Interview with Anthony Hess

My name is Anthony J Hess Jr. and I'm from New Jersey. I've lived in New Jersey my entire life and I soon aim to escape. Contrary to popular belief, I had a pretty rough childhood, the only reason it's contrary is because I was born, "middle class," and that apparently assumes the guise of a good life. This is where I learned that money and materials are non-transformative elements for example: if you give a bitter person a million dollars, they will continue to be bitter the day after. I was subject to harsh psychological torture by the way of incompetent parents that seemingly assumed the same precedent, "I'll buy him whatever he wants so he has a good life," when in turn, all that does is make life transactional for the child.

I'm going to fast forward here to my high school which was called, "Heroin High," because of the MASSIVE amounts of drug arrests and in-class drug overdoses. This was Toms River High School North, TRHS South was dubbed, "Suicide South," because of the massive amounts of suicides. I've been subjected to a number of deaths from friends by the way of drugs, mostly acquaintances since I tried my hardest to stay away from that element.

Then it happened, one of my closest friends, one I considered a brother, lost the fight with mental illness and hung himself after being discharged by the military for medical reasons. These reasons were psychological since he was under extreme amounts of pressure. This broke me... and I didn't know how to fix myself. Then it kept happening, closer and closer friends started overdosing more and more, due to the introduction of fentanyl to the public sphere in 2012.

What can you do? I wasn't taught proper mechanisms by my parents to deal with such horrors, they were probably under the assumption that this wasn't going to happen to me. Naive. I hid myself under the guise of alcohol, drugs, and sex. I was arrogant, near narcissistic due to my fear of the world. I felt I had to control everything because nothing was being controlled regardless. Of course the world will crush you for such inadequacies and that's what happened. I became homeless for a long time, sleeping in cars, benches, under bridges, going to the hospital for a meal, getting arrested just to be out of the cold, stealing bikes just to get around.

Then Covid happened... and my eyes opened ever so slightly, three years later, I'm probably more read than your average psychotherapist on emotion, psychology, philosophy, theology and it's correlations. One of the biggest influences of my transformation was Jordan Peterson since he facilitated it with his books, lectures, and podcasts. I soon will be a student of Jordan Peterson at the Peterson Academy that's coming in November... so I can finally get a degree in what I love most. Motivational, and Goal-Direction Psychology. Very nuanced, but important nonetheless now more than ever since the doctors of "western" psychology have become increasingly... benign, agreeable, malleable.

To a larger degree, my former self died, executed by the false intuitions of my narcissistic, authoritarian mindset. Only to harrow hell, and be reborn. I've sacrificed a lot to be where I am, I've sacrificed even more to hold the level of perception of the psyche that I do have.