ForEverAfter
Ex-Bluelighter
Note: This is part of a much larger trip report called "Tequila Mockingbird" (http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/...es-amp-Cannabis-quot-Tequila-Mockingbird-quot)
I’ve had two hours sleep; been working on assignments for university all night. Tonight is my last opportunity to trip. For the next four weeks, there will be no drugs whatsoever – mushrooms or otherwise.
0:00
I swallow the last six gel caps; roughly 2.1 grams of dried mushrooms.
+0:30
I am tired. Being a vegetarian means I need to sleep more. That’s one thing I’ve noticed about the lack of meat. The energy isn’t sustained. Whatever you consume, it gets digested three times as fast. With meat, you can eat a big steak and be right for the next sixteen hours.
I need to go to sleep. It’s a shame, because it’s my last opportunity for a long time. But, it doesn’t matter too much. I’d rather have the rest. I lie down on the couch and go to sleep.
+1:10
I wake up, tripping. It is freezing. I am so cold that my entire body is shaking. You can’t understand how cold it is. There are homeless people in Siberia dying in the snow that are warmer than I am. I turn on the heater and curl up under the blankets. I try to go to sleep. The trip hasn’t kicked in properly yet. If I manage to go to sleep quickly, I might be able to avoid it. I lie there, dead tired and freezing to death, trying to get to sleep before the mushrooms arrive. It is a race I am destined to lose. I knew as soon as I swallowed those six gel caps that it was a one-way street. Still, I stay there for half an hour trying to convince myself that I can go to sleep; even when the trip is fully formed I am thinking it’s possible.
+1:30
My stomach body is delicate during the transition from reality to the world of psychedelics. My joints are stiff. My stomach is trigger happy to evacuate itself. I can feel the sensation spreading throughout my body. But I don’t want it. I’m too tired. It’s too cold. So I don’t move. I remain perfectly still. And the sensation struggles to spread to my extremities. I stay like that – frozen, like a baby refusing to eat – for about five minutes before finally giving in.
+1:40
I get up. It is so cold that walking around is almost impossible. I have to bend over myself, curling into a ball, as I walk. There is something seriously wrong here. People aren’t meant to be this cold. I used to live in the snow, and it wasn’t this cold. It’s a medical condition. It must be. My blood is failing to produce heat or something. I am becoming reptilian.
+1:45
I realize the back door is wide open. I have a habit of doing this, even in winter, so that my cats can wander in and out as they please. I don’t like the idea of confining wild animals between four walls. I am a wild animal. I am confined, caged. I know what it’s like.
My female cat refuses to come inside. I tell her that I’m going to close the door and she’ll be stuck outside in the cold. She doesn’t believe me. It breaks my heart to close the door and leave her out there. I seriously consider leaving it open.
I think I often consider the welfare of my pets more than my own. When I don’t have enough money to eat, I prioritize cat food over my own groceries. Because it isn’t fair to them, they don’t understand. I’m extremely skinny. You don’t need to do an x-ray to see my bones. My cats are all well fed. One of them is downright fat. When I have kids it will be the same thing. The vulnerable will always take priority; because they need me to survive. They depend on me. I don’t depend on anyone but myself. If I’m a failure, that’s my own fault. It’s not their fault. If I don’t have enough money for food because I spent it on alcohol – like I used to do – then why should they suffer? It should be me that suffers. And, it is, always.
My cat runs off, happily, onto the lawn. She’s not freezing. She has enough meat on her bones to insulate her against the cold. And that thick long coat of fur.
I neglect myself sometimes. I’m so busy thinking about other people and I don’t include myself in that category. Other people, not people. It’s everyone else I have to make considerations for: cats and dogs and people. I’m always catering to people’s sensitivities and humouring them in one way or another. I’m always cleaning up after my cats, feeding them, patting them. I feel for them. These pampered animals. I don’t feel for myself.
I close the door.
+2:15
My leg has been resting on a radiator, going full blast, for the past half an hour. I’m still fucking cold. It’s manageable now, though. I stopped shaking. I’m de-thawing myself having discovered my body frozen in the centre of a block of ice upon awakening. It’s a good thing I woke up and closed the door; otherwise I might have caught pneumonia.
+2:25
I’m the sort of person that delays doing something by planning it. I’ll actually sit down and spend the time that it takes to do whatever it is without actually doing it. I write about doing it. I make lists. I create daily plans detailing what I’m going to do. But I never do it. That’s what psychedelic drugs are all about, being overly conscious about what needs to be done; maybe that’s why they appeal to me. I can dwell in this state of pre-existence, forever planning, forever creating lists in my head of the incredible things I will achieve.
Then again, maybe it’s had an impact. I don’t think I’d be a vegetarian now if it wasn’t for psychedelic drugs. I wouldn’t be sober either. It’s funny, taking psilocybin eventually makes me want to stop taking it along with everything else. Alcohol doesn’t work like that. Booze isn’t capable of being self-critical. Mushrooms question their own existence. They would rather not be ingested, if that’s the right thing to do. Alcohol doesn’t have a conscience.
Psilocybin is a cure. It forces addicts to address the nature of addiction. You think about it from every angle possible, and – after a while – you can’t lie to yourself anymore. That’s why a lot of serious drug users don’t like psilocybin. It threatens their lifestyle.
Alcohol isn’t a cure. It’s a never ending treatment. It’s the illness and the remedy and the illness and the remedy, a thousand times over. It’s not an honest drug. It plays devil’s advocate. It will do whatever you want it to. It will bend over backwards and take it up the ass without question, if that’s what you want. If you want to lie to yourself, no worries; it likes a liar. Liars make good drunks.
+2:35
This is the first trip I’ve had since I started going to AA. I’ve been listening to these people day in, day out for the past seven days. Probably something like eighty stories I’ve heard, all up, most of them horrible. And there’s this word that keeps getting repeated. The word is disease. They all say it, all the time. They keep repeating it like cult members repeat hypnotic mantras. Disease. Disease. Disease. Alcoholism is a disease. And if you tell them you don’t think it is a disease, they get all self-righteous. They say, “It’s recognized by the Australian Board of Health!”. “It’s a disease, full stop. There’s no question.” Then they repeat it a couple more times. Disease. Disease. Disease. Some of them have been going to meetings for forty years. Seriously. Forty years. I don’t know how many repetitions of the word disease that is, because I’m not a supercomputer, but it’s a fucking lot. These people are seriously brain-washed.
I went to a meeting the other day, and there were a bunch of people sitting around a table, with books spread open in front of them. I thought I had the wrong day. Turns out it’s a Big Book study. The Big Book is the Bible of Alcoholism.
At the beginning of every meeting the chairperson has to read the opening statements, which include something along the lines of this: “We are not affiliated with any sect, denomination or religious organization.” This is absolute horseshit. Meetings take place in churches. At least half of the members talk about God. How God saved them from Alcohol.
