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PaperclipPerfector  23d ago (text post)   1255 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for May 20, 2026

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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Due to the sensitive nature of this I will keep this as discreet as possible and not divulge too much, but at the ripe age of 18, I recently discovered that someone very near and dear to me was not merely exhibiting tough love but in fact had every symptom of NPD in the book. On one hand it's liberating to receive an answer for why everything is the way it is and not beat myself up over what I needed to do differently this entire time. On the other hand, I'm left with an empty void in my heart having to deconstruct what I've learned from them, and come to terms with the fact that they operate on a different wavelength and nothing I say will make them have a change of heart. Very gut-wrenching feeling, at this juncture my church is the only thing that gives me the strength to keep going which I'm immensely grateful for.

Is there anybody here who is in a similar position or otherwise qualified to offer any valuable input?

I've talked about it here several times in the past, but yeah, I've been there. My own particular realization didn't hit until my mid-forties and took some seriously and pervasively bad behavior on the part of my mother to illuminate the reality of the situation (BPD Queen), so if you're catching it at the age of 18, you're way ahead of the game on that front. For me, the revelation as as dramatic as my first pair of glasses in terms of finally being able to see fuzzy things clearly. The one thing that I want to add to all of the good advice below is that the deconstructing what you've learned from them is going to take a long time, but will also probably be the best possible thing you can do for yourself in the long run. It's taken me years to start bringing my life and my personal relationships into some sort of better balance, and a lot of the time my honest answer to what I want or what I think is best for me is still an, "I don't know," but one of the things that I do know is that if I pay enough attention to what I'm experiencing, as opposed to just stuffing it into the closet and hyperfocusing on $Thing_In_Front_Of_Me, I can have enough of a sense to understand what's generally good for me versus what's generally draining and exhausting. And if it's the latter, then I have to ask myself why I'm in a situation that's draining and exhausting, and whether or not I'm setting myself on fire so that I can keep a loved one warm for a time, which is to say that at least I no longer give until it hurts and then some purely out of habit based on previous expectations.

I come from a bad home life, and the part about deconstructing what you have learned really resonates. I didn't really know what normal people were like until I was in my late 20s.

Is there anybody here who is in a similar position or otherwise qualified to offer any valuable input?

There have been three things that have been valuable for me:

  1. A caring and patient partner. She knows about everything that has happened to me, and she'll point out that I'm behaving irrationally without judging me for it
  2. Exposure to "normal" people and family dynamics. My partner's family is well adjusted, loving, and wholesome. It took me about two years before I could actually believe that any of that was true. Once I did, it was easier to trust strangers as well. The idea that people will simply ask how your day was without ulterior notices was one of the most alien concepts I've ever experienced.
  3. Highly focused therapy. If you're around a toxic person (or people) during your formative years, it can really fuck up your sense of self, and self worth. It causes you to develop a lot of behaviors and reactions that were adaptive in that toxic environment, but are highly maladaptive outside that environment. Be careful if you go this route. A lot of assembly-libe practicioners try to tell you that you have anxiety and send you on your way with instructions to count five things you can smell before popping an Ativan. That doesn't really help.

I don't know if it helps, but I hope it does.

#1 is a big one in relationships that people greatly undervalue. If you can’t be a safe space for your spouse or partner, then you’d better start working on it very seriously. Trust is foundational for relationships of all types, and without it, what do you really have?

To point #3 as well, having a solid group of friends or family members helps with this a lot. There’s a very small group of people in my life for which we’d practically been each other’s therapist for 30 years. We grew up in the same environment, similar conditions and all had something to offer for how we made it through things, owing in no small part of the amount of support we showed for one another.

A lot of people get robbed of developing the psychological resources in their youth to be able to deal with tough living conditions and circumstances. It’s a major reason why so many people turn to drug use. It’s not really about the cool experience of “changing your consciousness,” the way people like Joe Rogan would tell you. No. The reason they take drugs is because it’s a form of escapism. It’s how rappers would relate to the pain of people in the hood. Developing the mental tools to navigate crushing hardship isn’t easy at all, and it takes a lot of time; but it can be done. I tend to think professional therapy is something of a racket, but in my case it wasn’t the ‘kind’ of thing I needed to make things better off.

