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Books4free.com Vibe Coded Relaunch & Life Updates from 2019 to Now

Posted: April 15, 2026 in Uncategorized
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Hello world! Its been a very long time since I’ve written anything at all on here and I went through some massive changes, spiritually, geographically, and even matrimonially! I moved to Florida, became Catholic, albeit not a very good one, and married a woman I love with a 3 year old daughter who is now 7 and we are in the process of adopting!

So much to unpack there! I’ll start with Covid and dirty rotten scoundrel politics. I’d moved to Tampa Florida in October of 2019 with my fiancé at the time, but we broke up in February of 2020 after fighting like cats and dogs. It was painful to say the least. Few things though, save 9/11 have been more surreal than seeing our country turn itself inside out, over that debacle, that now seems was mainly about selling snake oil medicine. I happened to be in Las Vegas twice in late February and early March for two different shows, and the day after Trump announced Chinese tourists had been banned from visiting the US, I was in Paris, the casino, not France, and I’m not kidding when I tell you two buses filled with Chinese tourists pulled up, meandered on in to the casino and went and filled the breakfast area. The first few days of my visit, there had been a few tourists, mostly Americans, and then opposite of the news, the place filled with Chinese that last day. It would be another couple of weeks before full panic set it.

The breakup with my fiancé hadn’t yet happened. The second trip out to Vegas though was when the real Covid panic hit. We were all at the ConTech show 2020, when the global hysteria set in. I’ve always felt it had a real national security level emergency feeling to it. One of the largest tradeshows in the world, this year I know 140,000 attendees, and they just shut the whole thing down. I had to wait in the airport all day, as everyone flights were moved, and there were a lot of soldiers and drone support airmen in the airport as well, being moved from Vegas. When I arrived home early, my fiancé didn’t pick me up at the airport, and we broke up a few days later.

I had launched my book, Spiral’s End, Hepatitis C and Me, the year before and had lackluster results with it, primarily because I didn’t promote it at all, hating that name with every ounce of my being. I had hoped the name would help with the Amazon SEO, and I’d had it professionally edited and cleaned up as well, but used the same cover. Still the name is terrible, lol, the originally name Hippopotamus Sea was much better, subtle, creative. I mention it again though because I did still have a Social Media presence with it and it comes into play during this covid story.

But first the bottom fell out. Sadly as a man in Western Civilization, much of our identity comes from financial stability, and as a salesman in tech, construction software specifically, I am probably over invested in tech like Tesla, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia, so when the crash of 2020 hit the stock market, I was punched hard right in the gut. I lost a lot, a very big percentage of my nest egg disappeared relatively quickly. Around this time too, my fiancé had moved out, and a few weeks later met another man who she was head over heels for, and wouldn’t return my calls or texts, and with the move to Tampa, losing my network, my financial status taking a hit, I simply went into a tailspin. I had a bit of a spiritual experience as well, realizing that that relationship ultimately failed due to my own character defects, lust basically without expounding, and that the TRT I’d been on for a few years probably wasn’t helping I decided to kick that as well. This was probably ill advised at this exact juncture. I’ve now cycled on and off it a few times over the years, and as a man in sobriety, 19 years sober in December 2026 I can tell you this is not nothing, but can cause extreme mood swings, depression, and can last months. I didn’t know this the first time I cycled off though, I genuinely felt like I was losing my mind. I guess I was 13 years sober or so around then, and it just felt like the world was coming apart.

So I became a bit manic, as one is want to do. I began obsessively trying to fix up my house, which was awfully small compared to my Atlanta house, which I loved, and was a perfect mid-century model work of art I’d put all my love into, and this tiny house on the canal in Tampa just felt super cramped. It wasn’t helping so I began to work on it obsessively, as well as double down my efforts at work, and exercising like mad to try and kick the obsessive thinking about my ex. None of it worked, but I did fix my house up and get in great shape, waking up at 4:30 am and riding my bike 30 miles a day consistently from Town and Country, through Oldsmar, Safety Harbor, across the Courtney Campbell and back home every day before work. If you’d rolled up on my house at this time you may have found me single handedly trying to fix my boat lift, where in replacing the felt pads, all the beams fell into the water, with me on them and all my tools, racing against the tide to put it all back together, in 3 foot deep Tampa Bay tidal mud, just beating the waters, before my boat tipped over. My next door neighbor gawking at my antics the whole time ready to call the emergency crews. Or renting a scissor-lift to cut the Oak Tree branches, getting it done, manic, no planning, but executing, never mind a scissor lift doesn’t work well in sand, and I’m lucky to have lived as it settled and adjusted as I sawed off huge branches falling to the ground, narrowly missing my skull. I stayed busy.