Hanging from the wall is the serenity prayer, which starts off with: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” At the end of every meeting, all the attendees are required to join hands and say the serenity prayer out loud.
Hanging on either side of it, are the twelve steps and the twelve traditions. The first of the twelve steps is: “Admit that you are powerless in the face of alcohol, that you are a weakling, and that you need God to save you.” That’s not a direct quote, mind you, but it’s pretty close.
The word God is plastered all over the interior of the church, and they force you to pray, yet they insist that the organization is non-religious. This is why it is a cult rather than an offshoot of Christianity. Because people don’t even realize they are partaking in something that is blatantly religious. AA is far worse than organized religion.
The whole powerless thing they force down people’s throats. It’s not empowering. They don’t tell you that you have the power to beat alcohol. They tell you that you don’t have the power to beat alcohol, that you’re weak. It is the opposite of empowering. They take people at their lowest and most vulnerable moment and crush them into a speck of dust.
These forty year members, who haven’t touched a drink for decades, some of them don’t even see it as a personal accomplishment. It’s not them who stopped drinking, because they’re powerless. It’s God that stopped them drinking.
AA replaces the word God with Higher Power. This is so they can argue the fact that the organization is not affiliated with any sect, denomination or religious organization. But it is. It’s a Christian cult. They say they’re all about helping alcoholics, but really that’s not what they’re all about. What they want to do is recruit people to Christianity, via the cult of AA, by offering a helping hand. It’s like the missionaries in Africa, saying we’ll feed you as long as you pray. Day after day, these poor villagers have to sell out their spiritual beliefs in order to eat. After a while, the association between survival and religion sets in concrete. It’s basic conditioning. A correlation is formed.
Christianity is an evil fucking religion. It will bend the moral code that it supposedly stems from in order to recruit people. How people are recruited doesn’t matter. The more I think about it, the more I think Christianity – itself – is a cult. AA is more obvious. It is less clever than Christianity at disguising itself.
The Big Book of Alcoholism is poorly written. It reminds me of Dianetics, the Scientology Bible. Assuming that you’re relatively intelligent, and you lack the predisposition towards being brainwashed, it’s pretty easy to recognize it as a manipulative work of fiction.
AA members would genuinely laugh if I said this to them. For them, it is as convincing a piece of literature as the Bible is to the pope.
During the Big Book Study, there was this one lady that kept nodding. She agreed with every sentence, and she wanted us to know that she agreed: this huge smile on her face, nodding so vigorously I thought she might decapitate herself. I sat there for an hour and a half as we went through passage after passage. With every word, she nodded. The smile never faded. She might as well have been saying ‘Amen’ with every tick of the clock and fucking ‘halleluiah!’ with every tock. It was sickening to witness; really, just horrible.
And, although the rest of them weren’t quite as extroverted about it as her, you could tell they were nodding on the inside. A lot of them muttered approvingly throughout the readings. Nobody said, hold on a second – isn’t this a load of bullshit?
The average age of AA members is something like forty-five. Big meetings, like the South Yarra one, have enough young people to bring the number down overall. Small suburban meetings, the average age is well over fifty.
The chairman at the Big Book Study said that ninety-five per cent of alcoholics don’t ever come to meetings; and ninety five per cent of those that do come, don’t manage to stay sober. I’m not sure where he’s getting his statistics from. The annual alcoholic census, I guess. Anyway, he made it sound like some sort of a mystery why people don’t go to meetings.
People don’t go to AA because it’s a fucking cult. If they really cared about treating alcoholism then they would drop all the God nonsense and just help people. It isn’t a fucking mystery. Christians have a monopoly over alcoholic treatment in Australia. They have hotels on Boardwalk and Park Lane. They don’t care about helping people. They want to win the game. They want numbers. They want members. Like any organization wants members. Like any company wants more customers. Christianity is a competitive machine. If Jesus ever existed, his message is lost; smothered by power hungry capitalising immoral hypnotists.
Buddhism doesn’t try to recruit. It doesn’t lure people in with food and then smack them over the head with the Bible. It doesn’t scoop victims of self-destructive behaviour from rock bottom and rewire them to spread the word. Buddhism is quite happy for you to come to it. It doesn’t want to force you. It doesn’t go door knocking. It doesn’t hand out pamphlets.
AA is creepy like a pyramid scheme. People invest in it and invest in it, and – after a while –they have no choice but to lure in other investors, for fear of losing everything. They want you to believe, so they can maintain their beliefs. The more people around you saying: Disease. Disease. Disease. The more sense it makes.
+4:00
One of my cats is missing. I keep thinking my disabled neighbour killed him. Ever since I moved in here, I’ve had a bad feeling about the fucker next door. He’s a piece of shit covered in human skin. Shit oozes out of every pore. You can see it in his eyes. This guy, he’s human garbage. He puts on a front out on the street, this veil thin charade. Then you hear him yelling abuse over the fence. Yelling empty death threats, the fucking coward. He’s just the sort of person I’d expect to kill a cat. I don’t trust him.
My cat always comes when it’s time for food. I can’t find him anywhere. I went outside, and looked around. I could hear my neighbour over the fence, dropping metal on concrete and knocking things over. It was so cold I could see my breath against the night sky. I stood there, staring at the fence, imagining the worst. Thinking, I’m going to kill this fucking guy. I want an excuse to kill the fucker.
Some people with brain injuries – which is what I suspect this guy has – have absolutely no sense of right and wrong. If you get struck in the right part of the brain, you become a sociopath: worse than a sociopath, because – on account of your disability – people have to put up with you. There are some disabled people that are horribly twisted lunatics. This guy, next door, people smile and say hello because there’s clearly something seriously wrong with him. But you don’t smile and say hello to Hitler.
I’ve struggled with this a bit. Am I leaping to conclusions about this guy, just because he’s different; like they did with Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Honestly, I don’t know.
All I know is I don’t like the fucker.
+4:10
I find the missing cat sitting outside the back door. He sees me, meows, and wanders inside. I dish him out some sardines. The meat smells horrible. It looks absolutely disgusting. Becoming a vegetarian is like quitting smoking. You realize what cigarettes smell like. Raw meat is pretty disgusting. It’s certainly not appetizing.
It occurs to me that my neighbour is like Boo, and that I’m the sick one. But that’s bullshit. I never suspected any of my other neighbours of killing my cat. The guy gives me the fucking creeps. It’s not just because he’s different, or because he’s disabled. He’s a fucking scumbag. Fuck him. I’m sick of second-guessing myself all the time and blaming myself for judging people who deserve to be judged. I would be happy if my neighbour died. If he was raped and murdered the world would be a better place. If that makes me sick, well so be it.
