The spite, hate, rage, apathy and mild irritation thread...

[BitchPudding]

Well, this year has been a time.

I wont get into detail describing the parade of bullshit and unfortunate circumstances that have bared their fangs at me, but needless to say with the death of my dog, my grandmothers declining health and the stress of trying to be all smiles for my newborn daughter and FAILING has beat me face first into the dirt Yamcha style.

But really, my biggest struggle at the moment is drug use.

I started smoking weed pretty regularly pre pandemic, which during the pandemic has escalated into constant use every day for the past, shit must be at least a year, but it's hard to keep track at this point. Feels like I've been high the entire pandemic except for when my daughter was born.

Initially, I was getting high for the same reasons I imagine most people do. Its fun, takes some of the stress of my day away, and when you have bad mental health issues anything that takes you away from those feelings feels like a saving grace. And for a while, it worked even. But once the pandemic happened and various shitty things in my life followed, I smoked constantly. To run. I wanted to run away desperately from the feelings im struggling with, but in doing so I've trapped my brain in an endless loop of get high, go to work, come home, get high, sleep. Not to mention whats its done to my musicality and productivity. My studio has become less of a studio and more of just a straight up drug den.

I cant keep going on like this, and I wont. Weed is fine for some and I dont judge anyone for smoking but for me the dependency is slowly killing who I am. I dont need drugs to do the things I do or be the person I am. Im tired of using weed as a crutch when I need to face my problems to heal. I miss playing music because it made me feel something. I miss being able to have conversations with people without awkwardly dropping sentences. I miss feeling the bliss I used to feel from living my life without being drugged the fuck out all the time.

Maybe one day I'll be able to partake in the sweet leaf casually again, but for now, I need to be sober. I don't really have a support system for this outside my wife, and I'm not sure if we have a thread for sobriety check ins, but I'll check in here periodically and in the happy thread if things go well. These next few days are probably gonna be hell while my brain resets, but it'll be worth it to get the old me back.

I love you all, I miss you all. Wish me luck.

[Never]

Good luck! Not everything is for everybody — and I guess we don’t remain the same person forever, either

[friendship]

Well, this year has been a time.

I wont get into detail describing the parade of bullshit and unfortunate circumstances that have bared their fangs at me, but needless to say with the death of my dog, my grandmothers declining health and the stress of trying to be all smiles for my newborn daughter and FAILING has beat me face first into the dirt Yamcha style.

But really, my biggest struggle at the moment is drug use.

I started smoking weed pretty regularly pre pandemic, which during the pandemic has escalated into constant use every day for the past, shit must be at least a year, but it's hard to keep track at this point. Feels like I've been high the entire pandemic except for when my daughter was born.

Initially, I was getting high for the same reasons I imagine most people do. Its fun, takes some of the stress of my day away, and when you have bad mental health issues anything that takes you away from those feelings feels like a saving grace. And for a while, it worked even. But once the pandemic happened and various shitty things in my life followed, I smoked constantly. To run. I wanted to run away desperately from the feelings im struggling with, but in doing so I've trapped my brain in an endless loop of get high, go to work, come home, get high, sleep. Not to mention whats its done to my musicality and productivity. My studio has become less of a studio and more of just a straight up drug den.

I cant keep going on like this, and I wont. Weed is fine for some and I dont judge anyone for smoking but for me the dependency is slowly killing who I am. I dont need drugs to do the things I do or be the person I am. Im tired of using weed as a crutch when I need to face my problems to heal. I miss playing music because it made me feel something. I miss being able to have conversations with people without awkwardly dropping sentences. I miss feeling the bliss I used to feel from living my life without being drugged the fuck out all the time.

Maybe one day I'll be able to partake in the sweet leaf casually again, but for now, I need to be sober. I don't really have a support system for this outside my wife, and I'm not sure if we have a thread for sobriety check ins, but I'll check in here periodically and in the happy thread if things go well. These next few days are probably gonna be hell while my brain resets, but it'll be worth it to get the old me back.

I love you all, I miss you all. Wish me luck.

I support you! Withdrawal not be as hellish as you fear, though you'll have some fucked up dreams for the next couple days. Soon you'll be sleeping better and maybe even having more energy. And you'll be able to be more present with Victoria. But don't beat yourself up for having relied on it these past couple of years. You did your best to get through a hard time, and now you've noticed this coping method isn't working for you anymore. Onward and upward my friend

[BitchPudding]

I support you! Withdrawal not be as hellish as you fear, though you'll have some fucked up dreams for the next couple days. Soon you'll be sleeping better and maybe even having more energy. And you'll be able to be more present with Victoria. But don't beat yourself up for having relied on it these past couple of years. You did your best to get through a hard time, and now you've noticed this coping method isn't working for you anymore. Onward and upward my friend

Thank you man. its harder today than yesterday, im bouncing back and forth between im ok and fucking sobbing, but I also went for a run this morning. Hopefully the first in a new daily occurrence. Its a journey right?

