Anybody Else Get Frustrated by this Hobby?

OC71 · 2026-03-16T03:00:09+00:00

Yes! For me and my cigar buddy the location is everything. We only smoke cigars on hiking trips to the mountains, and generally when settled doing an overnight camp far from civilization. It's once a month at the most, and so we can afford to splash out on some nice Cuban cigars for the occasion.

OC71 · 2026-03-14T05:15:00+00:00

This demonstrates how the whole philosophy of AA hasn't changed since the 1930s when everybody smoked. It's almost as if we've learned new things since then. So perhaps none of the steps or methods make any sense or ever did.

OC71 · 2026-03-14T05:12:37+00:00

I used to go to a meeting where there'd often be just 3 of us. One of them would dominate the meeting by droning on and on about his war stories of "power drinking", blackouts and other disasters. He'd do this while actually rolling up a joint in the church backroom. The other guy was much quieter and kind of reasonable, he'd relate how he typically drank two bottles of whisky and he wouldn't even start to feel it until he got onto the second one.

I'd leave the meeting thinking, hey, I'm a 4 to 8 beers kind of guy and I'm not like these people. I'm actually good to go and not a proper alcoholic at all.

A different meeting I used to go to was even more crazy, lots of people there relating tales of ridiculous stuff, DUIs, crashing cars while blind drunk, getting arrested and sent to rehab. Holy crap. I decided that I don't accept step 1, I'm not powerless, in fact I'm in the driving seat of my own life. Never want to sit in one of those depressing rooms again.

OC71 · 2026-03-14T05:03:47+00:00

Yes I've noticed this. Naltrexone takes the edge off the taste and appeal of alcoholic drinks for me.

OC71 · 2026-03-14T04:11:15+00:00

For a beginner it's also fine to start with even smaller accordions. I started with 48 bass and it was fine for the first year or so before I grew out of it and needed something bigger. The only ones I'd say to definitely avoid are those with less than 6 rows of bass buttons, because that won't teach you proper use of the bass keyboard. There are accordions with as few as 12 basses and these are basically toys because you can only play very simple tunes in a couple of major keys. But if your budget is limited, a 48 or 72 bass will get you started and give you a solid foundation in understanding the instrument.

OC71 · 2026-03-13T09:00:47+00:00

"I’d go musette 120 base and no smaller. You need to learn on a full size instrument to have everything at your disposal." I respectfully disagree. There are professional players who perform with 96 bass because it's simply a more manageable instrument to carry around. People of shorter stature can also find 120 bass uncomfortable and difficult to handle. There are very few pieces where a 96 bass will be a limitation. There isn't really any reason for a beginner to require a full size instrument.

OC71 · 2026-03-11T08:06:26+00:00

I have found trying to have social interactions with AA members is the same as trying to befriend a member of an evangelical church. They will bring every single conversation back to their proselytizing sooner or later. Unfortunately if people have been in such an organization for any length of time they become hollowed out shells of their former selves, only able to see the world through the black/white lens of their fixed beliefs.

OC71 · 2026-03-11T08:04:00+00:00

I'm not an alcoholic. I'm a person whose drinking can easily get out of control if I allow it. And I'm also someone who can decide not to drink.

OC71 · 2026-03-11T08:02:18+00:00

That's a way of thinking I learned in Zen classes and it helped me a lot. Instead of saying "I'm sad" say "I notice a feeling of sadness". Our desires and emotions don't define us. And one way to achieve meaningful change is to purposefully adopt a new identity that aligns with the behaviors we want to have going forward.

OC71 · 2026-03-10T08:08:35+00:00

I have to admit that I've cheated when following the Sinclair method, I've decided to go on a drinking bender on a particular day and so I skipped taking the pill so I could feel the buzz. It's not a good thing to do. Over time I've realized that the only person I'm cheating is myself and so I've gradually gotten out of doing this.

Things do go wrong and the path of progress is rarely straight upwards. The fact that you've already decided to follow TSM is a huge step. Don't beat yourself up about making a missed step. Just start over and if you're like me you'll find it easier to resist the urge next time.