+4:20
In AA they refer to alcoholism as a disease, and a spiritual disorder. Because, if it was just a disease then there wouldn’t be any need for God. Lifelong alcoholism is not a medical condition. It is a spiritual condition. There are a lot of confusing aspects to the AA definition of alcoholism. A lot of people say it’s a genetic thing. But there’s a shitload of members who don’t have any history of alcoholism in their extended families going back four or five generations. So obviously that’s bullshit. They speak in absolutes. They say an alcoholic can never stop. The first drink always leads to oblivion. But there are a shitload of members who only became alcoholics at the age of thirty-five or forty. People who managed to drink in moderation until some point in their lives when they contracted the disease. They say it’s a lifelong thing, that alcoholics will never be cured.
I know people who used to be alcoholics who are now capable of drinking moderately. I brought this up at a meeting once. The response was, the person in question was never an alcoholic. I continued to argue with them. I told them about how he drank thirty to forty beers per day, every day, for over ten years. Then he stopped, got his life together, got an education, and a decent job, and now he can quite easily sit down with you and have a glass of wine without getting sloshed. Again, the response was: he wasn’t an alcoholic.
The funny thing is if my friend had gone to AA during that ten year period of alcoholism, they would have said he was an alcoholic. They would have tried to convince him. And if they were successful, he’d have “remained” an alcoholic rather than “curing” himself.
AA is dangerous in the same way that psychiatry is dangerous. Diagnosis is a horrible thing. To diagnose someone with an imaginary disease, spiritual disorder, illness, mental disorder, ailment: is about the worst thing you can do.
If you’re depressed and you go to a psychiatrist, they’ll you you’re depressed. They’ll repeat the word, like a mantra. Depressed. Depressed. Depressed. And if you accept diagnosis and keep coming back, you’ll hear it again and again. You’ll become convinced that you have this depression disorder. When you talk to people, you’ll start saying it. Depressed. Depressed. Depressed. With every repetition, it becomes more and more of a permanent fixture. Depressed. Diseased. Depressed. Diseased. Depressed. Diseased. Depressed. You start taking anti-depressants. There’s that word again. Every time you open the packet of, it’s there. Three times a day, every day. Anti-Depressant. Anti-Depressant. Anti-Depressant.
The emphasis should be on the positive, not the negative. Anti-depressants should be called happy pills and AA should be empowering. Convincing people that their addictions are worse than they are, will make their addictions worse than they are. Same thing goes for depression. When someone who believes they are an alcoholic relapses, they believe they have no choice. They will keep drinking until the pass out. So that’s what they do.
+4:40
I want to start a recovery program that takes the opposite approach. Convince people that they aren’t hopelessly addicted and powerless. Teach them control. Try to work out the reasons that they drink, or abuse drugs. And go about fixing those underlying problems.
Addictions are symptoms. They are not the cause of the problem, they are the misguided solution. People self-medicate because there is something wrong. They don’t perpetually self-medicate for the sake of self-medicating. Basically people drink alcohol to excess because they are unhappy. AA says stop drinking and you’ll become happy, but that only solves half of the problem. The long-time members I’ve encountered are, for the most part, miserable. The only difference between them now and when they were drunk is the lack of self-medication. That’s why it’s a struggle to stay sober; why they relapse; and why the “disease” is permanent for AA members: because the reason they feel the need to drink to excess is never addressed. These people need therapy. They don’t need a cult.
I don’t believe in schizophrenia or attention deficit disorder, or any other psychiatric illness; nor do I believe in alcoholism. I am a strong person. If I can quit smoking cigarettes, eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, eating sugar and consuming caffeine simultaneously; then I can drink moderately. I used to drink moderately, once upon a time. Then I suffered some serious tragedies in my life and I developed an addiction to help me cope. It’s a bad habit that I picked up during a time of extreme stress, and I can break it just like I can break any other habit I happen to pick up. I don’t have a disease. I am not weak.
My name is For Ever After, and I am not an alcoholic.
+5:00
I thought becoming a vegetarian would reduce my food budget. It didn’t. It increased it. I am always hungry. I have to constantly keep eating food.
When I was an omnivore, I could get away with tripping for twenty hours or so without bothering to eat anything. Now, after only five hours, I’m starving.
+6:07
The mushrooms are wearing off now. In thirty-three minutes it will be midnight, and phase two will begin. I have decided to take this opportunity to dig into my reserve stash and have one last trip; the last trip for the next four weeks.
+6:20 / 0:00
I weigh up 3 grams of dried mushroom powder and put it in the bottom of a pint glass. It looks like a lot. It’s been a long time since I’ve consumed mushrooms without the convenience of gel caps. I pour water into the pint glass. There is a centimetre thick layer of dried mushroom floating at the top.
Spinning the glass between my fingers, the powdered mushroom particles spiral downwards in the shape of a tornado. I place the glass on the desk and watch as the spiral disintegrates. Tiny mushroom chunks float in every direction, moving up and down, left and right, turning in circles. It is like looking into an agitated snow globe.
I lift the glass back up and drink before the mushroom bits have a chance to settle back up to floating position. The taste is surprisingly strong. I have forgotten. My body tries to reject the liquid. Bits of mushroom gather around my throat triggering my gag reflex, but I suppress it and continue swallowing. By the time I finish the glass, I feel mildly nauseous.
+0:10
It is ten minutes to midnight. I have had less than three hours sleep. Tomorrow morning I have a class, followed – directly – by a short shift at work. I will get very little sleep tonight, if any. Tomorrow will be difficult; but I’ll manage. This sobriety experiment has shown me that I am capable of anything. I am not afraid of being sober, or afraid of being high. I am not an alcoholic, or a drug-addict. I refuse to be diagnosed, labelled or categorized. Dependency is psychological. If you believe you need something, then you need it. I have proved this to myself by removing everything I am dependant on. I used to drink a lot of coffee. I used to think, especially at work, that I needed a cup to keep me going. But that’s bullshit. I don’t need coffee any more than I need amphetamines or cocaine. I don’t need anything. I am highly capable in my natural sober state. Whatever happens to me, whenever, I will manage.
+0:30
I can feel the mushrooms kicking in already. I feel a little sick, and a little tired. I go and lie down on the couch and watch Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia.
+3:00
It is my favourite film of all time. There are a couple of films that have had a profound emotional impact on me. Melancholia is number one.
If alcoholism is a symptom, then what is the disorder?
If I want to cure myself of alcoholism I must face the truth.
I don’t like the idea of psychiatric illnesses because the idea threatens me; I don’t like it when people talk about depression, because I am depressed.
I don’t have any friends. This isn’t because of an inability to socialize. I am a likeable person. If I wanted to make friends, I could so. I don’t have any friends because I don’t want to have any. I don’t see the point. It’s all such bullshit. People are dependent on people because they are insecure. Friends tell you that you’re okay. They confirm that you’re likeable.
I think of it like this. There are six billion people on the planet. In your lifetime, you get to know about a thousand. Of those thousand, you chose the most compatible to be your close friends. But, somewhere in the world there are people better suited. Mathematically, there has to be. We settle for what is available. We make do.
If you only ever met one person in your life, they would be your only option as a friend. And, you’d be grateful to have them. Because people need people. It doesn’t matter who the other person is. It’s a matter of co-dependency.
