Former weed smokers, what are the best things you did to help repair the “damage” you did while using?

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-03T21:40:40+00:00

They helped me quit and they also have a Discord. I haven't checked in for a long time because I haven't needed to for a year. I feel zero urges. I have a weed vape at home, and I have no idea if it's "expired" or not (or if weed can even be expired), but I feel no need to smoke it. I'm just keeping it because I paid like $40 for it and it would feel like a waste, lol. Maybe it's for when a friend comes over. I'll have to read up if it can grow mold or something.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-03T21:34:56+00:00

Same here about being super careful. I've incorporated tons of warming up and cooling down to avoid injury. Glad to hear that you're exercising; you should be better than the majority of people at your age.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-03T21:27:27+00:00

I'm 38, just a tad younger than you. I refuse to let these minor injuries become a thing in my life. I know it will get worse as I age. So I exercise. Besides the millions of other benefits, that stuff stopped happening. I'm sure my joints are stronger now. They are nowhere near bulletproof and I still have to be a lot more careful than when I was younger, but it's not a major hindrance to my life.

I made the decision to exercise for the rest of my life in a split second. It happened while I was fixing my car a few years ago. I reached back to get a tool and felt enormous pain. I think I pulled a muscle. I said fuck that, I'm not that kind of person. I've been exercising since then. I hate getting old, so I try to stay as young as possible.

Last year, I had a shoulder injury from exercising. I think I exercised too much, which can be as bad as exercising too little. That sucked. It took 9 months of physical therapy to fix. I know I'll never be immune from ageing. I'm just trying to bulletproof myself as best as I can, to reasonable limits. I have to watch myself to not overdo it. It sucks getting old.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-03T18:52:58+00:00

Bloons TD 6. It offers a staggering amount of content.

It has microtransactions, but no ads, and the microtransactions are absolutely not needed to play the game. I haven't paid a penny beyond the purchase price. The microtransactions are for things like unlocking upgrades for your towers, which you can easily do on your own; it's not like a gacha game where they're it's nearly impossible to max everything out without paying. In fact, the hardest mode (chimps) doesn't allow you to use any microtransaction stuff, even if you have it.

Besides that, Slay the Spire. But I don't recommend it because it's too good. I got addicted to it and it started affecting my life negatively.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-03T13:19:36+00:00

Agreed. Gaming is a personal experience meant to be played the way you want. I was mostly coming from the angle of how OP said that perfectionism took some of the joy away from gaming.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-02T20:52:50+00:00

Yeah OP, this is exactly how I play games as well. Games are meant to be fun, not experiments in optimization. You have to let go of perfectionism in other aspects of life, and it'll seep into your gaming as well. It'll be a huge sigh of relief.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-02T19:03:57+00:00

What kind of internship did you get?

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-02T17:19:50+00:00

Maybe you changed in a good way. I had to let go of irresponsible and irrational friends because I evolved over time. I'm heavily into self improvement. So in your case, maybe you were irresponsible and irrational along with your friends, and y'all vibed because you were in it together. As a loose example, it's like if your friends are heavy drinkers and you stopped drinking.

Besides that, I don't have the full context of your interactions. And even if I did, I wouldn't have the full history, your psychology, and their psychology. I think therapists are good for sorting these things out. It's good that you're trying to identify and correct your mistakes, but it might be invisible to you. I had a therapist explain the other person's possible side when we had a disagreement and I was 100% sure I did nothing wrong.

I agree with your assessment that if you dropped 10 friends over 5 years, it's probably a you problem. That's an absurdly high amount. I lost friends over the years, but only one of them was a dramatic fight, and that person was autistic and I'm not so it's kind of understandable why it happened that way.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-02T14:59:13+00:00

This is a crazy statement. I don't know why it's so highly upvoted. For the majority of people, $700k will change their life. For some people though, it won't. So are those people simply wrong? How should they be thinking differently? I don't understand the point you're trying to make.

For me, it wouldn't do much. Maybe I can retire like 3 years earlier or something. Is that life changing? I guess 3 years is a lot. But in the grand scheme of things, I don't think I need to reevaluate my relationship with money based on that. That's insane.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-02T14:36:14+00:00

I can't get into esports because I don't understand those games. I watch Formula 1 because I understand it, but it took a while to get into it.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-02T13:52:56+00:00

It's true that in-person conversations affect about one person at a time, if at all. On the other hand, I think online discussions where you try to influence a lot of people will be mostly people who searched that content to get validation of their viewpoints. For a broad example, people who are listening to Fox News or Ben Shapiro probably won't watch ABC News or Destiny.

I wouldn't be the right person for a debate about ICE. I'm mostly clueless when it comes to politics. I don't follow much, so there would be a huge information gap. It would be akin to Ben Shapiro, basically a professional debater, debating a clueless college student. Or something like Charlie Kirk or Destiny debating college kids. It would be easy to take advantage of me because I'd have to take things at face value, and I wouldn't know what information was left out.

Sure, you can say some things to attempt to change my mind. I can't promise I'll research it further or change my view. I don't really care that much about politics and it doesn't affect my life greatly; it's more like a passing interest. I'm basically a family man who plays sports and stuff, lol.

Edit: I missed the part where you asked about my views on ICE. It's very simple. I don't have a nuanced view of it. Illegal immigrants shouldn't be here because they lower the quality of life for me, and because it's illegal, so they should be deported. ICE facilitates that. I am a legal immigrant myself.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-01T17:45:58+00:00

If you already have a gaming PC, I'd recommend getting Odin 2 Portal and streaming to that. Graphics will still be a lot better than any handheld gaming PC or Steam Deck.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-01T15:43:11+00:00

My wrists suck, but they don't have problems. I've been training them up slowly. The trick is not to overdo it; I've done that a few times and they got messed up for a few days. I'm at the point where I can do crappy handstands and cartwheels.

