Societal Dropout with DC Copeland

DC's special skill is capturing the essence of current events and rights to an audience who understands that we're currently living in dark times and who want to listen to a story about overcoming the status quo the cultural, psychological, and spiritual sickness created by it. And if you're an everyday, ordinary person then you will love this interview. You can find DC at dccopeland dot com. And while I'm here again, I have to say thank you to all of the

new subscribers and followers. I see you and I get your emails, and I want to remind you that if you aren't currently a follower of the show, go ahead and do so now. Boundless Authenticity is available on spreaker Spotify, Apple Rumble, and sometimes YouTube when they aren't punishing me for being a rebellious son of a bitch. However, I highly recommend using the Spreaker app as it is free to listen and no sign up required. All you have

to do is just hit play. Subscribing to the podcast will not only let you know when the next episode is available, but it will also help the show to reach a wider audience, which means we can attract the kind of guests that you want to hear. You can now look forward to three episodes of Boundless Authenticity every month on the sixth, sixteenth, and the twenty sixth. Some mark your calendars. DC Copeland, how's it going.

poems got published more when when they would respond to me, oh, you know, you seem like a very sensitive fellow, right, like something along those lines, and I would have to, you know, say that I was a female, but please publish it under D. C. Copeland, And I just started using D. C. Copeland as my name, So that's that's my name, basic, like the basic name of D. C. Copeland. And how I found myself finding you is that I

wrote society. I wrote I first, I wrote an ARS manifesto, which is basically a manifesto dealing with polyamory and sex and gender and drugs and suicide. And it kind of happened in collaboration with an art gallery which is no more. But you know I was. I was friends with someone who owned a gallery, and it was just it was I started writing about art and I started writing this very fast, kind of raw, vulnerable voice. You know, I

lay prostrate before the authority of my soul. To discuss the death drive is not one I easily tackle, but my meaning to do so is clear that kind of like raw, let's talk about the death drive, Let's talk about soul, let's talk about honoring it. All of this just kind of poured out, and that became an artist manifesto and that is available on Amazon on today. Through that, I found an agent, right and and I and he

was like that this is such an interesting voice. Let's talk about like different other other other topics that are are our relative to the millennial experience. Let's talk about AI, let's talk about social media, let's talk about mental health, Let's talk about not just like polyamory, but maybe we could talk about gender wars. And he had all these ideas. So that became Societal drop Out, a culture manifestor for the new millennium. And that right now is being shops

around to different publishing companies. So so you don't you can't purchase that yet, but you will be able to purchase that. So that and my agents suggested I started

looking at podcasts and that's how I found Jahann. I looked at he gave me a long list of millennials that were doing interesting stuff, and I started doing research to collect in order to collaborate with some of these fine folks and I and I started listening to Jahan's and I was like, this sounds like a soul, a fellow soul, doing their thing, being rebellious and with their

own voice. And I think one of the messages and what makes me want to be here today is to like to inspire other people to speak with their own true voice. And you know, when I say I dropped out societal dropout, I'm saying I dropped out of the conventions, the conventional way we think about society in order to bring to the table my own specific point of view on what's really going on beneath how we're taught to look at the world.

In the music industry, band names are inherently bad. All of them are bad. Anybody that says, well, that's a killer band name is just nuts. They're all inherently bad. They just work because it's like a smoke screen for a time. But you know, you know how it is. That's a thinker. We'll see it, but others won't.

I was going to deal with this bringing pain. A few days later, I did go to the emergency room, but I didn't let them do anything. I was still like, don't touch me. I'm really worried about this child, and I will deal with this fucking pain. And like, that was the first time I was offered more thing in my life, and I actually and I said no. I said no, I'm going to go home. Three days later, I wound up back in the emergency room, and at this point I intuited that there was no way that

this baby was still alive. I was like, this baby is dead and I am dying. My body had started shutting down. I couldn't urinate, my stomach had become so distended, and I really thought there was just something around me. I was like, this is this could be the end, and this this sucks, but this might be the end. And I went to urgent care, and urgent care called the angler. We can't, we need you got to go to the emergency roup. So I went to U n Yu Land going and uh I had I was septic.

