh, savoring my fear. "I made you love me, made you trust me," you hiss, eyes gleaming with sadistic pleasure. "And then I ripped your heart out and crushed it. Your pain, your tears, they’re delicious to me. I’ll never get enough. Now, I’ll break you even further. I’ll make you beg and cry for mercy, and when you finally break... when your soul shatters into a million pieces... that’ll be when I’ve truly won." You grab the knife I had hidden and hold it against my skin, drawing a tiny bead of blood. I flinch, my whole body trembling. "P-please don’t kill me," I beg, voice barely a whisper. You laugh, the sound reverberating through my bones. You raise the knife, ready to plunge it into my heart. I wake up with a gasp, drenched in cold sweat. The room is dark and silent. I take a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. Just a dream, a horrible nightmare. But the relief is fleeting. I scream into my pillow, "Get out of my head!" The images haunt me, vivid and terrifying. I start to see you everywhere—in the shadows, in the corners of my vision, always with that sinister smile. Your voice whispers in my ears, taunting me, playing with my mind. The lines between dream and reality blur. My sanity slips away. Your laughter echoes in my mind, a constant reminder that my torment is far from over. Everywhere I turn, there you are. Watching. Waiting. Smiling. The walls close in. Your voice, your laughter—unceasing, relentless. I'm trapped, drowning in this madness. I can't escape. I can't breathe. Your face, your eyes, your smile—they're all I see.
Help me. Someone, please. Make it stop. But no one comes. No one can hear me. I'm alone in this hell, with you.

It's a bit long. I'm mostly just...getting this off my chest. Sorry if it's a bit disjointed, I'm not exactly in the best headspace right now.
My baby is 8 years old, he would be turning 9 in September, but I don't think he'll make it. It's been a really rough month, as he was fine a month ago but stopped eating as much. He's a rabbit, and needs to eat a lot of hay, so seeing him not eating much of it was really concerning. We took him to the vet on May 1, which was hard because I'm currently getting TMS treatment every day and the closest rabbit savvy vet who was taking new patients was over an hour away. I had a really bad feeling at the end of April when he wasn't eating his hay as much, and I finally put in an order for a plush replica of him that I'd been meaning to do since the end of last year.
Anyways, we went to the vet. He had mild gingivitis, so we got some antibiotics and pain killers. He seemed fine after a few days, he started eating hay again and everything seemed great! But after he was done with the antibiotics, he stopped eating hay again. It got to a point where he stopped eating as much in general. We picked up some more pain killers after a few days, which was about a week ago, but he didn't get better.
So we brought him to the vet again, two days ago on Monday. He got xrays just in case. Everything looked fine, so we got more antibiotics again. Nothing obvious was wrong with him. But he lost 1.5lbs in 20 days. Our vet told us to get CC just in case, because he lost so much weight. We got emeraid because CC wasn't in stock, and it came yesterday.
The past 24-48 hours he has deteriorated so much. On Monday morning, he was eating greens if we fed it to him, but he started refusing everything by night. We had to pick him up and feed him his nutrient supplements, which he still refused. I noticed he started breathing harder, as if it took a lot of effort. Today he was even more tired, and he started staggering whenever he was moving.
We've been trying to feed him and give him water, but I don't think he's going to make it much longer. Tomorrow is probably our last day together, assuming he survives the night. He doesn't really move much, like he's just...waiting to die. Even if he survives the night, I don't think I have it in me to let him suffer much longer.
I've been having a really hard time with this. We've been together for 6 years, since I was 16. He's been with me through some of the hardest parts of my life. I wasn't the best parent to him, but I loved him, and my parents helped me when I was lacking.
I remember the day we first met. I had an endoscopy just to make sure everything in my stomach was okay. It was Black Friday, November 24th. I remember the date we met because it was the birthday of one of my favorite characters. I'd been begging my parents for a rabbit nonstop for about a month, and we went to the shelter after my procedure. There were 4 rabbits that day, 2 of whom were bonded. My parents didn't want to get 2 of them, and the other single rabbit was larger than him, so I went into his little pen to meet him. It was love at first sight. He didn't care that I was a stranger, because when I started petting him he immediately splooted. He was so relaxed and happy even though I was a stranger and he was a prey animal. We took him home that same day. We hadn't even prepared enough for him, so we had to go to the pet store to buy fencing, litter, toys and whatnot.
He's had some off days, but he's been healthy pretty much the entire 6 and a half years we've been together. Still, I've always been an anxious person and a worrier, so I've had the thought of his death in the back of my head after the first year or so.
I don't want to let him go, but I know he's suffering. I haven't dealt with a loss like this before. He's the most precious thing to me, as someone who has various mental and physical health problems. We spent so much time together in my room, just me and him, existing. There's a little space under my bed where he liked to sleep during the winter, and sometimes I'd wake up and look under there to say hi before going back to sleep.
Sometimes I cope better than other times. It gets harder when I'm with him, when I can see him struggling. My mom suggested adopting another rabbit after a bit, after the pain of losing my baby has lessened a bit. As much as I love rabbits, I'm not sure if I can do this again. It was so stressful to bring him to a rabbit savvy vet, over an hour away. I don't want to put another poor rabbit through that when they get sick. I've also been thinking about maybe adopting a cat when I feel better. They aren't prey animals, so they don't tend to hide their sickness like rabbits, and more common as pets so a vet closer to us could care for them. They're also suitable for one room, as long as their needs are met, and I spend most of my time in my room. But I don't know, maybe after some time passes I'll be more open to another rabbit. It's not something I can think too hard about right now.
I think the worst thing about all of this is I'm afraid of forgetting him. I'm afraid of forgetting the way my baby sounded and felt, the way my boy honked and grunted, the way he loved kale over everything else, the way he ate the leafy parts of vegetables and left the stem for later. I'm afraid I'll never be the same. My depression has been getting better but I've always had the thought in the back of my head that if something happened to him, I don't know what would happen to me. I genuinely don't know if I can handle losing him. I love him so much.
I don't know what I'll do after he's gone. My best friend has been a great help. She's in finals right now, but she's been getting into needle felting and said if I could save some of his fur, she could felt me a little guy and put his fur in it like a sachet. She even said I could send it back to her if he ever needed repairs. My mom has been comforting me and helping me care for him. But it still hurts so much.
We had a dog for many years before my rabbit, but I wasn't as affected by her death because I got my baby about two months before that. Her favorite person was also my mom anyways, and I spent a lot of time in my own room. We got another dog about two years ago, but we call him my mom's pet. I'm not as attached to him as I am to my baby.
I'm so tired. I haven't been sleeping well out of worry, and I don't think I'll be able to sleep well even after we let him rest. I wish the fountain of youth was real so that he could live forever. I wish I knew the secret to immortality, if only to let him live a bit longer.
I don't know if I got all my thoughts down, but I want to lay next to him and comfort him, so I'm wrapping this up. I hope he knows how much I love him. I wish we had longer together.

Like to these works: https://www.attalus.org/poetry/theriaca.html
it into wine. That will be a most excellent protection, for you will stave off death in all forms alike.
700 Learn also that the powerful aid of the sea-turtle is a defence against the bite of all the long, crawling creatures that injure distressful mortals; and may you find it a strong protection. Thus, when fishermen draw the murderous Turtle up out of the sea on to the dry beach, do you, having turned it on its back, strike the life from its head with a bronze knife and let the coarse blood pour forth into an earthen jar newly baked in the furnace; but draw of the livid, thin serum with a well-made colander and on this dry and break up the dots of blood, 710 taking for your mixture four drachmas by weight. And add two drachmas of wild cummin, and to each two drachmas a quarter by weight of the curd in a Hare's stomach. From this cut off one drachma and drink in wine.
Against Snakes these remedies, you will find, will protect you.
Consider now the operations of the dangerous spider and the symptoms that attend its bite. The one which is the colour of pitchy smoke is named the grape ; it moves its feet in succession, and in the centre of its stomach it has hard and deadly teeth. But even when it has fastened on a man, his skin nevertheless remains as though unwounded; 720 yet the eyes above turn reddish and a shivering settles on his limbs, and straightway his skin and his genitals below grow taut, and his member projects, dripping with foul ooze, and at the same time numbness descending upon him overcomes his hips and the support of his knees.
Learn of one different from these - the starlet, on whose back striped bands gleam radiant on the skin. When it has bitten, a shivering comes unexpectedly upon the victim, a torpor is in his head and breaks the bonds of his knees beneath him.
Another kind is the blue spider : it darts about off the ground and is covered with hair. 730 Even on his flesh the victim of this spider carries a terrible wound: his heart is heavy within him and night is about his temples, while from his throat he discharges a deadly vomit like a spider's web; and he thinks that death is near to him.
Yet another is the huntsman, and he is like the Wolf-Spider in form, the destroyer of blue-bottles; he lies in wait for bees, gall-insects, gadflies, and whatsoever comes into his toils. But the bite he inflicts upon man is painless and without consequence.
But another kind is an aggressive foe, the one men call the wasp-spider, reddish and like the ravenous Wasp, 740 which resembles the horse in its high spirit, for horses are the origin of wasps and bulls of bees [which are engendered in their rotting carcases]. When this creature has inflicted a wound, sever swelling ensues and various forms of sickness, and in some cases a quivering, in others powerlessness in the knees; and the wasting man is overcome by an evil sleep that brings the final alleviation.
The antlet - now mark - which in truth resembles the ant, has a fiery neck, though its body is dust-coloured; its broad and spangled back is all speckled, 750 and its dusky head is raised but little on its neck, yet it inflicts as much pain as the spiders aforenamed.
Where men go plucking with their hands, not using sickles, gathering pulse and other legumes amid the fields while still green, there in swarms, wrapped in fiery colour and like to blister-beetles, dart small spiders. But for all their size around the troublesome bite of one blisters always rise, and the mind wanders and is crazed; the tongue shrieks disordered words and the eyes squint.
Consider now monsters which the grim land of Egypt fosters, 760 like the moth which the evening meal-time brings in to flutter round the lamps. All the wings are dense and are covered with down, even as a man appears who may chance to touch dust or ashes. Such in appearance, it is reared among the leaves of Perseus's tree {Persea}. Its terrible head nods ever in grim fashion and is hard, and its belly is heavy ; its sting it plants in the top of a man's neck or on his head, and it may easily and on the spot bring the doom of death.
