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ace1928

How do people get through the day sober?

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@waterboy I think that what yo are trying to say that it is idiotic for someone who believes they have some level of intelligence to wish they were stupid because the life of a stupid person is wrought with difficulties. I think you are trying to hint towards intelligence being a gift rather than a curse and that an intelligent person would never wish to be stupid. But maybe I'm entirely wrong. Or maybe you don't understand how trivial I find life to be. Either way I don't really care. Your statements/comments were not constructive in the least and not helpful in the situation...

And @responsible choice, I did have an avatar. For some reason it vanished and I don't really care for replacing it. It makes me stand out in anyways because I don't know of anyone else on here who has no avatar. So I won't bother changing it because it's pretty irrelevant anyways.
 

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life isn't trivial in the slightest. life is profoundly rich and complex in myriad ways.

 

the day to day activities which we have to go through are trivial, sure. but anyone who mixes the two are more ignorant than they think.

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I hope you are ok @ace1928 - it sounds like you are in a dark place, I dont mean to sound anything other than concerned for a fellow human being, so please dont be pissed about my comments, but I hope you have the support you need and if not, know that there are always sabers who want to help :-) 

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Sorry I haven't read all the comments. But thought I'd write a thought.

Personally I found the best way to get through the day/s sober, is to know yourself that another day will come when you can be unsober. Whether that be tomorrow, next week, month, year etc. 

This pretty much got me off death sticks (I understand probs not the sober classification). I've had a few death sticks since I quit, but knowing it's always gonna be around some way or another made me go - oh yeah, cool, I don't need em, but if I ever feel like it then I can. 

 

I dunno if that helps, but training the mind to what works for you is the best option I think. Sometimes finding your own understanding is harder than applying it.

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Skimming  through all of that I see a few issues. Both mj and especially alcohol are terrible sleep aids. Do some research, alcohol = disrupted sleep architecture = feeling like shit the next day. Most drugs are terrible for sleep. Even over the counter and prescription sleeping aids have limited  efficiency. Check out this http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/01/treating_insomnia_with_less.html

 

If you take psychedelics when you feel shit expect an uncomfortable time, which may still be therapeutic.

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On 18/08/2016 at 7:23 PM, ace1928 said:

I just simply don’t enjoy much of what I’m doing on a day to day basis, even if it’s something I’m passionate about. No idea why.

 

On 10/08/2016 at 8:14 PM, ace1928 said:

I know what you're saying and I do all I can to keep myself as busy as possible. I'm working two jobs, maintaining a healthy relationship and I'm going to uni (even considering going on to do a second degree with double major in biology and chemistry) yet none of this is enough to distract me from life AND I'm able to do all of these things no matter how fucked up I am

 

Damn dude, that sounds bad. Do you really not enjoy anything in your life? Cause if that's true, I've really gotta wonder how healthy this relationship of yours can actually be. But that aside, have you enjoyed life, or even certain activities, in the past? Are you still doing those things? I guess what I'm asking is: are you unhappy/unfulfilled because your circumstances have changed, or because you have changed? Because either way, those are both things that can be changed again, and again, until they start working for you. But I'm entirely unclear on whether your problem here is physiological or existential.

 

I think you've already answered your own title question here, but I'll spell it out: I think that most people get through life by distracting themselves from it. Seems to work well enough for a lot of them. To me though, that's not living. If you have to spend every spare moment distracting yourself from the fact that you don't like your life, then maybe it's time to change your life. Work out what you actually want. Not just what's easy right now, or what makes you temporarily feel better, but what you can do that will be challenging and satisfying long-term. And maybe that won't be the same things that make sense to other people as "life goals", but fuck 'em, it's not their life. Get some crowdfunding to become the next Shulgin. Climb a mountain & join a monastery. Go look for a job you like better, working for a boss who isn't evil incarnate. Whatever you want. We're privileged to live in a country where we have safety nets for this kind of thing - we can risk our homes & savings & careers to make big life changes, without having to worry about starving to death or dying of treatable illnesses as well. Life isn't something you should have to distract yourself from.