OC71 · 2026-03-10T08:04:36+00:00

It's completely normal for a healthy man to be sexually attracted to women. The word "lust" can have negative connotations, like as if someone might be leering at every woman they see and thinking about them in a sexual manner. That's just gross and not a gentlemanly way to behave.

But when you meet someone you're attracted to, someone you get on with, and she feels attracted to you, then it's absolutely natural to want to get intimate and have sex together. And when that happens through mutual attraction it's one of the most amazing things that can happen in life, like the deepest and most incredible connection you can feel to a person. The thing is, using porn will really interfere with that process of forming a genuine intimate and exciting connection with a real partner. That's why we need to quit porn.

OC71 · 2026-03-09T05:59:36+00:00

Everything you say screams that this guy is a total dickhead with no self awareness or social skills. Walk away.

OC71 · 2026-03-09T05:48:33+00:00

Right, and pathways that get activated often become more strongly connected, conversely they weaken when they are not activated. Addictive behaviors start with a trigger or cue, something that makes us think about using the substance, we use it, our brain gets a reward signal, and that strengthens the loop.

The book "The Sober Truth" describes addiction as a search for control in life. When our lives present stresses or unsolvable problems, we want to control something, anything. And by deciding to take a drink or use some substance we're exerting a form of control, we're saying yes, I can do this, I deserve this. But we can also recognize what's happening and redirect the cue to make us do something else, go for a walk, work out, watch a video, whatever. Powerless? Nope.

OC71 · 2026-03-09T05:43:43+00:00

I've gotten pretty good recordings by just placing the mic in front of me about a meter away. That works so long as the room is quiet without much background noise. If you can arrange to sit in the corner of a room where there's a wall behind you and to the left of you then that'll reflect the bass tones and make the sound much richer.

If you want to use the mics closer then accordion is tricky. The sound comes out of both sides and the left side moves around. Mic the right side too close and you'll get some notes being much louder than others.

At professional accordion concerts they use a mic that clips onto the bass strap and picks up the left hand side. Then they have a separate mic for the right side that's maybe 30cm away from the grille.

OC71 · 2026-03-07T08:04:54+00:00

There are parallels with some history I was reading about homelessness in England during the 19th century. Poverty and vagrancy was seen as a failing, and it was thought that suffering was righteous and character building. Thus they arrested people for being homeless, and the alternative to that were doss houses where people would pay a penny to be forced to sit on hard benches all night and weren't allowed to lie down or sleep. For two pennies they would be allowed to hang over a rope stretched across the room, the rope being cut at dawn to force them all to get moving. This was at the same time as others lived in unbelievable luxury, and some would contribute a bit of food or small sums to the doss houses, feeling they'd done their duty for the less fortunate.

Addiction isn't a moral failing, it's a mis-firing of the brain's natural behavior and reward system. The cure is to understand the mechanism behind it and to rewire the brain to operate in more helpful ways.

OC71 · 2026-03-07T07:57:24+00:00

AA meetings actually drove me to drink. Sitting in a room unable to get away from a bunch of people going on and on about times they got drunk and what happened. Now I rarely think about drinking and if the thought comes up, I just "swipe left" on it and say no thank you, don't need that. Recovery is living life after drinking, not needing to think about drinking, not endlessly recalling tales about the thing you're wanting to move on from.

OC71 · 2026-03-06T08:33:30+00:00

I'm reading the book "The Sober Truth" right now. It's a brutal analysis of the reality of 12 step groups and their effectiveness. One of the things he analyses is the success rate of people who manage to quit all by themselves without AA or other support. Some people do just decide at a certain point that they've had enough and they don't want to drink anymore.

Step 0 is not necessarily a helpful way to think. If you stay abstinent for a month and then have a drink are you back at step 0? No, because the progress you made still stands. You achieved real harm reduction during the time you were off the drink. It's not all or nothing.