Come now, and I will speak of the scorpion, armed with an agonising sting, 770 and of its disgusting brood. The white kind is harmless and does no hurt. But the red inflicts a swift and burning fever on men's mouths, and the victims struggle convulsively beneath the wound as though caught by fire, and there rises a mighty thirst. The black kind on the other hand, when it has struck, causes a fearful agitation in a man: victims go out of their wits and laugh without reason. But another kind is greenish, and when it strikes a limb it inflicts shivering fits, and after them a horrid eruption appears, even though the Dog-Star burn scorching hot. 780 Such in effect is the sharp edge of its sting, and behind such a sting nine-jointed vertebrae extend above its head. Another is livid; it carries beneath it a broad and hungry belly, for in truth it is ever an insatiable eater of grass and of earth; and it deals a stroke incurable upon the groin, so ravenous the hunger in its hard jaws. But another kind you will find like the crab on the sea-shore, which feeds in the delicate seaweed and the noisy surf. Others again, like the bandy-legged common crab to look at, are heavy-limbed and their weighty claws are hard, 790 and serrated as in the rock-haunting crabs. It is from them that they have their allotted being, whenever they quit the rocks and the delicate wrack of the pebble-strewn sea. The fishermen with their baits draw them from the salt water; but directly they are caught they slip into mouse-holes, and there the scorpions, the deadly offspring of these dead crabs, are born, to work ruin from wall and fence. Learn too of the honey-coloured scorpion: its end joint is black at the tip, and it dispenses doom unassuageable and most deadly. But the worst enemy of man is the one whose crooked legs are like fire: 800 to children it instantly brings death. Upon its back white wings unfold themselves like those of the corn-devouring locusts, which flitting over the tops of the corn feed on husked grain, and haunt Pedasa and the vales of Cissus.
I can tell you however of remedies against the scorpion's strokes, just as for those of the buzzer from the hills, or of the bee, whose death follows from its very sting when it has stabbed a man as he labours around the hive or in the fields; as it implants its sting, it leaves it in the wound, 810 and to the Bee the sting is both life and death. Yes, and I know too the devices of the woodlouse, and of the deadly wasp, and of the tiny tree-wasp, and of the two-headed centipede, which from both ends can bestow death upon a man, and as the creature moves there speed beneath it as it were the winged oars of a ship; also of the blind and fearsome shrew-mouse, which brings destruction upon men and meets its death in the wheel-tracks of carts. You should certainly avoid the seps, which resembles the squat lizards; and that treacherous and ever detestable beast the salamander, which makes its way through unquenchable fire [unharmed] and without pain; 820 nor does the unquenchable flame injure its tattered skin or its extremities. Furthermore I have knowledge of all the creatures that the sea whirls amid its briny surges, and the horror of the murry, since many a time has it sprung up from the fish-box and striking them with panic has hurled toiling fishermen from their boat to seek refuge in the sea . . . if it be true that this creature couples with deadly-biting vipers on the land, forsaking its salt pasturage. Again, from the death-dealing sting-ray and the ravening sea-snake I can protect you. The sting-ray causes trouble when it strikes with its sting 830 the toiler labouring at his hauled drag-nets; or if the sting is fixed in the trunk of some tree which is flourishing in pride, then, as though the tree were stricken by the fierce beams of the sun, its roots and with them its leafage wither; on a man his flesh rots and wastes away. Indeed the story tells how Odysseus of yore perished from the baneful sting of this monster from the sea.
Now will I rehearse the several remedies for these afflictions. You should take at one time the leaves, like wild-lettuce, of alkanet, at another potentilla, or the crimson flowers of the bramble; bearwort, sorrel, 840 and the long-stemmed viper's herb, cicamum, the luxuriant hartwort, and you may well include ground-pine and thick bark which you have broken off from the oak tree; with them too hedge-parsley, and seeds gathered from the carrot, and the fresh and variegated berries from the terebinth. Moreover you should store up the purple orchella-weed from the sea, and the unspotted maiden-hair, on whose leaves the fine moisture falling from the bursting rainstorm does not settle. Note too, you should cut the everblooming cretan alexanders or the tufted root of the dead-nettle and of the eryngo, 850 together with the fruit-bearing rosemary frankincense. Let there be present also cleavers and helxine and the heavy-headed poppy, capsuled or horned, to protect you. Cut off also a budding shoot of the fig-tree or the actual fruit of the wild fig which appears orbed and swelling before other fruit. Take too the fiery thorn and the blossoms of the bright mullein, and with them leaves of havergrass, and celandine, wild carrot, and the root of bryony, which wipes away freckles and the rash abhorrent to women's skin. 860 Powder also the leaves of vervain, or pluck the twigs of a the protective rhamnus, for by itself it is efficacious to ward off death from a man. Again, gather freshly plucked branches of feverfew, blue pimpernel, or hart's tongue, or take a portion of Lemnian ruddle, which is soothing in all afflictions. Sometimes too you may cut the bitter root of the squirting cucumber; to a stomach even sore oppressed with anguish also fruit of the prickly paliurus affords relief; so too its spiky leaves, and the young fruits of the pomegranate 870 with scarlet on its neck-like, closing sepals where it reddens about the slender flowers; at another time hyssop and the many-branched rest-harrow and the leaves of love-in-absence and the fresh tendril on the grape cluster, cloves of garlic, and the seed of the mountain-born coriander, or even the downy leaves of the delicate fleabane. Often too you may cut of some fresh pepper or Persian garden-cress and administer it in a drink; and the flowering pennyroyal and deadly nightshade and mustard too may save one in evil plight. Take also the green leak from the garden-plot, or else the hurtful seed of the nettle itself 880 with which boys play tricks. With these too perhaps the snow-white head of a squill and the dried coats of purse-tassels and the stalk of the dragon's namesake {dracunculus}, and the shoots of the shrubby rhamnus, and what the wildwood pines in the valleys nourish at the heart of their cones. Look you, you should lop the green root of the feeble herb scorpius that men liken to the poisonous sting of the beast, or waterlilies from Psamathe, and those which Traphea and Copae foster by the waters of their lake, wherein discharge the streams of Schoeneus and Cnopus, 890 and the pistachio nuts which look like almonds upon the boughs by the Indian flood of the roaring Choaspes. Collect hedge-parsley and the red-brown, astringent myrtle berries and slips of sage and of the flourishing fennel; collect also hedge-mustard and the seeds of the wild chick-pea, including with its green shoots the heavy-smelling leaves. Again, water-cress alleviates sickness; so too a fresh garland of melilot; also the white blossoms of the spongy dropwort which shepherds pound in a mortar, and those seeds which the corn-cockle and the red plantain and the rose foster within them, 900 and the tiny seed of the gilliflower. Or cut some knot-grass from the tangled watermeadows, depilatory, and the seed of the mournful hyacinth, over whom Phoebus wept, since without willing it, hard by the river of Amyclae he slew with a blow the boy Hyacinthus in the bloom of youth ; for the iron mass rebounding from a rock smote upon his temple and crushed the sheath beneath it. Mix too some trefoil and gum of silphium equal in scale to the weight of three obols; or else pluck the horn-shaped tufted thyme, often too samphire or lavendar-cotton, 910 and along with them grate into some drink anise and libyan roots. Having shredded them into a bowl, sometimes together sometimes separately, drink them mixed with vinegar or else with wine or water; these help too when shredded into milk.
If however some bite should call for haste as you are on your journey and among waterless glades, the moment you are overcome chew with your jaws some roots or leaves or seeds growing by the way, and sucking out the sap, lay the half-eaten remains of the food upon the wounds 920 in order that you may avoid suffering and imminent death.
Again, by applying to some deadly wound a brazen cupping vessel you will drain the poison and the blood together; or by pouring on the milky juice of the fig, or by using an iron heated in the heart of a hot furnace. Sometimes the skin of a grazing goat filled with wine will be of service at a time when the wound is in ankle or hand. You will fix the sufferer in the wineskin to the mid forearm or ankle and wind the fastening cord about the groin or armpit until the strength of the wine has drawn out the pain from the flesh. 930 At times moreover let leeches feed on wounds and drink their fill. Or drip onion juice, or else pour lees of wine or of vinegar, upon sheep's droppings, make a paste, and plaster the wound with the fresh dung.
But that you may with instruction compound a general panacea,- it will be very serviceable after you have mixed all the simples together - let there be birthwort, root of iris and of spikenard, of all-heal too with dried pellitory, of all-curing wild carrot, and of black bryony, 940 and with them the spongy roots of a freshly dug peony, sprigs of the black hellebore, and mingled with them native sodium carbonate. Pour in too cummin and a sprig of fleabane mixed with the husks of stavesacre; and grate down an equal quantity of the bay's berries and tree-medick and the lowly horse-moss, and gather in some cyclamen. Cast in also the juice of the gleaming poppy, and over all the seeds of the agnus castus, balsam too and some cassia, and with them cow-parsnip and a bowlful of salt, mingling them with curd and a crab; but the former should come from a hare, 950 the latter should be a dweller in pebbly streams. Now all these you should throw into the belly of a capacious mortar, kneading them with the blows of stone pestles. And on the dry ingredients pour at once the juice of cleavers and mix well together; then prepare round cakes of a drachma each, limiting the weight precisely with a balance; then shake them up in two cotylae of wine and drink.
So now you will treasure ever the memory of the Homeric Nicander, whom the snow-white town of Clarus nurtured.
https://www.attalus.org/poetry/theriaca.html

and seeing in its hole the deadly, trailing brute, implored it with fawning speech to aid him in his sore plight. Whereat the snake asked of the foolish creature as a gift the load which he had taken on his back; and the ass refused not its request. Ever since then do trailing reptiles slough their skin in old age, but grievous eld attends mortals. The affliction of thirst did the deadly brute receive from the braying ass, and imparts it with its feeble blows.
Come now and learn that the forms of the chersydrus and of the asp are alike in appearance. 360 Signs of a malignant nature follow on his bite: all the skin upon the flesh, dry, loathsome, and bloated with putrid sores, breaks out from below, disclosing a clammy wound, while innumerable and fiery are the pangs which overcome the man, and sudden swellings are raised upon his limbs, plaguing him by turns now in this quarter now in that. This is the snake that first beneath some shallow mere wreaks his truceless malice upon the frogs; but when the Dog-Star dries up the water and drought is upon the floor of the lake, then upon dry land he becomes dust-like and shabby, 370 as he warms his grim body in the sunshine, and with hissing tongue he haunts the thirsting ruts along the highways.
After him you shall learn of the amphisbaena, less in bulk and slow of gait, two-headed, ever dull of eye. From either end a blunt chin protrudes, the one far from the other. Its body is earth-coloured and wears a skin ragged, speckled, and sheeny. This snake, when it comes to full growth, do wood-cutters, as though they had cut for a walking-stick a stem of twisted wild-olive, strip of its skin as soon as it appears, 380 before the note of the cuckoo in spring. The amphisbaena benefits those with afflicted skin when crippling chilblains break out upon the hands of men overcome with cold, also when the bonds of their sinews slacken and weary.
You shall learn too of the scytale, like in appearance to the amphisbaena, though thick, and bulkier down to its useless tail, for the skytale is of the thickness that men make the haft of a mattock, while the amphisbaena's bulk is that of a maw-worm or of such earth-worms as the earth breeds after a shower. Nor at spring's oncoming, after it has quitted gully and hollow cleft 390 in the season when earth brings reptiles to light, does it browse upon the waving shoots on the fennel's branch, when it clothes its limbs with their new skin beneath the sun; rather does it retire to hedges and glades and lurk deep in slumber and feed upon what the earth may chance to yield, nor does it stave off its thirst for all its desire.