 

I don't normally proselytise about nihilism, because that's just... wrong... but since you're struggling with it and asked how others deal, I'll tell you how I reconcile my nihilism with optimism, and joy in life. I absolutely believe that there is no fundamental meaning in the universe. I think where my path veers away from the depressed-angsty-nihilists is what I do with that core belief. See to me, "no inherent meaning" isn't the same thing as "no meaning at all". I figure that our reality is so fucking subjective anyway, we have basically built up this model of reality in our heads that only roughly correlates to consensus reality. So with that in mind, the idea of assigning personal meaning & morals seems perfectly at home, it's almost minor. My ENTIRE REALITY only exists because I think it does, and once you've accepted that, it puts the concept of creating your own ethical code into perspective a bit. You can use that blank slate of existential nothingness to build a strong personal philosophy & ethics (yep, lots of moral relativism in this philosophy of mine). And for me, this is a great thing. It means that I spend a lot of time wrangling with my conscience, but it also means that I rarely have to worry that I might've done something bad by following some external code. I know that I sometimes come across as a pessimist, but I'm really not. I'm cynical - there's a big difference, like the saying "hope for the best, plan for the worst" (I know that this is probably meant for practical disaster preparation, but it works for philosophy too). I like being self-sufficient, I like knowing how to make my own things. Why on earth would I stop at bread & treehouses, when I can create THE MEANING OF LIFE?!

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Anodyne is pretty spot on I reckon. 

 

There is no inherent meaning to our existence.  The meaning your life has is entirely determined by how much you are willing to work to invest meaning into the things you do & the people in your life. The more you work to do that & the more momentum that you develop the deeper that sense of meaning becomes.

 

Even if you know that ultimately at some level life actually is quite meaningless it makes little difference because if you really live like that then at many levels it is not meaningless. For instance, people who live like that are often very inspiring to others & that can help very deeply with other people's existential struggles. Also, living life as though it has meaning is just way more interesting & enjoyable, so unless you're a masochist, why not choose to give your life a sense of meaning?  If you're smart enough to get that this may be an illusion then you should be smart enough to realise that our entire reality is an illusion & if that's the case why not choose a meaningful & fulfilling one?

 

sounds like you're on a pretty selfish trip.  I can relate man but theres a reason why the wisest traditions & philosophies are pretty much based on selflessness because the self is an illusion & pretty much the only true meaning in life comes from taking care of the people around us who are also suffering in this illusion. We're all in the same boat.

 

Realising that life is ultimately meaningless shouldn't be an excuse to  not give s fuck & be a bitter cnut. Rather it's one of the first realisations that can lead to taking control of your illusions & creating meaning dispite the bleakness that is just one aspect of that realisation.

 

im by no means some kind of saint but if we stop being self absorbed fuckheads for once & actually pay attention to the people & things around us & live life as though the point is to take care of those things instead of just obsessing on how hard it is for YOU then we'll more than likely realise that life feels very meaningful indeed.

 

that is until we start playing the poor me game again.

 

just cause you may seem smarter than most people around you doesn't mean you aren't just as much of a cnut as everyone else 

 

 

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Hey paradox. I appreciate the input. It just happens to go way off on a tangent that isn't at all what I'm trying to get at. I'll respond more thoroughly later in the week when I'm not so burnt out after a long day at work.

Anodyne, I'll respond more thoroughly later in the week when I'm not half burnt out from a long day at work too.

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As to how to get through a day sober. Stop being a self obsessed pussy & just do it. If you want to.. Then continue to embrace the struggle & do it again & again until you actually develop some perspective on your substance abuse in relation to your sobriety & that may lead to developing some perspective on your life as a whole..