Considering a vasectomy. Actually have the appointment set. Looking for the experiences of others.

I've had intermittent lower back pain for years, long before I ever started lifting weights. The earliest I remember experiencing it was 2019, which I attributed to an old mattress: replacing it seemed to do the trick. In the first few weeks of Covid I was sitting on a kitchen chair for eight hours a day which aggravated my back dreadfully, but my employer was good enough to have a swivel chair delivered, after which the pain subsided for months. Ever since then I've had periodic flare-ups wherein my lower back will feel a bit stiff and painful for a week or so, before receding. Over the years I've tried dozens of different back stretches and exercises, with effectiveness ranging from mild to non-existent.

By some combination of search terms the benevolent YouTube algorithm bestowed upon me this video yesterday evening, and after completing all the stretches in it (which took all of fifteen minutes), my back felt better than it had in weeks. I immediately went to the gym and did five sets of deadlifts at 170kg, experiencing no discomfort during or after.

Wow that was an unexpectedly good video. I have some lower back pain from a long time ago from poor form weightlifting, and sitting at a desk for long periods of time afterwards made everything worse.

I only tried the first two exercises, stairs and ballerina, and my back feels much better. Like an itch I always wanted to scratch but didn't know how to. Thanks for posting this. Will finish the rest when I have more time (and my back recovers to stretch more).

maybe you should look at misfiring of quadratus lumborum while your glutes are sleeping. Normally, glutes should fire first and after that QL should start its work. if the opposite is happening then you will have overactivity of QL which would get into spasm and pain. making the body learn the correct pattern will help in getting rid of this kind of pain.

It doesn't mean that your glutes or QL are weak (so making them stronger is not the solution). The firing mechanism has got reversed, that's all.

If your diagnosis is accurate, do you have any suggestions for how I could correct it?

you will have to look at Lower Crossed syndrome. eg link. (i am not a pro physiotherapist). but the sequence would be something like this:

  1. make the correct diagnosis. self-diagnosis can be done but keep in mind about repeating different tests to make the diagnosis more certain (don't rely on a single test). You can do videos of your posture and deeply feel your muscle while starting various movements (which one contracts first is important, which you check by feeling that muscle).

  2. finding the reason of why the glutes are sleeping or why others are firing first or firing more. two big examples are long sitting hours and shallow breathing (less diaphragmatic breathing, more thoracic breathing). those would need to be corrected.

  3. Then step by step approach to correction. This would include:

A. Relaxing the misfiring / early firing muscles - this you do with foam rolls, egg/tennis ball rolls, or hot fomentation over those particular muscles. This will relax these muscles and stop their inhibitory (automatic relaxing) effect on their opposite group (in this case, the glutes).

B. Relearn the correct firing pattern. The example exercises are: B1. Hip Hitch (the first one in your provided youtube) = stand on a step on one leg, let the other side of the pelvis drop below level, then Hike It Back Up using only the Gluteus medius, do 15 reps very slowly. B2. Side-lying hip abduction with pre-squeeze (squeeze glute first, leg slightly behind the body, toes neutral, take your leg up till your back muscle fires at which point you stop. B3. Single leg bridge with other hip flexed. B4. Dead bugs.

C. Progressive loading with correct sequence. Single leg Romanian deadlift.

I'm pleased to say that I do feel a little bit better with my exam out of the way. Only moderate depression instead of moderately severe depression! A directional improvement!

Now, I still finish work with only the desire to crawl into bed to keep me going, but I'm noticeably better at hiding my feelings. I've noticed a threshold effect, after a certain point I simply do not give a fuck anymore, and I'm back below whatever line that implies. Everything hurts, quite literally. I don't have the time or energy to engage in a hobby more involved than arguing with people online. But I forced myself to make plans for the weekend, and I intend to see them through.

