anxiety: a public memoir

the fact that my name is max, the fact that i use they/them and he/him pronouns, the fact that i grew up in tampa, florida, the fact that i went to college at vassar college in poughkeepsie, new york, the fact that i now live in a retrofitted van (built by myself with the help of my dad) in berkeley, california (the bay area broadly), the fact that living in a van kinda sucks but so does paying rent, the fact that i've also lived in nyc, amsterdam, and lake tahoe, the fact that i disliked living in those 3 places but maybe because i was just really struggling with certain things during those times of my life, the fact that i've worked at a nature therapy camp for neurodivergent kids, the fact that i've worked as a program assistant at rikers island, the fact that i've worked as a ropes course guide and a cook, the fact thati love tie-dye but i don't really identify with a lot of new-age culture, the fact that i'm really astrology-averse, the fact that i think astrology is a really indirect, convoluted, immaterialist spirituality and vulnerability-workaround for talking about one's feelings, the fact that the best way to reach me is via instagram @yungleary

the fact that my academic and personal interests include:

• affect theory, biopolitics, critical psychology & critical theory more broadly, psychoanalysis, spirituality,
• practices and structures of community, joy, ecstasy, pleasure; conflict resolution, introspection, and communication (strategies? techniques)
• labor & work crises, anti-capitalism, anti-work, anti-consumption; virtual realities, television, video games, media
• the role of art in activism and as therapy, the tensions between therapy and activism,
• virtual realities, STS studies, socialist & utopain projects
• the psychosocial effects of our age of information, of content overwhelm and information overload
• philip k dick
• abolitionist, feminist, critical race, queer, intersectional theory & praxis
• in over our heads
• representation of mental health in the public sphere, particularly in music, art, media, academia (in academic journals and in different disciplines), politics, news coverage, and the mental health field (cliinics, pracitioners, non-profits)
• New age spirituality, cultural creatives, escapism
• critical education, dialectical studies, the unexamed life is not worth living, nothing human is alien to me
• dystopia, societal collapse, dark futurologies, paradigm shifts, consciousness-raising
• substance use, suffering, coping, escape, relationships, drugs as an avenue to explore the intersections (wc) of individual psychology with sociocultural forces; hedonism, pleasure activism, anthropology of human psychology
• public feelings
• psychedelics
• individualism, atomization, loneliness, the limits of personal responsibility
• somatic psychology
• environmental psychology, context-based psychology, community psychology
• urban studies as they relate to human flourishing and suffering, public transportation, bike safety and culture,
• countercultural movements, their limits and potentials; the limits of political ideology in envisioning slightly better dystopias
• the politics of community, pleasure, happiness, ecstasy, suffering, mental health, discontent, anxiety, depression, insomnia,

the fact that through harm reduction efforts and drug policy studies I have explored:

• drug use as an exploration of suffering, coping, escape, relationships, cultural movements
• I look back upon my major as training in perspective, in sociological imagination and the (no bullshit of essential services) and the necessity of essential services.
• drug policy as an exploration of power, and of resistance to the status quo, of pleasure activism, of the anthropology of a basic human drive to consume mind-altering substances (michael pollan, food, terence mckenna) (thereby a less biased look at human psychology); an anthropological and political inquiry into human psychology, the study of drug policy offered the perfect avenue for exploring these questions and conundrums.
• hedonism, change, growth, responsibility, forgiveness
• psychedelics as an exploration of spirituality, hope, disillusionment, with society, with hope itself
• pleasure, drives, motivations
• addiction as an exploration of dystopia, of the excesses and depravities of human existence, particularly in highly industrialized western societies (first world, whats the best term for this?)
• exploration of suicide, free will, choice
• exploration of the media apparatus that is the united states, the backstage or alleyways of our advertised image of progress
• personal experience of privilege, of the desire to see connections and communities but not infringe upon places that aren't mine

the fact that my views/beliefs can be described as: – materialist, in the Marxist sense, and recognizing but resisting the world of semiotics, the social construction of reality, and the existence of mystical planes separate from the physical world (see psychedelics & Michael Pollan) – phenomenologist – humanist – affect theorist; things are experienced and first and foremost as and through emotions -