Draft:Zachary Addison Pence

Zachary A. Pence (b. 1989) is an American jazz drummer. , union organizer, Marxist theoretician , and mental health advocate.

Early Years and Education

Pence attended elementary school at Glenn Springs Elementary in Gainesville, Florida. Pence was homeschooled by his mother, Sharon Pence, who advocated that her son be allowed to take gifted education classes in the public school system. Pence has two siblings, an older brother, the artist and entrepreneur Nikolas J. Pence, and a younger sister, the marketer and entrepreneur Alexandria M. Pence. At a young age, Pence excelled at chess, and his hobbies included building toy models and drawing architectural designs. In 2003, Pence was admitted into the Youth Performing Arts School in Louisville, Kentucky, where he studied percussion performance and took AP academic courses. From 2006 - 2007, Pence worked as a busboy at The Jazz Factory, a jazz club in Louisville, Kentucky. In 2007, Pence received a full-tuition, Presidential scholarship to play jazz drumset at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ, where he studied drumset and music composition under Horacee Arnold, Bill Goodwin, and Kevin Norton.

Mental Illness, Union Organizing, and Marxism

After his father completed suicide in 2011, Pence moved back to Louisville, Kentucky, completing his B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Louisville in 2012. Pence went on to complete an M.A.T. in Secondary English Language Arts from the same institution. While at the University of Louisville, Pence befriended Kate E. Snyder, a gifted underachievement and achievement motivation researcher. Together, they published a paper in 2017 on the lack of empirical evidence for learning styles.

It was during this period that Pence became addicted to Benzedrex inhalers, consuming as many as three per day. From early 2015 to 2023, Pence was admitted to inpatient drug treatment facilities over three dozen times. In the fall of 2015, Pence organized a union at Medline Industires in Shephardsville, Kentucky. Although unsuccessful, he was awarded $15,000 in a settlement negotiated by the National Labor Relations Board. In 2020, Pence published his first major theoretical work on the Communist Party, USA's website (Pence began reading Marx during his father's first major depressive episode in 2004). From 2021 - 2023, Pence worked, among other things, as a Temporary Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

In December of 2023, Pence began experimenting with microdosing dextromethorphan HBR as a psychotechnology for inducing what Alcoholics Anonymous calls a "vital spiritual experience." In March of 2024, Pence started his own Youtube channel, Carnivorerecovery, in which he documents his recovery from active addiction, his experience with the Lion diet, and his burgeoning theoretical interests