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?
Think globally, act locally
As said by Paulie Shore in his environmental documentary Biodome.
If everyone did that we’d be fine as a species, but not enough do. Don’t get so stressed out about the stuff we can’t change to not help change stuff you can.
Our brains don’t care about the scale, it’ll help if you do something no matter how small.
And that gives you the mental bandwidth to care about big shit again.
You have to moderate how many fucks you give or you’ll run out.
If I may, let me rephrase what givesomefucks said:
Do not focus on the “ bigger picture”; it’s not something that can be easily fixed by you. Instead, focus on smaller things within your bubble of life; e.g., been putting off the laundry? Go do it real quick. All of it: wash, dry, fold, and put away. Been meaning to clean your bathroom for a while? Do it. Wash the counters and the mirror; wipe the toilet down (even the back of the base).
If it helps, make a laundry list of things you need to get done or want to do (they don’t all have to be chores). This will help get them out of your head and organized in a way that you can tackle each b item easier. And while you don’t want to pressure yourself to get them all done “right now”, give yourself reasonable deadlines to help hold yourself accountable.
The idea is to build up these little wins; they feel good when they’re complete, and also enrich your life in some way at the same time. It will also help build up your confidence, as you’ll run out of simple stuff and start focusing on slightly more complex things.
Great advice.
I would also add, it’s not necessary to go in to those tasks planning to complete the entire thing. If the prospect of doing all of washing, drying, folding, and putting away the laundry sounds exhausting or intimidating or otherwise executive-dysfunction-inducing, that’s fine. Start by just starting; putting some laundry in the washing machine can be a satisfying task all on its own. And maybe by the time it’s done, starting step two of the process won’t seem so daunting.
Sometimes, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.
To add to this, I find it helpful to think about “what I’m doing today makes tomorrow easier” (or what can I do with these 15 minutes to smooth tomorrows hassles)
This is the best advice I’ve adopted recently for exactly the same perception. Focus on your life, maybe do your best to have a positive impact on the things that worry you. Decrease your engagement with the news cycle - know what’s going on, but only as much as you can handle without it affecting your mental health.
Learn to trust that things will be ok, even if you’re not entirely convinced they will. It may not solve the problems, but your sanity matters too
Have you considered that you might be self medicating depression rather than getting high?
Maybe a professional could help more than anyone on lemmy?
I agree with everything you said, except the “rather than” sentiment. It sounds a lot like the “stimulants don’t make people with ADHD high, it just makes them normal” folklore - this is not how anything works, though: people with ADHD can get high on stimulants just fine. Perhaps “getting high to cope” would be closer, but op basically said this in the post.
That’s fair. I didn’t mean to imply anything about the drug use.
The way OP views the world reminds me of how I see things when I am experiencing certain depression symptoms. I tend to filter my view of the world so that only the negative things are true, and it makes it harder to do anything positive in my life.
When my symptoms let up, either through treatment or sometimes on their own, I can still see the negatives but they’re there with a lot of positives, too.
If OP does have depression, it’s possible that treating it in a more effective way would be the answer to their question.
Well there is ALWAYS pessimistic and optimistic view on everything. But I do not mean naive or stupid. I mean optimistic.
Pessimist: “It makes no sense to improve my situation, because I will fail! I will not even try.” Stupid: “Things are not bad. Nothing to change here.” Naive: “Things will fix themselves.” Optimist: “Well things may be bad, but we can, and we will fix them.”
So to answer your concrete questions:
- unhabitable planet: lets vote for green parties, lets push for green energy. Results will not be immediate, but we will get there. Yes it will get hotter a few degrees and will cause some weather problems. But we can fix it.
- fascist government: Vote for better, join movement. Or if things are really extreme in your country. Move to a democracy.
- money problems: you can change your job. Yes it can be very hard, but If you really try (improve your cv, reeducate yourself, change profession) you can get really good jobs. You can learn sales and be really good salesman with very high pay without ever going to college.
- social issues: go out, meet new people, join some class, start a hobby.
Yes I know mentioned things can be awfully hard to achieve. Buy you can achieve them. One by one. As to why bother? You do not have to. But that is the beauty of it. You can try to improve things as many times as you want. It will be hard, but things can be way better.
If nothing else I would bother to fix my life (and the world) just for the sake of curiosity. To see how good can life actually get.
Have you considered you might have better relationships and definitely would have more money if you weren’t high all the time?
Weed isn’t expensive everywhere. I just bought half an oz for $30; even when I’m in the middle of a pain flare and sharing with another heavy vaper that will last at least 4-6 weeks. ~$350/year isn’t changing my life if I don’t spend it on weed.
“Just don’t do drugs lol” is useless for anything other than feeling smug; when people don’t have access to quality mental healthcare and their material living situations suck, a certain amount are going to use drugs to deal with it. People who are having a good time already don’t want to be high or drunk all the time.
Also i think anti drug types tend to picture getting high like in movies or when you’re 16 and giggling, stumbling over the place, and getting everything wrong. I and plenty of people I know smoke while coding, doing woodwork, or similar.
I and plenty of people I know smoke while coding, doing woodwork, or similar.
Ah man, now I want to go sand a nice piece of oak.
Well, it’s better than feudalism, or 99.999999999% of all time inhabited by human beings on this earth, for human longevity and enjoyment of life.
lol, you wanna wallow in pessimistic self pity, go right ahead, it’s a valid way as any to spend one’s existence.
I’d like to know the answer to this question tbh because same, minus the 24/7
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.
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.
join an organization by volunteering in soup kitchens or something similar. educate yourself and radicalize others while building a mutual aid network, so that you will have comrades in case you ever end up in need. and even if you dont succeed you can at least say that you are helping others.
*all of which can be done while high…
Well that’s what I thought when I was young but now I’m old and my life is fucked and the bastards still haven’t killed us all yet.
I’m not saying dont smoking weed or anything but when you’re planning your life it is important to remember the future will probably happen
Anxiety at the prospect of all those things AND being cold, hungry and homeless at the same time. Works a treat.
Environment decay (aka climate change) is gonna force all of us into pockets of extremism where we start killing each other. unless you’re the brave bastard doing a one man miracle decapitation strike that changes the system, Start building community now, lest you be caught alone when the flood comes to your valley on earth.
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.
Get mad. Slowly diying while depressed and high is what they want you to do. They set up the system for you to suffer like this. It gives them power and money and they don’t give two shits about you.
Maybe you can’t win. But you can at least be a massive thorn in their side before you go. If you can’t take them down, setup others to take them down. Maybe not this generation, but the next.
Don’t forget to enjoy your life when you can. Without pain, there is no joy.
Who is “they”? You have to find out for yourself. Start by trying to figure out who is benefiting from your suffering. Keep asking questions. Try to make sense of the world. You’re doing good so far.
As someone who used to be high all the time. I know what worked for me a lot was trying to focus on the best I can do in a given day.
I got into exercise and tried enjoying everyday as if I could be happy with dying that day. I really do try my best to not think about all the crazy things going on just because I realized I can’t help as much. But I do my best to help with things locally. One simple that helped me financially as well as climate related was switching to eating less red meat. Even though some may say it’s not enough as I didn’t go vegan, it still helps reduce some of my carbon output. With the idea of helping where you can and not stressing about what you can’t do, life becomes a lot easier and less stressful while actually making impact.
Do you have anything particular you want to do outside of just being high to feel better? Once I realized how much I like computers and tech, smoking less became easier