[friendship]

I support you! Withdrawal not be as hellish as you fear, though you'll have some fucked up dreams for the next couple days. Soon you'll be sleeping better and maybe even having more energy. And you'll be able to be more present with Victoria. But don't beat yourself up for having relied on it these past couple of years. You did your best to get through a hard time, and now you've noticed this coping method isn't working for you anymore. Onward and upward my friend

Thank you man. its harder today than yesterday, im bouncing back and forth between im ok and fucking sobbing, but I also went for a run this morning. Hopefully the first in a new daily occurrence. Its a journey right?

That's what they say! How are you feeling today?

My therapist has managed to get me to give up on music as anything but an occasional dalliance whereas it was for decades my raison d'etre. He also helped me realize that the fight to rise above mental illness is itself a cause of my suffering. He's considered these to be really positive breakthroughs, but I'm struggling to understand how giving up a cherished creative outlet and all hope of being well are positive developments. I feel really weird typing this into the internet but there is literally not a single person in my life I can talk to about this lolololol

[Blackened Soul]

without knowing your whole situation… and my answer would end up in a tirade along the lines of fuck the normies so I’ll skip it

[friendship]

without knowing your whole situation… and my answer would end up in a tirade along the lines of fuck the normies so I’ll skip it

I mean that's always good advice!

[K2000]

I’ve started to believe that there’s nothing wrong with using a crutch if it helps you to keep walking. If you feel like you’ve outgrown it, I can understand wanting to let it go. If you realize later that you can still benefit from cannabis, please don’t get down on yourself about using it.

I’ve been using low-dose edibles in the evening to help take the edge off. I make them myself (brownie recipe from leafly dot com). I’m kind of a lightweight and a couple of puffs will interfere with my productivity, but a mild edible seems to work more like a Valium for me. I estimate my dose is 10mg thc which is pretty basic. But helpful. Stress is cumulative and a mild edible at night seems to keep things at manageable levels for me.

[Never]

I’ve started to believe that there’s nothing wrong with using a crutch if it helps you to keep walking. If you feel like you’ve outgrown it, I can understand wanting to let it go. If you realize later that you can still benefit from cannabis, please don’t get down on yourself about using it.

I'd like to second that, but also add I think it's good to change things up periodically just for change's sake. When you / your body / your mind have to adjust, it does force you to grow -- but the idea you could grow so strong you'd never need any type of crutch at all, that would be a fantasy. I've switched to legal CBD products completely in recent years, and that's been really great for relaxing. OTOH, my wife was starting to play music with me but now stopped taking CBD and feels like she can't be absorbed in creativity sober (we take pretty strong doses tbh) -- I want to help her get over that hurdle, because I don't think that's true at all, weed isn't brain-magic, but it does feel like you have to learn new neural pathways to do these things differently.

Along the same lines:

My therapist has managed to get me to give up on music as anything but an occasional dalliance whereas it was for decades my raison d'etre. He also helped me realize that the fight to rise above mental illness is itself a cause of my suffering. He's considered these to be really positive breakthroughs, but I'm struggling to understand how giving up a cherished creative outlet and all hope of being well are positive developments.

Idk what strands of psychology your therapist is drawing from in his practice (and I'm not very knowledgable or experienced, so this is not mental health advice!) but from what I've learned reading about more traditional (Lacanian / Freudian / non-American) psychoanalysis, having an insight like "the fight to escape my symptoms is contributing to my symptoms" would definitely make sense as a breakthrough, if / when it feels true to you to say so.

But then, the perspective of classic psychoanalysis would also be, like, "no one is 100% mentally healthy." You might heal specific psychic wounds or traumas and start to change how you feel about your self through analysis, but you can't eradicate all symptoms forever, let alone "suffering" in general -- if we could, we'd be eradicating our personalities, too. You might get past certain symptoms, but then there will always be something new in life you could talk to a therapist about. So if he were saying, music is causing you suffering, try to cut it out idk, that doesn't make sense to me.

But then again, I grew up as a very religious Catholic (liberal Catholic, not psycho!), so I'll probably always believe that suffering is an important part of life -- that's one of my own "symptoms," I guess

[Never]

Also, I thought the point of therapy was to talk about yourself and the therapist helps you think through it, not that they actually tell you how to behave and what to do..? But like I said, I have almost no experience here

[friendship]

To elaborate, I had been describing to my therapist how all my effort (therapy, meds, self-care of all types, more meds, DBT, CBT, etc) over the years to recover from chronic depression hasn't done much of anything. The frustration and despair that comes with that inability to get better (by which I mean no longer being mentally ill, not avoiding all suffering which as you wisely noted is impossible and maybe not even desirable) is compounding the original suffering, so why do any of this stuff at all? Why do I keep going about my days behaving like a mentally healthy person if it never actually makes me mentally healthy like the mental health workers keep telling me it will? How many more years/decades can I keep it up? And that's the point at which I was like, "maybe it's time to just let it all go and stop trying to be feel better." I guess his enthusiasm for that idea confused me because I don't know if he realizes that, for me, this means quitting therapy, quitting exercise, quitting eating right, quitting meditating, quitting socializing, maybe even quitting medication.

