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Testimonial - Well it seems that most of you "discordians" are little more than dupes of the Cathedral/NWO memetic apparatus after all -- "freethinkers" in the sense that you are willing to think slightly outside the designated boxes of correct thought, but not free in the sense that you reject the existence of the boxes and seek their destruction.

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Discordians Can't Be Happy With Happy

Started by Q. G. Pennyworth, October 18, 2016, 05:27:17 PM

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hooplala

Yeah, despite what Goldilocks would tell you: medium porridge is the shittiest of the lot.
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: Hoopla on October 19, 2016, 09:10:09 PM
Yeah, despite what Goldilocks would tell you: medium porridge is the shittiest of the lot.

:lulz: The fairy tales are all damned LIES!
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

NeonWytch

#17
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on October 19, 2016, 08:15:07 PM
Last winter I was in a bit of a slump and the thing that shook me out of it was the first really bitter cold snap. Like, it's sad and boring when it's just cold enough that nothing's growing and the trees are bare and the grass is brittle and yellowy and the skies are gray and nothing happens. Give me some "so cold you'll seriously get frostbite if you don't cover up," some black ice and freezing rain, give me snow up to my armpits and leaky boots and the buses aren't running. THEN I'll show you what I'm made of. I'll SHOW that fucking weather who's boss.
Oh my god yes.
Give me weather that I have to creatively live around.
Give me temperatures hot enough that I have to tactically reduce clothing cover as much as humanly possible without being arrested.

As for cold, well,
Nothing beats the feeling of biking down a highway at two in the morning with so many scarves on that you can barely see oncoming traffic.   
A wise man once said "What was that? I couldn't hear you."

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

I like sunny medium nice weather in the low 80's. I like not having to worry about the heating bill. I like it when things are relatively easy on the "basic survival" front.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

I also like having enough food.

I think that there is a very legitimate class divide in how we respond to and view certain types of adversity. "Survivaling" vs. surviving.

"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Salty

I, for one, am so God damned happy to no longer be in an environment that is actively trying to kill me all the time. It affords me the time to have panic attacks.
The world is a car and you're the crash test dummy.

LMNO

I like no longer being in constant chronic pain.

The Good Reverend Roger

You know what I like?

Not working for Lilly.  It's hard to explain, a year and some later, how bad those 5 months were.  And it's also hard to explain that - as panicky as I was working on my own and trying desperately to find a full time gig - it was still better than working for her, and as worried as I got, quitting that place was one thing I never, ever second-guessed.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on October 23, 2016, 06:32:22 AM
You know what I like?

Not working for Lilly.  It's hard to explain, a year and some later, how bad those 5 months were.  And it's also hard to explain that - as panicky as I was working on my own and trying desperately to find a full time gig - it was still better than working for her, and as worried as I got, quitting that place was one thing I never, ever second-guessed.

That's where I'm at 6odd months after I walked. I haven't had a single regret, even as I started spiraling into a horrible depression and had about half of my life support turn out to be shit. Even as I was giving undue ear to the idea of checking out I was proud of 2 things I quit, nicotine  (over 3 years now, a couple blunt-wraps aside) and THOSE FUCKERS. Folks around town tell me a lot of personal stories about themselves or family getting ruined one way or another by their shitty practices and often shittier personnel.

I'm looking for my next thing. Don't know what.
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

NeonWytch

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on October 23, 2016, 05:17:05 PM

That's where I'm at 6odd months after I walked. I haven't had a single regret, even as I started spiraling into a horrible depression and had about half of my life support turn out to be shit. Even as I was giving undue ear to the idea of checking out I was proud of 2 things I quit, nicotine  (over 3 years now, a couple blunt-wraps aside) and THOSE FUCKERS. Folks around town tell me a lot of personal stories about themselves or family getting ruined one way or another by their shitty practices and often shittier personnel.

I'm looking for my next thing. Don't know what.
Hey man, good on you for quitting nicotine. That's a hard road. I've been trying to cut down because my meds interact with nicotine in such a way that it severely raises the chance of life-threatening blood clots in the legs. Even after I get past that 3 day hump, there's still the habitual "You're with friends/on break/just ate/on a walk, why aren't you smoking?" impulses, and the whole deadened opiod receptor thing that I have to get used to.

If it's not too personal, did you go cold turkey or did you do nic gum or patches or vape or what?
A wise man once said "What was that? I couldn't hear you."

The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: NeonWytch on October 24, 2016, 05:11:37 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on October 23, 2016, 05:17:05 PM

That's where I'm at 6odd months after I walked. I haven't had a single regret, even as I started spiraling into a horrible depression and had about half of my life support turn out to be shit. Even as I was giving undue ear to the idea of checking out I was proud of 2 things I quit, nicotine  (over 3 years now, a couple blunt-wraps aside) and THOSE FUCKERS. Folks around town tell me a lot of personal stories about themselves or family getting ruined one way or another by their shitty practices and often shittier personnel.