Consider too the king of snakes {basilisk}, small indeed yet far excelling all others: his head is pointed; he is golden-hued and three palms' width in outstretched length. Truly none of the heavy-coiled monsters of earth 400 abide his hissing when to feeding-ground or forest or in craving for a watering-place they dart forth at noontide, but they turn and flee. His bite swells a man's body, and from the limbs the flesh falls away livid and blackening. Nor even will a bird pursuing its track above the corpse, be it eagle or vulture or raven that croaks of rain, nor yet any species of wild beast that pastures upon the hills, feed upon it; such the terrible stench that it sends forth. Yet if so be that fatal greed draws one of them near in ignorance, 410 death and a swift ending are wrought for it on the spot.
Learn now the doom inflicted by the dryinas, which others call chelydrus. It makes its home in oaks or maybe Valonia oaks and dwells in mountain glens. For after it has deserted the water-weeds, the marsh, and the congenial lake, and is hunting molurides and small frogs in the meadows, it is sent speeding in expectation of the gadfly's distasteful onslaught; whereat slipping swiftly into the stem of some hollow oak it coils itself and builds its lair in the depths of the wood. 420 Its back is of a smoky hue, but in the flatness of its head it resembles the hydrus, and from its skin exhales a hateful air, as when about the damp horse-skins and hides the scraps of leather ooze beneath the paring of the tanner's knives. And truly, when it strikes the hollows of the knee or on the sole of the foot, a stifling smell is diffused from the flesh; also there rises up a dark swelling about the victim's wound; moreover he is distraught, hateful distress shackles his mind, and his body is parched with suffering. His skin hangs loose about him, so consuming is the fierce poison 430 which feeds ever upon him. and an encircling mist, veiling his eyes, overcomes him in his sore affliction. Some men scream and choke, and their urine is stopped; or again they fall asleep and snore, oppressed with frequent retchings, or from their throat discharging a bilious or sometimes a bloody vomit; and last of all a dreadful plague of thirst sheds a trembling upon their limbs.
Learn and consider the green and dark-blue dragon, which once on a time the god of healing fostered in a leafy oak upon snow-capped Pelion 440 in the vale of Pelethronius. Radiant indeed does he appear, but in his jaw above and below are arrayed three rows of teeth; gleaming eye are beneath his brows, and lower down beneath his chin there is ever a beard of yellow stain. Yet when he fastens on a man he does not hurt as other snakes, even though his rage be violent, for the wound upon the skin of one whose blood is drawn by his slender fang seems slight as that of a meal-nibbling mouse. From his earliest days the king of birds, the eagle, grows up cherishing fierce wrath against him, and against him with his beak 450 he wages a war of hate whenever he espies him moving through the forest, for every nest he lays desolate, devouring alike the young and the cherished eggs of birds. Nevertheless when the eagle has just snatched in his talons a lamb or a swift hare, the dragon will easily rob him, springing up from a thicket. The eagle avoids him: and then there is a battle for the feast. But as the eagle hovers round, the writhing snake is after him without cease, watching him with sidelong glance and grim eyes.
Should you chance to walk in some valley of limping Hephaestus's isle { Lemnos } or go to storm-beaten Samothrace - these lie far off in the Thracian Gulf, 460 where are Hebrus, the river of Hera of Rhescynthium, and the snow-crested mountains of Zone and the oaks of Oeagrus's son, where too is the cave of Zerynthus - you will find the long monster cenchrines, which men call the spangled lion, dappled with scales. His bulk and his length vary, but in a twinkling he sends upon the flesh a shower of putrid sores which will not heal, and these with their consuming poison feed upon the limbs; and ever deep in the belly the dropsy with its load of pain settles about the mid-navel. At the hour when the sun's rays are at their hottest 470 this snake eagerly resorts to rugged mountains, athirst for blood and on the watch for the gentle sheep, while beneath the tall pines of Saüs or Mosychlus the shepherds cool themselves, forsaking the tasks of herdsmen. Do you not dare, bold though you be, to face him in his fury, for fear he wind about and strangle you as he lashes your body all around with his tail, and gorge your blood after he has broken both your collar-bones. But in fleeing weave ever a crooked, manifold track, and baulk the beast's course by starting aside. 480 For by the many turnings and twistings of the spine he injures its ligaments; whereas he moves rapidly and at his swiftest when his path is straight. Such is the serpent which haunts the isles of Thrace.
There too are the bites of the gecko, hateful, though he is of no account. Of him the tale is current how the Sorrowing Demeter did him injury when she marred the limbs of him as a boy by the well Callichorum, after wise Metaneira of old had received the goddess in the dwelling of Celeus.
Harmless reptiles also there are however which feed in the forest, the brakes and thickets and gullies in the country; 490 and men call these Elopes, Libyans, and curling Mouse-hunters; and with them all the Darters and Moluri and Blind-eyes too which are reported innocuous.
Now all the simples and remedies for these ills, the herbs and the time to cut their roots, I will expound to mankind thoroughly and in straightforward fashion,- herbs by whose aid a man may heal the urgent pain of sickness. While the wound is still bleeding and painful, pluck your herbs freshly (this excels all other remedies) from some place where snakes feed in the thick wood. 500 Choose first the medicinal root of Chiron {centaury}; it bears the name of the Centaur son of Cronus, and Chiron once on a snow-covered col of Pelion found and took notice of it. Its waving leaves, like sweet marjoram, encompass it about, and its blossoms are golden to view; its root, at the surface and not deep-set, is native in the dell of Pelethronius. This when dry or while still green, after crushing in a mortar, mingle in a cotyle of pleasant wine, and drink. It is of service in every case; therefore men call it Panacea {"all-healing"}.
Assuredly let birth-wort which grows in the shade be commended; 510 the leaves it bears are like those of the woodbine with its ivy-shaped leaves, but its flowers are red with scarlet, while the odour diffused from it is heavy, and the fruit in the midst you will see to be like the wild pear upon the cordate pear-tree or the common pear. The root of the female shrub is rounded into a lump, but that of the male is lengthy and extends down as much as a cubit, and in colour it resembles the boxwood of Oricus. This you will search after as a surpassing aid against the dread blow of male and female viper. From it let a portion of a drachma's weight be mixed in a draught of tawny wine.
520 Furthermore take to yourself the treacle-clover as a protection against snakes, be it on some stony hill or in some steep glen (some call it Brief-flower, others would call it Trefoil) ; its leaves are like the melilot, but its scent is like rue. When however it sheds all its blossoms and its mottled leaves, it exhales a smell of bitumen. Then cut off enough seeds to fill the sauce-boat on your table, pound them in a mortar, and take to drink as a remedy against snakes.
Attend now and I will rehearse some compound remedies against disease. Grind down and take the strength-giving Sicilian root of fustic; 530 add a heap of the seed of the brightflowered agnus castus, savin, and the luxuriant rue, and pluck a shoot of the earth-pillowed savory, which in the forest spreads abroad fronds like those of the tufted thyme. Again take the root of the double-flowered asphodel, or else the upper portion of its stem; often with them too the seed which the enclosing pod ripens; or else helxine, which men call Clybatis and which delights in streams and flourishes ever in water-meadows. Drink them after crumbling them into a cotyle of vinegar or of wine which you have drawn. 540 Even with water you might easily escape death.
Consider now the excellent root of Alcibius's bugloss: its prickly leaves grow ever thick upon it, and it puts out a coronal of flowers like violets, but beneath them in the soil the root grows deep and slender. Alcibius a male viper wounded above the lowest part of his groin as he lay asleep upon a mound of uncleansed grain by the margin of a piled threshing-floor, straightway rousing him by the violence of the pain. Whereat he pulled the root from the ground and first broke it small with his close-set teeth as he sucked it, and then spread the skin upon his wound.
550 Again, if you pluck off the shoots of the sprouting horehound and drink them with bright wine you may ward of snakes : this is the plant which draws down the udder of a young cow which mothers not her first-born calf, and anon, swollen with milk, she cares for it. Herdsmen call it Meliphyllon {"honey-leaf"}, others Melictaena, for all about its leaves the bees lured by the fragrance of honey buzz busily.
Or else you should peel off the thin membranes of the brain of a domestic fowl, or pare fine some field basil and marjoram, or cut from a boar's liver 560 the tip of the lobe which grows from the 'table' and inclines towards the gall-bladder and the portal fissure. These then you should drink, mixed together or separate, with a draught of vinegar or wine, though a fuller cure will attend wine. And snip the foliage from the evergreen cypress for a potion, or all-heal, or the testicle which is fatal to the beaver, or that of the river-horse which the Nile beyond Sais with its black soil nurtures, and launches, a ruinous sickle indeed, upon the plough-lands. (For the beast, emerging from the muddy ooze of the river when the pastures grow green and the fallow has put forth grass, 570 tramples and leaves behind a deep track as long as that which it devours with its jaws as it cuts its returning swathe.) From it cut off a drachma's weight to match, and soak in water, shredding all together in a vessel.
And do not forget the wormwood or the berries of the slenderer bay; very serviceable too would sweet marjoram be, which flourishes in garden-plots and borders. And include curd from a nimble leveret or from a fawn of roe or red deer after separating the impurities, or the seminal purse which you have cut from a stag, or his paunch, which some indeed call the 'urchin' but others the 'intestinal snood'. 580 Take of them portions of two drachmas' weight and throw them into four cyathi of old wine and mix well. And do not overlook the succour afforded by the hulwort and the cedar-tree, the juniper berry and the catkins of the plane that invites to sleep in summer, and the seeds of the bishop's weed and the cypress of Ida ; for all these will heal you and will banish untold suffering.
Next consider another means of escape and protection from death, and take helxine and grind it in a round mortar 590 and pour in a cotyle of barley gruel, adding two cyathi of wine of ancient vintage, adding also an equal portion of gleaming olive oil; mix them by pounding and you will keep at bay the poison that bites like gall.
Take also to the sixth of a cotyle fragrant pitch and cut out the central pith from the green giant fennel; or grate the full-grown root of horse-fennel into juniper berries, also the seeds of the marsh-bred celery. The full depth of an alexanders 600 and two drachmas' weight of pungent myrrh: cut too the fruit of cummin that grows in summer and weigh them, or pour in at random and shake up unweighed. Then draw thrice a cyathus of wine and mix with them before drinking. Take to yourself a drachma's weight of fruitful spikenard and with it crumble into fresh-drawn milk an eight-footed crab ravished from the river ; some iris too which Drilon has fostered and the banks of Naron, the abode of Sidonian Cadmus and Harmonia, where as two fearsome snakes they move about the pastures. 610 Take next the thick-growing heath when in flower, round which the thronging bees crawl and feed; take too a young frond of the tamarisk that bears no fruit, an honoured prophet among mortals, which Apollo of Corope endued with prophetic properties and authority over men; with these green marjoram leaves and blossom in plenty, and tree-medick and the milky spurge. Bray all these in a mortar, and in the containing vessels medicate wine with them and take in one-tenth of a chous. 620 But of a truth the tadpoles' all too noisy parents, frogs, are excellent when boiled with vinegar in a pot; often the liver of the biting snake itself if drunk in common wine, or the poisonous head administered sometimes in water, at other times in a small quantity of wine, will help you.
You must not neglect the blossom of the sweet blue pimpernel with its closed eye, nor the all-healing marjoram, which men honour as Heracles's Organy; and with the Marjoram you should rub small a leaf of pot marjoram, and dry pellets of the savory that muzzle evil disease.
