as my after-work fluid intake is mostly beer, I realized that now my brain cannot tell the difference between thirst and alcohol cravings.
Does your at-work brain confuse thirst with alcohol cravings too?
One idea would be thirst-like feeling → drink water → re-examine, but water is not a very good thirst quencher.
So test this by drinking something that isn’t beer or water but matches your other criteria for good thirst quenchers. Carbonated water with lemon or lime juice in it will meet the criteria that you listed, but actually staying hydrated with water will just prevent you from getting thirsty in the first place. Seriously—ginger ale, lemon-lime or orange soda, etc.
I am toying with the idea to alternate alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer in the evenings to de-train the association
What? You’re suggesting that you should train yourself to associate the taste of beer with satisfying your craving for hydration here, so the association that you’re trying to de-train is the one between beer and satisfying alcohol cravings? That’s crazy, dude. Look at how much energy you’ve put into thinking about ways to keep drinking beer while avoiding satisfying alcohol cravings and put the same amount into thinking about ways to not drink beer. That will be an easier way to decouple the satisfaction of your cravings for hydration alcohol.
I’m an alcoholic and have been sober for about 7 years now so take that into account. My advice is that you quickly try all the ways you can think of to control your drinking. Make notes about what you’re trying and how well it works. Track stuff like servings of alcohol consumed, etc. so that you can look at how well your control mechanisms work. Spend some time with no control mechanism in place and just track your consumption for a baseline if necessary (maybe even do this for a week or two in between trials to see if your baseline fluctuates). Make notes about things that trigger cravings. If something works, tweak it or stick with it. If none of them work, consider that you’ll either need to abstain entirely from alcohol (and avoid things that trigger cravings for a little while) or that you’re just going to slide further into alcoholism and make the necessary adjustments in your life to do those things. Gather information and be honest with yourself.
Thanks, it is good ideas. I got two different kinds of de-training completely mixed up.
I decided that if you want to understand yourself you may start first studying others, because you will be more honest and less likely to find excuses, and then applying the lesson to yourself (not allowing new excuses). That is a good idea?
I studied my late father and current father-in-law both classical blue-collar guys with classical blue-collar vices i.e. drinking more than healthy and probably being addicted (no textbook alcoholics: they were/are never actually drunk, just elevated “bubbly” every evening).
One thing I have noticed is that the basic idea is that you don’t enjoy your work and life much. And when the daily work is done you need a quick pick me up, something that quickly makes you feel good, for the blue-collar culture it is booze, for others, it is sugar (contributing to the obesity epidemic), drugs or gambling. They all act fast.
Apparently, one reason more intellectual people (typical Silicon Valley types) have less of an addiction problem is that they enjoy their work and thus life enough, they don’t need to quickly wash down another suck of a day, so they can have less euphoric hobbies in the evening, say, drawing or painting.
I am fairly intellectual but for reasons I don’t think I will ever have a very enjoyable job or life. It is mainly a must-do tasks to stay afloat kind of life. So I need to see how to cope better.
A) I started studying what healthy “quickly pick me up” other people are using. I found music and socialization. I.e. they put on headphones when riding the subway or Facebook chat with their friends. Neither is to my taste or possibilities. Any other ideas? I.e. not the kinds of enjoyable activities that take investment, but the kinds that are easy as downing a drink or three, calling someone on the phone or putting on music. But it has to be a strong jolt, I am very easily bored. For example something like playing Settlers of Catan on an Android tablet (against AI) bores me out in 15 mins even though is one of the most popular board games.
B) Is it possible to just to learn to put up with it all? For example 2-3 generations ago British upper classes were very good at putting up with boredom. They could spend an afternoon just reading Times. It is not exciting at all. Even Carcassone on Android is more exciting. What and how made these people so good at putting up with nothing enjoyable and fun, no jolt, no pleasure shock happening?
Am I even on the right track here?
Counter-test: what do today smart people (who know unhealthy habits are unhealthy) do if their work/life is generally unpleasant, so they need a quick jolt of pleasure injected into themselves after work? Again I am not talking about hobbies one invest into, I am talking about something one may as well do on the subway back home. Well, I know one physcist doing some kind of a PhD internship where he analyses nuclear data all day writing C++ programs (don’t even ask...) and he hates it, and he is a drinker. That is not a good example.
