I prefer watching educational videos on YouTube more than watching television, but it’s tedious digging for good content, and I’ve already seen most of the good stuff while searching for videos to put in my blogs. In case anyone else is looking for entertaining educational videos on YouTube, I made a series of posts with all the ones I’ve used on The Wise Sloth, organized by topic, with links to the posts they appear in. You’re bound to be enlightentained, and if you need help exploring the 600+ essays on The Wise Sloth, these video lists offer a quick overview that practically summarize my philosophies.
This list comes from my essays on saving the world.
Money makes the world go ’round. Money is power. It might not be able to buy happiness directly, but it buys comfort, security, and freedom, which yield happiness. Poverty buys stress, anxiety, hopelessness, poor quality food and slavery, which will make you so miserable it will shorten your life.
Mind-altering substances are expensive and addictive. The more you use the more you will want to consume and the more you’ll need to consume to achieve inebriation. If you become a full-blooded addict you’ll end up spending a very significant portion of your income on mind-altering substances, and that will severely reduce your options in life. If you have any hopes and dreams in life then stay sober, because addiction is a very heavy chain and ball around your finances.
2. No hangovers, withdrawals or cravings
Euphoric chemicals are called “euphoric” for a reason. They will cause you to feel levels of pleasure unattainable through sobriety. Though you may begin your descent into addiction by chasing euphoria, your motivation to get inebriated will inevitably transition to fleeing hangovers, withdrawals and cravings (all of which are extremely painful). The benefit you get from temporary chemical-induced euphoria won’t be worth the cost of perpetual discomfort.
3. You’ll make more clear-headed decisions
Inebriation is effectively temporary retardedness. While under the influence you can’t speak, walk or think at normal, sane levels. The more time you’re inebriated the higher the chances you’ll make bad decisions like sleeping with the wrong people, breaking laws, ignoring responsibilities and treating other people poorly. If you want to make the most of out of life you need to make the best decisions possible every day. Addiction prevents that from happening.
4. You’ll be more able to overcome the problems that drive you to inebriation
Some of the most important issues you need to confront rationally are the problems that drive you to drink and use drugs in the first place. Inducing temporary retardedness won’t make those problems go away; it just sweeps them under the rug until you sober up again, and the longer they’re left unresolved the worse they’ll get.
5. Your life won’t be plagued by the problems that come with addiction
Addiction will make you poorer, more stressed and less able to deal with life’s challenges. These problems will cause even more unnecessary problems that you’ll need to deal with. If you’d never started down the path to addiction those problems would never have happened, and once they do start piling up you’ll be less capable of dealing with them if you’re broke, stressed and incoherent.
6. Your brain will work better, which will improve every aspect of your life
Euphoric chemicals don’t just hamper your ability to think coherently and logically. They damage your brain and take their toll on your subconscious thought processes as well causing mental deficiencies you’re not even aware of. Your identity and reality are defined by your brain. If you throw a monkey wrench into your brain then you’ll lower the quality of your life and your reality forever even if you can manage to hold down a high paying job and not run off everyone important in your life.
7. You won’t be a burden on the people you love (and who love you)
No man is an island. The things you do (and don’t do) affect the people in your life. Living with an alcoholic is like living with a special need’s child. In saying that I’m not trying to disparage addicts or special needs children. I’m just pointing out that they do add another level of responsibilities and burdens on the people closest to them. I’m also not implying we shouldn’t help the people in our lives who have special needs (such as managing addictions). I’m just saying, if you don’t have to inconvenience your loved ones then you shouldn’t.
8. You’ll have more meaningful relationships with the people you love (and who love you)
Living with someone who is too inebriated to walk, talk or think effectively is like living with a Neanderthal. It’s difficult to reach and relate to someone in that state. Likewise, when you’re inebriated you can’t connect with your loved ones on a lucid level. Inebriation puts up a wall between you and your loved ones that limits your ability to experience each other’s true selves, and that’s missing out on the best part of life.
9. With good health comes better feelings
Pain is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong, and addiction is agonizing. Good health allows your body to function properly, and if you take care of yourself then your body will reward you with free euphoria.
10. The future will always look bleak when you’re killing yourself
Life is daunting, especially if you’ve had a traumatic past and/or a stressful present. Addiction is harming yourself to medicate yourself out of fear of feeling pain. The cure for fear is hope. If you have hope for the future then your anxieties will fade to your peripheral vision. As fun as euphoric chemicals may be, you know they’re killing you. That will always make the future bleaker even if you don’t fully articulate the fact to yourself. Sobriety isn’t always easy, but it opens doors that lead to greener pastures.