It was similar to the music thing--he didn't tell me to quit, per se, just suggested I could stop working at it. But here, too--if I don't work at it, I don't do it.

Anyway I'm talking to him again tonight so I'll bring this stuff up and let you know what he says. Thanks for listening.

[friendship]

okay he talked me down from my nihilistic death spiral. Really, he just doesn't want me to add the burden of frustration about not being well and the frustration about not fulfilling my self-created artistic expectations to the other burdens I'm dealing with. IOW, as valid as it is to rage against those things right now, it isn't doing me any favors.

[BitchPudding]

Hey, so an update.

I talked to my wife for a while about it, and decided to simply cut back a little instead of going cold turkey for the sake of my mental health. She offered to be a person I can check in with if I feel like I might be overdoing it, which has helped. I'm currently back down to sublime rules, two joints a day max, which has helped a bunch with my tolerance levels and my general feeling of disconnect I had before. I feel sharp again, and have a sudden burst of inspiration to finish an EP i've been sitting on.

I think my wanting to go cold turkey stemmed from panic. I have really bad anxiety which I was treating with a combo of therapy and weed, but without therapy thanks to the panini the balance was thrown and i spiraled into constant daily use. It can definitely help with the problems I have, but I still need to confront and face my trauma in a healthy way. Im working on it. But point being im ok right now. Maybe not sober, but not completely off the wagon like I used to be.

On a different note, I think I had my first experience with a bad show last night.

I've been trying to network and get my name out there with more musicians in my area and potentially get some work somehow in the music scene. Part of that is going to shows to meet people over the possibility of working. In the past, its only ever paid off, like with my current collaboration with Rose, and with my old bandmates.

Last night, not so much.

So, I went to a show at a local venue out here based on a lead about potentially replacing a guitarist who had dipped.The person in question had already got a temporary replacement by the time they started talking to me, but we agreed to meet up at the show and chop it up some, see what happens. So I get to the show, meet the guy and the vibe is already pretty awkward. We had just met n everything, but there wasnt much conversation happening. So in the end, I spent more time hanging with the hired guns than the main guy himself (those two are incredible musicians, I hope I see more of them out there). Then there was the issue of the songs. I had hoped that maybe the material would translate better live, but unfortunately it was all kinda meh. Which I HATE saying because I just dont feel right being critical of other peoples music. But it wasnt great. A lot of the whole vibe of the band itself was kinda cringy, which im not sure if that was intentional, but if it was it wasnt landing. Worst/funniest part was the last song. Without giving away details that would potentially identify this band, it was about premature ejaculation and hard ass sex. Which like, its whatever if you write about sex. But have some fucking finesse to it for fucks sake. This shit had all the levity of high school bathroom graffiti. At that point I couldn't see myself ever working with this band and ghosted the spot. Fortunately, its easy to have a reason to dip if you have kids.

On top of that, I had too many joints for how low my tolerance was now, so by the time I had this "oh no, this shit ain't it" realisation, I was VERY high and not vibing. I went down a block before calling my lyft cause I just really didnt wanna be seen. Full panic mode. I was in the car going home listening to Fuzz's first album, and I felt like the world was exploding.

So yeaaaaaah. The perils of trying to network and get out there. Get up. Be social. Blah blah blah. I feel bad about ghosting, even worse about being so critical. But I know what I like and what I can take seriously, and I feel like I have good enough taste now to know when something is objectively bad music. and at a certain point, I can't pretend to like something that aint it. Hopefully the next time I go to something like this, it'll be better. Luck of the draw I guess.

[Never]

okay he talked me down from my nihilistic death spiral. Really, he just doesn't want me to add the burden of frustration about not being well and the frustration about not fulfilling my self-created artistic expectations to the other burdens I'm dealing with. IOW, as valid as it is to rage against those things right now, it isn't doing me any favors.

Haha, yeahhhh I get that, I'm in the same boat

I talked to my wife for a while about it, and decided to simply cut back a little instead of going cold turkey for the sake of my mental health. She offered to be a person I can check in with if I feel like I might be overdoing it, which has helped. I'm currently back down to sublime rules, two joints a day max, which has helped a bunch with my tolerance levels and my general feeling of disconnect I had before. I feel sharp again, and have a sudden burst of inspiration to finish an EP i've been sitting on.

I think my wanting to go cold turkey stemmed from panic. I have really bad anxiety which I was treating with a combo of therapy and weed, but without therapy thanks to the panini the balance was thrown and i spiraled into constant daily use. It can definitely help with the problems I have, but I still need to confront and face my trauma in a healthy way. Im working on it. But point being im ok right now. Maybe not sober, but not completely off the wagon like I used to be.

On a different note, I think I had my first experience with a bad show last night.

That's great!! Damn, good job putting yourself out there even if it was cringy as fuck haha

[BitchPudding]

Thanks. I guess its just part of it. I wont let one bad experience keep me from getting out forever. but im drained for a minute. hahah