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Comment by ehPReth | Hacker News Reader

whilst at work I count down the minutes until I can get home and have a nice drink. the booze soothes, and helps me forget about.... everything. what is there to live for in a life without substance, without substances? nothing. so i'll scurry away to make a wage to pay for these substances to soothe my soul until one day the flesh and bone around it collapses and i'm finally, finally, set free.

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Amen, I’m in the same boat. I feel constantly surrounded by people who don’t get it. Don’t follow instructions, don’t communicate, don’t think critically. I know it’s me and my expectations, and I try to cope as much as possible, but it’s always creating more work for me to get to what I’m trying to accomplish. And thus, reliance on substances to get past the mundane is the cure, for now. I try to put down those substances time to time, but it seems they keep coming back.

I've felt this way for the better part of a decade. Then I read about how alcohol causes anxiety and then temporarily relieves the anxiety that it causes. I've been a little over two weeks without it now and I've noticed a decrease in my anxiety. Just not having the constant thought of when my next drink will be is relieving.

Alcohol is an interesting beast, certainly bad for your physical health but IMHO it's invaluable for your mental health in small doses.

I'm not exactly a drug expert, my experience is limited to a few substances but nothing ever comes close to alcohol. It melts away all the fake constraints(the limits and problems which you only imagine to have) that cause stress and break your flow. All this in moderation of course, being completely drunk doesn't help.

I will be send to oblivion for this but the worst is the weed, it lowers your IQ so much that you think you are so creative for each dumb idea(and you can't have any ideas with depth in that state). Alcohol is not like that, up until a point your mental capabilities(not the reflexes) are intact.

There's this great sketch about being slightly drunk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTSCppeFzX4 And this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/323/

I've experienced the Ballmer Peak most often when gaming. I'm a good player most of the time in most games, but if I hit just the right amount of intoxication I reach a whole other level. It's like being in a flow state for head shots. I'm guessing the mechanism is tamping down on anxiety and second guessing which happens. Since I've played these sorts of games for the last 20+ years, the reflexes take over and I'm thinking a lot less. The drop off post-peak is steep though.

> I will be send to oblivion for this but the worst is the weed, it lowers your IQ so much that you think you are so creative for each dumb idea(and you can't have any ideas with depth in that state).

Consider the epistemic quality of the ideas plain old consciousness puts in one's mind, like this perception of omniscience you and many others in this thread are experiencing.

On certain topics, this being one of them, I do my very best thinking when I'm on drugs, though it did take several months to become properly acclimated to the environment.

Do you have adequate experience to judge this realm accurately? How would you know (as opposed to believe)?

Alcohol seems to interact with the body's various endogenous opioid systems [1], and not always to the same degree from person to person. What for you is a substance that "melts away all the fake constraints" for me it just makes me foggy, sloppy and tired.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9040115/

Cannabis with a high THC content will have a significant cognitive penalty, which is much reduced/mediated when enough CBD is available. Due to prohibition, a lot of Cannabis has an absuredly high THC content, it's as if all available Alcohol was hard liquor.

> Alcohol is not like that, up until a point your mental capabilities(not the reflexes) are intact.

That point is VERY quickly reached, and I would argue much, much quicker than you care to admit. Even a buzz will tank your cognitive abilities.

You and I have the same poison of choice and we are probably both working our way to having a problem with it…most people who use it to forget are.

I know HN users on the whole dislike alcohol while being open minded about other drugs, but it really does make things just a bit more tolerable. It lets me destress after work, actually enjoy my free time, and lets me ignore my problems for a bit.

I’d never drink while working, but the moment work is done? Sure, why not drink the rest of the day? I have to cope with life somehow.

That's why they invented Irish coffee and hip flasks. To maintain a wicked glint in the eye, quirky sense and bit of mischief at the end of the rainbow. Reminds me of an Irish dancing lass that I once knew. Ahh, must be getting old... :)

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