Is it possible to rank or categorize hobbies, interests, free time activities by factors like time investment, quick jolt vs. more slow pleasure and so on? E.g. parachuting or bungee jumping does give a quick jolt, one very similar to drugs, they are very good at washing down an unpleasant workday, but they require investment in the sense of going/driving there, going up etc. people who do it normally just do it on the weekend. They are clearly not something to quickly do on the subway on the way home. Music, as long as people can find one they really like, can work as press a button, get an instant jolt of pleasure. Hobbies like painting or drawing generally don’t give this kind of euphoric jolt at all. I wonder if such an avenue of research is a good idea.
About my at-work brain: not until about 4PM, however, I am not very thirsty before that, it is the usually quite salty lunch (like street döner kebab) eaten around 1PM that generates it. I drink a lot of water but mainly as routine.
I can’t comment on alcohol use, but on recuperative activity:
Different types of “burnt out” suggest different remedies.
If you just spent 8 hours sitting at a desk, you might get a bump from a game of tennis, or a long walk. If you just spent 8 hours on your feet, that game of tennis might not help.
If you just spent 8 hours alone, then socialize. If you were dealing with customers and coworkers and crowds nonstop, maybe do something alone.
Anecdote: When I lived in college dorms (4 people in 2 bunk beds in a unit), my idea of heaven was sitting alone in a quiet empty room. The desire evaporated as soon as I moved out.
Sometimes people match to the wrong class of remedies: If you’re angry (a negative, high-arousal state), you might not want to go out with friends (social activity = further arousal). If you’re lethargic and depressed (negative, low-arousal), the long hot bath might makes things worse (hot bath = low arousal).
I may try that, thanks. I hate the idea, that is why I don’t talk at work either and consider it a victory when I did not open my mouth, but it still may be necessary. I mean, I gave up the notion of having one single “indivisible” “I” long ago. While one part of me hates it, it may be very beneficial for the other parts.
what do today smart people (who know unhealthy habits are unhealthy) do if their work/life is generally unpleasant, so they need a quick jolt of pleasure injected into themselves after work?
Reddit is a popular choice among people who are too smart to spend their days on Facebook.
The main reason why I don’t get drunk after work most days is that I usually do not buy alcohol.
I would probably distinguish between drinking to dull the pain (“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”) and drinking to ameliorate boredom. I would also be very wary of structuring your life to receive easy, cheap, and fast “jolts”—that’s unlikely to end well.
Off-the-top of my head alternatives: Sex. Intense exercise (e.g. parkour instead of jogging). Diving into another world (replace addiction to alcohol with addiction to e.g. Eve or Warcraft).
Can your problem be described as “How can I feel alive”?
Can your problem be described as “How can I feel alive”?
Perhaps yes. I have intense exercise (boxing) 3 times a week, and don’t feel strong urges afterward, although, still use it, interestingly for the opposite purpose: to calm down, mellow out and be able to sleep. To a brain used to boredom a boxing training is so intense in impressions that sleeping for hours afterwards is impossible, as images and sounds go running around and twitches of muscles repeating movements and so on.
But on normal days, the feeling alive thing is certainly missing.
Our marriage is now largely platonic due to wifey being zombie tired from looking after our toddler, I never tried things like Warcraft, do you know why are they popular or addictive? I have heard they are full of “grinding” or “farming”. Why do people like to MMO anyway, as opposed to something like single-player ACOK (a Mount & Blade Warband mod, highly recommended, Warbands mods are the only game I still play regularly, including Brytenwalda, L’Aigle and Anno 1257), is it the social aspect?
I never tried things like Warcraft, do you know why are they popular or addictive?
It’s a complicated question, but a crude answer would be because they provide an easy and convenient activity structured so that you receive (psychological) rewards at a steady clip and because they provide a variety of rewards for people who want different things. Some people are loot-centric (and so they farm), some people are social-centric (and so they do things only with their guild), some people do PvP (some as a sport, and some as an exercise in griefing), some people enjoy exploration of the virtual world, some people like puzzles (e.g. how kill a boss with an underpowered character), etc. The relevant idea here, however, is that you leave the dull mundane world behind and submerge into a rather more exciting virtual world.
