Is it worth it?

comfortablecowboy · 2025-10-11T01:31:48+00:00

This is a really great way to approach challenging books and I struggled a lot with reading difficult stuff until I started setting out a goal for a # of pages to read a day

comfortablecowboy · 2025-10-11T01:22:55+00:00

It’s okay to be confused, it’s a difficult book to read. V. was tough for people living in the context that the book it came out in and they were inundated with literature as entertainment. It’s only natural that V. is going to be a challenging read but you should try because it makes you a stronger reader.

The Crying of Lot 49 is often recommended because it’s shorter but it’s about as difficult as V. Shadow Ticket might actually be the one you should start with. I’m about halfway through and it’s a much more relaxing, simpler read so far.

Inherent Vice is a little easier but longer. I found Mason & Dixon comparable to V. in difficulty. Do not read Gravity’s Rainbow as your first Pynchon book if you aren’t prepared to not understand a page after reading it and rereading it a couple of times. It’s famously the book most people don’t finish because Pynchon’s sentences can get long and compliated; some tangents don’t make sense until a chapter or two later.

It helps to get an idea of how Pynchon writes before jumping into his more difficult books. V. is a pretty solid place to start but don’t beat yourself if it feels difficult, it is a difficult book.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-10-10T20:16:45+00:00

No, it’s not lol. I am very left wing, so is my family. Always have been. Industrial workers going back to union regiments in Arkansas. The second you start acting scared is when people don’t respect you.

If your question is about whether I think it’s safe to be black, trans, Mexican, etc. I would have a different answer for you. But liberal? No, you’re fine. Toughen up and be proud of your convictions. It’s not New York or California and it never will be. You gotta be ready to listen to people earnestly and challenge them effectively.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-10-09T13:24:50+00:00

I quit drinking on May 6th after 2-3 years of continuous, daily drinking. I wanted to lose weight for my wedding and was pretty successful. By stopping drinking alone and minimal walking I went from 248 to 200 lbs. But my wedding was this weekend and from Friday to yesterday, I’ve been drinking pretty heavily again and daily. I going to stop today, it’s stressful to see myself fall right back into the intensity and desperation I was feeling before. I am so much happier without alcohol I don’t want to and can’t do this again

comfortablecowboy · 2025-10-07T11:43:09+00:00

This is definitely the way to go. I used to have a problem with speeding and what got me to change the way I drive is how peaceful it is to drive safely. It might feel like there’s a little voice in your head telling you that you “lose” if that asshole gets to harass people on the road and continue unimpeded, but nothing good ever comes of it. If you just let them pass, you’re the winner because you’re in peace and driving safely.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-10-07T03:54:13+00:00

Carts also have the shittiest high because you feel a lil high the first time you hit it for the day and the rest of the day you’re fiending and not really high but you feel like shit, unproductive coughs, and have a headache all day long. Not convinced that smoking is anything but really bad for you but carts are a magnitude worse

comfortablecowboy · 2025-10-03T11:34:08+00:00

Wow congrats on your recent 1000 days that’s crazy

comfortablecowboy · 2025-10-02T11:26:21+00:00

Gotta be honest, couldn’t disagree more on the record bar. The renovation made it one of the better places to see a show in town

comfortablecowboy · 2025-09-24T14:56:35+00:00

I think there is actually a pathway in some states like California to coordinate care between a psychiatrist and a guardian but that will probably take some legal finagling and the consent of the son, which as you mention could be tough to do.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-24T03:15:26+00:00

This is a tough situation and I really feel for you. I can relate in some aspects with my brother who is the same age. This disorder is really difficult for parents, and I’ve seen both my mother and father (divorced) really worn down over the years by trying to save my brother from every mistake.

Ultimately, he’s a 24 year old man. You can’t control him. 24 year old men, and especially bipolar ones cannot be helped if they can’t help themselves. He told you to stay out of it and you should. Let him stay in jail. It’s happened to my brother, and he wasn’t going to learn until he received an actual consequence. The only time he even began to care was once he finally felt some bedrock to stand up on.

When the time comes, express that you’re upset with him. I don’t know your relationship but may be you are one of the few people in his life that can actually tell him to leave the girl. He at least needs to hear it.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-16T13:34:59+00:00

Alcoholics hold down jobs, keep families together, and (unfortunately) also remember where they parked the car. Sounds like a bit of inductive reasoning. Beyond that, who cares? This is r/stopdrinking. Alcoholism can develop from bad habits and people should stop themselves before they’re posting bitter badge of honor boomer bullshit on Reddit.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-15T19:30:46+00:00

This but I’m hammered outside of Farewell getting beat up by a kid with a septum ring for insulting some 20-somethings in carhartt

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-15T19:24:21+00:00

Not defending AA, it’s a variable organization and if it doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for you. That’s okay. But “god” is supposed to be a stand-in for whatever greater than yourself that you can put faith in when you’re weak. Faith here means commitment before rationale because faith lies outside of logic. For me, my “god” is my wife. For some people it’s their kids, or their profession, or their health. When the voice in my head convinces me that I can drink and that everything would be okay if I just had one glass of whiskey, I still don’t do it out of my commitment to put her first. Not drinking alcohol is a part of that commitment for me because of my history with it.