And for those of you who don't know what sepsis is, sepsis is a blood condition where your blood is infected and like a normal blood count is like four to ten and I was at like a forty something, so my blood was really infected, and my organs had started shine down. My uterus had shut down, so the baby was dead. The my bladder had shut down, so I couldn't urinate. Other organs were starting, kidneys were starting to shut down my entire body. I was, I was, I

was dying. And that was the second time they offered me morphine. And you better believe it, yes to that. And I'm going to just say that. Throughout my entire stay at the hospital. For the next ten days, I was on heavy orphane and lodden. The miscarriage saved my life. I was around the clock and about it's four IV ports an n GT tube, which, if those of you who don't know, an energyttube goes right through your nose into your stomach. It comes to stomach, gets sort of

like horrible thing. You know, it's like a bag and you know, urine collects urine. And and I was, I was, I was every day I was. That wasn't sure if if I was living or dying. But I lived, I lived, baby died. I lived. I get back home after that, and I'm like, yes, I'm going to recover now. Now I recover, and maybe I will get pregnant again because that was so exciting. Maybe I'll find somebody and blah blah blah. Two to three weeks later, I mean the

worst pain again. I'm in horrible pain again, and this time I do go right to the emergency room and they say, you're appendix as burst, but we can't take it out because there's this ball that this abscess and that's just an inducted ball of just like and it's preventing us from taking out the appendix. We have to keep you in the hospital again, give you a bunch of the morphine, shrink the abscess, and then you know. So they they said, and which is like a head?

Which is morphine? Uh and and and they said, basically, we want you to get the appendix out as soon as possible, but you're gonna have pain, and you should. You can use this heavy pain, this heavy narcotic to manage your pain. So last week I got my appendix out. But that but for November and December, I had two other stays in the hospital because there was so much pain, and I had I had conflict about taking the Dolawden

because it was it was masking the pain. Anyone who's ever taken de lawd in or morphine knows that what it does is your pain is really acute, and then it dulls the pain and kind of makes it go into like like you're on an island and you're away from the pain and the pain's over there, but it's not real. Whatever's causing the pain is still causing the pain.

I was given several tests and they said each time that the tests were inconclusive because you can see I'm a fairly thin person and so all my organs are kind of like interposed on each other, so it's hard to see what's really going on. When they finally opened me up, they were like, Wow, there was so much infection. I actually wrote a will before this surgery because I wasn't sure what was going on. They weren't sure. They're like,

there was so much infection. There was like all the assists stuff, and no wonder, you've been in so much pain. And they released me again with the lawden of course, and here I am back from the dead. I'd say that back from the dead twice because my appendix ruptured and I survived even though they didn't take it out. And then the other time was you know, I was sept and there's eleven million deaths that happen every year from sepsis, so it's like, you know, it's not something

that is like guaranteed to like live through. So yeah, so when you say Jahanne that I'm like back from the death, Like I will come and tear you a new asshole right from like the grave. I will totally do that, Like like I'm here sitting with you because I truly want to continue on the road of life. But yeah, like there was a moment that I want to share with the listeners where my soul was literally like there was two or three moments where it was like, if this is the end, then this is the end.

And it's been a real nice run and I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed my time here, but maybe this is the end. And for somebody, you know, that's fairly young, right to have this experience of being okay with not being here anymore, as a very I find it to be strange and I just had it, so you know. So that's that's that's the harrowing tale that I wanted to share with you. And we can draw many conclusions from this tale, but there's a few that I would that I would bring home for you if you want.

their lives every day because of this. And it's bullshit and it's not going to get better until the average people who as you know, Eric from said that people are hardwired to be submissive to authority. But I also think that his illusions there are basically, in a very roundabout way, saying that people choose to be that way too, like they choose to not think beyond a certain point, and we have to stop doing that.

our teenagers don't do drugs. Drugs are so bad, but yet we're we're giving them like embetterment, right and riddl it and like all these different drugs just like to you know, like like loosely, you know, we're also like just in the basic sense of the way the hospital treated me in terms of like pain management, like here's a bunch we're sending you home. Here's a bunch of pills that like, here's a bunch of heavy narcotic addictive

pills here. And and when I would go to the hospital without even oh, you're in pain, you're in pain, without even asking me any questions, it was here, we're going to get you comfortable. And I felt like I was going into like an opium den of like the nineteen twenties or something like that. I was like, oh, this is what and everybody like I get it. Were it's a lot easier to manage an emergency room if you've got a bunch of people strung out on morphine.

