Been high nonstop for years. I realize it’s bad for my health. But at least being high feels good.
My future is on a planet becoming increasingly unhabitable, under a government becoming increasingly fascist, doing nothing but working and still not being able to afford rent or food, never traveling, never making real friends much less finding a life partner, water quickly becoming a luxury, and with zero chance of ever retiring.
So why even bother?
It depends what you’re using. If you’re smoking weed, give yourself two weeks notice to take a break from it for two weeks. Just start with a two week commitment and see how it feels.
If you’re using opiates or something that causes withdrawal, get advice from a medical professional. There may be medicine that can help with withdrawals, and you need to know the risks involved with detoxing.
If you’ve been using weed pretty heavily for a while, I’d give it a month T break.
For me the first week is insomnia, muscle pain and brain fog worse than when I’m actually stoned, the second week is depressive symptoms and feeling “dopamine withdrawal” (ie: nothing is fun, nothing is motivating, everything is empty), hyperemesis/diarrhoea, and hypersomia.
It’s not until the third or fourth week of a T break that I feel human and begin to think “this is fine, I don’t need weed, it’s nice, but so is having some time off to be sober”
Touch grass.
Sounds like they have been.
Touché.
Have you considered joining a cult?
Yeah make sure it’s not just any standard garden variety cult. It has to be a DEATH cult. Preferably one where there is a cool uniform, like dark hooded robes.
You define your own meaning of life. Whether you are Atheist, Christian, Muslim, Jew, or whatever, that is still true. If you want to be high literally all the time, go nuts and have fun with it - but please note, it sounds like you don’t, not really?
Consider possibly joining a support group, to help you through working that all out, by hearing stories of others who are further ahead on that path than you? Plus you may be surprised that you could be further ahead along it than you thought.
And yeah the world really does seem fucked, but so what? Don’t use that as an excuse to give up, if you would rather have more fun standing up on your own two feet. The world may burn (and freeze, and more likely alternate rapidly between both extremes), but you still get to decide what you want to do about it!:-P
Maybe watch the movie Braveheart, as William Wallace (Mel Gibson) gets eviscerated at the end, knowing full well that he could have chosen to avoid it, but instead choosing to value his pride… and freedom. We all die, every single person who has ever lived has died up until now (barring weird freak events like someone time-traveling from the past beyond us into the future:-P), but you get to choose how you want to LIVE.
So being high all the time is remarkably similar to being sober all the time because your brain adjusts to what you throw at it.
I took 10 months off and I just read a lot of books.
Everyone is different though. You should probably try avoiding the internet news and try interacting with people in real life. People are pretty cool when they’re not a vague description of bad behavior from a stranger online who wants you to believe an entire category of people are bad.
The news literally exists to make you anxious at this point because it drives engagement.
The fucked up thing is you can know this and still not be able to stop compulsively reading it.
Change the things you can change. I’m sure you can change more things than you think.
I don’t know how you can afford rent or food. In my country there is a social safety net where you will be provided housing and food if you can’t afford it. If you don’t have that, try reducing costs somehow, move to lower cost of living, look for a shittier place with less rent, idk as I don’t know the reality of your situation. If you’re from the US, I thought you do have at least limited social safety net?
Traveling is overrated, at least overseas. If you have any way to get around at all, traveling locally can scratch that itch. Also video games do indeed scratch the travel itch.
Making real friends and finding a life partner, both of those things are possible for anyone regardless of circumstances. I don’t know why you think you can’t do it, but I’m pretty sure the reason is just in your head, so something you can change.
Water becoming a luxury and never retiring does not affect you yet, all future things don’t, i.e. it should be irrelevant for your happiness right now. While it is often a good idea to plan for the future, you can leave some things, like the world ending or similar, for future you to deal with and just actually not care about it right now. It’s actually your decision to choose to feel bad right now about future things, I assure you, you can choose to not feel bad about them.
Anxiety at the prospect of all those things AND being cold, hungry and homeless at the same time. Works a treat.
Get active politically. Even if (especially if) we are all just doomed, we can at least “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. For me it meant joining up with a group of people doing mutual aid distributing meals and camping supplies to our houseless neighbors.
Getting out and actually doing something useful and productive can help you view the world in a different way. Be a part of the things that are good about the world.
Volunteer Be with good people
And therapy.
If you do anything worthwhile politically you’ll get killed
I know where you’re coming from, but that’s not strictly true. Historically in the US (at least) a lot of radical political leaders have been assassinated, that is true. A movement needs leadership, but it also needs a lot more people doing the real work. Try to shift your focus to things less grand in scale.
Society will collapse, and I hope finally Capitalism will end, I hope then we will start enjoying of just living the life without believing you need more stuff to be happy. Just enjoy the time alone or with company doing nothing and chill. And 4 hours a day to fix your home or garden/plants. Life is pretty simple.
Societal collapse wouldn’t be a return to a simpler life. There are too many of us and we are far too urbanized. Check out Haiti for an example of what societal collapse looks like.
You could have been alive during the actual ice age. Or a hundred years ago when fascism was literally worse. Or an indentured slave to the British empire having your kids eaten by cannibals because you didn’t make your rubber picking quota. Or in about 80% of the world today that has things worse.
The glass can be half full or half empty.
If you live your life focused on what you don’t have, it devalues the things you do have. If you look at your life as one of abundance (and compared to 99.9% of human lives in all of history, it very much is), you’ll have a life filled with value.
One of the few proven techniques to improve happiness is to end each day writing down three things you are grateful for that day.
All that said, yeah of course everyone is fucked and there’s high odds things will only get worse from here.
Which means today is one of the best days of the rest of your life. 🎉🪩🕺
Enjoy it while it lasts?
Or an indentured slave to the British empire having your kids eaten by cannibals because you didn’t make your rubber picking quota.
WTF are you referring to here? I mean I’m guessing that you’re referring to a historical event, rather than making shit up?
You’re not crazy. Our future on this world is fucked, I can’t deny that. Only thing I would say is that getting high all the time is nice in some ways but in other ways it sucks and is even worse than being abstinent, because you’ll cause yourself more problems that you’ll be forced to deal with until it’s all over, and who knows how long that’s going to take?
Bro you need therapy
You just do it.
Not sure what drugs you’re doing but I’m about 6 years clean now. One thing that helped me the most was rediscovering my passion for video games. I guess my advice would be to find a hobby or something to focus on and forget about the world for a few hours.
If you want to feel like you’re doing something productive, get involved in your local community. It’s very difficult to fight fascism at a macro level but building bonds and protecting those in your immediate vicinity makes more of a difference than it seems.