At one point during Covid, I want to say around April, I was on Twitter, which we all recall was being heavily censored at this point, and I commented on a post by the Chinese CCP aligned Editor, Hu Xijin, something about you know my usual libertarian rantings around being on the wrong side of history, and I always just thought I was lost as a tear drop in the ocean whining to this guy, but this time I must have struck a nerve. Now my wife is not a fan of this cartoon, and its not my best work I’ll grant, but it did get a mild amount of AA fame and a few folks from conventions have given me recognition on these YouTube videos, but my series AA Boy Meets AA Girl on YouTube was public to try and help promote the book, SEO for booksfree.com and ultimately entertain, and the video at had gotten around 20k views by then. Arguably, save the post I wrote after Bin Laden was killed, my most popular publication of any kind. It was NOT linked to my Twitter account at the time. Within 10 minutes of my snarky reply to Hu Xijin, the Silicon Valley cabal of censorship had pulled my YouTube account, Facebook and Twitter accounts. I was absolutely shocked. I could not believe they were linked, and so infiltrated by Chinese Communists. Its shocking to me still. It verified for me that Covid was a powerplay, more so than a big pharma scam, though maybe it was both? I mean really who knows, the power plays were so hidden, so expansive, so malignant and secret that we just don’t know. The conspiracies now can’t be proven or unproven and mountains of evidence obscure every angle. We are truly in a doubt of real information and that is a book in itself, I intend on writing at some point. What I can say definitively is that they deactivated my accounts across all my socials instantly. I appealed and prevailed, but the power, and the coordination was not lost on me. It was real, it was powerful, and those agents probably are still in Silicon Valley in these big tech companies, thought quieter now. On this day as Chinese ships head to the Strait of Hormuz, and the Chinese embassy wraps barb wire around its DC offices, this cold war could become hot at any time. It is said there are many Chinese men of military age poised to go in the US at any point, we simply don’t know what information is real and what is not. I do know that day in 2020 they censored me, and by appealing I got all my links and socials turned back on.

Easter Sunday, Tampa police guarded the churches to prevent church goers from attending. AA meetings were closed in Tampa. Someone had the gall to tell me to quit riding my bike at 4:30 am thus breaking the curfew or whatever authoritarian overreach bullshit the Tampa local government tried to enforce via Facebook and I recall responding poorly, and threatening to post up in my house until the National Guard arrived if they wanted to stop me, and this was bad timing on my part. As fate would have it a few days later towing my boat, that had a 12.5 foot tower, I ripped the cable line serving the entire internet to all the homebound house arrested Tampa covid sufferers, basically LIVING off the internet, and old JB ripped their internet line straight out of the powerlines using my boat. The police arrived, as did an angry, almost medieval mob, and they almost arrested me! I was not making friends. The police openly discussed arresting me and I laughed at them, which they didn’t appreciate, but eventually let me go, there was some legal point about the neighborhood not having an HOA to press charges, but here I was 13 years sober, about to get arrested over a minor traffic incident. And frankly that has happened, with low hanging internet cables three times since because my boat tower is so tall but at the time, boy, with these riled up home bound Tampa residents, mad at losing internet, it was all very intense,. and I wasn’t making any friends in that neighborhood.

I kept trying to make it work though, I knew I loved living near the water, and going back to Atlanta felt like retreat so my mission was to persevere and this too shall pass. I’m emotional though, and I hadn’t had enough meetings, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of taking my boat way offshore and just not coming back. Having lost my father this way though, I’d long ago promised myself I’d never quit on life this way, and cause pain to all those I knew and loved and who loved me, but the thoughts were there. Even while fishing offshore, catching lots of fish, in the Gulf and the East Coast, I still was manic, sad, obsessive and it would be a year before my mind really settled down. I tried many things to calm my mind, and one thing finally took hold. Playing guitar. I found while learning to play I found peace. I guess you can’t be sad and try to learn something at the same time or maybe it was just music soothing my soul, I really don’t know. I’d owned guitars since my 20’s and even mention picking one up in a bender while in Little Five Points in my book, but I’d never sat down and attempted to learn. Frankly had my brother not accomplished this task I would have never had the faith to pick one up myself, but lo and behold I began to be able to put a song or two together and singing gave me peace. The first song I learned, poorly I’m sure, was El Paso, by Marty Robbins.