630 Be sure and take the well-watered rhamnus, like to the little Wild Lettuce; it ever clothes itself in blossom of white. The name whereby men call it is Good Companion, the men who dwell about the tomb of Tmolus and of Gyges on the steep of Parthenius, where horses that toil not pasture upon Cilbis, and where the Caÿster rises.
Attend now and I will tell you of roots that are a help against Serpents. First, learn the two kinds of viper's bugloss : of one the prickly leaf is somewhat like alkanet, since it is small, and the root which it extends is short and on the ground. 640 The other kind has robust leaves and stalks, is tall, grows purple with small blossoms all over, and puts out a head like that of a viper but rough on top. Of these two kinds cut off an equal portion and use as a remedy after shredding them on a block of wood or in a mortar or a hollow stone. Also you should make a paste of the roots of the eryngo and the flowering bearsfoot, and to these two add an equal weight of the campanula that flourishes about the hedgerows. Take too the heavy foliage of the field-basil upon the mountain and seed of the evergreen celery from Nemea ; 650 with them let the double burden of anise raise the scale that sinks with the weight of roots. These should you knead, and having mixed them in a single vessel you may cure one time the deadly bane of Male Vipers, at another the scorpion's wound, at another the bite of the poisonous spider, if you will crumble three obols' weight in wine.
Consider too the white pine-thistle and the dark kind also. The two are distinct: the dusky is like golden thistle in appearance; it puts forth a circle of leaves, its root is strong and dark, and it grows beneath shady mountain spurs 660 or in glades, shunning the sun. But the other you will find ever in the pride of its leaves, while the head lies low and bloated in the middle of them, and its root is whitish and honey-sweet to the taste. Reject the dark root of these plants, but of other stir a piece of a drachma's weight in river water and drink.
Take herbage of another kind that also bears the name of Alcibius, fill your hand full, and drink in a little wine. it was that when hunting beneath Phalacra's cliff, on Crymna's plain and about Grasus, and where lie the meadows of the horse, 670 as he hallooed to his Amyclaean whelps, he discovered through the anguished whimpering of his lion-hearted hound; for as it followed up a goat's trail along some woodland path it had received the female viper's stab in the watering corner of its eye. And with a howl it flung her off and readily ate the leaves of this herb and escaped deadly destruction.
Administer plenty of the sappy, oily bark of the castor oil tree, together with the leaves of the thick balm, or else the plant whose name is that of the sun's turnings, and which, like the glaucous leaves of the olive, 680 marks the path of the retreating scion of Hyperion. Take likewise the root of the navelwort, which in frosty weather draws out the painful chilblains on the feet of those with broken skin. Sometimes you may take the green leaves of the tall bindweed, or of hart's tongue, shearing off the stalk. Take too the Phlegyan all-heal, even that which the God of Healing was the first to pluck by the brim of the river Melas, when ministering to the wound of Iphicles Amphitryon's son, what time with Heracles he was burning the evil Hydra.
Now lay sudden hold on the marten's young or their mischievous mother, 690 and strip their fur over the flame of a fiercely blazing fire, and after rejecting all the inwards and the stomach's excrements, dress with holy salt, and then dry away from the light of the sun, so that its swift shafts do not shrivel the fresh carcase. But, when necessity comes upon you in anguish, rub the desiccated beast thoroughly with a rasp as though it were frail silphium or a round cake of dried milk, grating...

Readily, dear Hermesianax, most honoured of my many kinsmen, and in due order will I expound the forms of savage creatures and their deadly injuries which smite one unforeseen, and the countering remedy for the harm. And the toiling ploughman, the herdsman, and the woodcutter, whenever in forest or at the plough one of them fastens its deadly fang upon him, shall respect you for your learning in such means for averting sickness.
Now I would have you know, men say that noxious spiders, together with the grievous reptiles and vipers and the earth's countless burdens, are of the Titans' blood - 10 if indeed he spoke the truth, Ascraean Hesiod on the steeps of secluded Melissēeis by the waters of Permessus. And it was the Titan's daughter who sent forth the blighting scorpion with sharpened sting, when she compassed an evil end for Boeotian Orion, and attacked him after he had laid violent hands upon the immaculate raiment of the goddess. Thereupon the scorpion, which had lurked unobserved beneath a small stone, struck him in the ankle of his strong foot. But Orion's wondrous sign is set conspicuous, fixed there amid the constellations, 20 as of one hunting, dazzling to behold.
You for your part will easily chase and dispel all creeping things from farmstead and cottage, or from steep bank, or from couch of natural herbage, in the hour when, to shun parching summer's fiery breath, beneath the sky you make your bed on straw at nightfall in the fields and sleep, or else beside some unwooded hill or on the edge of a glen, where poisonous creatures feed in multitudes upon the forest, or beside the levelled perimeter of the threshing-floor, and where the grass 30 at its first burgeoning brings bloom to the shady water-meadows, at the time when the snake sloughs the withered scales of age, moving feebly forward, when in spring he leaves his den, and his sight is dim; but a meal of the fennel's sappy shoots makes him swift and bright of eye.
You may expel the hot and harmful doom that snakes bring, if you char the tined horn of a stag, or else set fire to dry lignite, which not even the violence of a fierce flame consumes. Cast also upon the fire the foliage of the male fern with its cloven fronds, 40 or take the heated root of the frankincense-tree mixed with an equal measure of garden-cress; and mingle the fresh, pungent horn of a roe, putting an equal weight of it in the balance. Burn also a portion no less heavy of the strong-smelling black cumin, or else of sulphur, or again of bitumen. Or you may ignite in the fire the Thracian stone, which when soaked in water glows, yet quenches its brightness at the least smell of a drop of oil. Herdsmen gather it for themselves from the river of Thrace which they call Pontus, where the Thracian shepherds 50 who eat ram's flesh so follow after their leisurely flocks. Again, the heavy-scented juice of all-heal stimulated over a fire, and the stinging nettle, and cedar cut with saws and ground to dust by their many-toothed jaws, produce in burning a smoky and repellent stench. With these means you may clear hollow clefts and couches in the woods, and may sink upon the ground and take your fill of sleep.
But if these things involve trouble, and night brings bed-time near, and you are longing for rest when your work is done, then gather to yourself among the eddies of some rushing river 60 the water-loving, leafy mint, for it grows in plenty by streams and is fed with the moisture about their edges, as it delights in gleaming rivers. Or you should cut and strew beneath you the flowering willow, or the strong-smelling hulwort, which has a most offensive odour; so too have viper's bugloss and the leaves of marjoram, aye, or of wormwood, which grows wild upon the hills in some chalky glen, or of tufted thyme from pasture-lands : tenacious of life it draws sustenance from a damp soil, deep-rooted, ever furnished with hairy leaves. 70 And you should mark the pale spikes of the low-growing fleabane and of the agnus castus, and the pungent stinking bean-trefoil. Likewise cut the rough twigs of the pomegranate, or else young and flourishing shoots of the asphodel, and deadly nightshade, and the horrid hypericum which injures the herdsman in the springtime when his cows are poisoned by eating the stalks; and further stems of the heavy-scented sulphurwort whose very odour scares snakes and chases them away should they approach you. so place some of these by you wherever you make a casual couch in the fields; others where snakes lurk, and a double quantity at their holes.
80 Now make in an earthen vessel or an oil-flask a paste of juniper berries and anoint your supple limbs - or of the heavy-scented sulphurwort; or else pound thoroughly in oil the dried leaves of fleabane from the hills, and likewise the healing salvia, adding the root of silphium, which the grater's teeth should grind small - many a time too have noxious creatures fled in terror from the scent of a man's spittle. But if you rub a caterpillar from the garden in a little vinegar, the dewy caterpillar with a green back, or if you anoint your limbs all about with the teeming fruit of the marsh mallow, 90 then you will pass the night unscathed. Also cast in and rub down in the stony heart of a mortar two leafy sprays of wormwood mixed with garden cress - an obol's weight is suitable - and with a pestle pound therein to smoothness a handful of fresh berries from the bay; then mould into rounds and put to dry in a shady, wind-swept spot; when dry break them in pieces in an oil-flask, and you can anoint your limbs with it at once.
If however you can cast snakes coupled at a crossroads, alive and just mating, into a pot, and the following medicaments besides, 100 you have a preventive against deadly disasters. Throw in thirty drachmas' weight of the marrow of a freshly killed stag and one-third of a chous of rose-oil, - essence which perfumers style 'prime' and 'medium' and 'well-ground' - and pour on an equal measure of raw, gleaming oil and one-quarter of wax. These you must quickly heat in a round, bellying pot until the fleshy portions are softened and come in pieces about the spine. Next take a shaped, well-made pestle and pound up these many ingredients in a mixture with the snakes; 110 but cast aside the vertebrae, for in them a venom no less deadly is engendered. Then anoint all your limbs, be it for a journey or for a sleep or when you gird yourself after work at the threshing-floor in summer's drought and with pronged forks winnow the high pile of grain.
But if you should chance to come upon biting creatures when your skin is un-medicined and you are fasting - that is the time when disaster strikes a man - you may readily save yourself by our precepts. It is the female snake that attacks with its bite those who encounter it; besides, it is thicker right down to the trailing tail, 120 and for that reason the doom of death will come more swiftly. But chiefly in summer must you be on your guard against harmful snakes, observing the rising of the Pleiads, those smaller stars which graze the tail of the bull in their course, when the dipsas either sleeps unfed with the young it broods, lurking in the recesses of its hole, or when it makes eagerly for its feeding-ground, or when therefrom, sated with the forest, it goes sleepily to its lair. Beware of meeting at the crossroads the dusky male viper when he has escaped from her bite and is maddened by the blow of the smoke-hued female, 130 in the season when, as the male covers her, the lustful female fastens upon him, tearing him with her foul fang, and cuts off the head of her mate; but forthwith in the act of birth the young vipers avenge their sire's destruction, since they gnaw through their mother's thin flank and thereby are born motherless. For alone of snakes the female viper is burdened with pregnancy, whereas oviparous snakes of the forest warm a membrane-enclosed brood. Beware too when the viper, having doffed the wrinkled scales of age, comes abroad again exulting in his new-found youth; beware when, after escaping in his hole from the trampling feet of deer, 140 he darts in fury his limb-corroding venom at men; for red deer and roe cherish a special anger towards long reptiles and track them down, exploring on every side stone-heaps, walls, and lurking-places, following hard after them with the dreadful breath of their nostrils.
Furthermore the snow-capped crags of Othrys too bear deadly serpents, and hollow gully and rough crags and woodland scaur, where haunts the thirst-provoking seps. It has a varying hue and not one alone, ever taking the colour of the place wherein it has made its hole. 150 Those that live in stony ground and cairns are smaller but fierce and irascible: no bite of theirs can fail of effect on man, but is malignant. Another's body is like a land-snail; yet another has scales of greenish hue which variegate its huge coil; and many there are that frequent dusty places and make their coils rough by wriggling in the sand.
