351–360 of 497 posts
I remember my own decade-long struggles with "failing to thrive" and I can assure one can turn your life around, but as author correctly noticed: "The puzzle of getting Jack onto his feet could never be solved because there was a missing piece – Jack wanting to get better".
Substance abuse is a terrible curse.
When I was nine years old, my cousin died of a heroin overdose at nineteen years old. Most of the grownups around me were very sad, but I didn't really know my cousin very well; he lived on the opposite side of the country, and he was a full decade older than me so the times I did see him we didn't really play together, and so I wasn't really able to feel "sad" about it. People I don't know die every day, I can't fee…
I'm a recent teetotaler and my quality of life is massively improved. It took me an unreasonably long time to realize many adult role models in my life (family, and then in my first significant professional workplace) were abusing alcohol. None of them would consider themselves alcoholic. A few of them were dependent at significant cost to their health, which I believe is easily classified as alcoholic. A few years a…
I think alcohol, tastes disgusting in general. It's fun to mix with other things to have a stronger effect, but I've always enjoyed everclear to accomplish that, which basically is just pure ethanol.
I never understood alcohol culture, bars, going out, etc.
And I always related that to not being "popular" or feeling calm in a new city or such. I think it's so strange to go to a place, have to wait in line, pay admission/cover, to talk to a bar tender that expects tips, and then pay extravagant costs for something that can be purchased cheaply anywhere else (yes, I understand the transaction/food/beverage/hospitality.)
Never will get it.
His other book on depression, Lost Connections, is similarly great and insightful.
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The US has waged a war on drug for several generations with virtually unlimited funding and has made no progress on that goal whatsoever. What makes you think it could ever work, despite the mountains and decades of evidence that it has failed?
They’ve been fighting the suppliers. It’s time to go after the demand side, too. Every user bought their drugs from a dealer. Throw them in jail with the dealer. It seems like every solution in this thread is something other than “punish people who buy or sell drugs.” Can we at least try ruthless enforcement before we try free drugs for addicts paid for by taxpayers?
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I have seen the homeless as people to be pitied and helped. Just weak people, down on their luck. So you help them, right? I let a homeless man sleep in the hallway of my building. He took a shit in front of my door. Now if I had seen the homeless as what they actually are, maybe weak, maybe helpless, but still people with agency who can be absolute assholes, that wouldn't have happened. And I hate that this is overl…
Maybe if you had offered him an actual place to sleep and shit instead of being an asshole yourself, you wouldn’t have had to deal with the consequences. You decided he was not worth as much as you.
There is a reason every single person in their life abandoned them to sleep in the cold.
When I was nine years old, my cousin died of a heroin overdose at nineteen years old. Most of the grownups around me were very sad, but I didn't really know my cousin very well; he lived on the opposite side of the country, and he was a full decade older than me so the times I did see him we didn't really play together, and so I wasn't really able to feel "sad" about it. People I don't know die every day, I can't fee…
> my cousin had been taken so young? He wasn't taken. He took himself. Exercise: Everytime you remove agency, reintroduce it. "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself. "I am helpless". No, you are making yourself helpless. These are active processes. Let's get more controversial: "I am being bullied". No, you are letting people bully you. I know this is harsh. I know the societal memes and phrases are the wa…
> "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself.
You're assuming a brain that's in good working order. It's difficult to imagine a different one. Consider that not everyone's window into consciousness works like yours does.
This is a sad story. I have lots of sympathy. But I can't help but think this is a spiritual problem. In particular, rehab seems utterly useless. Obviously, it helps them get over the chemical dependency. But it seems to completely neglect the spiritual one. Unfortunately you cannot install the spiritual tools that lead to non nihilism later in life which is why childhood spirituality and culture are so important. Ma…
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irr...
Good write up. The US is really grappling with diseases of despair, and heroin/fentanyl addition is on of the biggest ones impacting the wellbeing of our society. A massive slice of talent and raw human resource is just dying every year, but the solutions that have worked in other countries are just impossible to implement here due because the the methods that are known to work are politically dead on arrival. I'm a…
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> my cousin had been taken so young? He wasn't taken. He took himself. Exercise: Everytime you remove agency, reintroduce it. "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself. "I am helpless". No, you are making yourself helpless. These are active processes. Let's get more controversial: "I am being bullied". No, you are letting people bully you. I know this is harsh. I know the societal memes and phrases are the wa…
I started writing out a much longer response to this, but it just got very ranty so I'll cut it short. If you insist on such a reevaluation as to why people aren't in their best state, a one word answer "lazy", "attention seeking" (okay thats two words, you get the idea), "weak" isn't going to cut it. You need to continue to ask yourself why that is the case, why are these people so apparently lazy, that they would a…
Not is it productive to misinterpret his comment as perpetuating a tired trope and then launch into an emotional rant against something that literally nobody here is supporting.
GP did make a fair point - learned helplessness does nothing but exacerbate your suffering, and taking agency and responsibility for your own mental state is the most effective way to improve things.
Whether the solution comes through lifestyle changes (leaving toxic environment), a simple change in viewpoint or SSRIs, labelling yourself as depressed or burned out and then succumbing to your new fate is never productive. I know this because I've experienced both.