Social is an important part of it, and not only because of “social” aspects, but also because it makes the environment much more unpredictable, complex, and challenging. In single-player games you are usually in full control. In MMORGs you are not.
Apparently, one reason more intellectual people (typical Silicon Valley types) have less of an addiction problem is that they enjoy their work and thus life enough, they don’t need to quickly wash down another suck of a day, so they can have less euphoric hobbies in the evening, say, drawing or painting.
I don’t think this is exactly right. There is a correlation between intelligence and addiction, but it’s not so strong that you won’t still find a lot of addicts among the intelligentsia. Chemical addiction is a process whereby you ingest chemicals to stimulate your reward center. Smarter people who are wired in such a way that they can get the same jolt of reward-juice from working hard or whatever may be able to substitute that behavior as their trigger rather than a chemical like alcohol, but it doesn’t mean it’s not caused by the same kind of chemical deficiency. Also, as pure anecdota, I believe there is a probably a largely unmapped dependence on illegal stimulants (like ADD meds, not cocaine) in cultures like those found in Silicon Valley. I am currently a graduate student in Chemistry and have noticed a large percentage of my fellow students use such stimulants citing their performance enhancing properties despite evidence that such drugs decrease performance for neuro-typicals.
With regard to points A) and B)
A) There’s no non-chemical boost that I can think of that will match the chemical boost. If you’re into games on your phone, Minecraft PE is pretty open ended and may provide some of the stimulation you’re seeking, but it sounds like you’d like a substitute for whatever fix addiction provides and if there’s something like that it may be dependent on your neuro-chemistry. Common substitutes (according to google) include overeating, exercise, and burying yourself with work.
B) Whether it’s possible to just get used to not having that stimulation may also be dependent on your neuro-chemistry. I have done it and I know several other people who have done it, but I’ve also met quite a few who haven’t been able to do it. I don’t know of a foolproof method to stop an addiction.
You’re saying that you want quick jolts that don’t require an investment. I don’t have any good ideas for that. Learning to meditate seems to help reduce the importance attached to cravings for some people. Exercise certainly triggers a lot of the same pleasure and reward chemicals. You can also read through the some of the relevant material here on LW (How to be happy(short), Be Happier(longer)). The long term effects of addiction are usually pretty bad, so I’d say it’s worth making the investment, but it’s a lot easier to say that than to do it.
There’s no non-chemical boost that I can think of that will match the chemical boost.
Music is an obvious counter-example to it. People who like it, can get completely “crazy” from something like Faithless : Salva Mea or The Prodigy: Firestarter. It is the strongest non-drug drug I know.
Parachuting, bungee jumping and motorcylce riding also count. I just don’t want to do them. But they do work like that.
Meditation is a funny topic. First of all, 99% of the people I know think it means sitting with an empty mind etc. and you should expect some mental effect. However, what I practiced for years was entirely different, in the “red hat” tradition of Tibet it was not about empty minds but using imagination to visualize and also saying mantras, and it was not promised to have any immediate “trippy” effect, and indeed it didn’t. The idea was more like long-term improvement. I should also say that in these gompas people tried to sit up straight but did not work very well.
At another time I visited a Zen center, and here they made me use a very tall, thick pillow and sitting strictly on the edge of it, which was not so in the other one. This kind of moved my lower hip forward, upper hip back, creating a position where the bottom of the spine could be balanced, and it was easy to balance the upper spine, creating a much more straighter spine position than before. And it was the more common mediatation, just empty mind and watching the breath go out. And this kind instantly had very, very, very trippy effects.
However I read stories from people who do not care that much about position, just sit up in bed roughly straight and still have effects.
what do today smart people (who know unhealthy habits are unhealthy) do if their work/life is generally unpleasant, so they need a quick jolt of pleasure injected into themselves after work?
The obvious answer to me seems like “exercise”, although that doesn’t really fit your category of being something one may as well do on the subway back home (though walking or cycling home instead of getting on the subway might fit). Maybe more relevant to someone with a desk job than someone who’s already been moving around all day in some manner for work.
No, exercise is a long-term mood stabilizer / antidepressant, but it does not have any immediate effects. At least my box training and push-ups done at home not. And should it be? Can you imagine an animal running around euphoric just because it is running?