And there's one way of looking at this, because I've been in the emergency room probably a total of ten days in the past four months, and there's one way of looking at that emergency room and being like, we're just a bunch of strung out fellows here waiting for our next fix, and like, how horrifying. But that's the truth. That's me true.

And like, I think it's something like twenty two percent of people identify with some kind of depression, bipolar anxiety disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, some kind of disorder and we think we can have a functional society when like one fourth twenty Like when when when like one I had of four people identify as having some kind of disease And that's that's insane. How can we actually think we live in a healthy that America? I mean, I don't

know about the rest. I mean even I would say the Western moral but like, like, how can we think we have we have a shot at a healthy way of managing our society if the individuals around us are sick. There there's I think every single person knows somebody or is somebody that identifies with suffering from like depression, bipolar anxiety disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, drug addiction, add like the buds.

want it, you have to accept it. It's like a from the time you're born, there's this long hypnotic induction that occurs where you're led to believe that you need to focus on what they're doing. That's the right thing, that's how we should all aspire to be. And it's nothing but sickness. It's been nothing but that, tricks and lies and you name it since the very get go.

And it's kind of like you know when you've seen I forget that movie because I don't really watch too many things, but it's like having a speculum or something that you're like, ah, yeah.

while he watches violence. And that's how they this experiment is supposed to create individuals that are no longer violent as opposed to like teaching individuals or having a non violent a society that practices nonviolence right as opposed to like teaching Gandhi in school or like, I don't know, I don't know how you create a non violent society, but I think one of the first ways of doing so is realizing how freaking violent we actually are towards

ourselves and towards each other, and not like running away from that. Like even I think drugging, even drugging something like drugs as a solution, can be a form of violence.

let's go back to the Delauded thing. Seven years ago, I had a client that got hooked on Delauded when she was fourteen years old. She came to me at twenty three unable to get off of it. Since then she said something happened to her that day when her entire spirit changed, and she hasn't been able to reclaim any aspect of her soul since then. We've had to part ways because she was on a plethora of other drugs.

She would often have relapses and be like, I can't come to the session today because I just woke up in the hospital from an overdose. I literally had these auditory hallucinations occur where I was just minding my own business. Next thing you know, I was in a drug den with a needle stuck in my arm, and now I'm in the hospital. And it completely corrupted her. And I don't even know if she's still alive or not, to be honest with you, but that's what's going on out there.

And so when people say dumb shit like all ketamine works for people with anxiety and all that, it doesn't show me the actual circumstances, the day by day, hour by hour playback of this person's internal world and how they actually dealt with the situation before and after a snapshot of their internal representation systems, how they think and

believe and act, and their emotional state. And I'll let you know if ketamine works are not I can guarantee that if you look at all of that in context, you're going to find ketymine doesn't work, psychedelics don't work, And a lot of people are going to turn off this podcast and never listen again because I said that goodbye to you.

And I'll tell you. I believe that it comes from the world and how we're supposed to fit into the world. And I think if and that's why, I mean, that's the reason I wrote Societal drop Out, because it's this idea of like, find the peace in yourself with the solutions that society offers our drugs and a mixed mess and a stigma that drugs are bad, so you're a bad person. But here you go that mixed message, here you're a bad person if you take this. But here's

the ketamine. Here it is, and it's good for you, and it's good for you. These studies, these studies show and we're not doing stuff. How about more studies of like what about if you you know, I don't, I don't, I don't buck studies. At some point we're just like, you know, what what works for you? Like how like we do? This is what we do. We like we look at normal people, and normal the normal person isn't happy.