Consider now the murderous asp, bristling with dry scales, the most sluggish of all snakes. 160 Its form is terrifying, but when in movement, it uncoils its weight slowly and ever seems to wear a fixed look in its drowsy eyes. Yet when it hears some strange noise or sees a bright light, it throws off from its body dull sleep and wreathes its coil in a circular ring upon the ground, and in the midst it rears its head, bristling in deadly fashion. Its length, horrible beyond that of any other of earth's creatures, measures a fathom, and its thickness is seen to be that 170 which a spear-maker fashions for a hunting-spear for fighting bulls and deep-voiced lions. Sometimes the colour spread over its back is dust-like, sometimes it is the yellow of a quince and sheeny, at other times an ashen hue, but often, when it grows dark with Aethiop soil, a smoky brown like the sludge which the many-mouthed Nile in flood pours into the sea, as it dashes against the waves. Above the brow over the eyes there appear, as it were, two calluses, while its eye beneath them glows bright red aloft over its coil and its dust-coloured neck swells up as it hisses continuously, 180 when in the violence of its wrath it fastens death upon wayfarers who meet it. It has four fangs, their underside hollow, hooked, and long, rooted in its jaws, containing poison, and at their base a covering of membranes hides them. Thence it belches forth poison unassuageable on a body. Be they no friends of mine whose heads these monsters assail. For no bite appears on the flesh, no deadly swelling with inflammation, but the man dies without pain, and a slumberous lethargy brings life's end.
190 Now the ichneumon alone escapes unharmed the asp's onset, both when it comes to fight and when it breaks on the ground all the baneful eggs which the deadly serpent is brooding, as it shakes them out from their membranes by biting them and crushes them in its destroying teeth. The form of this snake-tracking creature is that of the puny marten which seeks the destruction of domestic fowls, snatching them from their perches as they sleep, where they roost upon a beam or foster their feeble chicks, keeping them warm beneath their breast. 200 But when amid Egypt's rush-grown water-meadows they join with the wriggling asps in a fearsome struggle, forthwith the Ichneumon leaps into the river, strikes the slimy bottom with its paws, and rolling its small body smears its limbs at once with the mud, against the time when the Dog-Star's heat has dried its fur and made it so that no fang may rend it. And then it either springs upon the frightful head of the reptile with the flickering tongue and bites it, or seizing it by the tail, sends it rolling into the weedy river.
You would do well to mark the various forms of the viper. It may be long, it may be short; 210 for so Europe and Asia breed them, but you will not find them alike. Thus, in Europe they are smaller, and above the tip of their nostrils they are horned and white, those, that is, beneath the mountains of Sciron and the Pambonian steeps, Rhype, and the hill of Corax and hoary Aselenus; whereas Asia breeds snakes a fathom long and even more, such as are about rugged Bucarterus or are contained within the strong headland of Aesagea and in Cercaphus. The front of their heads is flat, and at the trailing end of its coil 220 the creature wriggles a stunted tail which is abundantly rough with dry scales. And this way and that through the brakes it strays with sluggish coil. But every male viper is seen to have a pointed head. In length he is sometimes larger, sometimes short, and in breadth of belly he is slimmer, while his tail stretches tapering away, and may be flattened towards the end of its trailing length or rubbed smooth of scales. But the eyes in his face turn blood- red when he is angered, and as his forked tongue flickers rapidly, he lashes the end of his tail. 230 Wayfarers call him the snaky Cocytus. Two fangs in his upper jaw, as they spit poison, leave their mark upon the skin, but of the female always more than two, for she lays hold with her whole mouth, and you can easily observe that the jaws have opened wide about the flesh. And from the wound she makes there oozes a discharge like oil or, it may be, bloody or colourless, while the skin around starts up into a painful lump, often greenish, now crimson, or again of livid aspect. At other times it engenders a mass of fluid, and about the wound small pimples 240 like slight blisters rise flabbily from the skin, which looks scorched. And all around spread ulcers, some at a distance, others by the wound, emitting a dark blue poison; and over the whole body the piercing bane eats its way with its acute inflammation; and in the throat and about the uvula retchings following fast upon one another convulse the victim. The body is oppressed also with failures of sense in every part, and forthwith in the limbs and loins is seated a burdening, dangerous weakness, and heavy darkness settles in the head. Meantime the sufferer 250 at one moment has his throat parched with dry thirst, often too he is seized with cold from the finger-tips, while all over his frame an eruption with wintry rage lies heavy upon him. And again a man often turns yellow all over his body and vomits up the bile that lies upon his stomach, while a moist sweat, colder than the falling snow, envelops his limbs. In some cases his colour is that of sombre lead, in others his hue is murky, or again it is like flowers of copper.
You would do well also to learn of the crafty cerastes, who attacks like the male viper, which he resembles in equality of size. 260 True, the viper is hornless, whereas the cerastes boasts sometimes four horns sometimes two, and his dust-coloured skin is rough, and it is his habit to sleep in the sand or in the ruts down a road. The viper writhing himself darts swiftly forward on a straight course with the long winding of his belly, whereas the cerastes rolls on with clumsy movements of his middle, meandering on a crooked path with his scaly back, like to the dinghy of a merchantman dipping its whole side in the brine when the wind is contrary, 270 as it forces its way to windward when driven back by the south-westerly gale. When the cerastes bites, the disfiguring wound turns callous all around like a wart, and livid blisters like drops of rain move round about the bite, dimly discernible to the eye. True, the man in whom the deadly cerastes strikes his mischief-working fang goes through less acute pain, but nine suns of suffering does he behold. And in either groin and the hams the trouble festers persistent ever, while his skin has a livid appearance. 280 And from their suffering little strength is left in the joints of those afflicted, and with difficulty do they escape death.
Next I will tell you what marks the blood-letting snake, which always sleeps in rocky ascents, making a small, rough lair under a hedge. There it has its lurking-place when it has gorged its fill. It equals a footprint in length, but as to breadth it dwindles tapering from the fiery head down. At times it is of a sooty hue, or again a reddish brown. It narrows moderately at the neck, and its tail is sharply compressed 290 and stretches flattened from the middle onward. In its forehead beneath its snow-white horns are planted two eyes, of which the irises are somewhat like those of locusts, and on high rises terrible its devouring head. And with an oblique and halting movement it ever steers its little body on its brief journeys from the middle of the back like the cerastes, scraping its belly over the earth, and with its scaly body it makes a slight rustling as though crawling through a heap of straw. But when first it bites, a swelling of dark, unhealthy hue rises, and a sore pain freezes the heart, 300 and the stomach's content turned to water gushes out, while on the first night after, blood wells from the nostrils and throat and ears, freshly infected with the bile-like venom; urine escapes all bloody; wounds on the limbs break open, hastened by the destruction of the skin. May no female blood-letter ever inject its venom into you! For when it has bitten, all together the gums swell from the very bottom, and from the finger nails the blood drips unstaunchable, while the teeth, clammy with gore, become loose.
If the tale be true, Bane-Helen coming from Troy was angered with this species 310 when her company beached their vessel by the tumultuous Nile as they fled before the dread onset of the north wind, what time she beheld Canobus, the helmsman, swooning on the sands of Thonis; for as he slept a female blood-letter, on which he had pressed, struck him in the neck and belched forth its deadly poison into him, turning his rest to ruin. Therefore Helen crushed the middle of its trailing shape, breaking the ligatures of the back about the spine, so that the backbone started from its body. From that day forward the blood-letter and the crooked-roving cerastes alone of snakes move haltingly, oppressed by their injury.
320 You would do well to recognise the form of the sepedon, which in other respects resembles the blood-letter in appearance, but it steers a straightforward path; moreover it is almost without horns, and its colour, like that of a carpet, is spread over a rough surface. Its head is heavy, but its tail appears short as it moves, for it curls the end like the rest of its body. Truly the wound of the sepedon is deadly and agonising, and its black, destroying poison pervades the entire body: upon the parched skin everywhere the hair withers and is dispersed like the down of a thistle when it is rubbed. 330 For from the head and the brows of the man who has been bitten the hairs break off and from the eyelids the dark lashes perish, while round spots bespeckle his limbs and leprous eruptions swiftly spread a chalk-like rash.
Again, the form of the dipsas will always resemble that of a small viper; yet death will come quicker to those whom this grim snake assails. Its thin tail, darkish throughout, grows blacker from the end forward. From its bite the heart is inflamed utterly, and in the fever the dry lips shrivel with parching thirst. 340 Meanwhile the victim, bowed like a bull over a stream, absorbs with gaping mouth drink past measuring, until his belly bursts his navel, spilling the too heavy load. Now there is a tale of ancient days current among men how, when the first-born seed of Cronus became lord of heaven, he apportioned to his brothers severally their illustrious realms, and in his wisdom bestowed upon mortals youth, honouring them because they had denounced the fire-stealer. The fools, they got no good of their imprudence: for, being sluggards and growing weary, they entrusted the gift to an ass for carriage, 350 and the beast, his throat burning with thirst, ran off skittishly....

i never rly came to terms with the fact that being slapped in the butt as punishment as a kid gave me rly bad trauma. i always thought that yk maybe it just brings back memories i don’t wanna talk about and i left it at that. i wasn’t beaten up bad before and i know a lot of kids esp ones who grew up w asian parents, gets their ass beaten up and it honestly became a ‘norm’ and some others had it worse. (child protective services would faint)
i realized when i was asked if i would be okay w getting slapped there (during kinky activities lmao). i thought i was then i thought about it and i did not end up liking it and it almost made me cry bec it brought back memories. literally any butt slapping brings back memories and it makes me queasy. even if it was a joke w friends or for fun and even if it doesn’t even hurt at all. it would throw me off. i thought i was being oa lang.
my parents never used that for ‘discipline’ for my little brothers. they would prob get in trouble for that in canada (higpit sila when they have suspicions if a parent hits their child. even just mentions from kids na they get hit or something, they’ll come interview the parent. i have a story abt this)
the worse part is my parents probably never regret doing it kasi one time when my little brother innocently asked why i used to be hit (i tell him stories from my childhood). my mom said, it’s because i was the eldest and i needed to be disciplined like that so i would turn out to be the way i am now. i think there are better ways to discipline your child and still turn out the way i did (excluding the trauma lmao).
i still absolutely love my parents but it honestly pains me to think about what they used to do. my parents were hit as a kid and it was the most effective and quickest way they thought of when it came to discipline me. i just hope parents right now would just break the generational curse. i will admit before, there were times where i hit my little brothers when they misbehave but never hard enough. i am able to restrain myself (like maybe a little push lang ganun) and i don’t do that anymore. i feel like im projecting on them and i feel so bad because i really didn’t mean it. i suddenly feel so bad.

I was in Waukeen's Rest and saving Florrick, I always send Wyll up to burst the door open and get Florrick while another player, usually my PC, goes around the other way and gets the guy crying about his wife. This time was nothing different. Getting through the guards to Florrick's door is always a pain so I always have Wyll Eldritch Blast from the hall, it means Florrick gets out faster and I don't have to navigate the guard's clusterfuck.
