Perhaps the first thing to quit, is being annoying.
I feel a strong need to distance myself from:
I mean I did peruse the book once, in a book store. But I can't really say what it's about, or why or anything. Except that I find a sub-heading of 'Fad-free Wholefood Wellness Code and Cookbook' with tell-tale fad words in italics amusing to me personally. I also note a societal tendency to pedestalise older women who look like above, which is to say women enjoying in later life the physical health necessary to participate in exercise.
I think women need more women on pedestals as unhealthy as Winston Churchill, FDR, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, Henry VIII, Emperor Nero etc. As in women who don't give a shit about their physical upkeep because at one point in their finite lives they enjoyed actual real power, as opposed to mere physical capability at an age associated with physical decline.
But it's been ages since those halcyon days where all I wrote about was quitting addictions. It really dominated my identity for those first three months. Now not so, it's merely gone and I've returned to some kind of regular me, albeit - there's shit I don't consume and people both forget and remember or misinterpret.
And there's this observation I made, which is that people generally only visit or revisit shit when a crisis has come. People don't for example, go to the psychologists for a check up, and have their seemingly stable marriage and career and what not questioned. You have to lose your job or be going through a divorce before many people go see the psychologist. I wonder often how many more options I would have had in life if I'd gone and talked to a shrink before I needed to.
And on that front, I felt I should write some about being quit of a bunch of arbitrary shit now that it's attained a sense of normalcy in my life.
Here's the entire downside - I quit sugar at the exact same time that it became the new 'gluten' which is to say fad of evil thing you put in your mouth that by somehow quitting it will solve all your problems in life. I quit sugar because it was the hardest thing I could quit. I really miss it. I watched an entire season of Masterchef looking at the desserts being made and contemplating never having the opportunity to eat those desserts again.
But yes, the one and only downside is to be confused for somebody who cares about their health and entertains eternal life fantasies. Buying more time and ableness so that I can put off achieving any actual achievements for some later point in life, presumably when I then embrace my actual mortality. I'm not one of those people.
But yes, being confused for them, and having to converse with people about sugarlessness shit. That's the only real downside, and it's unlucky. That and not getting any of the highs I used to from eating KFC, McDonalds, Pornography, Caffeine and sugar.
But essentially, everything else leads me to agree with Gabor Mate. But who knows, some people succeed through AA but I have heard it actually has quite low success rates.
Despite the shit stirring title of this post, the first thing to quit is whatever is stressing you, or aggrieving you. A few months before I quit KFC, the first thing I quit. I walked away from a relationship that was my major source of stress. I honestly believe that having done that, having gone through the grieving process to a sufficient point that I was operating every day (for grieving processes need not necessarily end) before I undertook quitting anything.
Fact is, that by that stage aside from the convenience of fast food, all those things had more or less dropped 90% of their workload before I quit them. So really, they weren't even what I needed to quit.
And one empathic bridge I can't build (without it being seriously muted) was that my destructive relationship was merely a friendship I cared about, but to maintain required I accept a lower sense of self worth than I feel intrinsically. But most addicts of harder stuff, have much lower intrinsic sense of self worth. I think the place for people who honestly beat themselves up over their lives is with compassion. And there's probably a lot of work to do to get to the point where you can feel compassion towards yourself, and forgive yourself without blaming yourself or anybody and thus take responsibility for your own happiness. That process is mysterious to me, but I believe you have to feel all those things to get to the starting line.
Nextly, consumption is social. It really is. Who hasn't experienced a friends dietary choices as an imposition on them. Which is why it's important not to be self-righteous about not eating gluten, sugar or whatever the next fucking fad is. But we live in a society where the onus is on people not drinking to explain themselves rather than the reverse. You can expect many knock on effects any time you change your consumption patterns. But if you are addicted to harder stuff you probably have to quit just about everyone you know at the same time that you kick your habit, because they are part of it.
One day at dinner I took a risk and ordered a coconut juice, because some of the canned coconut juices are 100% coconut. But this one had sugar added. So I decided fuck it and drank it anyway, and Jessie was all like 'yes I've been waiting for this day.' this is what you're dealing with, enablers everywhere.
I think a bunch of us that don't snort coke, shoot heroin or smoke ice, assume that you the addict are surrounded by people like us. The addict is other, abnormal. The sober are abnormal. The clean living are abnormal. I doubt you can even smoke ice or drop pills without stumbling into a social circle where such things are the norm, viewed as harmless etc.
Those are the two big things, I mean literally I don't give a shit about my health as far as everything I've quit. Sure my weight stabilises around 72kg as opposed to 80kgs when I used to have sugar, caffeine, KFC and McDonalds in my diet. My energy levels are much more consistent. But honestly I don't care.
What I notice is that I'd never ever, ever think quitting a substance was a no-brainer ever again. It's really all-brainer. It's feelings and emotions that betray you. Also that I'm an intensely privileged person to be able to do this exercise.
I think women need more women on pedestals as unhealthy as Winston Churchill, FDR, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, Henry VIII, Emperor Nero etc. As in women who don't give a shit about their physical upkeep because at one point in their finite lives they enjoyed actual real power, as opposed to mere physical capability at an age associated with physical decline.