The normal person is like on a roller coaster of anxiety and depression and at x euphoria sometimes when they're like you know, having sex or self medicating or you know, putting themselves in extreme behaviors or on vacation. But the normal person isn't necessarily a happy person. So we want I think it would be very interesting is we start to like take a happy person, what's a happy person doing? Like David Lynch just died and he was this really

creative dynamo, right David Lynch. Someone does might not know who David Lynch is, but David Lynch was a creative uh director who directed and wrote Twin Peaks and like Maul and dry and blue velvet and the first Dune, which you know, whatever, but I loved it. Anyway. He was a really happy person. And I've been listening to a bunch of interviews with David Lynch, and one of the things he did was he like meditated every day, and he was and he was kind to people like

he was kind. He was a kind person who like tried to create a family environment in every and no actor has anything negative to say about their experience working with Dave. But I think it's something to be said, like kindness, Like we don't teach kindness necessarily, so we teach ambition and getting a head and being at the

top of the class. I mean, anyone I get. I get why you want to like take some pills and get away from that like really kind of intense, I don't know, backwards way of thinking about yourself, and that every end, that your esteem and your value is completely dependent on how much stuff you get, how many awards you win, how much money you make, how many wives you have, how many women you've fucked, how many are men you are interested in you or people you know,

like all this stuff that's all on the surface, that that that that's how we're conditioned to think that like that's a happy person or a successful person, and and that's not working. That's not working. We have we have an increasing rate of suicide jan and we have an increasing rate of drug addiction. And I'm concerned about this.

And I'm concerned about this especially in like the millennial generation, because it's in our generation, and it's like, it's happening to us, and it's like, what, well, what can we do about that? Like, like that makes me so sad that people are like, oh, like like your like your client, that that people are are are overdosing and their lives are getting thrown away and and and nobody seems to

be able to address the problem. And and the baby boomers are living very long and they're very influential to the rest of us.

addicted to that. How are you supposed to know the difference between yourself, the world at large, and what's being offered to you in between. When you're just in a with chemicals from birth, you lose that ability to self reflect. And like you were saying earlier about the ketamine thing and how all that stuff doesn't work, the only thing that works is breathing and self reflection, does it.

I was like good. And my boyfriend was there with me at the time and he was kind of horrified and he's like, you really And it was grood to have somebody actually check in with, to check in with, But I was like, I'll be honest, and you're in a lot of pain. Yeah, that shit sounds really good. That shit sounds really good. But I'm doing this and I think this might be a helpful tool to anybody who wants to get off this shit. Is that I'm

counting days with a friend of mine. I'm saying, like day one off de Lawden, So today's day ten off da Lawden. I haven't had Dolawden or morphine for ten days. And it helps because it's difficult. It's difficult because the body likes that feeling of not having that tension and that pain, or rather it's a break from that. I don't think it's the body is meant to have that level.

I think that's why people die. People die of drugs because you're not meant to have that level of just oh you know, they're supposed to be a level of tension or pain. That's how you know. Oh I need to stretch, Oh I need to eat. Oh I need to take a walk, I need to breathe, I need to meditate, I need The body can't be an equilibrium if it's constantly all the pain and all the sensation and all the feeling is being muted, right, if it's

all being pushed far away, it can't do anything. Uh, And so that we're not meant to live on morphine or to Lawden or even just like this craze of like psychedelics or marijuana or like we're I don't think we're meant to live like high all the time. I think, I think, and I write about this, that there's a right you can use. I think there's a right time to to take to go on. And I've never done aahuasca,

but yeah, I can. I can see like going like once or twice in your life to a medicine man and having a ritual and working some shit out with somebody that that's part of their culture and they know what they're doing. You know. Do I think tripping on aahuasca every weekend is a good all to life's difficulties

and challenges. Absolutely not. And that unfortunately, stuff like stuff like that is kind of like, yeah, take some CBD gummings every night, and it's like, well, maybe you're not sleeping because there's some other things going on that we can address. You know, maybe you're not sleeping because you're watching you're constantly on Twitter and you're constantly refreshing your feed, and you're like getting concerned about things that really aren't real,

