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Wellness Wednesday for October 23, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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So, as is usual, my approaching birthday (the day after the election) is worsening my depression — reminding me of how little I've accomplished, how much of my life I've wasted, how many things it's too late for me to try to turn around. (All of which just increase the frequency of wondering why not just skip to the end, since at this point those remaining years won't change anything.)

I'm on meds, I see a therapist regularly, and I'm spending more time under my SAD light (because winter in Alaska). Any other suggestions?

Find someone you need to stay alive to piss off. Maybe it's an actual person, maybe it's an inner critic, the weak part of yourself that wants to give up, whatever, doesn't matter. Spite is a powerful motivator (at least, it is for me). Leverage the worst parts of yourself to motivate you. A most base example: I don't want to lose weight because I care about my health, but because I'm vain.

With that, I'm not sure of your background, expectations for life, age (I'm guessing mid-late 30s), etc. but for me (possibly one of the bigger fuckups on this forum) I look at it this way: I had a shrink throw up his hands during a consultation and ask how I was still alive. I took it as an insult. Sure, my life was intolerable at the time (as opposed to this time if I seek therapy again, where it's more a case of "I need to get better, decommission the neon sign on my head that attracts dysfunctional people into my life, and quit making shitty decisions to get where I want to be"), but I wasn't ready to quit (In fact, I sought therapy because my lifestyle at 23 was going to get me killed and a recent near-death experience had made me realize that I wanted to live.).

I've wasted most of my adult life, and at the age of 33 am giving it a half-assed go at getting things together, getting a career, and getting toxic people who use me and drag me down out of my life. Do I expect a happy ending with a family? No, I'd love one but am hoping for a smart but neurotic woman who also missed the boat and whose crazy clicks with mine, a partner to complain about the world with. Do I want to finally be a career man to impress my father? No, my easy gravy train job went out of business and I'm tired of being broke, dealing with roommate drama, and driving a 15 year old piece of shit car that I have to work on regularly.

I'm not exactly an AA success story, but I quit being a terrible (drinking until blackout every night) alcoholic the same way. At some point in my late 20s I just ran out of energy and got tired of feeling like shit every day, so I cut down on drinking, have days (sometimes multiple in a row!) where I don't drink at all, etc. and I don't wake up hating myself most of the time. I recently encountered a 36 year old CA who drinks like I did when I was 22 and good God now I understand why the 8th Step exists.

I guess the moral of the story is to use what you want to be as a goal for the future rather than a cudgel to beat yourself up with now. Ask yourself: "Am I a better man than I was yesterday, last week, month, year, etc?" If you can honestly answer with a "yes", you're on the right path.

Tl;dr, ground your expectations.

age (I'm guessing mid-late 30s)

About to turn 43.

As for background: Disabled. Living in Alaska. Failed my duty as eldest sibling to continue the family line (and my younger brothers certainly aren't going to do it). Failing to do anything to contribute to the survival of my people, against their many and powerful enemies. Failing to do anything productive with my 151 IQ. Failing to leave any legacy. Living by stealing money from the pockets of hard-working Americans — and worse, not even having the courage and masculine fortitude to do it myself, but by outsourcing my banditry to the state.

Obviously I don't know a damn thing about you and it may very well be that you are undergoing a spike of depression and presenting yourself in a fashion that highlights you at your worst, rather than at your usual. But with that caveat out of the way, and taking what you write here at absolute face value rather than as an exaggerating vent - have you considered suicide?

have you considered suicide?

Frequently, for the last 20 years. My first psychiatric hospitalization, and being put on meds, was following an attempt when I was at Caltech back in 2004.

Somehow you're not making any more attempts though, and what attempts were did not succeed.

So, what's keeping you around? Is there family? Friends? A love of leisure? A fear of pain or death?

So, what's keeping you around? Is there family? Friends? A love of leisure? A fear of pain or death?

Family, mostly — specifically, that the costs of disposing of my remains exceeds my net worth, and they'd be on the hook for the remainder.

Definitely not "A love of leisure" — I don't really have any enjoyable pastimes.

I've long ago given up on anything ever making me happy; the only question is if I can find some purpose to keep going through the misery, other than how it'll impact my family. ("But think of how sad they'll be" emotional blackmail is the go-to argument of all my therapists.) Otherwise, at the very least, when my Mom goes I'm done.

The problem is finding a good method that will be relatively quick and painless, and won't leave me even worse off if it doesn't work — people have survived shooting themselves in the brain, and their condition afterwards isn't pretty. (Plus, being in the psych ward after a failed attempt sucks.) Mostly, inert gas asphyxia looks like the way to go, and it doesn't cost too much to rent a helium tank (at least, not yet, but the supply is declining and price rising, so…)

Or I could take one acquaintance up on the offer he once made me to buy me a one-way ticket to Los Angeles after my mom dies, so I can attend a Caltech reunion… and then take out as many SoCal leftists with me "on my way out." As Ezra Pound once said, "I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown." After all, that may well be my only shot at leaving a legacy behind, the only way that my existence and my pain will have had some purpose and meaning.

Edit: and may I say thank you for not resorting to the usual clichés about how life is always worth living, suicide is never the answer, yadda yadda yadda. Where else, if not a rationalist-adjacent space like this one, can I get people who will rationally assess whether or not a particular life is worth living? Who might conclude that suicide is the reasonable action (and not just tell me to KYS out of emotional animus, politics-driven or otherwise)?

Okay, look, I am genuinely sympathetic to your situation. I have close family members who have literally been every bit as depressed, at the "why-do-I-even-bother-to-keep-living?" level, as you are, and I am aware that "Think about how sad your loved ones will be" is neither effective nor appreciated. That said:

Or I could take one acquaintance up on the offer he once made me to buy me a one-way ticket to Los Angeles after my mom dies, so I can attend a Caltech reunion… and then take out as many SoCal leftists with me "on my way out."

Whether meant ironically or not, please do not post things that will get a warrant served on us in the event that you actually follow through.