Perhaps I shouldn't be grabbing a pint (or two) after work with such a degree of regularity, but it's fucking Scotland we're talking about. I've been here long enough to understand Glaswegian accents. Most of the time.

Less sighing, a diminished but non-zero appetite. Sleep that is within the range of normality for overworked resident doctors. Cracking jokes at work (most of them funny, only a minority at my own expense). Life as a doctor is easier when you lightly flirt with the nurses, while not quite looking like a cat dragged me into the ward. The NHS rewards good cheer, or ersatz-impressions of it. If you look and act sad and miserable, you'll find that people treat you worse for it. How queer.

I've mentioned, in the past, that I think one of the interns likes me. I suspect that my suspicion is well-founded. Why? Through independent confirmation.

For context: I work in a female-dominated workplace. Apparently men just don't want to be doctors anymore. No objections while it works in my favor. I was engaged in menial busywork at my desk while two of the lady doctors were chatting away. I wasn't paying attention, until one of them turned towards me and said "oh, [x] your girl is doing [something I genuinely can't remember]". She had a smirk on her face, while my other colleague giggled. NHS HR polices are what they are, so I replied with a "no comment". That is literally what I said, expression as neutral as buffered water. This only made them titter harder. I understand women just well enough to be extremely perplexed by them. I have a lot on my plate, and workplace romance would be a complication, to say the least. She's probably too smart and competent for me anyway.

Good feedback from my clinical supervisor too. Genuinely nice guy, though I don't understand how he manages to make it to the gym religiously, before work, be a good father to his tween son, all while working as hard as he does. Some people are just built different. If he thinks I'm doing a decent job, I believe him. He strikes me as the kind of person who would be very clear and open if I dun-goofed.

I caught my seniors from a different department in psychiatry doing something quite bone-headed with regards to a patient I'm not even particularly responsible for. If I was more depressed, I would have just given up, but I managed to find the energy and righteous indignation to lay out my concerns in front of other, more senior doctors, with citations and clinical arguments in hand. I didn't get it all my way (though I think I was in the right), but I did make a difference. Good to know that all of that exam cramming taught me something of actual value.

I even managed to make it to a teaching session and actively engage in learning, instead of phoning it in. It's a good day when a very renowned professor sends "good question!" and similar compliments my way. It's even better when I manage to out-nerd half the senior clinicians, and actually answer some of the hardball stuff when he looked at me expectantly. I am absolutely the teacher's pet - my ability to look deeply engaged and nod along has been finely honed since childhood. You need it if you've got ADHD and may or may not have stopped paying attention several minutes ago. Fake it till you make it.

I'll take it. I'll take it all. This isn't euthymia, but it's the next best thing after the actual next best thing.

I know you've been through this with everyone and their dog but has meditation helped at all with the depression? I find it can, sometimes. Though when I get depressive it tends to be more out of anxiety from overwhelming responsibilities in the face of a world where the infrastructure for living up to those is broken. In other words it's often a matter of resetting my perspective and sort of... I think of it as remembering that even though the water is up to my chin and the waves hit me in the face a lot, I can still just touch the ground with my tiptoes, and that I'm grateful to have such a challenge and reason to keep trying to rise to it. Sometimes meditation gets me there.

My priest says that if a Christian husband doesn't often feel like he's dying (or, to extend the metaphor, drowning) he's probably doing it wrong.

I have not had a positive experience with meditation, but I've got nothing against it. I'm happy recommending it (weakly) for the average person. After all, we've stolen aspects like mindfulness and inducted it into validated and reasonably effective forms of therapy. CBT, DBT, they all have a little bit of Eastern meditation in them for taste.

Meditation is a non-starter for me because of my ADHD. It doesn't particularly appeal to me in general, but I'm not saying that it's inappropriate for other people with ADHD. I prefer relying on medication for my mental health issues (and I know that they work for me). Speaking about ADHD in particular? The drugs do more than any form of therapy/meditation can do. That claim has all the evidence it needs in favor, including in RCT form.