 

that may sound harsh. It's fucking hard to kick a serious addiction. But the sooner we realise that everything that's worth doing in life is fucking hard the better. Staying sober is like anything else in life. We'll only achieve our goals when we stop being little bitches & have the balls to follow through.  I say this as much to myself as I do to you

 

 

 

 

Edited by paradox
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Fair enough ace, I was kinda just riffing from some of the points anodyne made instead of replying directly to your OP

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All cool paradox. I get what you are saying and don't disagree with it all. It just doesn't exactly touch on the exact kind of issues I'm dealing with. I do intend to reply thoroughly to your posts though because I quite like what you are saying and where you are coming from.

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Cool. Im just blabbing cause I'm a self absorbed cnut who's looking at your thread from the narrow bandwidth of my own perceptions & the fews parts of the thread my overworked strung out mind really payed attention to. 

 

I can relate is all

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Sulking, food.....boxing, these seem to distract enough haha

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While everyone is having a stab at what WB was saying.. My take is that he's basically saying that he hopes you don't one day have to watch someone you love or yourself have some kind of horrific brain injury.

 

because those kind of injuries or whatnot happen to good people all the time & if someone close to you has been through that, it's probably pretty fucking irritating &/or very offensive to hear someone more or less wish that upon themselves in an ignorant kind of way.. Though that said I get your point.  It can feel like a curse having a highly active brain in this world of stressed out over stimulated miseducated worker bees..

 

Just remember that in a world that's so chockablock full of dummies it's the easiest thing in the world to feel as though you are basically smarter than everyone else.  The next stage of that game is arrogance & that can lead to all kinds of fucked up delusions & a lot of problems.

 

One of the biggest traps in that trip is you can become so convinced that the whole world is pathologically retarded that you can begin to believe that no one has anything to teach you. That will lead to pretty much completely closing your mind & losing the ability to see things from perspectives that you hadn't ordinarily considered & that then leads to you being basically as dumb or dumber than the masses of dummies that you find so hard to relate to..

 

my point is that often (not always) there can be a lot more in what people are saying than may be immediately apparent. We all selectively pay attention to the things that click with our own prejudices & personal perceptions & tend to dismiss everything else.

 

maybe I'm going on a tangent thats irrelevant to what you want or maybe that's part of your problem.. I know it has been for me at times in my life..

 

maybe im another dummy babbling nonsense or maybe there's something to this, I don't really know, I reckon we should always remember though, that even the biggest dummies can have a lot to teach us if we don't perpetually dismiss them out of an arrogance which is a coping mechanism for an insane & generally quite dumb world where we feel we don't really belong.

 

im typing this on my phone.. Not sure why the formatting is different all of a sudden 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by paradox
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17 hours ago, paradox said:

If you're smart enough to get that this may be an illusion then you should be smart enough to realise that our entire reality is an illusion & if that's the case why not choose a meaningful & fulfilling one?

Paradox said it all much better.

 

I keep reading "cnut" as an abbreviation for "coconut" though.

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Haha. That's a random & obscure old joke that maybe only a handful of people will get.. I will swear properly in future & save the confusion

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Fwiw over the last week or so I've been listening to Alan Watts on audiobooks. His emphasis on the only "thing" that is truly "real" is the here and now. Life as a series of moments. Nothing more or less; memories mere tracers of energies of past moments, which we can see/remember "backwards." Basically if the current moment is the only one which truly exists (outside Wholeness that is), then the true freedom of no-past-no-future is felt. I've put my own spin on that (and probably shouldn't have), but it CALMED my mind in a way that I haven't felt in ages. Distraction (from unnecessary use) always works for me when I'm not thinking outside the moment. Apparently pain (physical/mental/emotional/spiritual) doesn't exist in the Current Moment because there is nothing else to compare it to in the same infinitely-fleeting Current Moment. 

 

The next Current Moment is only a moment away (but that isn't soon enough!) but is it really worth wasting that moment worrying about how crap the Next Moment MIGHT be when it could just as easily be a good one? 

 

Youre not worried about social norms, you're not satisfied by your relationships or studies or drug usage; why do you do them? What makes you go on? I'm too damn curious to see where the Next Moment takes me, and that's enough. For me. 

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