People are wondering why I would go into the Dead Sea when my skin had terrible open wounds from severe atopic dermatitis / Red Skin Syndrome.

Have you ever heard expression, "salt in the wound"? I literally did that.

A thread on finding meaning through pain.

All of my life I would get some eczema, it was usually mild.

(NOTE: I will block anyone offering "tips" on how to treat eczema. This is super annoying when people do it.)

I started using mild topical cortisone steroids for it.

A little cream and it went away.

All was good.

I went from using 1% over the counter cortisone to stronger stuff. First it was 2% Coritsone, which was mild.

I'd use a little cream and was fine for weeks.

Soon that window narrowed to a few days. Then the creams stopped working.

I started being prescribed stronger topical steroid creams.

("Steroids" are not the muscle building ones. It's a different class of drugs.)

The stronger creams would work for a while.

Then, suddenly, the mid-tier strength creams didn't work at all.

My skin kept getting a deeper shade of red and my scalp was peeling.

I kept going back to a dermatologist for other options.

Eventually we moved up to Clobex.

The first time I used that shampoo, my entire scalp felt like needles were being pushed in.

But it worked, until ...

"The cortisone worked until it didn't," becomes a pattern.

My dermatologist moved me up to Clobetasol and then prednisone.

Prednisone is a wonder drug, you think.

Until the side effects kicked in.

One night while driving home from work, I started going blind.

While driving, my vision was blurry.

I knew something was really wrong, and started researching Clobetasol and prednisone.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

These are real drugs, no doctor warned me about these side effects.

I realized I would have to quit all of the topical steroids and prednisone, but what was the solution?

Severe topic dermatitis will put you on your ass. It's not a vanity thing, or just an itch.

Your skin peels off, making it painful to even move.

I then began trying to figure out causes.

Like all eczema patients, I tried every gimmick. And god it was tedious for people to offer their "tips."

Then I found out that some people have worse eczema *caused* by the medicines doctors provided.

Red Skin Syndrome it's called.

The only treatment for Red Skin Syndrome is complete and total cessation of all cortisones / prednisone.

I had heard this would be painful.

What happened next... I never could have comprehended.

I quit the medications, went to gym.

I felt a little “off,” went home to go to bed.

And then couldn’t get out of bed at first.

I found a mirror.

And looked like this:

My skin was peeling off and just opening it.

Thus begain a 4 year process of Topical Steroid Withdrawal.

The itching is hard to describe, because it's not like a normal itch.

Imagine the itch is coming from UNDER your skin, so that scratching your arm doesn't offer relief.

You have to PEEL THROUGH the skin to get relief.

Thats what Red Skin Syndrome is like.

Every day.

I realize now that God / the Universe put me through this to spiritually improve me.

I had become vain, I made a lot of money, had a hot body, and a great face.

This made me glib and self-indulgent.

I went from this to this, almost overnight.

Humbling.

What happens when you face horrific pain, lose your looks, and can't even do a push-up?

You either become depressed, or you go deep within yourself.

To find what people call "Spirit."

I realized that God / the Universe had a greater Plah for me, and the smugness and just douchebag way I behaved wasn't consistent with this calling.

"Spiritual growth is physically painful," became my mantra.

Rather than bemoan losing my lots, my body, even my fitness, I go out of bed and walked down one flight of stairs, and took the elevator back up.

(I couldn't even walk up one stair.)

I leaned into the pain and misery, because of a higher mission to discovery Spirit.

The pain... how to even understand or remember it.

Imagine you look up, and all of the skin on your neck peels away as if someone took an exacto knife to it.

That was a regular experience.

Gratitude is difficult when you have it all.

As you begin losing all that you value, you fall into a despair you'll never escape, or you become grateful for what remains.

That was the choice before me.

The suffering also put me in touch with the human condition in a way I hadn't understood.

When you have money, health, and even are attractive enough that women hit on you, you done become spiritually deep.

One aspect of the human condition is suffering and loss.

The choice then became whether to work through the pain and go on camera looking like a ghoul, or to hide out.

This was a hard choice for me.

I was vain, valued my looks.

"Lean into pain to discover Spirit," and this meant emotional pain / ego loss / vanity pain.

One detail to notice is the few white patches on the hands.

Every red patch burns and itches, worse than any sunburn.

And the Red Skin Syndrome destroyed my face as well.

The question of course is what are the lessons.

It's untrue that "Everything happens for a reason."

The truth is that YOU have this magical power.

- You can personally define the meaning of any event or experience you go through.

Oftentimes you not able to choose what happens to you.

You always have the power to REFAME and REDEFINE the experience to give it significance.

I told myself the suffering was a gift from God / the Universe, to teach me Spirit.

Because of this, the pain was an OPPORTUNITY.

Pain becomes an opportunity when you tell yourself, "Imagine what I'll be able to do when back to normal. What would bother me before won't even register."

Painful experiences of no fault to you allow you to redefine your New Normal.

Pain becomes a source of Power.

Pain leads you to Spirit.

Spirit is your connection to the 'self,' the indefinable and unreachable person who you are and also seem to live with.

Pain is the pathway to Empathy.

Empathy teaches you how to love.

Not the romantic and sexual love.

Empathy is a love for all who lived and ever lived.

Connection.

"You are capable of more than you think," is the kind of one-dimensional pablum that people who post, "I love to laugh," post on online dating profiles.

And yet it's true, but most people only know how to use Spirit for defense.

Here is what we mean....

Imagine you have the flu. It's terrible, but you get through it.

The next day, how do you feel?

AMAZING.

That post-flu feeling is how you feel every day, without realizing it.

People are taught to use Spirit to endure. You go through a hard space, you get through it, and then return to living a "normal life."

They aren't taught to use Spirit to go forward, to push through, to redefine their own reality.

The game we live in has everyone playing defense. "Get through this, get through that." And then return to normalcy.

The Universe sends you struggles to teach you what you're capable of, but that you were afraid of pushing yourself to discover.

Language is thought. If you use victim language you will feel like a victim. You will become a victim. Even if you are by an objective measure a victim, use language to redefine who you are.

Give meaning to pain and then even the worst event in your life won’t matter to you.