How to deal with living in a world with no future without being high 24/7?

AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 156 points –

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?

70

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.

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.

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.

For me, it's just math. The odds of things getting better if I try may be low, but the odds if I don't are even lower. I'll take the higher odds every time.

For you, have you considered spite? Live the best life you can to prove wrong everyone who tried to stop you, and do as much good in the world as you can so those trying to do evil have to try just that little bit harder. It only takes one good hit to ruin a superior opponent's perfect game, and you can only get that hit if you keep playing.

Climate change wouldn't be as bad as it is today if we didn't fix the ozone layer destruction trend.

A lot of the failing democracies around the world wouldn't be failing as badly if people who drank bleach and licked measles sores because Facebook said it would make them immortal actually died from the consequences instead of surviving to go on and share the posts again.

Sometimes making things better actually does make them worse.

Saving the deer from the wolf can have catastrophic effects.

Wait, you’re saying we shoulda kept some of the ozone hole around?

Kind of.

It should have been addressed and will still be around for decades despite healing, and it is a poster case for "see silly humans, you can mend your ways."

But there is also a cooling effect to a giant hole opposite to the effect of CO2 and improving the ozone may have slightly worsened the speed of warming as a result.

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?

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.

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.

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.

My guy, you're a depressed drug addict. You need to work on yourself and your situation if you want life to improve.

We have a lot of problems right now, to be sure, but it is entirely possible to have a meaningful, fulfilling life.

Things probably won't get better for everyone but they definitely won't get better for you. If the future you want is one where the world is better and you are healthier than what you have to do is get better and then just roll the dice on the world getting better.

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

Feel the same way, smoke weed every day. I just don’t want to contribute to such a shit world. Doesn’t help I live in FL. Been trying to get out of this state for awhile now but it’s just so expensive to just live let alone move.

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.

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.

One should always be drunk, that's all that matters.

So as not to feel time's horrible burden

That breaks your shoulders and bows you down

You must get drunk without ceasing.

But what with?

With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose.

But get drunk

"Be Drunk" by Charles Baudelaire, as interpreted by Liam Clancy

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Liam Clancy

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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.

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"

Join Politics.

Win people's support. Voice your concerns, if they are widely realised you will definately make a difference for people you care for.

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

I channel the despair, anger and misery into working on solutions to help marginalized peoples. I don't have all the answers to the world's problems, and I can't solve it all, but I can show the people who might have the answers that there is someone in their corner who supports them in their efforts. Even if those people haven't been born yet, demonstrating the power of empathy and collaboration sets them up to choose constructive paths. If I give up on them, then it becomes much easier and more likely that they will choose the same anti-social self-interested motives that are destroying us all. But, if they are going to be able to make that choice at all, they need to be in a position where they aren't in survival mode all the time.

We're all just organisms who exist for a brief flash of time on a galactic scale, ultimately this is all meaningless. But as someone who identifies as a bit of an existentialist, I make my meaning. You can too.

It also enables me to leave the weed for wind-down time, mostly. Depends on how badly my health is doing, and it's pretty variable.

Anxiety at the prospect of all those things AND being cold, hungry and homeless at the same time. Works a treat.

It seems to me there's something serious beginning
A new approach found to the meaning of life
Deny that happiness is open as an option
And disappointment disappears overnight

Relax, what you see is what you see
And what you get is a new philosophy

Miserablism: Is is and isn't isn't ...
Miserable

Therapy would probably help.

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?

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.

But there are many kinds of society collapse, with the climate change I doubt we will be better than Haiti. Not because of criminality.

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.

I don't do drugs except the occasional social alcohol consume. Drugs are a cancer, yes, they feel good, but thinking about the amount of people who die and suffer for them to exist, just hits me too hard. It's different if you can get them legally, but almost all drugs are illegal in my country. Right now, there's nothing to keep me going except for my life partner and my cats, but health and finding a good job is becoming harder at my age. Enjoy life as long and as much as you can, even doing drugs, but try to keep yourself sober once in a whole too. Do this, look for another way to enjoy life. If you are young, look for your older family members, they probably miss you.

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.

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.

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.