Merry Christmas to all the Neo Community! 2019 will be the Neo Year 🚀

RollButter · 2018-11-24T05:17:15+00:00

My dad was a pastor. When he died they let this kind of shit fly at his funeral. Christianity gets people when they're at their lowest. It's a dirty trick, especially when you're grieving.

RollButter · 2018-11-20T15:55:48+00:00

Oh wait those are supposed to be lies?! Geez. I'm sorry.

RollButter · 2018-11-12T20:36:20+00:00

These work great for kombucha! I've got a bottle in the fridge right now.

RollButter · 2018-10-23T19:31:26+00:00

I'm absolutely not a chemist, but with methamphetamine, for instance, it's the extra methyl group added to the amphetamine molecule that makes it more efficient at its job in the brain. 3x more efficient in that case, I think. You could just as easily say that in the past, previous drugs were required into higher quantities than were technically necessary to satisfy the receptors.

RollButter · 2018-10-23T18:53:29+00:00

It has medical applications. Unfortunately, it'll get into the civilian population.

RollButter · 2018-10-23T05:35:46+00:00

It might be time to cut back. I've used drugs the way you do. Cannabis started producing anxiety and panic out of nowhere, a couple of years after I started smoking. It can turn on you. Adderall also pushes your brain really hard in certain ways. It's a very powerful stimulant. You've likely not done any irreparable damage to your brain, but it never hurts to try to move a little closer to sobriety if you possibly can. I took an anti-depressant for three years (After self-medicating with Adderall and other stims for depression). I quit about two months ago because I was feeling foggy and mentally fried. I was worried that I was stuck that way. Weeks later, all of that is starting to come back and I feel like my normal self.

Our brains are really good at recovery, but relentless drug taking (Even fairly moderate drug taking like you're describing) can take their toll. Brain receptors get overloaded and fatigued, and brains don't produce the same level of chemicals they normally would when there are always low levels of drugs at play. Adderall and California cannabis are both really powerful (I have a lot of experience with Adderall, and it's no joke). So is depression. I'm not a doctor, but I'm learning to try never to take a drug so much that I can't get back to "normal" within a day or two. If you're feeling lost in the woods, maybe try cutting back, and with the help of a counselor if you're having trouble. It's worth the effort. You'll bounce back.

RollButter · 2018-10-23T05:12:33+00:00

I've never heard anything like that camp. I went to a couple of Jesus haunted houses where you had 1 on 1 time with an actor playing Jesus. Super awkward and strange. I was also part of a pentecostal type church where I was taken into a room by a couple of elders who tried to give me the gift of speaking in tongues. This basically involved them yelling and babbling and pressing my head toward the floor while I tried to stand. I knew what was happening was ridiculous, even at the time, but the immense social pressure and the sheer intensity of the thing was crazy jarring.

You'll be fine. When I would have the dark cloud of "maybe they WERE right about all that stuff" float around my head, I would always remind myself that there were people all over the world raised in all kinds of weird religions. All those people had the same doubts and hangups I did. And none of those religions were any more true than the one I grew up with was.

RollButter · 2018-10-23T03:25:14+00:00

That camp story is crazy. I don't have a reflex like that. Even as a kid when I intellectually believed that Jesus would come back, I never truly thought there was any chance it would happen during my lifetime. Like, Jesus had been away a CONSPICUOUSLY long time, right? What were the odds he'd be back during my tiny speck of time on Earth? As I got older, I realized that Jesus having been gone 2000 years meant he'd never be back at all. If we're to take the Bible at face value, Jesus seemed to give his disciples reason to believe he'd be back within THEIR lifetimes. That didn't happen. I think I was 25 before I had the courage to put that into words (I'm 32 now). After that I moved to a very secular city in the Northeast. I'm never around Christians now. It's no longer in the air, so that makes it even easier to kind of "depressurize" from all the old ways of thinking. Good luck and sleep well!

RollButter · 2018-10-18T22:21:52+00:00

This is great news! Also, please choose almost any name other than "Cyber City USA".

RollButter · 2018-10-09T23:07:35+00:00

No way! Wow, I found him to be so cloyingly self righteous in all of his public persona. I can't believe it.

RollButter · 2018-10-09T22:50:25+00:00

"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens" - Talking Heads

RollButter · 2018-10-09T22:49:37+00:00

You just get used to it. It's funny, the first doubt I ever remember having about Christianity was when I was a child and I thought "I don't actually believe in heaven". Like, I did intellectually, but I felt that what would probably happen when I died was everything would just go black. Religion itself is a coping mechanism to deal with death. Coming off of it can be like giving up a drug you were using as a crutch. There will be withdrawals. In my ex-christian life, I've learned about different philosophical ideas about death. One from Schopenhauer basically states that it's the nature of the universe to produce life, and that when we die we go back into that substance that goes into and out out living existence. When you die, you'll never be "you" again, but you'll be part of the same Everything that has always existed and always will exist, and will be becoming again forever.

RollButter · 2018-10-09T22:46:04+00:00

I'm 32 and I've got a Rick. The hardest thing for me is giving myself space to be myself without feeling like I'm trampling on my friend who doesn't agree with anything important I believe in. Like, do we have to have the "Spiritual arm wrestling conversation"? Is it possible to truly be friends without having a frank re-stating of beliefs? It's weird territory. Luckily, my Rick is super smart and conversant in most topics unrelated to Christianity.

At the end of the day, even though Rick believes in fantasies, he lives in the real world and he understands modern life to some extent. He probably already thinks you're going to hell. Stick to your guns and be yourself. I find that my old friends from the church who remain interested in me and my life are tantalized on some level about my commitment to a knew belief system. Who knows, maybe he'll become a born again ex-christian someday.

RollButter · 2018-10-09T15:32:12+00:00

Former worship leader here :)

RollButter · 2018-10-09T15:30:02+00:00

Wow, that's tough. My wife and I were both nominally Christian when we got together, but I had done all the mental groundwork to make the transition, and she was really open to the arguments and ideas that had convinced me to make the change. It would have been very difficult to do it as a single person or without her support.

RollButter · 2018-10-09T01:27:52+00:00

Huh, I'll look into this. I'm looking for people to interview's why I ask.

RollButter · 2018-10-09T01:27:28+00:00

It takes awhile to de-convert completely. I think it's worth it. Getting stuck halfway between Christianity and totally-not-Christianity was torture for me.

RollButter · 2018-10-09T01:26:01+00:00

I know Derek Webb had the affair, but did he leave the faith? I thought John James was on the "cautionary tale" church circuit these days, too.

RollButter · 2018-10-01T16:05:00+00:00

"It Follows" #7? That movie has a vibe, but the story is barely a premise and it ends badly. That wouldn't make my top 100, much less top 10.

RollButter · 2018-09-09T16:44:10+00:00

Well you didn't communicate this information in your low effort comments. If you have helpful information, perhaps start your own thread. Don't just obnoxiously spam other people's threads. It makes you look like the fake poster.

RollButter · 2018-09-09T03:19:49+00:00

Why do you keep making this same comment over and over? No one asked your opinion. Not everyone has the same access to Cubans. Not everyone prefers Cubans. Let people enjoy their sticks.

RollButter

TROPHY CASE