New Year's resolution check-in ( @thejdizzler posted in last week's thread by mistake):

  • Had an idea for a blog post which I intend to write the first draft of this evening.
  • Went to the gym three times last week. Yesterday I did a 5k run on my lunch break, then went to the gym in the evening. I intended to do deadlifts, but found my lower back was bothering me too much, so I did bench press instead. After years of my herniated disc bothering me on my lower right side, the pain now seems to have migrated to my lower left side. Then on other days (like today) it returns to the lower right. Very strange. I need to get into the habit of doing lower back stretches several times a day even when I really don't feel like it. Can deadlift 1.84x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.22x for 8 reps and bench press .87x for 6 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.

How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble and @falling-star?

I know I replied to your comment. I remember writing it and hitting submit. I can't see it on my profile. The universe is gaslighting me, or I've gone past pleasantly drunk into Korsakoff territory.

Oh well. It might just be user-error or shit wifi. I said that the Paper B gave me a cardio workout that met my annual quota, even before the fire alarm went off. We can ignore the day spent wandering Glasgow, or the very, very long trek home.

I also remember typing out that your reminder prompted me to go do push-ups till failure. The only reason I don't feel like a failure is that I did well over double-digits. If I haven't gone to the actual gym (which I've been actively paying for) by next roll-call, I authorize anyone and everyone to call me unkind names.

I authorize anyone and everyone to call me unkind names.

Be advised: I can be very creative.

I believe you, and I rescind the offer. I'm a sensitive young man going through a tough time, and harsh words will make me cry.

Current spending is $665.18 lower than it was on the same day last year.

I have two big expenses (car insurance and the second half of my home repair bill) coming up, so I expect to overshoot again in the next eight weeks. In the meantime, I'm going to try to keep spending down to mitigate that.

Just to jump in on you guys, I didn't make a resolution but I've been very happy with my own Substacking / writing this year. I'm coming up on three years of actively posting and I've got 71 published pieces, with a bunch more written. I feel good about it!

I like that y'all are doing this too it's inspiring.

Want a ping going forward?

Sure!

Context: still seeing my high scoring secretary, and thinking through some things.

Married/serious-relationship'd Mottizens: not how did you find them, but what was the process like once you did?

E.g.:

  1. how quickly did things get serious?
  2. how obvious was it to you that you wanted them to get serious?
  3. and how quickly?
  4. was there something that at first you thought was maybe unacceptable that you got over?
  5. oppositely, something great you didn't notice/fully appreciate?
  6. or, was your gut just correct quickly?
  1. 1.5 years before dating, but we were with other people when we met.
  2. I was instantly entranced, but knew I wanted to marry probably 2 months into dating.
  3. ^
  4. Yes. I've had to deal with the consequences of it, but nobody is perfect. I think you should generally really think through what dealing with that "something" is like for the rest of your life.
  5. There were things I had no way of knowing beforehand (skill at being a mother) that I did not factor into my scoring that I now appreciate.
  6. I knew enough women as friends and lovers that my gut was pretty well developed, so while I did get lucky I also knew what I had.

Met my wife on OkCupid, we chatted for a week or two before setting up a first date. We were about 2 hours away from each other, and I set up a first date closer to her. While we were waiting for the date to arrive she asked if she could come up and see me before that. It's quite nice to have someone else clearly excited about the relationship and willing to go out of her way for it.

I told her I loved her on the first date, and while that was obviously premature it turns out to have been correct. The experience was just so overwhelmingly better than any relationship I had been in before, and I didn't think the past relationships were bad, but this was just a whole other level. She would not say it back to me, though she expressed interest

We talked about marriage and children on the first date, in the sense of "is this where your plans eventually end up?" but I don't know when we actually started talking about "ok, let's get married for real". I know at some point her position was "it's up to you, I'm ready to say yes any time you're ready to propose", probably about a year or so in.