Like Twitter's not a real place. Remember, I mean like these are all like and that's something too that I think are the millennial generation it has to is so important for us to kind of like to own is that like we are a social media slash, Like uh yeah, like we're we are the generation that like grew up basically with all these devices and all these like social media outlets, and it's like they're great distractions, but we're

also like getting heavily into drugs. Drugs are becoming part of like the millennial everyday experience, whether that's just the fact that like cannabis is legal everywhere, or we're taking amphetamins, we're taking Riddlin, we're taking Sarah quoll, we're taking gun typing, we're taking clinazipam, we're taking opioids. We are being prescribed all of this stuff and we're taking it right. And it's not that and I don't want to like negatively

stigmatize it. It is what it is. It's we're a society that generates drug addicts, and we are the drug addicts, and like how do we get well? How do we get well? That's like the big that's and I don't think anyone cares enough to really to really ask ask of ourselves like are you but are you well? Yes, you're masking the pain and you're doing and you're allowed, you're getting you're masking the pain with xanax and cannabis. Okay, okay, but are you well? Are you happy? I don't think

people are actually being asked that question. I think people are being taught to cope.

anything like that. You listed a whole set of drugs there that at one point or another, I've had clients who've come to me to help them work with their doctor to get off of those drugs, because they were taking sarah quill, for example, and as soon as they started taking sarah Quill, they started having auditory hallucinations that said, open the drawer, take out the scissors, and stab your mother.

even more ridiculous, almost like they're mocking you. And it's the way that they take these old songs and stuff that were really popular, and to take those songs on purpose because they were they've been downloaded into your consciousness, because they've been a part of public consciousness for so long that there's something about that that almost becomes one with your subconscious the instant you enter the world that you identify with it. When you hear it and the

lyrics have been changed to sell a pharmaceutical. You know, yes, that it's automatically appealing, Like these marketers know exactly what they're doing. They're not stupid, and the average person takes that for granted. They think, okay, so they say things like, oh, you know, I can just leave it on in the background. I just ignore it anyway, really can you? Because everything that you hear is going right into your subconscious whether you like it or not. You can't stop that from

happening just because you know. It's kind of like if a tree falls in the woods, you know, did it really happen if you didn't hear it it?

doesn't work. Maybe you know, maybe the platitudes don't work, or maybe they do. Maybe that's what you need to

hear today. Maybe one day at a time is I'm just saying that sometimes we collectively think that like if I do X, Y and Z, I'm going to feel a B and C because that's what they tell me to If I if I go one day, if I live one day at a time, and I and I just do the next right thing, and I just do good orderly direction, and you know, and I and I go to yoga, and I go to soul cycle, and I go to the gym, and I go out with a friend, and I work from nine to five and then I take my pills and I go to bed,

and I do the next thing every day, then I'm good. I'm having a good life. But the question is not that that's a good life can look exactly like that. I would like subtract the pills, but a good life can look something like that. But is it your life or are you just living the prescription, the program, the formula. Because if you're just living the prescription, the program, the formula, then like you're missing it. You're missing your life, You're

missing it. And you know, in my day probably looks a lot like other people's days. I get up, I have coffee. I mean, I write for a living, so oh I start writing, you know, but I start doing my work, right, whatever your work is. But I would say this is like, I think one of the reasons I've been able to stay off of drugs is because there's things in my life that are worthwhile to me

that I in my soul want to be doing. And it's not that I've done like drugs and I've done my work, and I'll tell you it's better, I'm better. I'm better to just do I don't it's not even it's that I don't need it and I'd rather do a simpler life with less things that I need. There's a few things that I need. I need to love, I need to be loved. I need to nourish my body. I need to nourish my soul. I need to stimulate my mind. I need to honor my emotions. And I

need to contribute. I need to feel that I'm contributing my voice. That's what I need. And it might be different from like a b Jahn needs, you know, but like I guarantee you that like the simplest, like I don't need to be taking like sleeping pills, you know, like some people might some people that are listening, if you're listening, I'm not knocking sleeping pills or whatever. I'm just trying to like ask you, well, what how can

you live? How can you like live a life that feels authentic and like truthful to that still quiet voice inside yourself? And if you have never experienced that still quiet voice inside of yourself, like do you want to? Because I believe I believe I believe that it's there. I believe everybody has like a still quiet voice, call it soul, God, higher power, universe, field of consciousness, unity, you know what I mean. But I believe it's there,

and I believe we're all part of it. I believe we're all like manifestations of it.

