[HN Gopher] The Endlessly Examined Life (2014)
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       The Endlessly Examined Life (2014)
        
       Author : jereees
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2021-03-01 07:43 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thebaffler.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thebaffler.com)
        
       | SummerlyMars wrote:
       | _> He currently has fears that his turning away from religion may
       | have been a mistake and that he could be damned to hell for this.
       | He also fears punishment for compulsive masturbation, which he
       | says he engaged in daily for ten years prior to his loss of
       | sexual urges these last few months._
       | 
       | This reminded me a bit too much of myself. Never actively
       | religious, unlike the author, I developed (pure obsessional)
       | obsessive compulsive disorder in my teens and fixated on the
       | nominally Catholic identity I'd been introduced to as a child. I
       | was never _happy_ about what little religion I had, but I came to
       | the conclusion that it was absolutely true, and I took everything
       | I knew about it to its (seemingly) logical conclusion. The years
       | of shame, guilt and loneliness that I experienced as a result
       | aren 't something that I'd wish upon anyone. It's worth pointing
       | out that my beliefs were far from mainstream, but if you'd
       | pressed me on it, I would have insisted that no, I was right and
       | everybody else was doing it wrong.
       | 
       | Thankfully, I got on antidepressants a few years ago, and
       | anafranil works like a charm for me (Fluoxetine, aka Prozac
       | worked as well, but I've found the anafranil to be more effective
       | with less side effects. That's just me though, and there's no
       | reason to assume it would be true for others). I can look at my
       | past obsessions as deluded and wonder why many of the things that
       | bothered me actually did. That, combined with regular cannabis
       | use[1], therapy, and making extra effort to be critical of my
       | thoughts and feelings has given me my life back. Despite covid
       | anxiety, I'm in one of the best mental states of my life now.
       | 
       | I'm not advocating for anything here. I haven't discovered some
       | sort of cure-all treatment, just a series of interventions that
       | I've associated with improvements in my mental health. Talk to
       | your doctor before trying anything, don't use cannabis if you
       | have a history of psychosis (and start low if you don't, anxiety,
       | paranoia, and possibly even psychosis in the middle of a mental
       | crisis is the last thing you want), etc.
       | 
       | If there's a moral to this ramble, it's this: even if it feels
       | hopeless, even if you think you're damned, you can't know for
       | sure. I've improved, maybe you can too.
       | 
       | [1] My hypothesis as to why it was useful to me for stopping
       | episodes of rumination is because of the way it reduces short
       | term memory while high. It's hard to obsess when it takes effort
       | to remember your most recent thoughts.
        
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