What I am looking for is things comparable to downing a few drinks, doing drugs or rocking out to music, I don’t think exercise can have that kind of very quickly kicking in and very intense pleasure.
And yes desk job. Does something as simple as walking have a mood effect on you? For me walking is something the autopilot does, it does not launch me out of my thoughts into enjoying the here and now.
Have you considered replacing immediate jolts with slower jolts? Just as your brain is ready to get serotonin flowing from exercise, it is also programmed to get it from eating (and cooking), and from hanging out with your children. Using these sources of longer-term positive reinforcement may also have positive feedback in improving your wife’s afternoon, which may start an overall positive feedback loop in your family life.
Also, you mentioned that you dislike noise. You may want to look into Sensory Integration Disorder—even if you have a mild case, some common coping strategies may improve your life and reduce your need for decompression time after work.
Oh, for me it does. I feel an enormous mood lift from a bit of exercise, especially if it takes place outside on a sunny day, and it kicks in pretty quickly. I agree walking may be not quite intense enough to get much of an effect (though I think it does a bit, for me), but I cycle to and from work (not fast or anything; it’s a short distance, though a tiny bit hilly, and I’m a very casual cyclist) and that does give me a little boost most days, and some mental space between work and whatever’s next. Of course, it sucks in horrible weather.
Update: the following worked for me for two days in a row now: Friday, a bit too much beer, finally convincing my brain it does not need a drink stronger than that to be sloshed. Being disgusted with myself and sticking to non-A beer for the weekend, thus taking care of the thirst part, without getting an effect.
In the meantime, I realized this is very similar to the cigarettes → e-cigs wit nicotine → e-cigs without nicotine, just harmless sweet flavoured mist → nothing progression. Maybe there is a theory behind this progression. Such as “change one variable at a time”.
Another good advice in the thread was to try to do the opposite of what you do at work after it. Since I tend to not socialize at all at work, and even after only with my wife and child mainly talking about everyday things, I am trying to overcome my slight annoyedness about music (or sounds in general) and will try to listen to music on the way home with interesting lyrics, maybe this works as a talk-simulator.
I also upgraded my exercise habit to about 3x, trying to become fanatical in it, because I think another obsessions is as good idea for people with obsessive or addictive personalities, and the trick to it is to keep simple, it must be one very, very simple and repetitive thing so that it gets etched in. I think I will simply become a push-up monster, already 50 in the morning and will try another 50 in the evening, eventually aiming at 1000 a day. By that time if things go well it becomes another addictive obsession and can counter the old one.
Does your at-work brain confuse thirst with alcohol cravings too?
So test this by drinking something that isn’t beer or water but matches your other criteria for good thirst quenchers. Carbonated water with lemon or lime juice in it will meet the criteria that you listed, but actually staying hydrated with water will just prevent you from getting thirsty in the first place. Seriously—ginger ale, lemon-lime or orange soda, etc.
What? You’re suggesting that you should train yourself to associate the taste of beer with satisfying your craving for hydration here, so the association that you’re trying to de-train is the one between beer and satisfying alcohol cravings? That’s crazy, dude. Look at how much energy you’ve put into thinking about ways to keep drinking beer while avoiding satisfying alcohol cravings and put the same amount into thinking about ways to not drink beer. That will be an easier way to decouple the satisfaction of your cravings for hydration alcohol.
I’m an alcoholic and have been sober for about 7 years now so take that into account. My advice is that you quickly try all the ways you can think of to control your drinking. Make notes about what you’re trying and how well it works. Track stuff like servings of alcohol consumed, etc. so that you can look at how well your control mechanisms work. Spend some time with no control mechanism in place and just track your consumption for a baseline if necessary (maybe even do this for a week or two in between trials to see if your baseline fluctuates). Make notes about things that trigger cravings. If something works, tweak it or stick with it. If none of them work, consider that you’ll either need to abstain entirely from alcohol (and avoid things that trigger cravings for a little while) or that you’re just going to slide further into alcoholism and make the necessary adjustments in your life to do those things. Gather information and be honest with yourself.
Thanks, it is good ideas. I got two different kinds of de-training completely mixed up.
I decided that if you want to understand yourself you may start first studying others, because you will be more honest and less likely to find excuses, and then applying the lesson to yourself (not allowing new excuses). That is a good idea?