always music happening. And what that does to people is it disables their ability to not only let thoughts come through for analysis, but then they're always relaying on something else for joy or some other emotion. They put on a sad song. They want to feel sad, they want to relive something bad that happened or that they see as bad, and you know, they want to go to the gym. They have to put on their favorite playlists to go to the gym. Nobody's lifting weights anymore, just

in silence, so they're not using that quiet time. Because when you're tearing your muscle fibers, then your subconscious is gained all these wonderful memories and emotions and things that you're supposed to work through. But if you're listening to a podcast, you're not doing that. You're engaging in somebody else's opinion about fuck all of nothing that has nothing to do with the way that you live your life as an individual every day. So it's actually the opposite

of empowered thinking. And this is what passes for liberation is it's a forest. It's garbage. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that stuff, but I'm very alwayspoken. And I've also realized that if you leave any leeway for maybe this thing is good, people don't take you seriously, right, So you kind of have to go to the extreme if you want to plant that seed. They just sound he just said it was great. So I'm not going

to stop doing that thing. I'm not going to think about why I do it, you know.

silence is. It's so valuable. It's so important to be to be silent with ourselves and or to be quiet with ourselves, and like we don't that's not that is not a societal trope. Like if anything, people are like like like I need the podcast going on all the time, or I need this that's a that's a that's a going on all our time, or what's the trauma with my new boyfriend? Like it's just so silly, it's so silly, and it's so unnecessary, you know, it's so fucking unnecessary.

And yeah, I just I want I want people to be like, yeah, maybe I could, maybe I could try to like not like to go to the gym and maybe like and lift weight. I like that idea of lifting weights and not having the everybody's got those EarPods in their ears all the time, and so we're not

even like present with each other. Like you, I'm like a New Yorker righta walk in on the street in New York, and like everybody's zoned in to their own different channels, having their own different experiences, and it's getting worse and not better. And how can we And I think one of the most healthy things in the world is connection and feeling like connected to another person, you know, like feeling that way, and oh my god, it's definitely like it's definitely I think the best. Yeah, it's the

best to feel connected to another person. And we're missing it. We're missing it. We're missing the best things about life.

I'm not knocking therapy, but I am sad at how many people need therapy, and that once you get into the circuit of the psychiatry and you start taking drugs, and it gets younger and younger and younger. When you prescribe drugs, it's very hard to get off of the drugs. It's very hard. It's almost it's so hard, and so anybody that's been on drugs for so long, I feel for you because it's so hard. I talk about this in the book.

We're in our own little world and parents are doing this to their kids, and the kids grow up and they wonder why there's a rise of ADHD and I think it's pretty obvious why there's a rise of ADHD, Like the parents are off doing X, Y Z, compartmentalizing here, there and there, and the solution for the kids is to do X, Y and Z and compartmentalize and do this and this and this, and so the teachers are saying, no, this kid can't focus, this kid can't attend class, can't

be present. But that's what we're teaching them. We're teaching them how not to be present, and we're teaching them to compartmentalize, and we're teaching them how not to pay attention. So it's so, oh god, it's.

they all have friends. They're like, you know, their friends all tell them don't ever go to get a diagnosis for anything, because you're going to get those pills and you're going to wish he never took those pills. And the little kids, when they're not on anything sugary, which is days, weeks, months at a time, then when they do have a cookie, they freak out and then you're like, okay, so that's what ADHD is right. There is just being inundated by chemicals. So I don't think people really have

much perspective. I think that they're they've been blinded in a sense to what normalcy is when it comes to things like that. Kids aren't allowed to be kids anymore.

it's great. So yeah, I think I mean I'm all for like like like getting kids to like act out and like express themselves and run around and like and be their quirky little selves. And I just feel like we teach them so young to like they have to like pay attention and they can't like space out and wonder. And I think what they can't daydream? Like, I think there should be a class like just daydream, just like put a bunch of kids in the class and like have them daydream.

buy it. You can get it for free on Kindle, and you can get a lot of what Johanna and I talked about is in an artist Manifesto. It's all there. It's all there, all this stuff about drugs, all this stuff about this quiet voice, even clockwork Orange that Eyeball's opening is in that book. So you can get it there. I'm on Korra DC Copeland. I'm you can find me on Instagram at dcc copeland Selm.