My Uncle Barton and I were talking not too long after, I believe I sent him a video of my playing, and he said, “That’s interesting you know your Dad was an Air Force brat, and began learning music, when your grandfather was stationed in El Paso.” I knew my dad had moved around a lot but I always think of him and my mom from being from Albany Georgia, perhaps because their home videos sound like they bother fell off the turnip truck. But also when someone dies in your life so young you don’t get their narrative, you fill it in yourself. My uncle went on to ask, “Did you say you were in Tampa? You know that is where your Dad, Barry and myself, (my two uncles) were all born, at MacDill Airforce Base. So oddly enough, a traveling salesman that has seen most of the country, just happened to move of all places, to Tampa Florida, after living in Atlanta 42 years of my life. I chose the one city my dad had been born. And something about it felt right. Though I knew I was in a tough spot, I loved being by the water and learning my dad had been born here did bring me some kind of peace.

Around this time, the black crows began showing up. Now the crows are significant, as are all birds, prominently mentioned in my book and some of my delusions, but my dad had a particular niche with Black Crows. I skipped over this in my book as you just can’t fit in every little detail, but it now becomes significant. When we’d moved to Sweet Apple Crossing in Roswell, after living in Norcross, and just before moving to Brookfield West, my father had begun to get a bit more dark. His alcoholism was taking root, I believe in retrospect, but he went and bought a boombox, for those who remember the eighties. And an audiotape of a crow’s distress calls, and man I tell you the sky would fill with black crows, thousands and thousand of ominous black crows and he would laugh like the mad hatter staring at the apocalyptic sky with circling birds, screaming at us. It was not lost on me then how odd this was, and this being the beginning of this descent into madness that would culminate in his taking his head off with a .357, I have never super appreciated a big flock of crows at any time since. Well fast forward to Spring 2020, really early summer I believe and the trash was not getting picked up at the nearby Starbucks consistently and the crows began to gather. A murder as they say. By the thousands. For weeks on end. I’m not playing any God forsaken distress calls, they are just gathering, and while they traveled to the Starbucks it did seem like they had chosen my house specifically to make their headquarters.

I tried firecrackers, I tried a BB Gun, and my neighbors weren’t fans of either or me by this point if I’m being perfectly honest with all my antics, and so I just had to suffer. I hoped against hope they would go away and they just didn’t. it went on for days, then weeks and then months. Around this time, I visited my buddy Greg Steiniger in Saint Pete Beach, and the beach felt absolutely magical. The cool breeze off the water and salty air. I just loved it. This is where I’d wanted to move in the first place, well Tierra Verde, but my fiancé at the time had thought we wouldn’t get any work done and so we settled on Town and Country with a boatlift, but this beach was amazing. He told me I could easily rent my house out, and we should find a house down here. I told him to start looking, hell interest rates were at 2.65 in June/July 2020. I felt silly moving after only living in the Tampa home 8 months or so, but then I returned to my house, and there were 4 dozen black crows on the dead tree limb poking prominently from the canal, that had been an Ospreys home when we were house shopping. My fiancé had tried to feed it a Sweet Potato, and I lost the argument trying to convince her otherwise. The osprey never did become vegan. Those crows chased it off though.

We found a house in Saint Pete Beach though, a mid-century modern. And it was small but the feel of it was clean, modern and efficient. I will never doubt the impact good design has on my mind, though rationally it seems like it shouldn’t if the utility is the same, all things being equal, but I’m telling you, design matters and that house in Tampa made me miserable, while mid-century modern brings me peace. I can’t explain it. On the way to the house on the island, I saw three green parrots. They were beautiful, exotic, gorgeous. So much nicer, more pleasant than crows, a breath of fresh air.

I thought I was crazy though being chased out of my house by crows, and I literally went to a shrink, fully expecting her to tell me I was delusional, crazy, here is some medication. But when I explained the crows, and then the three exquisite parrots at the beach house, a medical doctor told me, “Sometimes the universe just tells you what do do.”

I’d also met a woman in AA that I really liked. She was bright, beautiful, and seemed to enjoy my company, though our philosophies were different, they were also vastly similar. She was a Jungian, she was sober, and we both had a deep respect for Alcoholics Anonymous, and both had been grateful beyond measure for sobriety. She had a daughter, and she was not easily won over, but I did think a nice house at the beach couldn’t hurt. The AA meetings at Saint Pete Beach had been another strong pull, not to mention the beautiful girl at the meetings, but the fact that AA had effectively closed in Tampa and remained opened in Saint Pete Beach was impactful as well. I moved, and moving to be close to Audrey was certainly a factor.