I studied my late father and current father-in-law both classical blue-collar guys with classical blue-collar vices i.e. drinking more than healthy and probably being addicted (no textbook alcoholics: they were/are never actually drunk, just elevated “bubbly” every evening).
One thing I have noticed is that the basic idea is that you don’t enjoy your work and life much. And when the daily work is done you need a quick pick me up, something that quickly makes you feel good, for the blue-collar culture it is booze, for others, it is sugar (contributing to the obesity epidemic), drugs or gambling. They all act fast.
Apparently, one reason more intellectual people (typical Silicon Valley types) have less of an addiction problem is that they enjoy their work and thus life enough, they don’t need to quickly wash down another suck of a day, so they can have less euphoric hobbies in the evening, say, drawing or painting.
I am fairly intellectual but for reasons I don’t think I will ever have a very enjoyable job or life. It is mainly a must-do tasks to stay afloat kind of life. So I need to see how to cope better.
A) I started studying what healthy “quickly pick me up” other people are using. I found music and socialization. I.e. they put on headphones when riding the subway or Facebook chat with their friends. Neither is to my taste or possibilities. Any other ideas? I.e. not the kinds of enjoyable activities that take investment, but the kinds that are easy as downing a drink or three, calling someone on the phone or putting on music. But it has to be a strong jolt, I am very easily bored. For example something like playing Settlers of Catan on an Android tablet (against AI) bores me out in 15 mins even though is one of the most popular board games.
B) Is it possible to just to learn to put up with it all? For example 2-3 generations ago British upper classes were very good at putting up with boredom. They could spend an afternoon just reading Times. It is not exciting at all. Even Carcassone on Android is more exciting. What and how made these people so good at putting up with nothing enjoyable and fun, no jolt, no pleasure shock happening?
Am I even on the right track here?
Counter-test: what do today smart people (who know unhealthy habits are unhealthy) do if their work/life is generally unpleasant, so they need a quick jolt of pleasure injected into themselves after work? Again I am not talking about hobbies one invest into, I am talking about something one may as well do on the subway back home. Well, I know one physcist doing some kind of a PhD internship where he analyses nuclear data all day writing C++ programs (don’t even ask...) and he hates it, and he is a drinker. That is not a good example.
Is it possible to rank or categorize hobbies, interests, free time activities by factors like time investment, quick jolt vs. more slow pleasure and so on? E.g. parachuting or bungee jumping does give a quick jolt, one very similar to drugs, they are very good at washing down an unpleasant workday, but they require investment in the sense of going/driving there, going up etc. people who do it normally just do it on the weekend. They are clearly not something to quickly do on the subway on the way home. Music, as long as people can find one they really like, can work as press a button, get an instant jolt of pleasure. Hobbies like painting or drawing generally don’t give this kind of euphoric jolt at all. I wonder if such an avenue of research is a good idea.
About my at-work brain: not until about 4PM, however, I am not very thirsty before that, it is the usually quite salty lunch (like street döner kebab) eaten around 1PM that generates it. I drink a lot of water but mainly as routine.
I can’t comment on alcohol use, but on recuperative activity:
Different types of “burnt out” suggest different remedies.
If you just spent 8 hours sitting at a desk, you might get a bump from a game of tennis, or a long walk. If you just spent 8 hours on your feet, that game of tennis might not help.
If you just spent 8 hours alone, then socialize. If you were dealing with customers and coworkers and crowds nonstop, maybe do something alone.
Anecdote: When I lived in college dorms (4 people in 2 bunk beds in a unit), my idea of heaven was sitting alone in a quiet empty room. The desire evaporated as soon as I moved out.
Sometimes people match to the wrong class of remedies: If you’re angry (a negative, high-arousal state), you might not want to go out with friends (social activity = further arousal). If you’re lethargic and depressed (negative, low-arousal), the long hot bath might makes things worse (hot bath = low arousal).
I may try that, thanks. I hate the idea, that is why I don’t talk at work either and consider it a victory when I did not open my mouth, but it still may be necessary. I mean, I gave up the notion of having one single “indivisible” “I” long ago. While one part of me hates it, it may be very beneficial for the other parts.
Reddit is a popular choice among people who are too smart to spend their days on Facebook.