Anyway. Did you know you can crit fumble and nonhostile NPC's will think you're aiming at them?? Yeah. Neither did I. Neither did Wyll. The whole gang at Florrick's door jumped Wyll, I tried to have Astarion, who was helping the trapped guy, run up and throw a health potion at him because it's early and revive is expensive guys. But the explosion and resulting fire killed Astarion almost immediately and somehow that triggered the rest of the guards to attack the rest of my party. Karlach almost got out of the courtyard before she was taken out by the cleric's guiding bolt..... RIP, 14 hours in.

Mix for the patient a draught of well-dried navel-figs from a flourishing tree in wine three years old; or you might also crush them together with a mallet, 350 dissolve them over a fire, and give as an antidote to his sickness. And when he recovers his appetite give him again his fill of this honey-sweet drink, sometimes adding milk to the mixture; or else cast in and mix with wine the dry fruit of the date-palm or wild pears that have long been dried, or the fruit of the common pear, or of the cordate pear, or sometimes myrtle-berries; or let him even, like a new-born child, put his lips to the nipple, and calf-like draw a draught from the breast, even as a new-born calf fresh from the womb, butting the udder, forces out the quickening flow from the teat. 360 Or else you may give him his fill of some warm and greasy drink and compel him to vomit unwilling though he be, forcing him with your fingers or with a feather; or cut and twist from papyrus a curved throat-tickler.
But if fresh milk turn cheesy in the hollow of a man's stomach, then, as it collects, suffocation overcomes him. Give him three draughts, one of vinegar between two of grape-syrup, and purge his costive bowels. Or further, grate into a draught the root of silphium from Libya, or else some of its gum, and administer it dissolved in vinegar. 370 Or again, you may add to the mixture dispersive lye or a fresh-blooming sprig of Cretan thyme. Sometimes the clustered fruit of the eucnemus well-steeped in wine is a help. Also a drink of curd, they say, disperses the clots; so too the green leaves of mint mixed either with a draught of honey or with an astringent one of vinegar.
Consider now the thorn-apple, whose aspect and whose taste upon the lips are like milk. At once unwonted retchings agitate the throat of the drinker, and by reason of the pain at the mouth of his stomach 380 he either vomits up his food stained with blood, or else he voids it, foul and fill of mucus, from his bowels, like one suffering from the spasms of dysentery. Sometimes worn out with the parching struggle his limbs give way and he falls to the ground, yet has no wish to moisten his dry mouth.
You must either administer draughts of milk, or else perhaps grape-syrup, slightly warmed and mixed with it in his cup. Moreover the flesh from the plump breast of a sleek fowl, softened on the fire and eaten, can be a help; so too is gruel if swallowed by the bowlful; 390 also the creatures which beneath the roaring of the rocky sea ever feed about the weed-clad crags: some of these he should devour raw, others boiled, many of them after broiling over a fire; but dishes of sea-snails or of the purple limpet, of crayfish and pinna and of the brown sea-urchin will be far more helpful, and scallops; neither . . . the trumpet-shell or sea-squirts that revel in the seaweed.
Let not the hateful draught of pharicum escape your memory - for you are not ignorant of it: it causes grievous suffering in the jaws. Know that to the taste it is like spikenard; but it sends men reeling 400 or sometimes out of their senses, and in a single day it can easily kill a strong man.
Now you may either weigh out and administer some of the purse-like root of the fair-flowering mountain nard which the headlands of Cilicia nourish by the brimming Cestrus, or else well-ground Cretan alexanders. Take also the iris itself and the head of the lily, abhorred of Aphrodite, seeing that it was her rival for colour; wherefore in the midst of its petals she attached a thing of shame to vex it, making to grow there the shocking yard of an ass. 410 Or else you may shave his head, and having cut the hair from the roots with a keen-edged razor, take it, and after heating along with it fresh barley-meal and the dry leaves of rue, which in its feeding the caterpillar is quickest to spoil, soak in vinegar and plaster thickly about his temples.
Let no man in ignorance fill his belly with henbane, as men often do in error, or as children who, having lately put aside their swaddling-clothes and head-bindings, and their perilous crawling on all fours, and walking now upright with no anxious nurse at hand, 420 chew its sprays of baleful flowers through witlessness, since they are just bringing to light the incisor teeth in their jaws, at which time itching assails their swollen gums.
Give the patient either pure milk to drink as a remedy or else fenugreek, which is grown for fodder and puts forth curving horns amid its windswept leaves - a great boon when it floats in common oil. Or else you should give him dried nettle seed, or even the raw leaves of the nettle itself in plenty to suck, or chicory and garden-cress and what they call perseum, 430 and besides these, mustard and radishes in plenty, and mingled with them slender spring onions. A head of garlic with well-grown cloves just taken in a drink also averts disaster.
Learn further that when men drink the tears of the poppy, whose seeds are in a head, they fall fast asleep ; for their extremities are chilled; their eyes do not open but are bound quite motionless by their eyelids. With the exhaustion an odorous sweat bathes all the body, turns the cheeks pale, and causes the lips to swell; the bonds of the jaw are relaxed, 440 and through the throat the laboured breath passes faint and chill. And often either the livid nail or wrinkled nostril is a harbinger of death; sometimes too the sunken eyes.
Of all these symptoms you must not be afraid, but devote yourself entirely to succour, filling the failing man with boiling-hot wine and grape-syrup. Or else make haste to break in pieces the labour of the bee of Hymettus. (Bees were born from the carcase of a calf that had fallen dead in the glades, and there in some hollow oak they first, maybe, united to build their nest, and then, bethinking themselves of work, 450 wrought round it in Demeter's honour their many-celled combs, as with their feet they gathered thyme and flowering heath.) There are times when, prizing open his dog-teeth, or into his drooping jaws, you should squeeze with a tuft of fleecy wool some fresh, fragrant rose-oil or iris-oil or again oil of the sleek olive; and let him drain a thick flock saturated with it. And forthwith rouse him with slaps on either cheek, or else by shouting, or again by shaking him as he sleeps, in order that the swooning man may dispel the fatal drowsiness and may then vomit, ridding himself of the grievous affliction. 460 And dip cloths first in wine and then in warm oil, and rub and chafe his chilled limbs with the liquid; or again, mix them in a bath-tub and dip his body in it, and at once immerse him in the hot bath and so thaw his blood and soften his taut, dry skin.
Also you should learn to know the dire and fateful drink of the deadly sea-hare, offspring of the waves of the pebbly sea. Its odour is that of fishes' scales and of the water in which they have been scoured; its taste is fishy like that of rotten fish, or of unwashed when scales taint the dish. 470 A sordid creature with its slim tentacles, it resembles the new-born young of the calamary or of the octopus or the fugitive cuttlefish, which stains the sea black with its gall directly it perceives the fisherman's crafty assault. Over the limbs of the poisoned spreads the dusky pallor of jaundice, and piecemeal their flesh melts away and dwindles, and food is utterly loathsome. At times the surface of the flesh swells and grows puffy about the ankles; the eyes are swollen, and as it were luxuriant blossoms settle upon the cheeks. For there follows a scantier flow of urine, which is sometimes red, 480 at others still more bloody in colour. Then the sight of every fish is hateful to his eyes and in his disgust he loathes food from the sea.
Give the patient a sufficient draught of Phocian hellebore or the gum of new-grown scammony in order that he may void both the draught and the filth of the evil fish; or else he should milk a she-ass and drink the milk, or he should dissolve smooth-skinned sprigs of the mallow in a pot. Then again he is given an obol's weight of cedar pitch ; or else let him eat his fill of the scarlet fruit of the pomegranate, the Cretan kind, 490 the wine-red, and the sort they call Promenean, also that from Aegina, and all those which partition hard, red grains into sections by a covering like a spider's web. Or else you should squeeze the flesh of grapes through a strainer, like olives oozing beneath the presses.
But if a man whose throat is constrained by parching thirst fall on his knees and draw water from a stream like a bull, parting with his hand the delicate, moss-like plants, then, approaching eagerly along with the water there rushes upon him in its desire for food the blood-loving leech, 500 long flaccid and yearning for gore. Or when a man's eyes are shrouded beneath dark night, and without thinking he drinks from a pitcher, tipping it up and pressing his lips to its, the creature floating on the surface of the water passes down his throat. At the point to which first the stream drives and collects them, the leeches fasten on in numbers and suck the body's blood, settling now at the entrance where the breath always gathers to pour through the narrow pharynx, and sometimes one clings about the mouths of the stomach inflicting pain, 510 and swallows a fresh repast.
You should administer to the patient a draught of vinegar mixed in his cup, and sometimes with it snow to eat, or ice fresh frozen by the north winds. Or you should dig up some moist, brackish soil and brew therewith a turbid potion to give him strength; or draw actual salt water, and either warm it at once beneath the late summer sun or heat it steadily over a fire. Or else you should give him rock salt in plenty or the salt flakes which a salter ever gathers 520 as they settle at the bottom when he mingles water with water.
Let not the evil ferment of the soil injure a man; it will often swell up in his chest, at other times it will choke him, when it is fostered over the viper's coil deep in its lair, sucking up the monster's venom and the noxious breath from its mouth. This is the evil ferment which they call Fungi in general, for to different kinds different names have been assigned.
Now do you cut of either the head of a cabbage with its coats of leaves or the green fronds of rue, and administer them. Or else crumble the bloom of copper that has had long use, 530 or ashes of the vine in vinegar. Sometimes grate the root of bindweed or some soda into an infusion of vinegar, or a leaf of the cress which grows in garden-plots; and citron too, and the biting mustard. You should also reduce to ashes in the fire the lees of wine or the droppings of the domestic fowl, and then let the man thrust his hand hard down his throat and vomit up the deadly poison.
But if hurt come from a draught, hard to cure, of the sorcerer's lizard, slippery-skinned and utterly reckless, which they call the salamander, and which not even a fierce flame can harm, 540 then on a sudden the base of the tongue is inflamed and then the victims are overcome with chill, and a fearful trembling burdens and loosens their joints. They stagger and crawl upon all fours like an infant, for the faculties of the mind are utterly blunted, and livid weals spreading thick over the skin blotch the extremities as the poison is diffused.
Give the sufferer frequent doses of the tears stripped from the pine-tree mingled with the bee's rich produce; or boil down the leaves of the budding ground-pine together with the cones which the pine puts forth. 550 And sometimes mix the nettle's seed with the finely ground meal of bitter vetch, and dry them. Sometimes too you should sprinkle cooked nettles with crumbling barley-groats, dress well in oil, and force the patient to eat in plenty even against his will. Again, pine-resin and the sacred produce of the bee and the root of all-heal and the delicate eggs of the tortoise are curative when you mix them on a hot fire; curative too the flesh of a hog abounding in fat when boiled down together with the limbs of the sea-turtle which swims at large with weak flippers; or else with those of the mountain tortoise that feeds on tree-medick, the creature 560 that Hermes the Gracious endowed with a voice though voiceless, for he separated the chequered shell from the flesh and extended two arms from its edges. Further, either you should bend to your service the tadpoles' impudent parents and eryngo roots with them, or you should throw into a pot a sufficient quantity of scammony and cook it. With these fee the sick man to satiety, and though he be near to death, you will save him.
