Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

I agree about being honest about handicaps. Especially if you know they can get in the way. People can easily forgive that when they know what to expect. I’ve been more upfront about it and having no issue finding work, but I feel far more at ease as a result. I’m even getting older; I’m 36 with a mild disability. I would have thought I’d be unemployable earlier in my life. Good people exist, and they get it. Definitely seek them out.

As for the search for meaning. I read that at a dark point in my own life and the main thing I got from it was perspective. What he describes is unimaginable. What I was experiencing was very imaginable. I found that very helpful.

Stoic philosophy has a sort of “zooming out” mechanism used to remind the practitioner how small they are in the scheme of things, how little their troubles matter, and Man’s Search For Meaning is an incredible tool for accomplishing this. Very few people can truthfully say their struggles are greater. It’s a window into how fortunate most of us, even with our hardships.

Chronic pain is legitimately hard to mentally distance yourself from though. Don’t hold it against yourself if reading the book doesn’t allow you to do so. I had chronic sciatica for around a year once and while I was young and stupid, I don’t think I’d handle it well today either. It was disabling in a truly unflagging and monolithic sense. I have no idea why it went away, but I can genuinely feel a sense of relief each time I think of it. It was torture.

Above all I would say don’t blame yourself or imagine you should do better or differently or whatever. Each step is part of it, whether it’s a good or bad step. You do the best you can with what you’ve got, mentally and physically, and no one said any of it would be easy. To be depressed about it is understandable. To be tired of it is as well. Struggling makes sense. Don’t hold that against yourself, if you do at all, and hopefully that can provide some relief.

Best of luck OP, and hopefully the traction this post got helps you see that people care, they understand, they relate. You aren’t alone.

Keto with good fats and eliminating keto snacks (and the snacking behavior altogether), can work absolute miracles. There's no question eliminating sugar and even most carbs will greatly diminish inflammation and improve energetic output via ketones and bypass the overworked carb pathways.

Anyway, such a moonshot diet exists, and it's zerocarb keto, some call ketovore, meaning mostly meat very high fat diet. Reddit has a r/zerocarb sub for the generic (not deliberately high fat) version.

I'm going to contact OP by email because I have a lot of experience with this, along with other advice for supplementation, etc.

Once you sort out a visa, you can literally buy a plane ticket, pack a backpack, and get on a plane.

Bali has recently introduced a nomad visa:

https://www.euronews.com/travel/amp/2022/06/24/balis-new-dig...

If OP were able to find part time work online, moving to a tropical climate in a new environment could potentially help their condition.

The biggest challenge would be medication, but even with that they could probably figure it out.

Living in a different environment can definitely help with your health. IMO, if they've been stuck where they are for years, it's not a silly idea at all to make a complete change of environment and see how they do.

The ability for psychological expectations to cause physical pain and even physical symptoms (like those of an allergic reaction) is relatively well established science.

I wonder what the person who watches him play video games all day thinks about his inability to work due to "chronic pain".