I told my wife this. I said, shortly after we were married, that there was probably someone on the planet that both of us would be happier with; someone more compatible, for each of us. Mathematically, there must be, I said.
She didn’t argue with me. She knew that it was true. No matter how in love we were, there was a stronger love out there somewhere. The unattainable perfection. We were settling. Both of us, for each other.
If I only ever met one woman in my life, I would have to love her.
I’ve been pursuing what I consider to be the ultimate truth for a long time, at the expense of my happiness. I’ve gone too far now to turn back. I know too much. I wanted to break down the world around me. Because it’s all fucking bullshit. Fashion and cuisine and fast cars and advertising and love. I never believed in any of it. So, I set about deprogramming myself.
My wife came along for the ride.
Eventually it landed her in a mental institution. She tried to kill herself by jumping off a balcony – high on LSD. But she didn’t die. She permanently damaged her spine. But the psychosis was so strong that she didn’t even notice. She disappeared into the neighbourhood. The police found her half a day later, naked, claw marks in her flesh.
My wife was weak. She couldn’t handle the ride.
I drove her insane.
I didn’t mean to.
It just happened.
The whole thing was very difficult on me, but I had to be strong. For her sake. So I stopped feeling. I made myself invincible. I remember telling her when I visited her in the psych ward that I was a skyscraper. This incredible strength came from nowhere.
As the situation got more and more complicated, I stayed strong. I remained a skyscraper; invincible. She had enough to deal with. Losing my shit wasn’t going to do her any good. So I swallowed it. I swallowed everything. Her parents blamed me for her condition. They were just lashing out. But they were right. I had destroyed this beautiful young woman, their daughter.
She told me she wanted a divorce over the phone.
It’s been over two years, now.
I don’t have any friends. I have basically no human contact whatsoever. I haven’t allowed myself to get close to anyone, other than my ex-wife, for over a decade.
Sometimes I feel like going out and making friends. But it’s all so depressing. Deciding that I like someone enough to want to spend time around them. Organising social interactions. Having conversations I don’t want to have, and pretending I’m interested.
Society tells me I should do this. People say that everybody needs human contact. But, I don’t. I want to be different. I want to be normal. I want to want people in my life, so that I can have people in my life and be happy. But I can’t change who I am. There is no way to convince myself, now. I’ve thought about it for too long. I’m not going to forget how I feel. I’m not going to ever be content pretending to be happy. If I meet another woman, I will go through the same series of events with her. I will tell her that – mathematically – true love doesn’t exist. That it is unattainable. I will tell her that she is a statistic. Because she is, and I’m not going to lie about it. Why should I?
I can’t date another woman, because I don’t want to destroy another life. Taking someone who is blissfully unaware of the devastating truth and exposing them to it for the sake of co-dependency is selfish. And, I will not do it.
I’d rather be alone.
I lie to my family. I tell them I have friends. I make up stories about people that I hang out with. I tell my mother that there are girls I flirt with at university. Really, there are no girls. There are no friends. I am alone.
+3:40
I try to make myself cry sometimes when I watch films. I want to cry. Because, that way, I can convince myself that I am still human. That I still feel. I didn’t do this with Melancholia. I have to accept the fact that I am beyond saving. My disease is incurable. It has spread to the lymph nodes and beyond. I have gone too far, to turn back now. However much I want to cry, that is not who I am anymore.
I am a skyscraper; cold and empty.
+3:45
I honestly couldn’t care less if my neighbour died. The human race is so disgusting to me, I really don’t give a shit when I see on the news that ten thousand people died in an earthquake. Part of me says good; fuck them; the world is better off. Another part of me feels guilty. Because I should feel guilty. Because that’s what people are supposed to feel.
I need to stop resisting.
I don’t care if people live or die.
Most human beings are utterly selfish ignorant pieces of shit. I rarely meet someone who is willing to sacrifice their own happiness. People are always complaining about how difficult their lives are. How some guy at work treats them like shit. Or their girlfriend cheated on them. They’re never satisfied, despite how blissfully ignorant they are. No matter how many luxuries they have. No matter how much damage they are doing to the environment, it’s never enough. Life is so difficult. I could be happier. I could have more. Me. Me. Me.
The average person deserves to die. There is no consideration for the state of the planet. People recycle and they think they are doing their part. Fuck that. The amount of environmental damage that the average person is responsible for is beyond calculation. How many litres of gasoline does the average Australian use in a lifetime? Millions. Do we deserve millions of litres of gasoline? Fuck no. We’re selfish. We don’t give a shit about the state of the planet. It’s all Me. Me. Me. Get the latest technology. Drive the fastest car. Life a hip enviable lifestyle – which you can comparatively justify as happiness. As long as you’re happier than everybody else around you. That’s the goal. To win the happy competition.
In the end, people settle for a certain attainable level of happy. They say they’re content, but really they want to have billions of dollars and own a fleet of private jets. Given the opportunity, pretty much everyone on the planet will life a selfish joy ride of a life. Because people are inherently selfish.
Power corrupts. That doesn’t mean that power is evil. People are evil. Power just gives us the opportunity to fully realise how selfish we really are.
I don’t care if people live or die because they don’t deserve to live.
I don’t deserve this life. The world would be better off without me.
I honestly think that somebody should kill ninety nine per cent of the world’s population. The character in 12 Monkeys that releases the virus, I always related to him. He’s supposed to be the villain, but he’s actually the hero. The less people on this planet the better.
I am too selfish to kill myself and I lack the ability to kill everyone else. If I could release a virus that destroyed humanity without damaging the environment, I would do it. Except for the fact that I’m too selfish to lose my own life for the sake of the entire planet.
I toy with the idea that if I had a terminal illness, I would kill a whole bunch of people. It’s the terminally ill’s responsibility to take out as many people as possible before they die. The only way to write off the damage that you have done to the environment is to kill a handful of people and, therefore, prevent them from causing incalculable destruction. Killing yourself is not enough, because the damage has already been done. Dying doesn’t undo the negative impact you’ve had on the planet. The only way for the world to be better off, is if you kill a lot of people. Living in the mountains like a monk isn’t good enough. The damage has already been done. The only solution is murder.
I would murder my neighbour if I could get away with it. And, I’d enjoy it too. Hell, I’d kill all sorts of people if I could. But I don’t want to face the consequences.
Human beings are inherently selfish, and the last time I checked I wasn’t a tortoise.
So, I’m not going to kill anyone. And, I’m not going to kill myself.
I’m just going to continue pissing acid into the earth until it dries up and dies. This is why I care more about my cats than I do about myself; it is my way of apologizing to the planet.
I’m not going to go to work today. I’m too depressed to put on my happy face. I’m fucking sick of having to pretend like I care. It should be socially acceptable to be depressed. It should be illegal for companies to insist that their workers act happy. Emotional prostitution is worse than physical prostitution.