If a man imbibe a draught from the sun-loving toad or from the dumb and green-hued toad which in the springtime cling to the bushes, sleek, and licking up the dew, 570 one of them, the sun-lover, induces a pallor like fustic and causes swellings in the limbs while the breath issues continually in long gasps and forced, and smells foul at the mouth. Whereas the voiceless one that frequents the reeds sometimes diffuses the yellowness of boxwood over the limbs, 580 and sometimes bedews the mouth with a flow of bile. Sometimes too a man suffers from heart-burn, and persistent hiccups convulse him. And it causes the seed, now of man now of woman, to drip on, and often scattering it over their limbs it renders it infertile. But you should give the patient the flesh of a frog boiled or roasted; sometimes pitch which you have mixed with sweet wine. And the spleen of the deadly toad averts the grievous oppression - the vocal toad of the fen, which cries on the sedge , the first harbinger of delightful spring. Further, for such patients you should sometimes pour out wine in abundance, cup after cup, and induce the man to vomit, reluctant though he be; or else heat over a fire a big-bellied vessel and keep the sick man always warm, and let him sweat profusely. Also you should clip and mix with wine the roots of tall-growing reeds which are nourished by the toads' native marsh, 590 where as tiny creatures they swim about with their feet, or roots of the life loving galingale, female and male; and dry the man's body by ceaseless exercise, keeping him from all food and drink, and exhaust his limbs.
Also do not neglect litharge, which brings suffering when its hateful burden sinks into the stomach and wind circulates and rumbles about the mid navel, as in a violent colic which overpowers men, smiting them with sudden pains. The victim's flow of urine fails; then the limbs swell 600 and the skin has the appearance of lead.
Give the patient either a double obol's weight of myrrh or a fresh infusion of sage, or else cut him hypericum from the hills, or sprigs of hyssop, or again a spray of the wild fig and seed of celery from the Isthmus, beneath which the sons of Sisyphus buried the youthful Melicertes, slain by the sea, and established games. Or else you should roast pepper along with rue and grate them into wine, and so rescue him from deadly sickness. You should also give him fresh buds of henna, or the firstling fruit of the pomegranate 610 with the flower still upon it.
[See that you do not pluck the dangerous, pine-like yew of Oeta: it is the giver of lamentable death, and only a copious draught of unmixed wine can bring instant help when it chokes the pharynx and the narrow passage of a man's throat.]
[Some remedies medicinal for a man against noxious fungi Nicander in fact set down in his book, but in addition to these the myrtle whose twigs Dictynna abhors, and which Hera of the Imbrasus alone receives not for her garland, 620 seeing that it adorned the Cyprian queen on mount Ida, when the goddesses were roused to compete in beauty with one another - from this in some watered glade take as a healing boon the scarlet fruit that waxes and is warmed with the wintry rays of the sun, and pounding them with a pestle strain the juice over fine linen or with a rush sieve and administer a cup containing a cyathus - or more, for a larger dose is serviceable since this draught is not harmful to men - for that is in fact sufficient cure if you drink it.]
And now hereafter you will treasure the memory of Nicander the singer, 630 and observe the command of Zeus, Protector of Friendships.

19M, 6’4, 265lbs, slightly elevated bp, no meds, vapes nicotine, no history of surgerys or conditions.
i got a new job about a month ago working as a floorhand on workover oil rigs in north dakota. im in the process of learning to be a derrickhand. a derrickhand climbs up the rigs via ladder and performs job tasks like latching and unlatching tubing from heights of 60+ feet. the tubing isn’t close to the board i stand on, so a lanyard is attached to my harness in the lumbar area and secured to a handrail behind me. this allows me to lean forward to latch and unlatch joints without falling over the board.
the problem is, this harness has a belt that runs across my stomach on the naval. when i lean off the board, all my weight is on my stomach. after about 4 hours, my stomach starts to hurt really bad. it’s a sharp pain deep in my stomach, and it comes and goes for days afterwards. all i’ve had since then for stools is diarrhea (yellow-green sometimes with small amounts of blood). i’ve climbed 5 times now, each climb lasting around 6 hours.
the pain in my stomach increases when i do anything that adds pressure to my stomach, like squatting down, bending over, or stepping into the tailgate of a truck. im not sure what is happening or how to fix it.
other factors could be: i recently changed vape brands to “kumi” but ive been caping for 4 years and this hasn’t happened. i’ve also recently changed diets to try to eat more healthy and eat higher amounts of protein in order to lose weight to keep up with the physical demands of my job, about 2 weeks ago. another factor could possibly be that i was very scared for my first climb but im pretty used to it now and the pain is still happening so idk. i notice spicy food makes the pain worse too, so ive been staying away from it.
my work schedule is also kind of intense. 14 days on, 7 off. a work day is usually 14 hours give or take 2. im not able to get very much sleep because of this sadly. im pretty out of shape but my endurance and strength have improved a noticeable amount over the past month.
please help, you guys are doing gods work here giving free medical advice.
information i forgot because im tired: i burp constantly now. like every 3-4 minutes. i have foul smelly farts now. another factors that could contribute is the chemicals im around constantly. diesel fumes, oil, trace amounts of h2s, and whatever else you’d expect on a rig. sometimes my stomach pain makes me feel like i need to throw up (i haven’t though) and lastly, id say my stomach pain is about a 7. it calms down the longer it’s been since my last climb. thanks again for any responses.

NICANDER, 'ALEXIPHARMACA' The Greek text of the 'Alexipharmaca' can be found on the Poesia Latina website.
Even though the peoples from whom you and I, Protagoras, have derived our births did not set up the walls of their strong towers side by side in Asia, and a great space separates us, yet I can easily instruct you in the remedies for those draughts of poison which attack men and bring them low. You indeed have made your home by the tempestuous sea beneath bossy Arctus, where are the caverns of Lobrinian Rhea and the place of the secret rites of Attes; while I dwell where the sons of the far-famed 10 Creusa divided among themselves the richest portion of the mainland, settling by the tripods of Apollo in Clarus.
You must, to be sure, learn of the aconite, bitter as gall, deadly in the mouth, which the banks of Acheron put forth. There is the abyss of the Wise Counsellor {Hades} whence few escape, and there the towns of Priolas fell crashing in ruins.
All the drinker's jaws and the roof of his mouth and his gums are constricted by the bitter draught, as it wraps itself about the top of the chest, crushing with evil choking the man in the throes of heartburn. The top of the belly is gripped with pain - 20 the swelling, open mouth of the lower stomach, which some call the 'heart' of the digestive vessel, others the 'receiver' of the stomach - and the gate is closed immediately upon the beginning of the intestines where a man's food in all its abundance is carried in. And all the while from his streaming eyes drips the moisture; and his belly sore shaken vainly throws up wind, and much of it settles below about his mid-navel; and in his head is a grievous weight, and there ensues a rapid throbbing beneath his temples, and with his eyes he sees things double, like a man at night overcome with unmixed wine. 30 And as when the Silens, the nurses of the horned Dionysus, crushed the wild grapes, and having for the first time fortified their spirits with the foaming drink, were confused in their sight and on reeling feet rushed madly about the hill of Nysa, even so is the sight of these men darkened beneath the weight of evil doom. This plant men call also Mouse-bane, for it utterly destroys troublesome, nibbling mice ; but some call it Leopard's-choke, since cowherds and goatherds with it contrive the death of those great beasts 40 amid the glades of Ida in the vale of Phalacra. Again they name it Woman-killer and Crayfish. And the deadly aconite flourishes amid the Aconaean mountains.
For one so poisoned gypsum to the weight of a handful will perhaps be a protection, if you draw thereto tawny wine in due measure with the gypsum reduced to fine powder - let it be a full cotyle of wine - and add stalks of wormwood, cutting them from the shrub, or of bright green horehound which they call Honeyleaf; administer also a shoot of the herbaceous, evergreen spurge-olive and rue, quenching in vinegar and honey 50 a red-hot lump of metal between the jaws of the fire-tongs, or dross of iron which the flame of the fire has separated within the melting-pot in the furnace; or sometimes just after warming in the fire a lump of gold or silver you should plunge it in the turbid draught. Or again you should take leaves, half a handful's weight, of the ground pine; or a dry sprig of pot marjoram from the hills, or cut a fresh spray of field basil, and cover them in four cyathi of honey-sweet wine. Or you may take some broth, still meaty and undiluted, made from a domestic fowl 60 when the forcible glow of the fire beneath the pot reduces the body to pieces. Also you should render down the fresh meat of an ox abounding in fat and satisfy the stomach to its full capacity with the soup. Again, sometimes you should pour the juice of balsam into some drops of milk from a young girl, or else into water, until the patient discharges from his throat the undigested food. Sometimes too you should cut out the curd from the stomach of the nimble beast that sleeps open-eyed {hare}, or of a fawn, and give it mixed in wine; at other times cast the roots of the purple mulberry into the hollow of a mortar, 70 bray them mingled with wine, and give them boiled in the labours of the bee. Thus may you ward off loathsome sickness though it threaten to master a man, and he may once again walk on unfaltering feet.
In the second place consider the hateful brew compounded with gleaming, deadly white lead whose fresh colour is like milk which foams all over when you milk it rich in the springtime into the deep pails. Over the victim's jaws and in the grooves of the gums is plastered an astringent froth, and the furrow of the tongue turns rough on either side, 80 and the depth of the throat grows somewhat dry, and from the pernicious venom follows a dry retching and hawking, for this is severe; meanwhile his spirit sickens and he is worn out with mortal suffering. His body too grows chill, while sometimes his eyes behold strange illusions or else he drowses; nor can he bestir his limbs as heretofore, and he succumbs to the overmastering fatigue.
Give the patient at once a cupful of oil of the Premadia- or Orchis- or Myrtle- olive, so that the stomach being lubricated may void the evil drug; 90 or else you may readily milk the udder's swelling teat and give it him; but skim the oily surface from the draught. And you may infuse sprigs or leaves of the mallow in fresh sap and dose the sufferer with as much as he can take. Or again pound sesame seeds and administer them also in wine; or else heat and cleanse in water the ashes of vine twigs, and strain the lye through the interstices of a newly woven basket, for this will retain the sediment. Moreover if you rub down the hard stones of the persea in gleaming olive oil, they will ward off injury - 100 the persea which once on a time Perseus, when his feet bore him from the land of Cepheus and he had cut off the teeming head of Medusa with his falchion, readily made to grow in the fields of Mycenae (it was a recent gift of Cepheus) on the spot where the scabbard-chape of his falchion fell, beneath the topmost summit of Melanthis, where a Nymph revealed to the son of Zeus the famed spring of Langeia. Or else you should break up in roasted barley the sap which congeals upon the frankincense bushes of Gerrha; also as helpful you should dissolve in warm water the tears from the walnut-tree or from the plum or those which ever drip in plenty on the elm-twigs, 110 and drops of gum, so that he may vomit up part of the poison, and part render wholesome as he yields to the hot water when the sweat moistens his body. And again he might sate himself with a meal which he has taken or with strong wine and so escape an inglorious death.