I'm looking for my next thing. Don't know what.
Hey man, good on you for quitting nicotine. That's a hard road. I've been trying to cut down because my meds interact with nicotine in such a way that it severely raises the chance of life-threatening blood clots in the legs. Even after I get past that 3 day hump, there's still the habitual "You're with friends/on break/just ate/on a walk, why aren't you smoking?" impulses, and the whole deadened opiod receptor thing that I have to get used to.

If it's not too personal, did you go cold turkey or did you do nic gum or patches or vape or what?

I quit cold, but it wasn't my first attempt by far. I attempted to re-wire some of the conditioned responses that the nicotine had laid into me over the years and succeeded. I was working from a personal theory of the mind as distinct consciousness levels that don't necessarily "crosstalk" all that much with the "reasoning" going on in the neocortex. The most basic of these "minds" is the part that's actually communicating with the environment on a chemical and tactile level, the part that's actually doing the smoking. The method was simple but unpleasant, even a bit painful, and intended to demonstrate physically what the rational and reasonable parts of a person already "know", that nicotine is not your friend but a killer with a traitorous smile on for you.

I realized that I had to do a few things if I was correct about my theory.

I had to commit totally to never allowing myself to "cheat" with other sources of nicotine, it being the draw to smoke. You don't quit smoking, you quit nicotine or you WILL smoke again anytime you're lacking your chosen proxy source. "Staging down" is comfortable, but it's essentially causing you to keep the problem in your system, even as your body is trying to (re)build a system without it. Also I needed the withdrawal distress to hit as hard as possible for the physical bit I'll describe below. WARNING IT'S PRETTY NASTY.

The above required a few hard axiomatic commitments.
NO smoking or smokers in the car. If that's a deal breaker for someone that needs a ride TOO BAD.
NO going to hang out with folks outside of a bar or home who are there to smoke, just wait until they're done inside or upwind.
NO standing your ground, if the urge to smoke hits due to external stimulus flee ASAP. After the initial withdrawal there's nothing that will do this but nicotine and associated stimulus and the whole point is to build new associations. "Fighting" such an urge is best done by removing the stimulus. Over time it WILL fade if you avoid the trace nicotine and associated behavior well enough for long enough. (For me about 6mos, but I keep all these rules still to reinforce my mentality)

During this time no other neural stims but caffeine (if you must) and no alcohol to excess allowed, especially if you're a barfly AND a smoker. Stimulants will be what your brain most desires, lacking the nicotine stimulus. The point is to minimize your exposure to such and rather literally allow your brain time to heal from toxic over-stimulus.

The above is why it had to be "cold turkey" in the end, but if the unconscious "mind" that governs Pavlovian responses isn't on board all the stuff above is just a head game doomed to failure as your consciousness constantly fights urges that QUITE effectively subvert reason to be satisfied.

Here's the icky part that warned about. The method to reinforce the "quit" signal as initial withdrawal symptoms set in.

When you've been smoking a long while a nasty batch of dead flesh and tar begins to build on the microscopic cilia tendrils of your lungs, causing both chemical paralysis from the nicotine and physical malfunction from the buildup of nasty ass "lung butter." This filtering system is most of what triggers the coughing reflex and it's malfunction probably much of the reason that smokers build up so much shit in their lungs and can still smoke long past the point where they're doing it through a stoma with what's left of their right lung. It's sending a false "all clear" signal over you body's own security system in addition to being deadly toxic in a "soothing" sort of way. I sought to and succeeded in repairing this broken unconscious perception.

When you hard quit the cilia go live again and you're basically treated to severe bronchitis and all of the psychological withdrawal symptoms at once. The very urge to cough signals the brain to fix it with the nicotine.exe suite of behaviors, worsening distress and making the "fuck it" response seem like a good choice.

I needed to change that response from "fuck it" to "fuck you Nicotine" and reinforce the nicotine as culprit and not savior. So in addition to the above commitment to follow-up behavior I intentionally worsened the withdrawal symptoms and sent a visual, tactile, audio, and  chemical message to my "unconscious" mind over a long weekend set aside for the purpose.

The first morning I woke up and hacked up the expected.. Then I continued to hack and cough past that until it was somewhat painful and quite fatiguing. All of this rotten lung flesh was deposited directly on my bare hands, and stared at, and smelled to reinforce that MY LUNGS WERE ROTTING INSIDE. Between rounds of coughing I audibly asked myself "Would I suck this back into my lungs for the nicotine?", and vividly envisioned doing so. This EVERY TIME I had a productive coughing fit in the morning or in private during the day for the duration of the withdrawal period, about 3 days. My body began to reflexively recoil from nicotine stimulus on day 2. Everything after that was a matter of reinforcing behavior as described above.


Disgusting doesn't begin to describe this, suffice to say I hope to never repeat it, but that was the point and it worked.
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl