I wouldn’t recommend psychedelics to anyone. If I had a choice to have never taken them, I would’ve chosen that than where I am today. You learn quite a bit about reality and your own life, but at the end of the day, it’s not really going to help you in terms of finding meaning in life that would ultimately be healthy for your own good as a mortal being. For me, things just seem quite meaningless. Before, life is still enjoyable in its own way. They threaten me with more good times, yet I can’t see how my life would be any different after that point. Oh maybe I get better sleep, maybe I get more human interactions, or just more choices in terms of which distractions I choose for the day. Before psychedelics I had my own preferences for the distractions, but now they all seem equally fine. When you lose yourself like that, it leads to depression. The easiest way to get out of it is to find meaning again, but that’s just easier said than done. The way people have constructed these scenarios for me have been on the basis of a normal person’s paradigm. They never worked because they can’t really measure just how far away from that norm I am at. Without psychedelics, I would probably still be able to find something to hold on to.
It’s like you meditate so you wouldn’t hit that dude who stepped on you. Sure, you don’t hit them anymore but is life still just as enjoyable or it’s different now? Life used to be much more flavorful, but now you’ve achieved more emotional stability/peace, life has become a lot more bland. They both have their pros and cons, which is why I think they have so much materials on the afterlife for people to focus on. Something to look forward to, no more good times.
I’ll probably just focus on developing empathy with my wife, something that I feel more worthwhile doing than anything else in the world. Meanwhile I was thinking of getting into Rust again, but it feels so pointless. The main difference between psychedelics and no psychedelics is whether I’m looking forward to it. Normally a person would look forward to something good happening in their lives, but if you feel like your life isn’t that bad at all, what difference does it make? That’s the key to the difference of having a flavorful life vs a bland life. I say this because it feels like something new since it hasn’t happened yet, but who knows how I’d feel a year down the road. I’ve always considered these in terms of time, compared to my own experiences I’ve had so far. Like when I was living with my wife, I had so much enthusiasm about so many different things. I think my day following the pattern of from the worst to the best has to do with how much I have to focus on. When you have nothing you feel strongly about, your days start off pretty badly, whereas you normally would just focus on things that you focused on the day before. Now everyday is a new day to me. I might focus on making music for a few days or whatever, but they never last longer than a month. That’s one thing I kept track of. When I look at other people who just usually do the same thing everyday without a hint of complaint, it makes me a bit jealous of how good of a life they are having instead of this bullshit of having to find something to do every single day. If I had a bit more emotional investment in things, then I would’ve been just like them, and I don’t have to look for shit everyday anymore. My wisdom tells me that having my wife in my life isn’t really going to change this very much. It’ll just be a hype for awhile and then the emotional investment will reach some baseline level. Hopefully regular physical and emotional intimacy can keep the baseline level rather high. Good thing for my wife that I don’t really feel like playing video games everyday anymore, but I’d rather have more flavor in my life than having to lick off the dried on food of a broken pot.
A good way to put it is that now I’m forced to look at the big picture regarding almost everything that I put any of my emotions toward. Before psychedelics, I could just stay in the small picture and get on with my life. Now I can’t help myself having to go through the whole process of looking at everything at all different levels. At first it seems exciting because it’s a new skill you’ve developed, but once it becomes a habit that you can’t get out of even when you know that you’d be better off not thinking too much, the usefulness becomes much more doubtful. The skill is still very useful if you just want to have a good way to analyze things, but when it encompasses your entire life, you just wish you can find some enjoyment of staying foolish for awhile. The psychedelics themselves won’t do this to you. You’d have to intentionally practice this, but the drugs definitely help in guiding you how you want to develop a new habit. I just didn’t know that by developing such habit, I would lose interest in everything. The only thing the drug does is to help you to be more self-aware while tripping. I believe I said this awhile ago: if you want the work you do while tripping to have any impact, you have to keep in mind/remember what it was like while tripping and carry on the same type of mental work while you aren’t tripping. I had a lot of time on my hands for the last couple of years, and I tried to follow the same pattern of thoughts I was having while tripping when I wasn’t tripping. Here I am today. I’ve had all kinds of ups and downs with different emotional investments as I recall different periods of my life. If you have things that you care about, little annoyances in life would quickly be forgotten about, but if you have nothing, you end up thinking too much about them. Whether they are worthwhile to think about or not, I have to consciously remove myself through self-awareness, which takes effort. Life just becomes so much more work than before where you just go about your day and let natural distractions guide you through life.
For awhile I got a lot of motivation from developing my skills and getting good at doing things, which is why I put so much time into music. Once you’ve reached a certain plateau of satisfactory, you look at how far you’ve come and how far there is still to go, you think what’s the point of climbing even higher. What difference would that make? If you have an ego, that’d probably be different, but I’m doing it purely for seeking out my own meaning. So I end up switching and find something else to get good at, and then you realize you are just gonna be doing the same thing again. Which is why I’ve stopped learning about quantum physics and Rust, knowing that there is quite a bit work to do there but feeling quite meaningless at the same time. Sometimes I take pleasure in knowing that I still suck at things that I’ve put a lot of work into. The idea of don’t use it lose it can still bring meaning into making progress. Now it’s just making progress for progress sake.