I would later learn she lived 45 minutes from that Blind Pass clubhouse, in Largo, but due diligence and planning has never been my strong suite, I’m much more ready fire aim, execute execute execute. She’s a planner, and that’s good for me. It didn’t happen over night, but we are married now, and we are one court case away from adopting my daughter, as I write here in April 2026.

So I moved to the beach in August of 2020, I closed on the house. I feed those parrots still, and sometimes they follow me around my little island. It’s magical. There is much more to tell, the court case has been intense, the absent biological father, a chronic heroin, crack user who stole from Audrey and abused her emotionally, verbally and has paid nothing in support since our daughters birth decided to fight us tooth and nail, and we’ve been in a lengthy court battle that can be its own book. Their defense is that he’s “sober” while being on Kratom, an opiate, and a travesty of justice and good common sense that it is legal in gas stations, while most of the country has never heard of it, a responsible adult capable of fathering it does not make one. That it keeps him off the needle is not what we would consider sober, and we are praying the court sees it this way as well. \

I look back on 2020 and the crows, and not unlike my brushes with darkness in the past, it all led me back to the light. Darkness is God’s double agent, eventually we all come home.

There is a romantic notion to me, that my father pushed through the veil of death and the beyond, guiding me to music, nudging me along to Saint Pete Beach, allowing the universe to whisper in my ear, this place is not for you, but there is a place you’ll love and that has been my experience.

We say in Alcoholics Anonymous that you’ll be rocketed to a 4th dimension. That finding God’s will is the proper alignment of ones own will, and that it will become easier and easier to discern. Life is either magical, and filled with God’s miracles or it is not, God is either everything or he is nothing.

He is everything, my sobriety is everything. Love is everything, and God is love. I feel it walking my puppy, daughter and wife around this island, and I feel it speaking in meetings. And just like guitar in 2020, I’ve felt it in learning to vibe code books4free.com.

I sell AI in the Contech space, and I’ve learned much in the year, to the day, I’ve been with this silicon valley start-up. Two Stanford PhDs, some of the smartest men on the planet, hired this ex drug addict, alcoholic, in and out of juvenile and jail, to represent their masterpiece software, that uses AI to process construction POs, Invoices and Packing Slips. While there, in the process of learning their software I’ve learned to vibe code, and as a result I’ve built books4free.com for the 3rd or 4th time, but this time all myself, with the help of AI.

It’s amazing, I’m obsessed and passionate about it. I hope you’ll come along for the ride! I’ll write more later but wanted to just update the world. Thanks for reading, more to come.

JB Smith
Founder
Books4free.com

Quality of our problems will improve.

Posted: March 23, 2019 in Uncategorized
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I’m around 12 years sober, and have struggled this year with a new dilemma, too many opportunities to choose from. What I thought I wanted, I don’t seem to want, and what I thought would be a great job offer, I received with stock and turned it down.

It’s quite amazing that I could receive a 6 figure job offer, with potential stock options which could range of course from zero to 7 figures, but just not feel enough warm and fuzzies to take the job. Then I walked into an AA meeting this morning and heard exactly what I needed to hear. A story about a 93-year-old multimillionaire that values his peace and serenity so much, that no matter what the figures around the deal are, if he felt any friction at all, he walks away.

“The whole course of things is to teach us faith” Emerson said. I think ultimately my next career is my own business, and that is why my heart didn’t feel 100% in it, and that is the right and honest thing to do, turn it down, walk away, despite it being more money I thought I’d ever make on a base salary. Having a big base salary was never my dream. Having my own successful business is, and therefore I set my heart on that, and only that.

“If you wanted it bad enough, you’d be doing it already.” I was once told that by a man worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and I’ve finally got enough to risk it all and go do just that. 12 years sober, I think I’ll do just that!

 

 

CBD Hemp Oil and Recovery – A facebook barrage of opinions

Posted: November 3, 2017 in Uncategorized
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So clearly I have a long history of chronic headaches and thought trying CBD Oil would be worthwhile as I was told it had no THC, no psychoactive properties if you will, and I thought hell i’ll give it a shot. The topic got brought up in our local AA Facebook recovery group and got lambasted!! It was pretty funny. Lots of opinions here. Mine is just one, but I think it worth looking at, for me the dead give away that it isn’t positive for recovery is the fact that the oil smells a shit ton like dank weed.