But it's been ages since those halcyon days where all I wrote about was quitting addictions. It really dominated my identity for those first three months. Now not so, it's merely gone and I've returned to some kind of regular me, albeit - there's shit I don't consume and people both forget and remember or misinterpret.
And there's this observation I made, which is that people generally only visit or revisit shit when a crisis has come. People don't for example, go to the psychologists for a check up, and have their seemingly stable marriage and career and what not questioned. You have to lose your job or be going through a divorce before many people go see the psychologist. I wonder often how many more options I would have had in life if I'd gone and talked to a shrink before I needed to.
And on that front, I felt I should write some about being quit of a bunch of arbitrary shit now that it's attained a sense of normalcy in my life.
Here's the entire downside - I quit sugar at the exact same time that it became the new 'gluten' which is to say fad of evil thing you put in your mouth that by somehow quitting it will solve all your problems in life. I quit sugar because it was the hardest thing I could quit. I really miss it. I watched an entire season of Masterchef looking at the desserts being made and contemplating never having the opportunity to eat those desserts again.
But yes, the one and only downside is to be confused for somebody who cares about their health and entertains eternal life fantasies. Buying more time and ableness so that I can put off achieving any actual achievements for some later point in life, presumably when I then embrace my actual mortality. I'm not one of those people.
But yes, being confused for them, and having to converse with people about sugarlessness shit. That's the only real downside, and it's unlucky. That and not getting any of the highs I used to from eating KFC, McDonalds, Pornography, Caffeine and sugar.
But essentially, everything else leads me to agree with Gabor Mate. But who knows, some people succeed through AA but I have heard it actually has quite low success rates.
Despite the shit stirring title of this post, the first thing to quit is whatever is stressing you, or aggrieving you. A few months before I quit KFC, the first thing I quit. I walked away from a relationship that was my major source of stress. I honestly believe that having done that, having gone through the grieving process to a sufficient point that I was operating every day (for grieving processes need not necessarily end) before I undertook quitting anything.
Fact is, that by that stage aside from the convenience of fast food, all those things had more or less dropped 90% of their workload before I quit them. So really, they weren't even what I needed to quit.
And one empathic bridge I can't build (without it being seriously muted) was that my destructive relationship was merely a friendship I cared about, but to maintain required I accept a lower sense of self worth than I feel intrinsically. But most addicts of harder stuff, have much lower intrinsic sense of self worth. I think the place for people who honestly beat themselves up over their lives is with compassion. And there's probably a lot of work to do to get to the point where you can feel compassion towards yourself, and forgive yourself without blaming yourself or anybody and thus take responsibility for your own happiness. That process is mysterious to me, but I believe you have to feel all those things to get to the starting line.
Nextly, consumption is social. It really is. Who hasn't experienced a friends dietary choices as an imposition on them. Which is why it's important not to be self-righteous about not eating gluten, sugar or whatever the next fucking fad is. But we live in a society where the onus is on people not drinking to explain themselves rather than the reverse. You can expect many knock on effects any time you change your consumption patterns. But if you are addicted to harder stuff you probably have to quit just about everyone you know at the same time that you kick your habit, because they are part of it.
One day at dinner I took a risk and ordered a coconut juice, because some of the canned coconut juices are 100% coconut. But this one had sugar added. So I decided fuck it and drank it anyway, and Jessie was all like 'yes I've been waiting for this day.' this is what you're dealing with, enablers everywhere.
I think a bunch of us that don't snort coke, shoot heroin or smoke ice, assume that you the addict are surrounded by people like us. The addict is other, abnormal. The sober are abnormal. The clean living are abnormal. I doubt you can even smoke ice or drop pills without stumbling into a social circle where such things are the norm, viewed as harmless etc.
Those are the two big things, I mean literally I don't give a shit about my health as far as everything I've quit. Sure my weight stabilises around 72kg as opposed to 80kgs when I used to have sugar, caffeine, KFC and McDonalds in my diet. My energy levels are much more consistent. But honestly I don't care.
What I notice is that I'd never ever, ever think quitting a substance was a no-brainer ever again. It's really all-brainer. It's feelings and emotions that betray you. Also that I'm an intensely privileged person to be able to do this exercise.
2 comments:
Tohm,
I like your second paragraph here so much that although it is a side point, I came back two days later just to say so. And also, such women will not be on pedestals in our current culture (while it becomes harder for men to do so as well). Gina Rinehart Club?
Anyway, I feel bad that I have nothing substantial to add to your main argument. But I find it interesting to read, so thanks for sharing with the world. In lieu of my own contribution here are some amazing renaissance gifs.
thanks muchly, I interpret the revisit as high praise. And thankyou for the gifs.
I immediately thought of Gina Rinehart, and she's a tricky one. She seems to just collect economic rents so there's no non-transparent sycophants in her retinue, and she doesn't employ propaganda to win hearts and minds. Just to minimise the wages she pays and her exposure to tax. So I doubt she'll yet achieve the status of the male examples I used.
People hate her at the peak of her power, and when she croaks she'll leave pretty much no legacy I can see. She'll be forgotten quicker than Steve Jobs.
Post a Comment