I wouldn’t recommend psychedelics to anyone. If I had a choice to have never taken them, I would’ve chosen that than where I am today. You learn quite a bit about reality and your own life, but at the end of the day, it’s not really going to help you in terms of finding meaning in life that would ultimately be healthy for your own good as a mortal being. For me, things just seem quite meaningless. Before, life is still enjoyable in its own way. They threaten me with more good times, yet I can’t see how my life would be any different after that point. Oh maybe I get better sleep, maybe I get more human interactions, or just more choices in terms of which distractions I choose for the day. Before psychedelics I had my own preferences for the distractions, but now they all seem equally fine. When you lose yourself like that, it leads to depression. The easiest way to get out of it is to find meaning again, but that’s just easier said than done. The way people have constructed these scenarios for me have been on the basis of a normal person’s paradigm. They never worked because they can’t really measure just how far away from that norm I am at. Without psychedelics, I would probably still be able to find something to hold on to.
It’s like you meditate so you wouldn’t hit that dude who stepped on you. Sure, you don’t hit them anymore but is life still just as enjoyable or it’s different now? Life used to be much more flavorful, but now you’ve achieved more emotional stability/peace, life has become a lot more bland. They both have their pros and cons, which is why I think they have so much materials on the afterlife for people to focus on. Something to look forward to, no more good times.
I’ll probably just focus on developing empathy with my wife, something that I feel more worthwhile doing than anything else in the world. Meanwhile I was thinking of getting into Rust again, but it feels so pointless. The main difference between psychedelics and no psychedelics is whether I’m looking forward to it. Normally a person would look forward to something good happening in their lives, but if you feel like your life isn’t that bad at all, what difference does it make? That’s the key to the difference of having a flavorful life vs a bland life. I say this because it feels like something new since it hasn’t happened yet, but who knows how I’d feel a year down the road. I’ve always considered these in terms of time, compared to my own experiences I’ve had so far. Like when I was living with my wife, I had so much enthusiasm about so many different things. I think my day following the pattern of from the worst to the best has to do with how much I have to focus on. When you have nothing you feel strongly about, your days start off pretty badly, whereas you normally would just focus on things that you focused on the day before. Now everyday is a new day to me. I might focus on making music for a few days or whatever, but they never last longer than a month. That’s one thing I kept track of. When I look at other people who just usually do the same thing everyday without a hint of complaint, it makes me a bit jealous of how good of a life they are having instead of this bullshit of having to find something to do every single day. If I had a bit more emotional investment in things, then I would’ve been just like them, and I don’t have to look for shit everyday anymore. My wisdom tells me that having my wife in my life isn’t really going to change this very much. It’ll just be a hype for awhile and then the emotional investment will reach some baseline level. Hopefully regular physical and emotional intimacy can keep the baseline level rather high. Good thing for my wife that I don’t really feel like playing video games everyday anymore, but I’d rather have more flavor in my life than having to lick off the dried on food of a broken pot.
A good way to put it is that now I’m forced to look at the big picture regarding almost everything that I put any of my emotions toward. Before psychedelics, I could just stay in the small picture and get on with my life. Now I can’t help myself having to go through the whole process of looking at everything at all different levels. At first it seems exciting because it’s a new skill you’ve developed, but once it becomes a habit that you can’t get out of even when you know that you’d be better off not thinking too much, the usefulness becomes much more doubtful. The skill is still very useful if you just want to have a good way to analyze things, but when it encompasses your entire life, you just wish you can find some enjoyment of staying foolish for awhile. The psychedelics themselves won’t do this to you. You’d have to intentionally practice this, but the drugs definitely help in guiding you how you want to develop a new habit. I just didn’t know that by developing such habit, I would lose interest in everything. The only thing the drug does is to help you to be more self-aware while tripping. I believe I said this awhile ago: if you want the work you do while tripping to have any impact, you have to keep in mind/remember what it was like while tripping and carry on the same type of mental work while you aren’t tripping. I had a lot of time on my hands for the last couple of years, and I tried to follow the same pattern of thoughts I was having while tripping when I wasn’t tripping. Here I am today. I’ve had all kinds of ups and downs with different emotional investments as I recall different periods of my life. If you have things that you care about, little annoyances in life would quickly be forgotten about, but if you have nothing, you end up thinking too much about them. Whether they are worthwhile to think about or not, I have to consciously remove myself through self-awareness, which takes effort. Life just becomes so much more work than before where you just go about your day and let natural distractions guide you through life.
For awhile I got a lot of motivation from developing my skills and getting good at doing things, which is why I put so much time into music. Once you’ve reached a certain plateau of satisfactory, you look at how far you’ve come and how far there is still to go, you think what’s the point of climbing even higher. What difference would that make? If you have an ego, that’d probably be different, but I’m doing it purely for seeking out my own meaning. So I end up switching and find something else to get good at, and then you realize you are just gonna be doing the same thing again. Which is why I’ve stopped learning about quantum physics and Rust, knowing that there is quite a bit work to do there but feeling quite meaningless at the same time. Sometimes I take pleasure in knowing that I still suck at things that I’ve put a lot of work into. The idea of don’t use it lose it can still bring meaning into making progress. Now it’s just making progress for progress sake.