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Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

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Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#521

Post by zcw100 »

bheadmaster wrote: post #140

I don't really "believe" in regret. At each and every point in my life, I was working with the information I had at my disposal, each information having its own "weight" in my mind. Every mistake I've made has brought some information in my mind that wouldn't have been brought otherwise. Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless. The only way I could justify having regrets, is reminding…

I get what you’re going for but I’ve found that attitude in other people distasteful. First it’s a normal emotion and simply refusing to experience an emotion probably isn’t healthy. It also means you are never really sorry even if you might say it. How can you truly be sorry for something without regretting having done it? It ends up translating to “I’m sorry for the outcome and that it hurt you but if I had to do it all over again I would still do it knowing that it hurt you” and that isn’t really an apology.

A regret is a mistake that you don’t want to make in the future only it’s projected into the past. “I regret having done that because if I went back to the past, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have done that”

You’re also inviting other people not to regret their choices even when those decisions negatively affect you.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#522

Post by snicky »

fullstop wrote: post #159

Half joking, but I was young and had the money, but didn't pull the trigger on buying 10k of AAPL when it was less than $1. It was such a low risk proposition at that time in my life.

It's not too late. Take your 10k and invest in one of hundreds of 1$ stocks right now. It's such a low risk proposition, isn't it?

I hope you get the irony.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#523

Post by fullstop »

snicky wrote: post #522
fullstop wrote: post #159

Half joking, but I was young and had the money, but didn't pull the trigger on buying 10k of AAPL when it was less than $1. It was such a low risk proposition at that time in my life.

It's not too late. Take your 10k and invest in one of hundreds of 1$ stocks right now. It's such a low risk proposition, isn't it? I hope you get the irony.

Those $1 stocks aren't close to the scale of Apple in 2001, but I understand what you're trying to say.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#525

Post by DontchaKnowit »

hirvi74 wrote: post #460
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #179

Always had an obsessive personality. Raised Christian. Always had a bent for pushing boundaries. Got interested in the nuerochemistry of psychoactive substances. Got very involved in educating myself about drug usage, until I was finally comfortable trying them. Queue ~6 years of polysubstance abuse, wasted money, and fake ass friends. Did everything under the sun I could get my hands on. I think the list of unique d…

(Please ignore my following questions if they make you uncomfortable or you find them offensive) 1. What was your favorite drug you ever tried? 2. What was your least favorite drugs you ever tried? 3. What was your best combination of substances? 4. Do you feel like any of your drug usage has affected your cognition in anyway? 5. Do you ever miss it? I only ask these questions out of pure curiosity, and I do no inten…

1) Good cocaine is hard to beat. 3-HO-PCE is the craziest I've done. Extremely powerful drug. You know the wolf of wall street scene where they OD on quaaludes? It was like that + psychedelia + constant distortion of time and space perception.

2) Plenty of real shitty ones. You eat the cotton out of a benzedrine inhaler and it gives you an amphetamine type high. constricts your blood vessels, makes you sweat bullets, and the taste and smell of it emanates from every inch of your body. Its awful. 3-FMA was awful as well. 0 euphoria or otherwise positive effects but was absolutely fucking wired for like 3 days. Hexen and other cathinone derivatives absolutely such. speedy high for 1 hour and then you feel like shit and redosing only helps like 50% so by the end of the day you're a shell of a person.

3) In general psychedelics + dissociatives was a favorite: Deschloroketamine + a synthetic tryptamine or phenthylamine. low dose benedryl and low dose cough syrup was crazy. Acid and cocaine was awesome, and one of the only experiences which I don't really regret at all. I don't wish, or feel the need, to replicate it though.

4) Yes, but not in the typical way people think - e.g. its not like I feel less intelligent or clearheaded. instead, the biggest effect is that I've basically hijacked my reward system. I suppose you could call it anhedonia, but not to a clinically significant degree. Additionally, I feel like I've made connections in my brain that were not previously there. Like sometimes seeing certain patterns or hearing certain music will briefly remind me of a feeling I had at some point while high. It's hard to explain, its not like a "flashback", but more like a traumatic stress response? its very uncomfortable, but its brief. Also my night vision is significantly worse.

5) No. When I think back to the type of shit I got up to all I feel is regret and disgust. I don't remember times that I was high fondly. And the thought of doing it again is repellent to me. A while back, a friend of mine got their hands on Ketamine, which I never got to try while I was in my hay day. I thought, what the hell, I'll cross it off the list. I did a dose of it and immediately regretted it. I just kept thinking "what the fuck is the point of this?" gave the rest of it away.

