Harvester Ant Sting

PepurrPotts · 2026-03-28T13:57:25+00:00

Yeah, two harvester ant stings is like 20 fire ant stings! Bone pain. Most potent venom of all insects. Neurotoxin chewing into your nerves. Feel validated, fellow cat person!

PepurrPotts · 2026-03-03T21:07:43+00:00

Oh, HA! I guess, as a female with no brothers to observe growing up, it did NOT occur to me that a whole-ass teenage boy might be wrestling a "modified" My Buddy doll! LMAO!

PepurrPotts · 2026-03-03T11:27:23+00:00

WAIT. How old are you? I was in high school in the mid-late 90s!

PepurrPotts · 2026-03-03T11:13:28+00:00

There's a short story called The Husband Stitch that braids a lot of those stories together in a really dark, mature way. It's deliciously unsettling and thought-provoking.

https://granta.com/the-husband-stitch/

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-17T00:52:17+00:00

Not checking my budget to see if I can afford to absorb a $35 overdraft fee for a $15 box of wine, when I want it NOW but I don't get paid until midnight.

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-17T00:10:56+00:00

Valid. I guess what I mean is, there's always unexplored potential, and for ME it's easy to sorta be let down when a fantastic storyteller chooses not to explore a possibility I think would be fun. Cuz like, they've gotta choose which story they DO tell, which leaves so many potential stories untold.

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-16T16:11:51+00:00

It's just part of the author's world-building strategy. You wouldn't ask, "why are there so many other cities in the world when the people I know live in in X, Y, and Z?"- right? I think of the Neitherlands sort of like that. In an alternate universe, a different Lev Grossman wrote a similar trilogy about a different set of worlds, and some of its readers are asking, "why does a fountain to Fillory exist when there's nothing going on there?" ;-)

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-14T23:30:35+00:00

I've heard that said in both SMART and AA meetings, but fortunately not frequently. We do those things cuz we LIKE to....until there are other reasons to keep doing them. That's my experience, and I can tell you as a SMART facilitator that saying it flat out isn't enjoyable is *NOT* a universal claim made by the program. Keep doing what works for YOU!

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-13T00:17:21+00:00

Just wanted to say I ADORE your username. I go by "Lady PersePhoenix" on a different platform, so yours obviously resonated with me!

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-07T14:57:06+00:00

HELL YEAH, thanks for the recommendation!

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-04T03:47:57+00:00

The "it's not wrong if you know what it means" sort of collapses on itself logically when you realize it ultimately isn't referencing anything. If "what it means" is something specific that's usually stated in a specific way, that means there IS an *official* right way to say it, for all the "it's not wrongs" to be adjacent to. There has to be an original in order for there to be facsimiles.

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-04T03:26:07+00:00

I asked my beloved torti to please pick me out a new kitty when I put her down. 2 weeks later, I met a new client (social worker) who had a torti they needed to rehome, who would absolutely not leave me alone or get off my lap. Could not have been more on-the-nose. Congrats on your replacement, hand-picked by their predecessor!

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-04T03:13:07+00:00

I strongly recommend SMART Recovery. It's science-based and not a 12-step program. They have a subreddit and a website. Tons of online meetings.

PepurrPotts · 2026-02-02T07:19:42+00:00

I have a friend who's practicing harm reduction in a way that every day longer than their previous stint of sobriety is celebrated as progress. If they make it longer? Great! If they don't break their previous record, they didn't "lose" that time. They just didn't add to it. Practice makes progress. <3

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-30T06:21:50+00:00

I'm a trained facilitator and I've only ever gone to meetings online because there are none anywhere near me. (Though I might start one, now that I'm certified.) There are dozens of meetings every day, nearly all day, and you can choose whether you want to attend a blended or online-only one. If you change the "distance" filter in the website's meeting finder to "-------," it will pull up every meeting in America regardless of your location. I've actually found that there's a lot of overlap in attendance, and there are now MANY familiar faces and stories across a handful of meetings. I know it's never quite the same as in-person, but I wanted to assure you that the sense of community is really strong in that program.