I tried two different brands – oil and pills – and  it simply wasn’t positive as pertains to my sobriety, wasn’t inexpensive, wasn’t effective to my chronic headache pain and hearing about people testing positive and I had never even heard you could smoke it till this string on facebook popped up (if that was true).

I think if you follow the money its a great big scam from the illegal/legal pot industry blooming in certain states (where it’s legal) to be able to sell their shit (which has drastically dropped in price due to supply) nationwide. And frankly looks like it’s working – I usually find you can find truth most effectively by following the money and in this case, as most I believe that strategy is apt.

Could I be wrong, absolutely – is it possible it works for others but not me and the side effects of mine so similar to when I smoked weed were purely psychosomatic ? Absolutely – lord knows I have an active imagination, but that’s still my gut feeling based on my own empirical evidence and observations.  I never judge anyone else’s sobriety , period, cause let’s be honest I care mostly about my own.

That said, I’m back to after ten years, my best medication for chronic headaches, is good diet, prayer, and staying in the middle of the bed with AA. Topomax made me retarded dumb, and I honestly feel like people have lost their minds to that drug, and all the others I’ve tried over the years just dulled it, gave me a shit ton of other side effects from constipation to lack of motivation, other kinds of headaches, you name it.  Now you can add CBD Oil, or hemp oil, or Snake oil in my opinion to the list of shit that doesn’t help my overall headaches but definitely does fuck with my head. For whatever that is worth!

Book is out with a few reviews and I appreciate them! please read at http://www.books4free.com or on kindle for 99 cents, and please leave a review!

Respectfully,

Jared Bryan Smith

 

Rebook Launch – Hurray!!!

Posted: October 1, 2017 in Uncategorized
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It’s actually been out for a few months now but I’ve been so slammed in the real career I haven’t had a second to process this, though I think I did mention it under the Jared Bryan Smith Facebook page. We could definitely use some good reviews though, if you have the time to make one it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Truth is – it’s been hard for me to promote the book this time around. I don’t know why really, I just feel so far removed from the book, and this time in my life now. There are some really cool additions to the book though and it really is worth the read if you are suffering from Hep C and need to get treatment as well as get sober, which to me, was the far harder journey, but also by far the most fruitful.

It’s still free on http://www.books4free.com but if you buy a copy and leave a review, that would be AMAZING! The Kindle version only 99 cents!

-Jared Bryan Smith

Hate to jinx it, but I think we’re close to official relaunch, and a kindle version!

Posted: August 11, 2017 in Uncategorized
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It’s amazing how solid a company Amazon is, setting up their Kindle account page was just easy as could possibly be, they are scary good.

As for lightningsource, well, they have taken ages to perfect and get everything ready and staged.

I’ll be glad when this is almost completed. Maybe I’ll shoot for an audiobook next, but I don’t know, just the idea of reading the damn thing again irks me. Haha, I’d really like to go and write something else but God knows if I’ll get the inspiration.

As George R.R. Martin says, I don’t love writing, but I love having written. Thats about how I feel about it as well.

Oh well, it will be good to have most of it done soon, and behind me, a solid story of my life as an alcoholic addict, who recovered to discover he had hep c, and beat it by going through Interferon. It sounds almost mundane but it was not, it was a blow by blow miracle after miracle experience to come out the other others side healed of hepatitis C and the overwhelming all consuming urge to drink, but I am a better man for it all.

10 years sober, it truly is layers of the onion though, and our character defects continually are being refined.

Writing is just about self-discipline, I need to force myself to just do a little bit everyday.

-Jared Bryan Smith

Topomax Update – Interferon Headaches – Book Relaunch

Posted: July 15, 2017 in Uncategorized
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Man it’s just so confusing. Topomax did work to relieve the headaches for several months, but it also was slowly making me lose my entire memory. I work in software sales, and parts of my delivery that I’ve been giving for four years were being interrupted by stuttering and the uh’s uh’s – I mean I was just not at peak level at all.

But what really made me just HAVE TO STOP – was the loss of basic math. I got to the point where I couldn’t do basic equations that I’d mastered in 2nd grade. For our contracts for instance, you have to put in the quarterly amount, multiple by four, then enter all the different line items, and it just got so bad I couldn’t do that basic level of functional math. Had to stop. Shocked people have been on that for years.

My best friend sits next to me took a half of the dosage I was on and quit in three months for the exact same reason, and then when you google the side effects, my God they are scary as hell.