I’d rather be paid to be fucked in the ass than be paid to lie.
Day Fourteen: "Melancholia"
I’ve had two hours sleep; been working on assignments for university all night. Tonight is my last opportunity to trip. For the next four weeks, there will be no drugs whatsoever – mushrooms or otherwise.
0:00
I swallow the last six gel caps; roughly 2.1 grams of dried mushrooms.
+0:30
I am tired. Being a vegetarian means I need to sleep more. That’s one thing I’ve noticed about the lack of meat. The energy isn’t sustained. Whatever you consume, it gets digested three times as fast. With meat, you can eat a big steak and be right for the next sixteen hours.
I need to go to sleep. It’s a shame, because it’s my last opportunity for a long time. But, it doesn’t matter too much. I’d rather have the rest. I lie down on the couch and go to sleep.
+1:10
I wake up, tripping. It is freezing. I am so cold that my entire body is shaking. You can’t understand how cold it is. There are homeless people in Siberia dying in the snow that are warmer than I am. I turn on the heater and curl up under the blankets. I try to go to sleep. The trip hasn’t kicked in properly yet. If I manage to go to sleep quickly, I might be able to avoid it. I lie there, dead tired and freezing to death, trying to get to sleep before the mushrooms arrive. It is a race I am destined to lose. I knew as soon as I swallowed those six gel caps that it was a one-way street. Still, I stay there for half an hour trying to convince myself that I can go to sleep; even when the trip is fully formed I am thinking it’s possible.
+1:30
My stomach body is delicate during the transition from reality to the world of psychedelics. My joints are stiff. My stomach is trigger happy to evacuate itself. I can feel the sensation spreading throughout my body. But I don’t want it. I’m too tired. It’s too cold. So I don’t move. I remain perfectly still. And the sensation struggles to spread to my extremities. I stay like that – frozen, like a baby refusing to eat – for about five minutes before finally giving in.
+1:40
I get up. It is so cold that walking around is almost impossible. I have to bend over myself, curling into a ball, as I walk. There is something seriously wrong here. People aren’t meant to be this cold. I used to live in the snow, and it wasn’t this cold. It’s a medical condition. It must be. My blood is failing to produce heat or something. I am becoming reptilian.
+1:45
I realize the back door is wide open. I have a habit of doing this, even in winter, so that my cats can wander in and out as they please. I don’t like the idea of confining wild animals between four walls. I am a wild animal. I am confined, caged. I know what it’s like.
My female cat refuses to come inside. I tell her that I’m going to close the door and she’ll be stuck outside in the cold. She doesn’t believe me. It breaks my heart to close the door and leave her out there. I seriously consider leaving it open.
I think I often consider the welfare of my pets more than my own. When I don’t have enough money to eat, I prioritize cat food over my own groceries. Because it isn’t fair to them, they don’t understand. I’m extremely skinny. You don’t need to do an x-ray to see my bones. My cats are all well fed. One of them is downright fat. When I have kids it will be the same thing. The vulnerable will always take priority; because they need me to survive. They depend on me. I don’t depend on anyone but myself. If I’m a failure, that’s my own fault. It’s not their fault. If I don’t have enough money for food because I spent it on alcohol – like I used to do – then why should they suffer? It should be me that suffers. And, it is, always.
My cat runs off, happily, onto the lawn. She’s not freezing. She has enough meat on her bones to insulate her against the cold. And that thick long coat of fur.
I neglect myself sometimes. I’m so busy thinking about other people and I don’t include myself in that category. Other people, not people. It’s everyone else I have to make considerations for: cats and dogs and people. I’m always catering to people’s sensitivities and humouring them in one way or another. I’m always cleaning up after my cats, feeding them, patting them. I feel for them. These pampered animals. I don’t feel for myself.
I close the door.
+2:15
My leg has been resting on a radiator, going full blast, for the past half an hour. I’m still fucking cold. It’s manageable now, though. I stopped shaking. I’m de-thawing myself having discovered my body frozen in the centre of a block of ice upon awakening. It’s a good thing I woke up and closed the door; otherwise I might have caught pneumonia.
+2:25
I’m the sort of person that delays doing something by planning it. I’ll actually sit down and spend the time that it takes to do whatever it is without actually doing it. I write about doing it. I make lists. I create daily plans detailing what I’m going to do. But I never do it. That’s what psychedelic drugs are all about, being overly conscious about what needs to be done; maybe that’s why they appeal to me. I can dwell in this state of pre-existence, forever planning, forever creating lists in my head of the incredible things I will achieve.
Then again, maybe it’s had an impact. I don’t think I’d be a vegetarian now if it wasn’t for psychedelic drugs. I wouldn’t be sober either. It’s funny, taking psilocybin eventually makes me want to stop taking it along with everything else. Alcohol doesn’t work like that. Booze isn’t capable of being self-critical. Mushrooms question their own existence. They would rather not be ingested, if that’s the right thing to do. Alcohol doesn’t have a conscience.
Psilocybin is a cure. It forces addicts to address the nature of addiction. You think about it from every angle possible, and – after a while – you can’t lie to yourself anymore. That’s why a lot of serious drug users don’t like psilocybin. It threatens their lifestyle.
Alcohol isn’t a cure. It’s a never ending treatment. It’s the illness and the remedy and the illness and the remedy, a thousand times over. It’s not an honest drug. It plays devil’s advocate. It will do whatever you want it to. It will bend over backwards and take it up the ass without question, if that’s what you want. If you want to lie to yourself, no worries; it likes a liar. Liars make good drunks.
+2:35
This is the first trip I’ve had since I started going to AA. I’ve been listening to these people day in, day out for the past seven days. Probably something like eighty stories I’ve heard, all up, most of them horrible. And there’s this word that keeps getting repeated. The word is disease. They all say it, all the time. They keep repeating it like cult members repeat hypnotic mantras. Disease. Disease. Disease. Alcoholism is a disease. And if you tell them you don’t think it is a disease, they get all self-righteous. They say, “It’s recognized by the Australian Board of Health!”. “It’s a disease, full stop. There’s no question.” Then they repeat it a couple more times. Disease. Disease. Disease. Some of them have been going to meetings for forty years. Seriously. Forty years. I don’t know how many repetitions of the word disease that is, because I’m not a supercomputer, but it’s a fucking lot. These people are seriously brain-washed.
I went to a meeting the other day, and there were a bunch of people sitting around a table, with books spread open in front of them. I thought I had the wrong day. Turns out it’s a Big Book study. The Big Book is the Bible of Alcoholism.
At the beginning of every meeting the chairperson has to read the opening statements, which include something along the lines of this: “We are not affiliated with any sect, denomination or religious organization.” This is absolute horseshit. Meetings take place in churches. At least half of the members talk about God. How God saved them from Alcohol.
Hanging from the wall is the serenity prayer, which starts off with: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” At the end of every meeting, all the attendees are required to join hands and say the serenity prayer out loud.