I ended up effectively moving into her place within a month or two of seeing her, in that my visits would just span multiple weeks. I was looking to buy a house at the time and when I did so, <6mo after the relationship started, I invited her to move in with me. From there, my strategy was essentially "let's wait and see to make sure nothing bad pops up": over time living together you learn each others' quirks and any problems you might have, you see the other person at their worst. So I gave it about 2 years, nothing concerning happened despite some decent low points (surgery recovery, difficult work conditions), and went ahead and proposed.

How long have you been married?

Less than a year.

My husband sais he knew immediately. I knew when he proposed (after a few weeks - he said that was the soonest he felt he could and the longest he could make himself wait) and I accidentally said yes. I never intended to get married and I had successfully declined a few proposals prior to his. When I realized I had said yes I needed to have a conversation with myself. We married a few weeks later.

Our last anniversary was our 30th. We don't get any more, but he will always be my husband.

When I saw my wife I knew it immediately.

I know several men who share that experience. I think I know one woman who shares it. Just anecdata but I find it interesting.

I'm pretty omnipilled on women but I'd still like to know what you're implying here.

Not implying anything. It's just anecdata. I may filter my acquaintances for more men/fewer women like this, if you want to try to make some broader conclusion. If I ever decide to interact with people again I can ask them if they have different anecdata to share. Probably at least a few years away.

For me, within the first half hour maybe. The conversation felt like the sort of thing I wouldn't mind doing for a long time. Knew pretty quickly I wanted to try for a relationship, see how it went. Second date I told her I wanted a relationship, within a couple months I told her I wanted the relationship to be indefinite. That's when she let me know about her infertility. Great for me, but could have easily been unacceptable.

Broadly, I'd say my gut was pretty correct pretty quickly. Certainly the first night I met her, before we ever went on a date. Wasn't so much "amg soulmates" as "I can work with this".

Met online (back when forums were all the rage) and chatted for a while, but it was pretty lightweight. Then we met in person and within a few weeks it became clear (at least for me) that it's going somewhere, and I want it to go somewhere. Moved together within about 2 months or so, and it has been more and more serious for the next 20 years :) I don't think there ever was anything unacceptable. I mean, there are a bunch of things that wouldn't be acceptable to me in a partner, but they usually surfaced pretty quickly and it didn't go anywhere. This time it did.

1.) From first meeting to exclusive relationship: about two months. Dated for seven months, then engaged; married seven months after that. So in total, married one year and four months after meeting.

2/3.) It only took a few weeks of dating, during which I was evaluating her various qualities, for me to realize that she was marriage material by my standards.

4.) She had spent several years in her 20s as a live-in caretaker for her grandmother with dementia; so for a long time her grandmother was basically the first priority in her life. This only ended up when the grandmother went into memory care, where she still is now. For a while, it wasn't clear to me if she was ready for marriage in the sense of being willing to put her marriage first, above all other family commitments. We had a conversation about it before I ever popped the question, and that conversation settled my doubts. It has never been a problem since.

An additional thing: she had a terrible diet and no history of exercise at all. She is slender, but almost purely by chance. I was concerned about the long-term sustainability of this. But while we were dating I got her into at least light exercise; and she has cleaned up her diet greatly since we've been living together. (Now - a recent visit of mine to the doctor indicated that I've gained weight in married life; so the tables have turned. We are supporting each other in this.)

5.) This was never really something I considered a priority, but living with her has greatly increased the livability of my environment. Just in that she cares about tidiness and the way things look, and takes steps to keep those things up. I take care of most of the dirt/grime chores, she takes care of the "things in their right places" chores, and between us we maintain a very nice home. In general we work together to accomplish things very effectively.

6.) None of this happened until my mid-30s. I trusted my gut before and it did not work out for me; but more than anything I think that's because I was seeking the wrong things, or indeed just didn't have a good idea of what a real, functional adult relationship would look like. Once I started looking for (what I think are) the right things, I recognized fairly quickly that my now-wife has those things.