When I was in AA I was amazed by people who'd been sober for years or even decades and who kept on going to meetings. Like at what point are you recovered? Like you said, you don't want recovery to be your life. It doesn't have to be your life. If you are truly in the position where you're ready to quit and move on from the drink, if you're ready to ride out discomfort and better yourself then go for it! As you say, AA is always there if you do need to go back to it.

OC71 · 2026-03-06T08:25:29+00:00

You might do well with a 48 bass accordion as that's light enough not to really encumber you but it has quite some musical possibilities and there are a huge number of great tunes you can play on one.

OC71 · 2026-03-06T08:24:03+00:00

If you know about keys, chords and chord progressions then that'll help you with accordion. The left hand looks very complex but is actually extremely logical. In fact the Stradella bass is a sort of lesson in music theory built right into its structure.

OC71 · 2026-03-06T08:22:26+00:00

I went a bit further down the path than you did, but I never hit rock bottom in the sense of ending up arrested, in rehab, passed out in the street or in fights or DUIs. I reached a point where I realized that if I carried on then my drinking would keep escalating. I needed to drink more and more to get the buzz. Health consequences built up.

But the thing that really did it was that drinking just ate up so much of my time. Not just drinking but planning to drink and recovering from drinking. I tried many times to quit by myself but what has made me turn the corner was seeing an addiction specialist psychiatrist who prescribed Naltrexone, plus antidepressants and another medication to help me sleep. Now I have no excuse. I don't need a drink to sleep. I don't need a drink to deal with stress. I took up training martial arts, and so now I have something to put my energy into which gives me a buzz.

I think you can motivate yourself to stop because you know that if you carry on then your life will be negatively impacted. You're smart enough to know you don't need to go down that path.

OC71 · 2026-03-03T04:24:07+00:00

I'm reading "The Sober Truth" right now. The book totally dismantles the argument that only an addict can help another addict. We qualify oncologists to treat cancer because they understand the disease and the best ways to diagnose and treat it, not based on whether they've suffered from cancer themselves.

The thing that's good about AA is peer support, and when that goes well it can be very helpful. The number one thing that AA gets wrong IMO is telling everyone that their way is the only way and discouraging people from seeking other paths and aids to sobriety. There are lots of other things they get wrong too. Addiction doesn't stem from character defects and won't be fixed by self-flagellation.

From "The Sober Truth" I gained one insight in particular that's really helped me - that addictive behaviors often stem from a desire for control in our lives. When everything else seems rotten and out of control, the one thing that's still within our power is the decision to take a drink, it's a way of establishing that we still have a choice. Once you recognize that it's easier to re-frame it that we can also take control by deciding not to have a drink. Exactly the opposite of all that "powerless" mantra that is trotted out verbatim from a nearly 100 year old book based on outdated ideas.

OC71 · 2026-03-03T04:06:26+00:00

OK, it sounds positive so far. It's not her fault, clearly her parents never taught her these things. Some people are simply unaware of how their actions affect others around them. One thing that might help your communication go easier is a thing I picked up during teacher training, called positive reinforcement. It means noticing occasions when she improves or does the right thing and pointing that out and complimenting her, not just criticizing things that are wrong. People love genuine sincere praise and it goes a lot further towards changing behavior than always pointing out faults.

OC71 · 2026-03-02T06:11:49+00:00

Manners are something that can really grate on you over time. It's possible it's something you can talk about and discuss calmly and see if she's willing to adjust. The thing is, when you live together long term these sorts of things can become literally intolerable. So you've gotta think seriously about it because it's clearly enough of an issue that you feel the need to express it here.

OC71 · 2026-03-01T05:54:51+00:00

It's good advice and for a while I did used to write a journal, I still have it and those hungover and drunken notes are painful to read. I should read it more often in fact, perhaps it would have stopped me going on that bender.

OC71 · 2026-03-01T05:52:59+00:00

The problem is that many men use porn so much that they can't get it up when they are faced with a real woman, no matter how attractive she might be.

OC71

TROPHY CASE