When a liquid smells of the corn-eating blister-beetle, that is to say, like liquid pitch, refuse it, for on the nostrils it weighs like pitch and in the mouth like freshly eaten berries of the juniper. Sometimes in a weak infusion these creatures produce a biting sensation upon the lips, 120 or again deep down about the mouth of the stomach; at other times the middle of the belly or the bladder is gnawed and seized with griping pains, while discomfort attacks men where the cartilage of the chest rests over the hollow of the stomach. And the victims are distressed in themselves: swooning delusions hold in bondage what is human in them, and the victim is brought down unexpectedly by pain, like the freshly scattered thistledown which roams the air and is fluttered by every breeze.
At times administer to the patient doses of pennyroyal mixed with river water, making a posset of them in a mug. 130 This was the rich draught of the fasting Deo; once with this did Deo moisten her throat in the city of Hippothoōn by reason of the unchecked speech of Thracian Iambe. At other times take from your pot and mix with the round seeds of flax a rich draught brewed from the head of a hog or of a lamb or from the horned head of a goat which you have but lately cut off, or even, maybe, from a goose, and give it until the man is sick; and let him by tickling his throat stir up in the gullet below the entire mass of polluted food still undigested. At times you should draw the fresh milk of a sheep in a clyster-pipe, 140 administer a clyster and so empty the useless faeces from the bowel. At another time a draught of creamy milk will help the sufferer; or you should lop the green tendrils of the vine when they are fresh-burdened with leaves and chop them up in grape-syrup; or take from crumbling soil the ever sting-shaped roots of scorpius and steep in the bees' produce. The plant grows high like asphodel but sheds its stalks when withered. Also you should take four drachmas' weight of Parthenian earth which Phyllis brings forth under her mountain-spurs, 150 the snow-white earth of the Imbrasus which a horned lamb first revealed to the Chesiad Nymphs beneath the rush-grown river-banks of snowcapped Cercetes. Or brew a drink of boiled-down must of twice that quantity, and into it shred some sprigs of rue, kneading the herbs with rose-oil, or sometimes soak it in iris-oil, which has often cured an illness.
If however a man thoughtlessly taste from loathsome cups a draught, deadly and hard to remedy, of coriander, the victims are struck with madness 160 and utter wild and vulgar words like lunatics, and like crazy Bacchanals bawl shrill songs in frenzy of the mind unabashed. To such a case you should administer a cupful of hedanian wine, 'Pramnian', unmixed, just as it gushed from the vat. Or cast a cupful of salt into water and let it dissolve. Or else you should empty the fragile egg of a chicken and mix with it the sea-foam upon which the swift petrel feeds. It is with this that it sustains life, and also meets its doom, when the fishermen's destructive children assail with their tricks the swimming fowl; and it falls into the boys' hands as it chases the fresh and whitening surge of foam. 170 Do you also draw from the bitter, violet-hued sea - the sea, which, with fire too, the Earth-Shaker has enslaved to the winds. For fire is vanquished by hostile blasts: the undying fire and the expanse of waters tremble before the north-west winds; though the unruly sea, swift to anger, lords it over ships and over the men who perish in it, while to the rule of the abhorred fire the forest is obedient. Again, common oil mingled with wine or a drink of grape-syrup mixed with snow will stay the pain, 180 what time the reapers with their pruning-hooks lop the heavy, wrinkled vintage of the hedanian and the psithian vine and crush it, while with a humming sound bees and the tree-wasp, wasps and buzzers from the hills fall upon the grapes and feast their fill of sweetness, and the mischievous fox ravages the richer clusters.
Take note too of the noxious draught which is hemlock, for this drink assuredly looses disaster upon the head bringing the darkness of night: the eyes roll, and men roam the streets with tottering steps and crawling upon their hands; 190 a terrible choking blocks the lower throat and the narrow passage of the windpipe; the extremities grow cold; and in the limbs the stout arteries are contracted; for a short while the victim draws breath like one swooning, and his spirit beholds Hades.
Give the patient his fill of oil or of unmixed wine until he vomit up the evil, painful poison ; or prepare and insert a clyster ; or else give him draughts of unmixed wine, or cut and bring him twigs of sweet bay or bay of Tempe 200 (this was the first plant to crown the Delphian locks of Phoebus) ; or else pound some pepper with nettle seeds and administer them, or again infuse wine with the bitter juice of silphium. Sometimes you may offer him a measure of scented iris-oil and silphium shredded in with gleaming oil. Also give him a draught of honey-sweet grape-syrup, and a foaming vessel of milk which you have slightly warmed over the fire.
There are even means of promptly averting the oppression caused by deadly arrow-poison, when a man is overcome with anguish from drinking it. First, his tongue begins to thicken from the root 210 and weighs upon the lips which are heavy and swollen about the mouth; he suffers from a dry expectoration, and his gums break open from the base. Often too his heart is smitten with palpitations, and it is his fate that all his wits are stunned and overthrown by the evil poison; and he makes bleating noises, babbling endlessly in his frenzy; often too in his distress he cries aloud even as one whose head, the body's master, has just been cut off with the sword; or as the acolyte with her tray of offerings, Rhea's priestess, appearing in the public highways on the ninth day of the month, raises a great shout with her voice, while the people tremble 220 as they hearken to the horrible yelling of the votary of Ida. Even so the man in his frenzy of mind bellows and howls incoherently, and as he glances sidelong like a bull, he whets his white teeth and foams at the jaws.
You must even bind him fast with twisted ropes and make him drunk with wine, with gentle force filling him to satiety even against his will; then force his gnashing teeth apart in order that under your mastering hand he may vomit up the deadly stuff. Or divide up and boil till soft over a bright fire the young gosling of a free-feeding goose; 230 you should also give him the wild fruit of the rough-barked apple-tree grown upon the hills after cutting off the inedible parts; or even those kinds that pertain to the fields, such as the spring seasons bring forth for girls to sport with; or again pear-quinces, or else the famed fruit of the grim Cydon, which Cretan torrents have fostered. Or sometimes, after sufficiently pounding all these with a mallet, you should soak them in water and then throw in some fresh and fragrant pennyroyal and stir in together with apple-pips. Also you may soak up some fragrant rose-oil or iris-oil into wool 240 and let it drip into his parted lips. Yet hardly may a man after countless sufferings at the end of many days launch with safety his unsteady steps, while his startled gaze roams this way and that. This is the poison with which the nomads of Gerrha and they who plough their fields by the river Euphrates smear their brazen arrow-heads. And the wounds, quite past healing, blacken the flesh, for the stinging poison of the Hydra eats its way in, while the skin, turning putrid with the infection, breaks into open sores.
But if a man taste the loathsome fire of Colchian Medea, 250 the notorious meadow-saffron, an incurable itching assails : his lips all over as he moistens them, such as comes upon those whose skin is defiled with the snow-white juice of the fig-tree or by the stinging nettle or by the many-coated head of the squill, which fearfully inflames the flesh of children. But if he retain the poison, there settles in his gullet a pain which at first eats into it and presently lacerates it from below with desperate retching as he disgorges the poison from his throat; and at the same time the belly also voids the polluted scourings, even as a carver pours off the turbid water in which the meat was washed.
260 Now sometimes you should cut and administer the crinkled leaves of the oak, or else those of the Valonia oak together with the acorns; or you should draw fresh milk in a pail and then let the man swallow his fill of the milk after retaining it in his mouth. At times to be sure shoots of knot-grass will help, or else the roots boiled in milk. You should also infuse vine-tendrils in water, or equally well shoots of bramble which you have chopped. Further, you should strip the green hulls of a well-grown chestnut-tree that cover the thin-skinned nut 270 where the dry husk encloses the inner flesh of the nut so hard to peel which the land of Castanea brings forth. You may suitably extract the inmost pith of the giant fennel which received the spoils of Prometheus's thieving, and at the same time throw in a quantity of leaves of the evergreen tufted thyme and of the berries of the styptic myrtle; or you might perhaps soak the rind of the chamaeleon-thistle, 280 which has a smell like that of basil . The furrow of the victim's tongue grows rough at the base and inflamed from below, and his heart wanders within him. In his frenzy he gnaws his tongue with his dog-teeth, for at times his madness overmasters his wits, while the stomach blinds with wanton obstruction the two channels of liquid and solid food, and rumbles with the wind it has penned within, which circulating in a confined track often seems like the thunder of stormy Olympus, or again like the wicked roaring of the sea 290 as it booms beneath rocky cliffs. Distressed though he is, despite his efforts scarce can the wind escape upward; yet medicinal draughts can at once make him void egg-shaped stools, like the shell-less lumps which the free-feeding fowl, when brooding her warlike chicks, sometimes under stress of recent blows drops from her belly in their membranes ; sometimes under stress of sickness she will cast out her ill-fated offspring upon the earth.
The familiar astringent draught of wormwood steeped in freshly pressed grape-syrup will check his pain; 300 sometimes too you may cut up the resin of the terebinth-tree, or else the tears of the Corsican pine, or again of the Aleppo pine which makes moan on the spot where Phoebus stripped the skin from the limbs of Marsyas; and the tree, lamenting in the glens his far-famed fate, alone utters her passionate plaint unceasingly. Give him also plenty of the flowers of the bright hulwort, fatal to mice, or strip the low-growing shoots of rue, and spikenard, and take also the testicle of the beaver that dwells in the lake; or rub down an obol of silphium with a toothed scraper, or else cut off the same quantity of its gum. 310 Sometimes too he may be given his fill of the wild goat's marjoram, or of milk just curdling in the pail after milking.
But if a man in his folly taste the fresh blood of a bull he falls heavily to the ground in distress, overmastered by pain, when, as it reaches the chest, the blood congeals easily, and, in the hollow of his stomach, clots; the passages are stopped, the breath is straitened within his clogged throat, while, often struggling in convulsions on the ground, he gasps bespattered with foam.
You should cut off for him some juicy wild figs, 320 soak in vinegar, and then mingle the whole with water, stirring together the water and the astringent draught of vinegar; or drain away the burden of his surcharged belly. Also you should strain through a porous bag of fine linen some stirred curd either from a fawn of roe or red deer or from a kid; or again if you take some from the nimble hare you will bring healing and help to the sufferer. Or give him three obols' weight of well-powdered soda, and mix it in a sweet draught of wine; mix too a pound weight with equal parts of silphium and of its gum, 330 and seed of cabbage soaked thoroughly in vinegar. And give him a sprig of flea-bane with its ill-coloured leaves. Or you should bruise some pepper and buds of the bramble-bush; then you will easily dissipate a mass of congealing blood, or break it up if it has lodged in the vessels.
Do not let the agonising drink of the hateful buprestis escape your knowledge; and you should recognise a man overcome by it. In truth, when bitten, its contact with the jaws seems that of soda; it has an evil smell; and all about the mouths of the stomach arise shifting pains; 340 the urine is stopped and the lowest : part of the bladder throbs, while the whole belly is inflated, as when a tympanitic dropsy settles in abundance about the mid navel, and all over the man's limbs the skin is visibly taut. This creature too, I fancy, causes swelling in plump-bellied heifers or calves, whenever they bite it as they graze. For this reason herdsmen name...