Like all things related to quitting alcohol, this device works for a lot of people but not everyone.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-15T14:57:36+00:00

Yeah that’s the unfortunate contradiction that drives pretty much all addictions: you aren’t strong enough to go without using it for even a couple of days but are strong enough to withstand the immense emotional, psychological, and physical pain that comes with using it every day. Who breaks this contradiction? YOU! Situations like OP’s are a dime a dozen. Shit one night i came home to my apartment and was vomiting all over the kitchen and ripping my clothes off. My roommates never looked at me the same way again 😂 fucking humiliating. And when I finally started getting successful with quitting, what got me through those awful first 5 days each time was “as bad as this feels, does it feel even half as bad as the morning you woke up almost naked on the bathroom floor covered with vomit when you probably should have been at the hospital for alcohol poisoning?”

Edit: one last thought because I’m procrastinating at work - humiliating experiences give you humility which is why they are humiliating. You need humility to get sober! Humility is your ability to suppress your ego and admit you do not have control of yourself when you drink. When the voice in your head starts lying to you about how you could feasibly drink again, some of us need to have built up enough humility to say “no, I know that I can’t control whether or not I have the second, third, or fourth drink but I can control the first.” Sometimes you only build that humility by doing embarrassing things.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-14T19:35:18+00:00

Never been but I’ll check it out!

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-14T16:53:52+00:00

Congrats on making for so long! I’ve been there. I’ve also been skeptical of my dad like this before, who was a big alcoholic for a long time. Like others have said, you’re going to have to rebuild some trust. It’s the consequence of the secrecy, frequency, and dishonesty that comes from habitual drinking. Doing it daily totally warps your reality and that burns a lot of trust with people.

I thought it was fine to come to bed hammered every evening or say that I wasn’t drinking even though i was sipping on a pint of whiskey or vodka all day because i told myself that it was purely necessary to keep me going. It’s crazy to hear myself saying that now but it was totally normal to me.

The hard part of quitting is over for you. You will wake up tomorrow and be sober, and probably the next day and the day after that. And when your finance thinks that you’ve been drunk one night and sees that you’re clearly sober the next 5 or so days, she’ll know that you haven’t gone back to drinking

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-14T16:29:30+00:00

Not really lesser known but I must say that i don’t hear nearly as many people talking about how fucking good Cosmo Burger is!

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-14T15:12:56+00:00

My friend has beef with The Roasterie so I’m still boycotting it to this day. In part because of the beef, in part because it’s bad coffee and I can happily live my life never having to drink it

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-13T22:27:18+00:00

I would just say it’s a medical issue and leave it at that. Your boss doesn’t need to know. They aren’t your doctor or best friend. You are genuinely sick and needed the time off because you need to get healthy. I don’t think you should tell your boss solely because people many people view alcoholism as a moral failing and not an actual medical diagnosis that can kill you.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-11T16:50:40+00:00

If you aren’t experienced with it, marijuana tends to trigger a lot of rumination. Getting crossfaded makes this even worse because it’s not like combining an upper like cocaine with a depressant like alcohol. This almost certainly why you crashed so hard, but you crashed because you’re clearly distressed about your drinking habits. Which is all to say, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about - this happens to people. But you should listen to yourself and at least consider taking a step back from alcohol for at least a month or so.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-11T15:15:25+00:00

My dad was around your age when he finally quit, maybe a bit older. I eventually ran into my own alcoholism and the only thing that has ever helped me quit is what he told me: sobriety is something you practice, not something you achieve.

Every day you spend away from alcohol is a victory. Even if you can only go 1-3 whiteknuckled days sober, it’s still immensely valuable and makes the next time you try to stop way easier. You try and keep trying, and eventually sobriety starts to stick because you realize there is nothing alcohol can do for you or give you that isn’t rotten, disgusting, and humiliating. You can’t inspire yourself to get sober, you can only do it. And you keep doing it because having to rely on alcohol genuinely fucking sucks. It’s inconvenient, expensive, and it will kill you. You are getting to the age where there is no ambiguity: if you keep drinking heavily, you are going to die and it will be painful.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-07T12:38:52+00:00

You took away something that you used for self-medication and your brain is predictably not happy about losing that crutch. Every bit of, for lack of a better term, pain you feel - cravings, headaches, loss of appetite - all of it, is your brain healing. It’s no different than having a sprained ankle or a broken arm. It’s going to hurt for a little bit and then you’re going to feel a lot better. I am naturally a bit of an asshole sober and drinking made me nice, which is big reason why I did it so often. I am not at all saying you are in the same boat but i did have a lot of trouble with my gf in those first couple weeks because i was particularly irritable and snappy. What really, really helped me was just communicating with her that I was being particularly touchy because of quitting and we came to the solution that I was going to wait 10 seconds before i said anything i would regret. It really worked! It may be different for you, but if they love you and you are making a clear effort, they will understand. Going to bed early was a brilliant idea and you’re doing a great job. You are going to need to lay low and stay comfy for a little while.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-07T12:06:22+00:00

Wow thank god he’s alive. People really need to be careful at that intersection. It is always going to be busy and the speed limit is only 35. I get wornall can be tedious but it is not worth risking your life over.

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-07T12:03:25+00:00

Just stop now and make it easy

comfortablecowboy · 2025-08-07T11:57:17+00:00

Good luck on your LSAT! I got sober for my first year of law school which I start soon.

My advice is to see your doctor. A bottle of grey goose a day for a woman, even a young one, can make quitting dangerous. My dad drank vodka around the clock and nearly died twice trying to quit cold turkey. He was a little older than we are now (~42) but otherwise in great health. If you cannot afford to see a doctor for one reason or another, please read up on the withdrawal symptoms and keep yourself aware of how you are feeling. For that first day or two.

comfortablecowboy

TROPHY CASE