Hanging on either side of it, are the twelve steps and the twelve traditions. The first of the twelve steps is: “Admit that you are powerless in the face of alcohol, that you are a weakling, and that you need God to save you.” That’s not a direct quote, mind you, but it’s pretty close.
The word God is plastered all over the interior of the church, and they force you to pray, yet they insist that the organization is non-religious. This is why it is a cult rather than an offshoot of Christianity. Because people don’t even realize they are partaking in something that is blatantly religious. AA is far worse than organized religion.
The whole powerless thing they force down people’s throats. It’s not empowering. They don’t tell you that you have the power to beat alcohol. They tell you that you don’t have the power to beat alcohol, that you’re weak. It is the opposite of empowering. They take people at their lowest and most vulnerable moment and crush them into a speck of dust.
These forty year members, who haven’t touched a drink for decades, some of them don’t even see it as a personal accomplishment. It’s not them who stopped drinking, because they’re powerless. It’s God that stopped them drinking.
AA replaces the word God with Higher Power. This is so they can argue the fact that the organization is not affiliated with any sect, denomination or religious organization. But it is. It’s a Christian cult. They say they’re all about helping alcoholics, but really that’s not what they’re all about. What they want to do is recruit people to Christianity, via the cult of AA, by offering a helping hand. It’s like the missionaries in Africa, saying we’ll feed you as long as you pray. Day after day, these poor villagers have to sell out their spiritual beliefs in order to eat. After a while, the association between survival and religion sets in concrete. It’s basic conditioning. A correlation is formed.
Christianity is an evil fucking religion. It will bend the moral code that it supposedly stems from in order to recruit people. How people are recruited doesn’t matter. The more I think about it, the more I think Christianity – itself – is a cult. AA is more obvious. It is less clever than Christianity at disguising itself.
The Big Book of Alcoholism is poorly written. It reminds me of Dianetics, the Scientology Bible. Assuming that you’re relatively intelligent, and you lack the predisposition towards being brainwashed, it’s pretty easy to recognize it as a manipulative work of fiction.
AA members would genuinely laugh if I said this to them. For them, it is as convincing a piece of literature as the Bible is to the pope.
During the Big Book Study, there was this one lady that kept nodding. She agreed with every sentence, and she wanted us to know that she agreed: this huge smile on her face, nodding so vigorously I thought she might decapitate herself. I sat there for an hour and a half as we went through passage after passage. With every word, she nodded. The smile never faded. She might as well have been saying ‘Amen’ with every tick of the clock and fucking ‘halleluiah!’ with every tock. It was sickening to witness; really, just horrible.
And, although the rest of them weren’t quite as extroverted about it as her, you could tell they were nodding on the inside. A lot of them muttered approvingly throughout the readings. Nobody said, hold on a second – isn’t this a load of bullshit?
The average age of AA members is something like forty-five. Big meetings, like the South Yarra one, have enough young people to bring the number down overall. Small suburban meetings, the average age is well over fifty.
The chairman at the Big Book Study said that ninety-five per cent of alcoholics don’t ever come to meetings; and ninety five per cent of those that do come, don’t manage to stay sober. I’m not sure where he’s getting his statistics from. The annual alcoholic census, I guess. Anyway, he made it sound like some sort of a mystery why people don’t go to meetings.
People don’t go to AA because it’s a fucking cult. If they really cared about treating alcoholism then they would drop all the God nonsense and just help people. It isn’t a fucking mystery. Christians have a monopoly over alcoholic treatment in Australia. They have hotels on Boardwalk and Park Lane. They don’t care about helping people. They want to win the game. They want numbers. They want members. Like any organization wants members. Like any company wants more customers. Christianity is a competitive machine. If Jesus ever existed, his message is lost; smothered by power hungry capitalising immoral hypnotists.
Buddhism doesn’t try to recruit. It doesn’t lure people in with food and then smack them over the head with the Bible. It doesn’t scoop victims of self-destructive behaviour from rock bottom and rewire them to spread the word. Buddhism is quite happy for you to come to it. It doesn’t want to force you. It doesn’t go door knocking. It doesn’t hand out pamphlets.
AA is creepy like a pyramid scheme. People invest in it and invest in it, and – after a while –they have no choice but to lure in other investors, for fear of losing everything. They want you to believe, so they can maintain their beliefs. The more people around you saying: Disease. Disease. Disease. The more sense it makes.
+4:00
One of my cats is missing. I keep thinking my disabled neighbour killed him. Ever since I moved in here, I’ve had a bad feeling about the fucker next door. He’s a piece of shit covered in human skin. Shit oozes out of every pore. You can see it in his eyes. This guy, he’s human garbage. He puts on a front out on the street, this veil thin charade. Then you hear him yelling abuse over the fence. Yelling empty death threats, the fucking coward. He’s just the sort of person I’d expect to kill a cat. I don’t trust him.
My cat always comes when it’s time for food. I can’t find him anywhere. I went outside, and looked around. I could hear my neighbour over the fence, dropping metal on concrete and knocking things over. It was so cold I could see my breath against the night sky. I stood there, staring at the fence, imagining the worst. Thinking, I’m going to kill this fucking guy. I want an excuse to kill the fucker.
Some people with brain injuries – which is what I suspect this guy has – have absolutely no sense of right and wrong. If you get struck in the right part of the brain, you become a sociopath: worse than a sociopath, because – on account of your disability – people have to put up with you. There are some disabled people that are horribly twisted lunatics. This guy, next door, people smile and say hello because there’s clearly something seriously wrong with him. But you don’t smile and say hello to Hitler.
I’ve struggled with this a bit. Am I leaping to conclusions about this guy, just because he’s different; like they did with Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Honestly, I don’t know.
All I know is I don’t like the fucker.
+4:10
I find the missing cat sitting outside the back door. He sees me, meows, and wanders inside. I dish him out some sardines. The meat smells horrible. It looks absolutely disgusting. Becoming a vegetarian is like quitting smoking. You realize what cigarettes smell like. Raw meat is pretty disgusting. It’s certainly not appetizing.
It occurs to me that my neighbour is like Boo, and that I’m the sick one. But that’s bullshit. I never suspected any of my other neighbours of killing my cat. The guy gives me the fucking creeps. It’s not just because he’s different, or because he’s disabled. He’s a fucking scumbag. Fuck him. I’m sick of second-guessing myself all the time and blaming myself for judging people who deserve to be judged. I would be happy if my neighbour died. If he was raped and murdered the world would be a better place. If that makes me sick, well so be it.
+4:20
In AA they refer to alcoholism as a disease, and a spiritual disorder. Because, if it was just a disease then there wouldn’t be any need for God. Lifelong alcoholism is not a medical condition. It is a spiritual condition. There are a lot of confusing aspects to the AA definition of alcoholism. A lot of people say it’s a genetic thing. But there’s a shitload of members who don’t have any history of alcoholism in their extended families going back four or five generations. So obviously that’s bullshit. They speak in absolutes. They say an alcoholic can never stop. The first drink always leads to oblivion. But there are a shitload of members who only became alcoholics at the age of thirty-five or forty. People who managed to drink in moderation until some point in their lives when they contracted the disease. They say it’s a lifelong thing, that alcoholics will never be cured.