So I’m back to just winging it, and going to a chiropractor regularly. And it had been going well, but then the last couple of days got pretty rough. I’d say I’d gone three four months since getting off the topomax and not having a MAJOR migraine, but man I got hit with one that last two days straight Thursday through today, and nothing touched it.

My sister in law sent me a Ginger Powder homeopathic remedy and I tried it last night but after two hours nothing.

I did end up taking the tried and true Indomethacin though, and it seems to have kept it at bay… I may try to just take this stuff as needed.

If that fails the doctor has given me a time release version of it.

As for the book – I think it’s finally ready to go to press.

I’ve honestly been dreading it, I feel like the title sucks, even though will work well for Amazon and Google search engines supposedly, it’s just corny, but I mean I’m going to follow through with it, too late to go back now.

It will be completed at least, this 8 year journey, with only the audiobook left to complete.

Then maybe I’ll reach out to all the positive reviewers of the first book and ask them to review again for the new one.

But I just feel like it’s going to be an inevitable commercial failure, sorry I do, lol, the reality is I’m a nobody, just a local Atlanta kid turned middle age adult whose gotten sober. Another bozo on the bus.

The fact that I let my life go to shambles as a result of alcholism and addiction, debt and piss poor living is so unremarkable it hardly deserves a book, and yet I felt compelled to write it.

The recovery though, God stepping in and saving my life, being there for me at every juncture, giving me the cure for Hep C, and actually curing me, when it was a 50/50 shot back then, for FREE when the meds cost $50,000 was note worthy.

However I spend a lot of time in the book on the drunk a log. I hired, and paid an editor a lot of money, and she turned out to do a real half ass job as it comes to content, and essentially left everything in there. Then she really screwed me over, demanding her name be removed from the book, after it had gone to print in January of this year. Really messed me up.

But I digress, over the years I’ve put a lot of money, time energy and effort into books4free.com and now the book is launching and I hope it does OK, but honestly I don’t have high hopes like I did the first time I went to market.

I think if I do write another book, if I’m ever so inspired, which I haven’t been since, I will do it through Amazon. Just to get a baseline and then learn the ins and outs of how they do it, versus the enormous amounts of work I put in to launch one.

Anyway, it will be cool to have the project be completed, and then throw a little Google Ad words money at it, maybe some facebook promotional dollars, just to see what happens.

Anyway, coming soon:

Spiral’s End: Hepatitis C and Me
BY: Jared Bryan Smith

Post Interferon Headaches Good News Finally- Topomax – For Me At Least

Posted: March 12, 2017 in Uncategorized
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If you’ve read my blog for a while or just googled post TX, post interferon headaches, and found this blog, welcome, I went through interferon back in 2006-2007 and beat Hep C, and have never test positive since, which is considered cured thank God!

At the time it was an injection of interferon once a week and pills of ribavirin daily, and it went on for a year, and it was much more than flu-like symptoms, most obviously admitted by the medical community by the fact that within just a few short years of my completing this cycle of medication they were no longer offering it, but opting for a much shortened time line of medication, that not only offered a higher than the 50/50 rate of remission than my cocktail did, but also was closer to a 13 week, rather than 48 week I believe mine was. Anyway I’m not bitching about what my options were at the time. In the words of the 2nd President Roosevelt who served his term in a wheelchair, in secret I might I add “Do what you can, with what you got, right where you are.” My liver was failing, I was dying. That’s that.

After I was cured, I was left I was left with terrible headaches, a surprise side effect, that having conquered, my drinking, and drugging problem that had plagued, me that previous 20 years, and of course, cursed my family childhood years previous, I’d really was hoping for a fresh, clean slate to build my life upon, and when I went into the corporate world I was really thrown back when I found myself in extreme pain, several days out of the week, if not all the way through.

Eventually I found a few treatments, for me it was Prodrin and Sudafed that allowed me to push through the work days that have allowed me the last five years to have steady employment and build a successful sales career back up, but it’s just been fighting through steady headaches with Prodrin, which is a heavy caffeine and Tylenol mix, and then Sudafed is a decongestants and Sudafed is a vasoconstrictint so I believe that sometimes helps, but not all the time. But its made me very antisocial. I’m thought of as angry around the office, and I don’t make enough meetings, don’t like to go out, as a result. I truly have a life that revolves around the headaches as a result.

I tried several different combinations of medications to alleviate the constant pain and wrote about them in this blog  a few years back, off the top of my head, indomethacin works, but kills your stomach, constipation, ulcer-like pain, Zoloft, a slew of other antidepressants and the like, to no avail, for six months stints at a time. And a few months ago, my girlfriend suggested I try Topomax. At first I felt nothing, and it wasn’t until I got to the full dosage, but lo and behold, I am finally feeling a lot better.