The main reason why I don’t get drunk after work most days is that I usually do not buy alcohol.
I would probably distinguish between drinking to dull the pain (“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”) and drinking to ameliorate boredom. I would also be very wary of structuring your life to receive easy, cheap, and fast “jolts”—that’s unlikely to end well.
Off-the-top of my head alternatives: Sex. Intense exercise (e.g. parkour instead of jogging). Diving into another world (replace addiction to alcohol with addiction to e.g. Eve or Warcraft).
Can your problem be described as “How can I feel alive”?
Perhaps yes. I have intense exercise (boxing) 3 times a week, and don’t feel strong urges afterward, although, still use it, interestingly for the opposite purpose: to calm down, mellow out and be able to sleep. To a brain used to boredom a boxing training is so intense in impressions that sleeping for hours afterwards is impossible, as images and sounds go running around and twitches of muscles repeating movements and so on.
But on normal days, the feeling alive thing is certainly missing.
Our marriage is now largely platonic due to wifey being zombie tired from looking after our toddler, I never tried things like Warcraft, do you know why are they popular or addictive? I have heard they are full of “grinding” or “farming”. Why do people like to MMO anyway, as opposed to something like single-player ACOK (a Mount & Blade Warband mod, highly recommended, Warbands mods are the only game I still play regularly, including Brytenwalda, L’Aigle and Anno 1257), is it the social aspect?
It’s a complicated question, but a crude answer would be because they provide an easy and convenient activity structured so that you receive (psychological) rewards at a steady clip and because they provide a variety of rewards for people who want different things. Some people are loot-centric (and so they farm), some people are social-centric (and so they do things only with their guild), some people do PvP (some as a sport, and some as an exercise in griefing), some people enjoy exploration of the virtual world, some people like puzzles (e.g. how kill a boss with an underpowered character), etc. The relevant idea here, however, is that you leave the dull mundane world behind and submerge into a rather more exciting virtual world.
Social is an important part of it, and not only because of “social” aspects, but also because it makes the environment much more unpredictable, complex, and challenging. In single-player games you are usually in full control. In MMORGs you are not.
I don’t think this is exactly right. There is a correlation between intelligence and addiction, but it’s not so strong that you won’t still find a lot of addicts among the intelligentsia. Chemical addiction is a process whereby you ingest chemicals to stimulate your reward center. Smarter people who are wired in such a way that they can get the same jolt of reward-juice from working hard or whatever may be able to substitute that behavior as their trigger rather than a chemical like alcohol, but it doesn’t mean it’s not caused by the same kind of chemical deficiency. Also, as pure anecdota, I believe there is a probably a largely unmapped dependence on illegal stimulants (like ADD meds, not cocaine) in cultures like those found in Silicon Valley. I am currently a graduate student in Chemistry and have noticed a large percentage of my fellow students use such stimulants citing their performance enhancing properties despite evidence that such drugs decrease performance for neuro-typicals.
With regard to points A) and B)
A) There’s no non-chemical boost that I can think of that will match the chemical boost. If you’re into games on your phone, Minecraft PE is pretty open ended and may provide some of the stimulation you’re seeking, but it sounds like you’d like a substitute for whatever fix addiction provides and if there’s something like that it may be dependent on your neuro-chemistry. Common substitutes (according to google) include overeating, exercise, and burying yourself with work.
B) Whether it’s possible to just get used to not having that stimulation may also be dependent on your neuro-chemistry. I have done it and I know several other people who have done it, but I’ve also met quite a few who haven’t been able to do it. I don’t know of a foolproof method to stop an addiction.
You’re saying that you want quick jolts that don’t require an investment. I don’t have any good ideas for that. Learning to meditate seems to help reduce the importance attached to cravings for some people. Exercise certainly triggers a lot of the same pleasure and reward chemicals. You can also read through the some of the relevant material here on LW (How to be happy(short), Be Happier(longer)). The long term effects of addiction are usually pretty bad, so I’d say it’s worth making the investment, but it’s a lot easier to say that than to do it.
Thanks, it is honest and partially useful.
Music is an obvious counter-example to it. People who like it, can get completely “crazy” from something like Faithless : Salva Mea or The Prodigy: Firestarter. It is the strongest non-drug drug I know.