I know people who used to be alcoholics who are now capable of drinking moderately. I brought this up at a meeting once. The response was, the person in question was never an alcoholic. I continued to argue with them. I told them about how he drank thirty to forty beers per day, every day, for over ten years. Then he stopped, got his life together, got an education, and a decent job, and now he can quite easily sit down with you and have a glass of wine without getting sloshed. Again, the response was: he wasn’t an alcoholic.
The funny thing is if my friend had gone to AA during that ten year period of alcoholism, they would have said he was an alcoholic. They would have tried to convince him. And if they were successful, he’d have “remained” an alcoholic rather than “curing” himself.
AA is dangerous in the same way that psychiatry is dangerous. Diagnosis is a horrible thing. To diagnose someone with an imaginary disease, spiritual disorder, illness, mental disorder, ailment: is about the worst thing you can do.
If you’re depressed and you go to a psychiatrist, they’ll you you’re depressed. They’ll repeat the word, like a mantra. Depressed. Depressed. Depressed. And if you accept diagnosis and keep coming back, you’ll hear it again and again. You’ll become convinced that you have this depression disorder. When you talk to people, you’ll start saying it. Depressed. Depressed. Depressed. With every repetition, it becomes more and more of a permanent fixture. Depressed. Diseased. Depressed. Diseased. Depressed. Diseased. Depressed. You start taking anti-depressants. There’s that word again. Every time you open the packet of, it’s there. Three times a day, every day. Anti-Depressant. Anti-Depressant. Anti-Depressant.
The emphasis should be on the positive, not the negative. Anti-depressants should be called happy pills and AA should be empowering. Convincing people that their addictions are worse than they are, will make their addictions worse than they are. Same thing goes for depression. When someone who believes they are an alcoholic relapses, they believe they have no choice. They will keep drinking until the pass out. So that’s what they do.
+4:40
I want to start a recovery program that takes the opposite approach. Convince people that they aren’t hopelessly addicted and powerless. Teach them control. Try to work out the reasons that they drink, or abuse drugs. And go about fixing those underlying problems.
Addictions are symptoms. They are not the cause of the problem, they are the misguided solution. People self-medicate because there is something wrong. They don’t perpetually self-medicate for the sake of self-medicating. Basically people drink alcohol to excess because they are unhappy. AA says stop drinking and you’ll become happy, but that only solves half of the problem. The long-time members I’ve encountered are, for the most part, miserable. The only difference between them now and when they were drunk is the lack of self-medication. That’s why it’s a struggle to stay sober; why they relapse; and why the “disease” is permanent for AA members: because the reason they feel the need to drink to excess is never addressed. These people need therapy. They don’t need a cult.
I don’t believe in schizophrenia or attention deficit disorder, or any other psychiatric illness; nor do I believe in alcoholism. I am a strong person. If I can quit smoking cigarettes, eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, eating sugar and consuming caffeine simultaneously; then I can drink moderately. I used to drink moderately, once upon a time. Then I suffered some serious tragedies in my life and I developed an addiction to help me cope. It’s a bad habit that I picked up during a time of extreme stress, and I can break it just like I can break any other habit I happen to pick up. I don’t have a disease. I am not weak.
My name is For Ever After, and I am not an alcoholic.
+5:00
I thought becoming a vegetarian would reduce my food budget. It didn’t. It increased it. I am always hungry. I have to constantly keep eating food.
When I was an omnivore, I could get away with tripping for twenty hours or so without bothering to eat anything. Now, after only five hours, I’m starving.
+6:07
The mushrooms are wearing off now. In thirty-three minutes it will be midnight, and phase two will begin. I have decided to take this opportunity to dig into my reserve stash and have one last trip; the last trip for the next four weeks.
+6:20 / 0:00
I weigh up 3 grams of dried mushroom powder and put it in the bottom of a pint glass. It looks like a lot. It’s been a long time since I’ve consumed mushrooms without the convenience of gel caps. I pour water into the pint glass. There is a centimetre thick layer of dried mushroom floating at the top.
Spinning the glass between my fingers, the powdered mushroom particles spiral downwards in the shape of a tornado. I place the glass on the desk and watch as the spiral disintegrates. Tiny mushroom chunks float in every direction, moving up and down, left and right, turning in circles. It is like looking into an agitated snow globe.
I lift the glass back up and drink before the mushroom bits have a chance to settle back up to floating position. The taste is surprisingly strong. I have forgotten. My body tries to reject the liquid. Bits of mushroom gather around my throat triggering my gag reflex, but I suppress it and continue swallowing. By the time I finish the glass, I feel mildly nauseous.
+0:10
It is ten minutes to midnight. I have had less than three hours sleep. Tomorrow morning I have a class, followed – directly – by a short shift at work. I will get very little sleep tonight, if any. Tomorrow will be difficult; but I’ll manage. This sobriety experiment has shown me that I am capable of anything. I am not afraid of being sober, or afraid of being high. I am not an alcoholic, or a drug-addict. I refuse to be diagnosed, labelled or categorized. Dependency is psychological. If you believe you need something, then you need it. I have proved this to myself by removing everything I am dependant on. I used to drink a lot of coffee. I used to think, especially at work, that I needed a cup to keep me going. But that’s bullshit. I don’t need coffee any more than I need amphetamines or cocaine. I don’t need anything. I am highly capable in my natural sober state. Whatever happens to me, whenever, I will manage.
+0:30
I can feel the mushrooms kicking in already. I feel a little sick, and a little tired. I go and lie down on the couch and watch Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia.
+3:00
It is my favourite film of all time. There are a couple of films that have had a profound emotional impact on me. Melancholia is number one.
If alcoholism is a symptom, then what is the disorder?
If I want to cure myself of alcoholism I must face the truth.
I don’t like the idea of psychiatric illnesses because the idea threatens me; I don’t like it when people talk about depression, because I am depressed.
I don’t have any friends. This isn’t because of an inability to socialize. I am a likeable person. If I wanted to make friends, I could so. I don’t have any friends because I don’t want to have any. I don’t see the point. It’s all such bullshit. People are dependent on people because they are insecure. Friends tell you that you’re okay. They confirm that you’re likeable.
I think of it like this. There are six billion people on the planet. In your lifetime, you get to know about a thousand. Of those thousand, you chose the most compatible to be your close friends. But, somewhere in the world there are people better suited. Mathematically, there has to be. We settle for what is available. We make do.
If you only ever met one person in your life, they would be your only option as a friend. And, you’d be grateful to have them. Because people need people. It doesn’t matter who the other person is. It’s a matter of co-dependency.