  1. I asked her to be my girlfriend two and a half weeks after our first date. She said yes, but then a few days later said she thought we were moving too fast and requested we go back to just seeing each other (albeit exclusively). Exactly thirty days after our first date, we again decided to be in a relationship, and have been ever since.
  2. Quite obvious.
  3. After our second date (which was perhaps one week after our first), I stopped pursuing other women on the apps.
  4. During the period in which we were just dating but not in an explicit, exclusive relationship? Not that I recall.
  5. Again, not that I recall.
  6. I think so.

She said yes, but then a few days later said she thought we were moving too fast and requested we go back to just seeing each other (albeit exclusively).

Do Zoomers Really? What is the difference between seeing someone exclusively and a gf?

I'm a millennial and I do this. I'm also not a normie like the downstream poster suggested. They have different definitions and I think they come from the online dating app culture.

Exclusive: We are dating and agreeing not to see other people but we aren't official or investing heavily into each other.

Girlfriend/Boyfriend: We are dating exclusively, officially out to all our friends, and investing in each other and our relationship

Marriage: We are legally bound together and expect to stay together for the rest of our lives barring some unforeseen problem (and even then)

Basically a GF/BF represents a level of commitment higher than someone you are just exclusively dating. At least my expectation, is that hitting a rough patch with a GF/BF means you'll at least discuss it/try to work it out before someone decides to cut and run. If we are just exclusive then that sort of flighty/ghosty behavior is more in the realm of possibility.

Basically how public you make the commitment and how much of your social capital you attach to it. This is downstream of social media, I think - first Facebook's "relationship status" feature, now the concept of "soft launching" or "hard launching" a relationship on Instagram. Very important to normiefoids and kind of a soft red flag.

Very important to normiefoids and kind of a soft red flag.

The term is "pink flag".

Imagine society has devalued the concept of marriage to the point where to younger generations it's either just something religious people do or that people do for convenience (taxes, finances, immigration, etc...), you end up eventually needing to reinvent a concept to separate the "trial run" of being with someone and a serious long-term partnership with someone.

I've seen this manifest as "girlfriend" vs "partner" but I have yet to see "committed but unlabeled" and "girlfriend".

I know, it's dumb. My pet theory is that some people think that, by avoiding formalising a relationship by putting the associated labels on it, they can therefore protect themselves from emotional disruption. Obviously, this is silly: if you like someone and are dating them to the exclusion of all others, it's going to hurt if they break it off with you even if you never explicitly declared them your boy/girlfriend.

  1. timeline from first meeting (i was old, she was new joining at workplace) when i wasn't thinking about new relationship TO serious thinking (about) 2 months. From serious thinking to "Surely this is the one" (about) 3 months more.
  2. it was neck-to-neck for my case about seriousness about each other. (she proposed first though)
  3. mentioned above.
  4. No, there was nothing that was unacceptable. but my mentality has been - whatever was or could be a problem, i was / am sure to overcome it.
  5. when two people want each other in same order of magnitude (not lopsided like man wanting woman much more than she wanting him back OR vice versa), then there are so many things which become smooth. Then there is no need to do bookkeeping of who did what and how much for whom. I think, i only realize now when that sort of thing is not needed to be done and how easy it makes life for both the persons.

Some other thoughts:

  1. i had some sort of long list of things we realized for each other - at that time, i had put something like our relationship has reached level 1, 2, and so on for 18-19 levels till i counted. after that, i stopped.
  2. for us, time didn't matter. at one time, it was a possibility that we would not be able to see each other for a long time - and it was okay. it didn't change the internal feelings.
  3. it all was a gut feeling kind of thing. i can still remember the first day when i saw her coming into the common room and saying something to someone else (i can still remember the texture of the voice). maybe it can be labeled as serious attraction at first sight and first listen. all the mind's calculations were put aside by me (as such, i tend to be analyst, just not in this case). in this case, it was - this is really the one, whatever my mind says i will manage later. whether that is a good idea in all other cases, i don't know. this is n=1 situation.