Parachuting, bungee jumping and motorcylce riding also count. I just don’t want to do them. But they do work like that.
Meditation is a funny topic. First of all, 99% of the people I know think it means sitting with an empty mind etc. and you should expect some mental effect. However, what I practiced for years was entirely different, in the “red hat” tradition of Tibet it was not about empty minds but using imagination to visualize and also saying mantras, and it was not promised to have any immediate “trippy” effect, and indeed it didn’t. The idea was more like long-term improvement. I should also say that in these gompas people tried to sit up straight but did not work very well.
At another time I visited a Zen center, and here they made me use a very tall, thick pillow and sitting strictly on the edge of it, which was not so in the other one. This kind of moved my lower hip forward, upper hip back, creating a position where the bottom of the spine could be balanced, and it was easy to balance the upper spine, creating a much more straighter spine position than before. And it was the more common mediatation, just empty mind and watching the breath go out. And this kind instantly had very, very, very trippy effects.
However I read stories from people who do not care that much about position, just sit up in bed roughly straight and still have effects.
Bunch of other things work like that as well—alpine skiing, whitewater kayaking, mountain climbing, etc.
The obvious answer to me seems like “exercise”, although that doesn’t really fit your category of being something one may as well do on the subway back home (though walking or cycling home instead of getting on the subway might fit). Maybe more relevant to someone with a desk job than someone who’s already been moving around all day in some manner for work.
No, exercise is a long-term mood stabilizer / antidepressant, but it does not have any immediate effects. At least my box training and push-ups done at home not. And should it be? Can you imagine an animal running around euphoric just because it is running?
What I am looking for is things comparable to downing a few drinks, doing drugs or rocking out to music, I don’t think exercise can have that kind of very quickly kicking in and very intense pleasure.
And yes desk job. Does something as simple as walking have a mood effect on you? For me walking is something the autopilot does, it does not launch me out of my thoughts into enjoying the here and now.
Have you considered replacing immediate jolts with slower jolts? Just as your brain is ready to get serotonin flowing from exercise, it is also programmed to get it from eating (and cooking), and from hanging out with your children. Using these sources of longer-term positive reinforcement may also have positive feedback in improving your wife’s afternoon, which may start an overall positive feedback loop in your family life.
Also, you mentioned that you dislike noise. You may want to look into Sensory Integration Disorder—even if you have a mild case, some common coping strategies may improve your life and reduce your need for decompression time after work.
Oh, for me it does. I feel an enormous mood lift from a bit of exercise, especially if it takes place outside on a sunny day, and it kicks in pretty quickly. I agree walking may be not quite intense enough to get much of an effect (though I think it does a bit, for me), but I cycle to and from work (not fast or anything; it’s a short distance, though a tiny bit hilly, and I’m a very casual cyclist) and that does give me a little boost most days, and some mental space between work and whatever’s next. Of course, it sucks in horrible weather.
Update: the following worked for me for two days in a row now: Friday, a bit too much beer, finally convincing my brain it does not need a drink stronger than that to be sloshed. Being disgusted with myself and sticking to non-A beer for the weekend, thus taking care of the thirst part, without getting an effect.
In the meantime, I realized this is very similar to the cigarettes → e-cigs wit nicotine → e-cigs without nicotine, just harmless sweet flavoured mist → nothing progression. Maybe there is a theory behind this progression. Such as “change one variable at a time”.
Another good advice in the thread was to try to do the opposite of what you do at work after it. Since I tend to not socialize at all at work, and even after only with my wife and child mainly talking about everyday things, I am trying to overcome my slight annoyedness about music (or sounds in general) and will try to listen to music on the way home with interesting lyrics, maybe this works as a talk-simulator.
I also upgraded my exercise habit to about 3x, trying to become fanatical in it, because I think another obsessions is as good idea for people with obsessive or addictive personalities, and the trick to it is to keep simple, it must be one very, very simple and repetitive thing so that it gets etched in. I think I will simply become a push-up monster, already 50 in the morning and will try another 50 in the evening, eventually aiming at 1000 a day. By that time if things go well it becomes another addictive obsession and can counter the old one.
That can make it hard to tell thirst from sugar cravings, though.
True enough. Tea or water would definitely be better choices.
Thirst from caffeine cravings!
Okay, I’ll stop now.