I told my wife this. I said, shortly after we were married, that there was probably someone on the planet that both of us would be happier with; someone more compatible, for each of us. Mathematically, there must be, I said.
She didn’t argue with me. She knew that it was true. No matter how in love we were, there was a stronger love out there somewhere. The unattainable perfection. We were settling. Both of us, for each other.
If I only ever met one woman in my life, I would have to love her.
I’ve been pursuing what I consider to be the ultimate truth for a long time, at the expense of my happiness. I’ve gone too far now to turn back. I know too much. I wanted to break down the world around me. Because it’s all fucking bullshit. Fashion and cuisine and fast cars and advertising and love. I never believed in any of it. So, I set about deprogramming myself.
My wife came along for the ride.
Eventually it landed her in a mental institution. She tried to kill herself by jumping off a balcony – high on LSD. But she didn’t die. She permanently damaged her spine. But the psychosis was so strong that she didn’t even notice. She disappeared into the neighbourhood. The police found her half a day later, naked, claw marks in her flesh.
My wife was weak. She couldn’t handle the ride.
I drove her insane.
I didn’t mean to.
It just happened.
The whole thing was very difficult on me, but I had to be strong. For her sake. So I stopped feeling. I made myself invincible. I remember telling her when I visited her in the psych ward that I was a skyscraper. This incredible strength came from nowhere.
As the situation got more and more complicated, I stayed strong. I remained a skyscraper; invincible. She had enough to deal with. Losing my shit wasn’t going to do her any good. So I swallowed it. I swallowed everything. Her parents blamed me for her condition. They were just lashing out. But they were right. I had destroyed this beautiful young woman, their daughter.
She told me she wanted a divorce over the phone.
It’s been over two years, now.
I don’t have any friends. I have basically no human contact whatsoever. I haven’t allowed myself to get close to anyone, other than my ex-wife, for over a decade.
Sometimes I feel like going out and making friends. But it’s all so depressing. Deciding that I like someone enough to want to spend time around them. Organising social interactions. Having conversations I don’t want to have, and pretending I’m interested.
Society tells me I should do this. People say that everybody needs human contact. But, I don’t. I want to be different. I want to be normal. I want to want people in my life, so that I can have people in my life and be happy. But I can’t change who I am. There is no way to convince myself, now. I’ve thought about it for too long. I’m not going to forget how I feel. I’m not going to ever be content pretending to be happy. If I meet another woman, I will go through the same series of events with her. I will tell her that – mathematically – true love doesn’t exist. That it is unattainable. I will tell her that she is a statistic. Because she is, and I’m not going to lie about it. Why should I?
I can’t date another woman, because I don’t want to destroy another life. Taking someone who is blissfully unaware of the devastating truth and exposing them to it for the sake of co-dependency is selfish. And, I will not do it.
I’d rather be alone.
I lie to my family. I tell them I have friends. I make up stories about people that I hang out with. I tell my mother that there are girls I flirt with at university. Really, there are no girls. There are no friends. I am alone.
+3:40
I try to make myself cry sometimes when I watch films. I want to cry. Because, that way, I can convince myself that I am still human. That I still feel. I didn’t do this with Melancholia. I have to accept the fact that I am beyond saving. My disease is incurable. It has spread to the lymph nodes and beyond. I have gone too far, to turn back now. However much I want to cry, that is not who I am anymore.
I am a skyscraper; cold and empty.
+3:45
I honestly couldn’t care less if my neighbour died. The human race is so disgusting to me, I really don’t give a shit when I see on the news that ten thousand people died in an earthquake. Part of me says good; fuck them; the world is better off. Another part of me feels guilty. Because I should feel guilty. Because that’s what people are supposed to feel.
I need to stop resisting.
I don’t care if people live or die.
Most human beings are utterly selfish ignorant pieces of shit. I rarely meet someone who is willing to sacrifice their own happiness. People are always complaining about how difficult their lives are. How some guy at work treats them like shit. Or their girlfriend cheated on them. They’re never satisfied, despite how blissfully ignorant they are. No matter how many luxuries they have. No matter how much damage they are doing to the environment, it’s never enough. Life is so difficult. I could be happier. I could have more. Me. Me. Me.
The average person deserves to die. There is no consideration for the state of the planet. People recycle and they think they are doing their part. Fuck that. The amount of environmental damage that the average person is responsible for is beyond calculation. How many litres of gasoline does the average Australian use in a lifetime? Millions. Do we deserve millions of litres of gasoline? Fuck no. We’re selfish. We don’t give a shit about the state of the planet. It’s all Me. Me. Me. Get the latest technology. Drive the fastest car. Life a hip enviable lifestyle – which you can comparatively justify as happiness. As long as you’re happier than everybody else around you. That’s the goal. To win the happy competition.
In the end, people settle for a certain attainable level of happy. They say they’re content, but really they want to have billions of dollars and own a fleet of private jets. Given the opportunity, pretty much everyone on the planet will life a selfish joy ride of a life. Because people are inherently selfish.
Power corrupts. That doesn’t mean that power is evil. People are evil. Power just gives us the opportunity to fully realise how selfish we really are.
I don’t care if people live or die because they don’t deserve to live.
I don’t deserve this life. The world would be better off without me.
I honestly think that somebody should kill ninety nine per cent of the world’s population. The character in 12 Monkeys that releases the virus, I always related to him. He’s supposed to be the villain, but he’s actually the hero. The less people on this planet the better.
I am too selfish to kill myself and I lack the ability to kill everyone else. If I could release a virus that destroyed humanity without damaging the environment, I would do it. Except for the fact that I’m too selfish to lose my own life for the sake of the entire planet.
I toy with the idea that if I had a terminal illness, I would kill a whole bunch of people. It’s the terminally ill’s responsibility to take out as many people as possible before they die. The only way to write off the damage that you have done to the environment is to kill a handful of people and, therefore, prevent them from causing incalculable destruction. Killing yourself is not enough, because the damage has already been done. Dying doesn’t undo the negative impact you’ve had on the planet. The only way for the world to be better off, is if you kill a lot of people. Living in the mountains like a monk isn’t good enough. The damage has already been done. The only solution is murder.
I would murder my neighbour if I could get away with it. And, I’d enjoy it too. Hell, I’d kill all sorts of people if I could. But I don’t want to face the consequences.
Human beings are inherently selfish, and the last time I checked I wasn’t a tortoise.
So, I’m not going to kill anyone. And, I’m not going to kill myself.
I’m just going to continue pissing acid into the earth until it dries up and dies. This is why I care more about my cats than I do about myself; it is my way of apologizing to the planet.
I’m not going to go to work today. I’m too depressed to put on my happy face. I’m fucking sick of having to pretend like I care. It should be socially acceptable to be depressed. It should be illegal for companies to insist that their workers act happy. Emotional prostitution is worse than physical prostitution.
I’d rather be paid to be fucked in the ass than be paid to lie.