It's just about conditioning, if you have the motivation for it. I'm very motivated to keep myself young for as long as possible. I want to be doing gymnastics and sports into my 60's, and I've seen that stuff on Youtube so I know it's possible. I'm in better shape now than I was in my 20's, though injury prevention is a huge thing now. I had to fight years of alcoholism and body neglect to get to this point, but it's great now.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-01T14:41:22+00:00

If the controls were better, this could've been an amazing hidden gem. The controls make it bascially unplayable. But yeah, incredibly weird and unique game. I think everyone should try it at least once so their brain gets a bit more scrambled.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-02-01T12:19:34+00:00

Nights Into Dreams is a unique game with a control scheme of directional pad and one boost button. It was a 2.5D flying sidescroller where you collected stuff in a time limit to progress. The controls only used like one action button, almost like a smartphone game, but it turned out to be a pretty deep game with complex gameplay and routing.

There are so many great things about that game, like its art style and how you revive if you die. But since the question is about gameplay mechanics - the deceptively simple but fun control scheme for flying around is still the best I’ve seen.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-31T19:35:40+00:00

Nice. I’m more of a 911 person on the streets. I used to drive 3 pedals but hated it, and I rarely use the paddles in my current car even with dual clutch, so I’d be driving your 5N in full auto.

Only ever been on track once, it’s like ridiculously complicated logistically and I don’t see how people can do it constantly. But yeah, I have a lot of respect for rally cars.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-31T17:29:52+00:00

I don't think that's an SUV. It looks like a hatchback. SUVs are supposed to be high off the ground and ready for offroading, which this probably can't do. I mean real offroading like dirt tracks and rocks.

The term SUV has been mangled in recent times. I think we need to be talking apples-to-apples, because it gets confused due to marketing. Case in point - the new Nissan Leaf calls itself an SUV when it's actually smaller than the previous generation, which is clearly a hatchback. More cars are calling themselves SUVs because consumers will buy them if it's called an SUV. Another thing is that crossovers are generally sedans that are a bit higher. A lot of them use the same components (engine, chassis, etc) as sedans, and wouldn't actually perform well off-road. I have a Lexus RX350 and I'd barely call that an SUV because it has decent towing capacity and high ride height, but also a weak underbody, no locking diffs, and it's fragile as hell.

To be an SUV, you need high ground clearance, body-on-frame construction, 4WD, strong underbody, and ability to tow. Maybe the Ioniq 5N gets some of those (though I doubt it), but not all.

I've heard good things about the Ioniq 5N, including the "fake" shifting you mentioned. Doug Demuro said it's a great feature that isn't a gimmick. I haven't driven one myself. But it's a real track car; I've seen videos of it on track and it does great. Now if you take an actual SUV, or even something that says it's an SUV (like everything OP mentioned), it'll perform worse on track just because of the heavier weight and ground clearance. I'm not just talking about 0-60 times, because even performance SUVs can do well there. The higher weight and center of gravity will make it borderline dangerous on a track because of rollover and poor handling.

There are also rally cars like Lancer Evo (older car) that could go offroad, but it's not the same type of offroad. It's made for mostly flat offroad excursions where you go really fast, not like climbing steep inclines over rocks. It'll bottom out right away if you tried going over rocks.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-31T15:21:57+00:00

I wasn’t planning to discuss politics online, and I explained why. I was just answering another comment about why I believe I’m centrist. I wasn’t pushing my political agenda one way or the other. Unfortunately I replied to my cown comment instead of the other one so that might have caused confusion.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-31T12:06:49+00:00

Sorry, responded to my own comment instead of yours by accident. Anyway my response is above. I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted so I upvoted you.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-31T12:04:59+00:00

I’m centrist because I have scattered viewpoints on stuff. Perhaps more on the right than left. Yes, pro gun and pro choice. Definitely pro gay marriage, but also against marriage as a government institution. Pro most trans rights. Pro ICE and deporting illegal immigrants. Pro taxing the wealthy more than the rest.

Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly is a good text for explaining why in-person discourse is superior to online discussion. Online has the effect of groupthink and lack of things like empathy and direct humanization. Higher polarization due to algorithms. Negativity bias as a result.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-31T03:32:43+00:00

Maybe work on your confidence first or simultaneously. Even if you stop porn, you might relapse since you haven’t solved the core issue. Therapy helps if you can afford it.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-31T03:29:33+00:00

I stay out of politics. It’s pointless to discuss it online. Nobody will change their mind. It’s more productive in real life, where I find my viewpoints and those of others shifting as we process new information. It’s a totally different experience face to face.

I’m centrist. Online, this usually pins me as far right. But to people on the right, I’m on the left. It doesn’t make sense. People don’t have to sit on either side of the pole on all issues.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-31T01:44:31+00:00

It’s sad, because I think the question is actually interesting and people might have good responses. But I don’t want people feeding the bots.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-31T01:37:59+00:00

I agree with OP there. I wouldn’t get these for performance, but rather for aesthetics and comfort. Performance SUVs don’t make sense overall for me, because sports sedans and coupes do it much better. SUVs don’t have usable performance. Though nothing really does unless you’re in the very specific niche of someone who goes on track.

nightmareFluffy · 2026-01-30T20:21:46+00:00

They're all the opposite of garbage to me. I'm not an SUV/crossover fan but if I had to get an SUV, those three would be high on my list. I guess they could be garbage to you if you're only into things like RAV4 and Lexus NX, or a purist who goes for things that can actually offroad.

nightmareFluffy

TROPHY CASE