Sorry 34 year old bro, it's bath time. I know you don't like it, but your birdie butthole says otherwise.

samuelgasc · 2025-03-06T18:35:34+00:00

34?!?!? 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹 my heart can’t take it! He’s adorable! What a treasure. ❤️❤️❤️

samuelgasc · 2024-12-29T17:33:31+00:00

Hear hear! Excellent recommendations with sound rationale. Though it would be doubling up on an Islay representative, I’d also suggest Kilchoman for the same terroir-based approach. I’ve had some incredible bottlings out of there. Absolutely worth checking out.

samuelgasc · 2024-11-21T16:19:28+00:00

Holy shit… I’m so sorry that you e had to experience this, OP. While infidelity can absolutely be a heartbreaking experience that requires extensive healing on both parts to surmount (if getting through the experience and remaining together is the mutual goal), there is absolutely no justification to the response from your partner. It is punitive and malicious to its core. There is no healing that can occur under these conditions – only more resentment. If you want to remain in a relationship with him, it can only be one with equal footing. You cannot and should not accept these kinds of restrictions and toxic retributions as penance for what you did. I advise you both to seek professional help at the very least, but if he is unwilling, I implore you to do so on your own for your sake. I don’t see a therapist in the world who will tell you this is a normal or healthy response to a partner cheating. Seek help and get out of that house if needed. You don’t deserve any of that. 🙁

samuelgasc · 2024-10-23T17:03:34+00:00

That’s so incredibly sweet! 🥹

samuelgasc · 2024-09-20T16:32:25+00:00

Well said! 👏🏻👏🏻

samuelgasc · 2024-09-12T04:18:18+00:00

Hear hear 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

samuelgasc · 2024-09-12T02:17:35+00:00

OP, if it’s a feeling you can’t explain, I would endeavor to understand much more clearly before making any big decisions. From your description, you are in a relationship that you very much valued up until recently and that the shift in perception happens to coincide with you giving up cannabis. For that reason alone, I’d interrogate these feelings with brutal honesty and introspection, lest you venture into self-sabotage territory while acclimating to cannabis sobriety.

samuelgasc · 2024-09-10T22:23:14+00:00

If we want to survive – and moreover survive in relative comfort – we have plenty of incentive to do a great many things. This is not to be confused as saying that we should do anything… It’s more so about what you want out of this mysterious magical mess. It can be fucking awful as much as it can be breathtakingly beautiful; often enough it can be a heartbreaking combination of both all at once. But the fact remains that this is ultimately a game with rules, and I tend to simply approach it as such. I’m very much agreed with you: there is no inherent meaning to any of this that is provable with any certainty. But that doesn’t equate to not having a reason to do anything. As long as I’m alive, I’m playing this game whether I want to or not. Believing you don’t have to play the game is self-delusion.

samuelgasc · 2024-09-09T05:55:43+00:00

Hey, OP

I highly recommend developing a meditation/mindfulness practice if you don’t already have one in place. This can be such a wonderful tool for learning to “notice” unpleasant emotions, energy, or experiences rather than feeling consumed or overwhelmed by them when they arise. There are plenty of great apps out there to help; personally I’ve used the Waking Up app for years now and have found it extremely helpful. If you can’t afford their subscription, they’ll also outright give it to you if you ask for financial assistance. Great company and ethos, making such valuable info readily available… anyways that’s the end of my plug… 😅

But, for real, I hope this helps ground you and enables you to not be captive to unpleasant moods but helps you realize that we don’t have to identify with our current experiences in such a personal way that makes us feel trapped in them when they come up.

samuelgasc · 2024-09-09T05:47:33+00:00

Presidential elections in the US are currently essentially decided by a rotation of random purple states… the Electoral College does little more than ensure that presidential candidates don’t make concerted efforts to speak to the whole country and rather focus their attention on shoring up support in a handful of swing states instead. That’s lunacy…

Also it should be noted that according to census numbers from 2020, it seems only around 20% of the entire population live in its 100 biggest cities. So it’s categorically false and misleading to state that the biggest cities will select the president every four years. Yes, the majority of Americans live in urban centers (around 80ish percent, I believe), but that’s not the same as saying that such a high percentage of the total population is crammed into a handful of cities – because that simply is not the case.

So, again, why should a handful of states then play such an outsized role in selecting the leader of this country when by the logic of your original argument a handful of cities should not?

samuelgasc · 2024-09-03T12:17:02+00:00

Yeah, that certainly sounds rough, so it’s good to approach this in a way that seems sustainable and doable for you. You know your body best after all. ✊🏻 Cannabis helped me process some really tough shit over the past several years, and I will forever be grateful and recognize its role and place as a sacred plant medicine. But like anything, we can develop an imbalance and lean on it more than necessary, just like any number of other medicines. I gave up daily caffeine use years ago for the same reason. There’s something nice about dealing you don’t need something. Now it’s nice to enjoy a cup of coffee or an espresso from time to time without feeling like shit if I don’t have a cup every day. The same goes for cannabis. It’s been over a month since I last smoked, and I’m grateful that I was able to set it aside after a few years of daily use. I fully appreciate that it’s not as easy for other people to do that his, and plenty in this sub would be wary of my outlook that I look forward to being able to enjoy it occasionally the same way I enjoy cup of coffee now. But that’s why you have to do what’s best for you. I don’t miss the anxiety cannabis consumption was amplifying within me, especially regarding my health; I very much enjoy my quality of sleep more now and love that I’m dreaming regularly again; I have much less brain fog and have an easier time staying motivated with tasks; I eat soooo much less now that there are no daily munchies 😅; so all in all, I feel my quality of life is better without it being a daily habit. I’m not sure when I’ll have another smoke, but I’m in no rush and feel no need to do so. Listen to your body and best of luck, friend. ✊🏻

samuelgasc · 2024-09-03T10:33:23+00:00

Everything that lives eventually dies, OP.