To compare:

  1. this kind of thing had happened once before. but in that case, it was a feeling only in me and not the girl. Lopsided. Would have definitely failed later on, even if it would have been an arranged marriage sort of thing (Indian context).
  2. Other time, it was partly the opposite way. The girl had serious crush on me, and i didn't have (lopsided again). We still proceeded and it was a long drawn painful experience for each of us (she remained always insecure about me, being very jealous of my normal interactions with other people, lot of long drawn mega-fights taken to extremes). Eventually, parting away was the only way out. But it remained a really bad experience overall.
  3. few in-betweens, timepasses you can say.

In short, my personal mantras would be: nearly equal levels of attraction with each other, no deep insecurities in either of the persons, gut feeling and not completely mind / excel calculations.

Does anyone else have wildly varied hangovers? If I drink while sitting and gaming or going online, I get nasty hangovers. But then if I drink while out with friends, I usually feel fine.

This is even if I drink way more while out with friends! Doesn’t make sense to me but…. It’s clearly a pattern. Anyone relate?

My hangovers are extremely varied. I've given up on understanding the mechanisms that lead to them. Only thing that seems consistent is being moderately drunk for an extended period of time seems worse than being fully trashed for a shorter period of time.

Physical activity? Alcohol gets converted to acetaldehyde which causes the hangover effects and then to acetate which causes the hangover effects.

If you're burning off the acetate quickly it may stop acetaldehyde from building up.

See if working up a sweat after drinking at home helps.

Yeah. Echoing what others have said, a pint of whiskey during a night of gaming leaves me ruined the next day. Six Jack&Coke doubles at a concert and I feel literally fine within a few hours.

I've never had a hangover, and I've also never gone to sleep drunk. Perhaps those things are related, or I just don't drink enough (I have Asian glow).

If I drink while sitting and gaming or going online, I get nasty hangovers. But then if I drink while out with friends, I usually feel fine.

I'd say this is likely caused by i) drinking at a slower pace because you're talking to people and ii) I've heard it said that one of the best ways to avoid a hangover is to wait until you no longer feel drunk before going to sleep. If you drink at home, you're probably going straight to bed still drunk, but if you're out with friends, by the time you get home you've probably sobered up a bit.

Globally, my worst hangovers originate from mixing my drinks.* If I drink six (or seven, or eight) beers, I'll probably feel fine the next morning, if perhaps a little sleepy, nauseated or have a mild headache. If I mix significant volumes of beer, spirits, wine and/or liqueurs, I'll probably feel like shit the next morning, especially if any of the drinks were very sugary, even if the absolute volume of alcohol I consumed is lower than if I'd just drunk one kind of drink. Mixing my drinks also seems to be disproportionately responsible for the emotional symptoms of hangover, namely "the fear": the sensation of paralysing anxiety and dread that you made a fool of yourself the night before.

In terms of physical symptoms specifically (headache, nausea), I used to get the worst hangovers from cheap white wine. The only kind of white wine I drink any more is sparkling (prosecco, cava).

*That being said, the single worst hangover I've had in the last five years wasn't even caused by alcohol specifically. I went to a gig, mixed various drinks and someone offered me a cigarillo in the smoking area. I've never learned how to smoke cigars or cigarillos and always end up smoking them like a cigarette i.e. inhaling, when as I understand it you're only meant to "taste" a cigar. Never figured out how to do that. Anyway, I ended up getting too drunk and left the gig early (wasn't really enjoying it anyway, so no big deal). The next day I was so hungover I literally couldn't keep water down. If you're going to smoke a cigar, make sure you've got your technique down in advance.

Yeah smoking makes my hangovers far worse as well.

I've noticed that I get more hungover if I sleep while I'm drunk. It's the most notable if I'm day drinking but I can literally be better off going an entire night without sleep, which makes no sense to me. It's like my body processes the alcohol worse when I'm asleep.