Just as a disclaimer - a lot of the shit I mentioned here are designer drugs. These have very little history of human consumption and as such are inherently very unsafe, because long term effects cannot be evaluated. I expect I will have some health complications later in life as a result. I cannot stress enough that doing this shit is a bad idea. I know you said you didn't plan to try anything, but to any other reader. Really. Stay away. Not worth it.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#526

Post by DontchaKnowit »

brnaftr361 wrote: post #369
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #179

Always had an obsessive personality. Raised Christian. Always had a bent for pushing boundaries. Got interested in the nuerochemistry of psychoactive substances. Got very involved in educating myself about drug usage, until I was finally comfortable trying them. Queue ~6 years of polysubstance abuse, wasted money, and fake ass friends. Did everything under the sun I could get my hands on. I think the list of unique d…

Me too, mostly. At least... in a lot of ways. It's weird having lived a whole life and done a bunch of crazy shit and then listening to people and realizing how fucking droll most of their lives are even at 30, how narrow are their experiences, even the ones that are "woke". I find it hard to relate. I even find myself condescending sometimes. But nobody knows how to meet people, nobody has some magic playbook. You'v…

Yeah I feel that. When I was into the shit, I thought it made me interesting. Now though, I feel like its mostly lame, and maybe a bit embarrassing.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#527

Post by nvarsj »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #513
nvarsj wrote: post #123

Letting anxiety control my life for so long. Marrying the wrong person because I didn’t want to be alone. Not going into the game industry. I was too afraid of the horror stories at the time, so ignored my passion.

How’d you get a handle on your anxiety if you don’t mind me asking?

Therapy - if only to get me analyzing it rather than letting it control my life.

It's still there, and it's still a struggle. I've learned to mostly accept it as just how my brains works. I can recognize when it's causing me to make the wrong choice, and override that. Long walks really help when it's bad.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#528

Post by DontchaKnowit »

bergenty wrote: post #426
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #179

Always had an obsessive personality. Raised Christian. Always had a bent for pushing boundaries. Got interested in the nuerochemistry of psychoactive substances. Got very involved in educating myself about drug usage, until I was finally comfortable trying them. Queue ~6 years of polysubstance abuse, wasted money, and fake ass friends. Did everything under the sun I could get my hands on. I think the list of unique d…

I would love to hear your list of 40 drugs because I did a lot of them in my 20s but I still couldn’t name that many. My list would be nicotine, marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, LSD, shrooms, ecstasy, adderall, oxy, dmt, 2cb, tramadol, percocet, ayahuasca and mescaline. Other than that the only things I can think of is heroin, crack and meth. That’s only 18.

weed, oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, tramadol, kratom, lorezepam, klonazolam, alprazolam, etizolam, phenibut, coke, amphetamine, 3-fma, 4-FA, ethylphenidate, hexen, NEP, benzedrine, 5-MAPB, 6-APB, 4-aco-dmt, ETH-lad, AL-lad, LSD, DMT, 5-meo-mipt, deschloroketamine, dextromethorphan, 4-HO-met, LSA (morning glory), benedryl...

That's just from memory. I know there's some ketamine and psilocybin derivatives I'm missing there. I also counted alcohol, psuedophedrine, ephedrine, nicotine, and caffeine.

The list of "designer" drugs is endless. There are hundreds out there and more discovered each day.

If you're interested in learning more about this sort of thing lookup Alexander Shulgin. He wrote some books documenting his experience as a chemist synthesizing novel psychedelics. Many of these have since seen mass production in china and distribution in the western world. For a while there you could just straight up buy most that shit from the internet - not even the dark net.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#529

Post by DontchaKnowit »

bigie35 wrote: post #307
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #179

Always had an obsessive personality. Raised Christian. Always had a bent for pushing boundaries. Got interested in the nuerochemistry of psychoactive substances. Got very involved in educating myself about drug usage, until I was finally comfortable trying them. Queue ~6 years of polysubstance abuse, wasted money, and fake ass friends. Did everything under the sun I could get my hands on. I think the list of unique d…

Hi there, you're kind of me but in reverse. Raised Christian, initially very socially awkward as a kid and even in high school, it wasnt until my junior year in college that i really opened up and now that i'm "established" professionally and socially, I've been looking into dipping my toes into the world of psychedelics. I'd love to chat more if you're interested. You can find my email in my profile.

Do you have snapchat? I'd have to create an email that doesn't dox me.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#530

Post by sizzle »

userulluipeste wrote: post #465
sizzle wrote: post #450

Not learning how to invest my money in early 20’s instead of spending it all on crap I didn’t need and not having the foresight to know I could have been in a much better position today financially had I just put my money away in the market rather than lighting it on fire with stupid material purchases that are in a landfill somewhere today. If you are young and have an income stream, do your future self a favor and…

Weren't your purchases impacted the quality of life you had at the moment? I don't know your particular context, but living in the moment vs. preparing for future is an old and common theme to many (i.e. almost all) of us, and buyer's remorse is a real but unfair frame of thought to judge ourselves. Also, investment requires discipline and foresight (intelligence) that come a bit later, as we grow. I for one, am glad…

I like your take on this and you are kind to yourself, wish I could learn to take that perspective.

I’m not talking about spending money traveling and on experiences, I think those are worth every penny.

I’m talking about blowing money living paycheck to paycheck instead of growing my savings on designer clothes and modifying cars, etc. trying to look a certain way among people my age and trying to impress the opposite sex.

None of that stuff matters now and didn’t back then in retrospect. I found my spouse partaking in a free hobby.

I guess hindsight is 20/20 as they say, back then I was surrounded by social and single college friends looking to find partners to date.

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