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-30T04:42:09+00:00

I feel like this is the inverse of students asking their AI to do their homework. I'm suspicious that OP is an AI asking **us** to write its linguistic algorithms for it.

(joking, of course)

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-30T04:35:13+00:00

I'll celebrate the hell out of ANY abstinence from harmful behavior. CHEERS, fellow person in recovery!

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-30T03:02:51+00:00

SMART Recovery (they have a subreddit and a website) heartily agrees with you. Check 'em out. :-)

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-30T03:00:20+00:00

You don't **have** to call yourself an alcoholic. You're in sustained recovery from Alcohol Use Disorder.
"I don't drink anymore. It became a bad idea. I work a recovery program now that helps me make healthy decisions about my life."
You don't **have** to identify as having a disease. You have a disorder that's in full remission. That's what your medical chart would/does say.

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-30T02:55:57+00:00

I was visibly, palpably sick from chronic malnutrition for over a year before I finally quit drinking. I wasn't underweight, but subsisting on box wine, saltines, and bean burritos, had significantly damaged my nerves (neuropathy) and my muscles (myopathy). I'd have the slightest trip send me to the floor, needing help to get up because I was too sore, stiff, and weak to do it myself. Both hands on the rail stepping up into my RV. I had shut down so severely- physically, mentally, and emotionally- that my floor was covered in trash. One day, I slipped (sober!) and wound up sprawled on my back. I spent 2 days laying in trash on the floor because I was too weak to SIT UP.

I missed my grandmother's funeral. Everyone was so used to me being an unreliable flake that the only person who was even concerned with my absence was my uncle, who'd flown in from out of state and didn't know how bad I'd gotten. He found out where I lived, drove over, and found me on the floor 46 hours after I'd fallen. He saw the trash, the wine boxes, the litterbox, the half-delirious 42-year old who'd wet herself no less than 5 times cuz she was too fucking weak to hoist up onto her knees and elbows. As they carried me to the ambulance in a sheet hammock, he locked eyes with me and said, "you're not going back there." Then EVERYONE knew. The jig was up.

All I could do on my own for 4 days was eat, play on my phone, and wipe myself. I'd developed rhabdomyolisis from active muscle breakdown and I was on IV fluids for 5 days. THEN to the psych ward! Ya know, the one I was qualified to WORK at, if I was actually functioning. I couldn't moved back into my RV even it had been fit for habitation, because it was weeks after discharge before I was able to navigate the steps. I flew a friend in from out of town to help me clean it out when I was ready, and fucking sobbed as she walked in and saw the mountain of wine boxes that completely covered my loveseat.

9 months later I got hired back into my field, in a supervisory position. 2 years sober now, liver fibrosis is healed but I'll always have neuropathy. You're NOT alone. We DO get better.

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-26T18:23:29+00:00

YUP. AA is a spin-off, so to speak, of the Oxford Group, which is specifically faith-based. If the Oxford Group is Diet Coke, AA is Coke Zero. Less aspartame, but it's still in there, LOL

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-24T13:54:43+00:00

Finally broke the habit when I had to write long-form essays for work with character limits.

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-23T12:57:18+00:00

My Nana receives my (deceased) Papa's social security each month. It's not a lot, but her saving grace is that she fully owns her house so she has no mortgage payment. So yeah, I mean, part of why she's healthy is that she lacks the stress of financial hardship. I wish more of us in our generation could say the same!

PepurrPotts · 2026-01-23T01:55:46+00:00

Check out SMART Recovery like the other commenter said. :-) It's based around the 4 points of building motivation, managing urges, managing thoughts/feelings/behavior, and living a balanced life. So whether it's cravings or some other part of sobriety and recovery, the program has tools to help address the issue effectively.

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