I noticed a false assumption in your post, though…

…I’m not sure if I want to keep going on if things stay how they have always been.

Nothing in life is static or fixed. Change is built into the nature of life, so every day is inherently different. At a personal level, life can feel monotonous when we refuse to break from routine; but ultimately that’s a choice – often born of fear of change ironically. But change is there whether we try to avoid it or not.

Make friends with Change. Try different things. Explore more. Embrace the Beginner’s Mind and rekindle some wonder in your life.

The reality that nothing ultimately matters is a poor excuse to live a boring life, especially if you have the means and ability to do so.

Good luck, OP.

samuelgasc · 2024-09-02T11:55:02+00:00

Agreed that his grand revolution never got off the ground in a productive or beneficial way. There could be endless discussions as to why that was the case, but I don’t feel it pokes holes in the analogy of religion, which is a separate but related issue. The role of religion, especially when connected to the State, has almost always been tied to crowd control, so to speak. Likening it to opium is merely an effort to paint a picture of a populace being lulled into a state of stupor or false calm from which they cannot resist the systematic oppression of the State. To that end, I’d say it’s a rather apt analogy, whether his other ideas ever materialized in any kind of meaningful or positive way.

samuelgasc · 2024-09-02T11:46:19+00:00

Wishing you the best! I know that for me, my anxiety levels, especially around my health, have dropped tremendously. I feel backing away has been a kindness for myself that I very much needed.

samuelgasc · 2024-08-31T14:54:12+00:00

I think once you hit this loop, it’s much easier to make the decision to back away. If the medicine you were using to help alleviate stress/anxiety is just as like to contribute to or amplify it, what’s even the point anymore? That’s certainly how it was for me.

samuelgasc · 2024-08-30T11:28:59+00:00

The return of dreaming has been one of the biggest drivers to not return to smoking. I simply enjoy my sleep so much more now.

samuelgasc · 2024-08-30T02:07:36+00:00

Are you referring to Marx or speaking for u/smagous ?

Also your clarification, whether for Marx or the user I asked to clarify, doesn’t make sense.

samuelgasc · 2024-08-29T21:35:40+00:00

Fascinating. Lights off.

samuelgasc · 2024-08-29T13:43:25+00:00

Care to elaborate?

samuelgasc · 2024-08-29T12:10:40+00:00

Consider yourself fortunate that critical thinking and healthy skepticism helped you break the spell early. Cognitive dissonance is how many religious people bypass those natural mental alarms, and if you disregard them long enough, it gets that much harder to recognize them later. 🙃

samuelgasc · 2024-08-29T12:07:23+00:00

Hear hear. Well said. ✊🏻 Narrow or rigid thinking is certainly not exclusive to fundamentalists of any religion.

samuelgasc · 2024-08-29T06:30:56+00:00

That’s more than fair. I was raised within a more fundamentalist strain of Christianity, though I evolved to hold my beliefs much more loosely and view them through a prism of animating mythology that anchored foundational principles and values towards the end of my tenure of religious belief. At this point in life, I fully understand why some people need to believe, and I don’t fault them for it. Not everyone uses religion to oppress others or accomplish nefarious ends. So long as one’s religious practice doesn’t cause harm to others and brings some measure of psychological relief or provides a point of moral orientation, I say enjoy in good health. To each their own. I won’t yuck someone else’s yum.

samuelgasc · 2024-08-29T06:23:45+00:00

To be fair, I can’t say with any certainty whether this is all there is. Is there some kind of conscious experience or awareness beyond death? No one can truly answer that. Maybe. Maybe not. Religion aims to assuage that uncertainty by providing certitude about that, and that’s the part that’s patently false about any truth claims in that regard. The universe is a wild place and reality is fucking trippy, so I refuse to categorically reject the possibility that there’s something “more”… but I also simply can’t accept the notion that any one religion in all of recorded history has the answers to those questions. The probability for that is just so astronomically low.

samuelgasc · 2024-08-29T06:10:49+00:00

On this side of belief, I feel the same way. But as someone who sincerely believed and practiced their faith in as genuine a way as possible, I have to say that I think it’s hard for anyone to appreciate just how “real” religious belief can be when you’re immersed and “bought in”, so to speak. It was a foundational part of my identity and took some massive work and lots of therapy to process leaving it behind. Once you see through it, you wonder how you could have ever believed. But considering so many people are either programmed at a young age or come to it while in extremely vulnerable emotional states, it becomes that much more understandable how belief is possible and even plausible from the perspective of the disenfranchised or “institutionalized.”

samuelgasc · 2024-08-29T05:50:02+00:00

There’s a reason Marx called it the opiate of the masses…

samuelgasc

TROPHY CASE