Now fair warning, they say you get a bit of brain-fog, and feel dumb. This is not inaccurate. I do software presentations, and could not remember how to spell words that I clearly knew how to spell for a good two weeks. Also I couldn’t remember the name of a place I’d eaten at lunch for five years. Touch of mania as well, sending oddball texts to my boss for a week or so, but I’m way above quota for the year, so I’m in a good place politically for these kinds of antics, and the emotions are definitely starting to settle back down.

Anyway, I can honestly say its the first time since the treatment that I haven’t had a MAJOR migraine and that is huge news. In fact, its hard for me to remember if it was the treatments that caused it or my whole adult life because prior to the treatment i was an alcoholic addict, so I’d have to go back 25 years. before I wasn’t self medicated. I don’t remember having headaches leading up to the interferon, maybe one or two a week or so, i just remember feeling so happy that I was finally cured of alcoholism, and then BOOM finding out my liver was failing. It was that quick, it was just a few months after. It’s been ten years now. I’ve suffered with headaches the majority of that time.

Finally for the last three weeks or so I haven’t. I just pray with the Topomax it holds and I can continue to stay sober and continue to do God’s will and find out what the next leg of the journey is!

Crazy it took me that long to find the right medication. If anyone is struggling with Post Interferon or headaches after your hepatitis C treatments, please try to cycle up to 200 mg of Topomax with your headaches specialist or Neurologist. I thought I had tried everything and nothing worked till I got to that. I even paid $19,000 cash for jaw surgery, I didn’t need! It’s funny, not haha funny, but ironic I guess, not that isn’t the word, either. To a hammer everything looks like a nail I guess, basically every kind of Dr you see, thinks their particular field is probably what is causing your headache. I’m just glad I finally have some relief.

Big news on the book and the website coming soon. Very grateful as always to be ten years sober, and now to be pain-free, and of course with a full long life ahead of me!

Anyway, God’s Will not mine. I just hope that it holds!

Jared Bryan Smith
Author
Founder
Books4Free.com

Post TX Syndrome – Chronic Headaches – Almost 10 years later

Posted: February 13, 2017 in Uncategorized
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So someone reached out to me after reading my blog post years ago about Post Interferon Headaches, and I simply wish I had more to give them. The sad truth is that I do not. Myself and the one other person I know that went through Interferon both suffer with VERY consistent and painful headaches. We both take different medications from time to time, Prodrin, Sudafed seems to knock them out sometimes, the real kind, with pseudophedrine, not the fake shit they try to peddle on us, the real deal they make meth out of, haha, but frankly even that only works about half the time, and I hate the way it makes me feel these days.

I wrote more about this years back, but having someone reach out, made me realize I’m still struggling with the same issue. My current, as in right now, strategy, is to take topomax and see if this helps, but it takes a few weeks to get up to the proper dosage. As I type I have a headache and the topomax feels like what the immitrex, celexa, wellbutrin and everything else did, a poor mask and substitute.

I sure as hell wish we could find a damn attorney willing to take on a class action lawsuit, but I guess the fact that it saved our lives makes us looks ungrateful and therefore not a fantastic court case, but they phased out our form of medication for a new shorter version, because the version we took created, haha, flu like symptoms, which is like calling Chemotherapy, PMS.

Look – I’m grateful, I am, I’d be dead otherwise, but it’s been almost ten years, and me and everyone I know that has ever taken Interferon with Ribavirin is still suffering, and that is some bullshit.

That said, again I’m alive, I’m cured of Hepatitis C, and I’m grateful, truly.

I’m also very successful in software sales, and able to power through with different kinds of medication, it can be done. I’m not doctor, and had I been, I think I’d have lost the ability to focus that effectively. My concentration is lacking, and my number skills, which used to be in the 99th percentile are definitely no longer in that range. I know interferon caused permanent damage to the way i think feel and compute, but you know, I compensate in other ways.

Books4free.com is right around the corner with a relaunch, the book too is being revamped, thanks for reading. If you still trudge  or stumbled on this site, keep on trucking, maybe they’ll create something soon that clears it up. They cured Hep C didn’t they!!

 

I make plans – God Laughs – surely I’ve used this post title before.

Posted: January 10, 2017 in Uncategorized
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I paid a professional editor a SIGNIFICANT amount of money, though she managed to still leave several noticeable errors in the manuscript, I went ahead and moved forward anyway. Well lo and behold, I go to publish and she not only has a panic attack via email, but also threatens to sue me for using her name, as the editor.