I've heard this theory before and I think there's a lot of truth to it. I can't fathom why it would be though.

When you drink way more with friends, is it over the same time frame? It's easy to lose track of time when you're having fun with people you enjoy spending time with.

It is! I think I have controlled for most of the other variables.

Coffee thread

How goes the roasting, grinding, drinking? Tagging @Muninn and I forget who else was into the specialty stuff, sorry.

I'm still liking Monsooned Malabar very much. I found decent quality beans of this type from a much cheaper source. I've cut my bean expenses by over 50%. I love how this bean smells of several spices at the same time.

I'll probably still try out some expensive specialty beans from time to time, but I've kinda settled into a more regular, reasonable habit by now.

It is to my great shame that I have to admit that I'm out of beans at the moment and need to roast more. If things go exceedingly well for me in the work/play department today (details to follow), I might just roast up one of several Ethiopians that I seem to have over-ordered recently, but we shall see how the day goes. Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you've been able to cut your expenses and that you're enjoying your recent bean! If I actually achieve my ambitious goals, I should be able to post a coffee hater's club thread later this week.

To be fair to myself and my lack of roasting, I just got home from a trip and my intention to roast has been complicated by both an issue with my VPN setup that was down to an outdated key in my original downloaded configuration that needed to be updated (doh!) as well as what has proved to be an irresistible urge to start playing in the deep end of technology again, however expensive and ill-advised said urge might be. The latter has involved trying out Bazzite, which will be my first Fedora-based distro in over a decade (and how different even is Red Hat land these days, anyway?), and will probably involve installing gpt-oss-20b today to kick the tires and play around with because I've been hanging around here for too long now now that my work responsibilities are more right-sized, I've recovered enough from burnout to start to be interested in tech again, though not quite enough to write any one of several effortposts that have been kicking around in my mind, including one about said burnout. Hmm, maybe I should poll our fellow Mottizens to find out which subject would be most interesting...

Offline ai models make weird mistakes even when they're 30b in size. Mine kept looping uselessly when I asked it to make some statistics on a pretty simple log file.

Yeah, I expect that pretty much comes with the territory, but I've got it up and running and I'm still interested in kicking the tires and playing around a bit!

Do you think there are any special tricks to getting a relatively small (offline) model performing well? I'm thinking that maybe it's extra necessary to be really clear in ones prompting.

I think it's certainly possible, and I can't help but believe that llm-fu is a Thing just as Google-fu is a Thing, but I'm too new to the llm scene to be able to currently have a decent idea one way or another with any real authority. I've got several different models that I want to test out for different things, but the two big things I want to play around with are training an llm with custom data, and automating a bunch of my wife's standard tedious tasks, like writing progress notes (which I'd like to sound like her thanks to said custom data training, if possible), entering visits into the software her biller is using, and sending out appointment reminders. Not to get too far ahead of myself, but if an offline model is up to that task, then I might pursue setting up an Openclaw agent for her to use for extra lulz, but all of this is just window dressing on the underlying desire to tinker, which is a desire that I want to feed now that it's back after fading in the teens and being completely absent for most of this decade.

I upgraded from grinding at the grocery store to a chinesium kingrinder k2 burr grinder which seems pretty good to my unsophisticated palate. It's not motorized, but I don't find that to be a huge deal.

I'm not super into coffee but I got a decent grinder and managed to convince my father of the merits of grinding your own coffee, and he is now obsessed and bought a ~$700 grinder and is buying beans from a local specialty café.

No need to guess where the 'tism comes from.

The good grinders do cost serious money. 700 is a tad high even so. I settled for a blade grinder instead of a burr grinder. Gets the job done. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There is plenty of opportunity for sperging in hobbies like these.

Our go-to is a local roastery called 3FE. Their house blend is solid and reliable. I've been thinking of trying Cloud Picker again. My girlfriend likes an Italian roast, although it's a bit too dark for my liking.

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