Man, I can not begin to tell you how frustrating this was, considering how much I had paid her, and also just how prideful of her it is, to make me go back and change the whole book, the amazon entry, the Lightning Source manuscript, everything, back to the drawing board.

Well, I supposed nobody died, and as Robert Frost, in all his intricate wisdom stated of what he knew of life for certain, “It goes on.”

This is true. I have learned from that mistake, I must always ask, and get permission to use ANYONE’s name on anything I publish and write about. I always want to yell, “but nobody reads my book!” What are you getting so worked up about.

The ISBN system, copyright, copy editing, full editing, man it gets tiresome. Some days i wish I’d picked a different pet project.

That said, I think I’m closer than I’ve ever been. I’m more prepared now, than I was before.

And if I can bring traffic to the site, via free books, then I can give publishers visibility, and even if creating a studio in my home, and doing freelance audio-book readings is the next step, well then so be it, I can read. And I have a nice voice, hell that is my day job.

So I’ll press forward, and try to bring help to other rookie writers like myself, that didn’t get official schooling, or were otherwise preoccupied with bills and survival, to get published, noticed, and create some revenue stream from their work. It’s only been 20 years , whats a few more on this journey.

-Jared Bryan Smith

Spiral’s End: Hepatitis C and Me (GRAND RE-OPENING) Oh amazon – thanks for being such bastards.

Posted: November 24, 2016 in Uncategorized
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Sigh Amazon./ Jeff Bezo’s couldn’t look more like the bald bad guy in Austin Powers if he tried. Whose going to get Mars first, you or Musk, my money is literally on Musk (in stock) , because Amazon sucks ass. Case in point: Megan Kelly’s negative book reviews removed because they were politically motivated. Oh, isn’t that inconvenient for her, meanwhile the rest of us peasants plebes and philistines, just have to SUCK IT when our ex’s get online and write a terrible review. At least Megan can have her hand picked reviews left at the top though, I don’t even think I can delete my book from Amazon, much less the one shiite review, that cmon is at least a little politically motivated. I mean cmon Amazon can you just give us like a few aces up our sleeve, like a wildcard option, please just don’t let these three or so ex’s leave reviews, because I mean cmon it just isn’t fair.

I digress, the one bad review shall remain I guess, unless they have a change of heart, which three years into its presence does not seem likely. Sigh. Acceptance is the key to all life’s problems I guess.

Anyway, this bittersweet re launching of the book, with the revamped site right around the corner is about as lackluster as publicity can possibly go, probably because after spending another 10 grand , hiring a professional editor, and spending hours with an internet guru in India it just hardly seems worth it, man I need a better publicist, this is the worst advertising ever.

The book needed a new name though because as much as I liked the name Hippopotamus Sea, it’s marketing value in the Amazon, Google Bing Yahoo search indexes of the world was next to nothing. Now at least there is something applicable in the title to the actual subject, and despite it being VERY imperfect, it has been professionally edited and combed over for the grammatical errors the original was plagued with. That being said, I still found a few, but frankly wasn’t worth  me resubmitting the PDF to LightingSource to reset the ole Gutenberg Press…. which is a joke, that is not how they do it anymore, but you get the point, it’s a pain in the ass, and close enough is about how I feel about this book. I really wanted it to be perfect, but books are not perfect things this journey has taught me. Nor is life. People leave bad reviews and don’t like you, it’s just life, nothing is perfect.

Anyway, the new book should be up on Amazon in the next few days, in paperback. So if you left a review, positive ones anyway, would be greatly appreciated if you would go leave another. If you left a negative one, I’m literally at your mercy, apologize profusely for whatever wrongs I ever committed and beg you not to leave a negative one moving forward. I actually have been told the book helps people from a lot of different people from all over the world and it really is the ONLY reason I wrote the embarrassing book to begin with. It’s helpful to see that others, and there are millions of people yearly, that find out they have Hep C and need to get sober as well, can find someone who has done so. I’m now 7 years or so Hep C free, with all the side effects finally gone, headaches, aches and pains and what have you, and on Xmas Eve I’ll have 10 years sober.

That is a real deal miracle right there, and even better, there is now a MUCH easier medication to defeat Hep C, and even though it’s expensive HAVE HOPE, mine was 50k a year also and Roche Diagnostics put me in a program that made the medication 100% free. God is good and I am thankful.

 

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