At some point in your life you’re going to have the opportunity to do mind-altering drugs like tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, heroin, meth, crack, etc., and you’re going to have to do the cost/benefit analysis to decide whether or not you should do drugs. Some people would tell you that you shouldn’t do drugs because drugs are bad, and if you do drugs then that makes you a bad person who deserves to be punished accordingly. That philosophy is vague to the point of being useless and doesn’t address any of the subtle realities of drug use.
People don’t do drugs because they’re bad, and doing drugs doesn’t make you a bad person. Doing drugs certainly doesn’t warrant punishment. So what does cause people to use drugs? The number one cause of drug use is the fact that life sucks. Life doesn’t suck because existence is an inherently pointless and painful experience. Life sucks because the world our elders designed for us is inhumane, and countless people suffer from poverty, abuse, and abandonment as a result of the faulty systems that control our lives. If you grew up in a loving, nurturing household where all of your needs were taken care of, then good for you. You’re less likely to get addicted to drugs because your life is full of experiences and opportunities that make life enjoyable and fulfilling. But if you grew up in a broken home and got stuck working as a disposable wage slave at the bottom of a heartless corporation with little to no options for career progression, then the cost/benefit analysis of doing drugs will look more tempting to you.
The harder your life is the more tempting and gratifying drugs will be, and if you live and work with broken people who are trapped under the glass ceiling, you’ll be more likely to make friends with people who have discovered that habitual drug use helps manage their own pain and anxiety. No matter what strata of society you come from, the people most likely to offer you drugs will be your friends. A creepy looking stranger in a black trench coat probably won’t walk up to you and ask you in a raspy whisper if you want to buy some dope. More likely you’ll see your friends having a good time using drugs and you’ll think to yourself, “I want to have that good of a time too.” And your friends will be more than happy to share their drugs with you because they care about you and want you to have a good time too.
An interesting thing about drugs is that they don’t affect all people the same way. While your friends may be having the best time of their lives while on drugs you might get a mild kick or even get sick from it because your body processes the drugs differently. If you experiment with drugs a few times and find that they make you feel absolutely amazing then you need to be extra cautious about using them again. If drugs don’t do much for you then you may be able to use them recreationally from time to time without ever becoming an addict. Just be careful about judging people who use drugs more often than you, because their situation is very different from yours.
Drugs are dangerous because they damage your health, and they’re addictive, but the most dangerous thing about drugs is that they’re fun. They’re more fun than reality. When you feel happiness or pleasure you’re feeling the effects of chemicals in your brain. Drugs affect your brain in ways that make you experience levels of happiness and pleasure greater than is possible to achieve through sobriety. When adults tell children not to do drugs because drugs are bad and children go on to use drugs and discover how absolutely wonderful drugs are, then those children are likely to lose regard for the opinion of puritanical adults and continue on with their drug use unprepared for the dangers ahead of them.
It takes time to get addicted to drugs. The first 1-100 times you use drugs you may not be an addict. You may just be enjoying the moment, but over time the addiction will creep in, and you won’t notice it’s there until it’s too late. So if you’re going to experiment with drugs you need to be vividly aware that you’re not just enjoying the moment. You’re courting addiction, and once your body becomes dependent on drugs you won’t be able to just quit any time. You might be able to quit, but it’s going to be painful…and not just the one time you decide to quit cold turkey.
Habitual drug users tend to start out using drugs simply for the sake of experiencing euphoria, but as you become addicted your body craves the drug all the time the same way your body craves food, water or sex. When you don’t have it you get this unexplainable sense of hunger for the drug, and your brain will want it so bad that it will help you make excuses why you should spend more money to get more drugs. This sounds dramatic, but the way it feels to fledgling addicts is deceptively commonplace. There’s just a thought in the back of your head that says, “Hey, a cigarette or beer or joint or line would sure be nice right now.” Then your brain answers back, “What the heck? Let’s get some more.” Then you do.
At the same time as this is going on your mind is also getting accustomed to experiencing an unrealistically euphoric reality. So normal life becomes boring and dull, which makes you want to do drugs more often. Then, the more drugs you do the more damage you do to your organs and deplete your vitamins. If you damage your organs long enough and starve your body of essential vitamins you won’t be able to experience the fullness of sober reality anyway. In fact, you’ll start developing minor aches and pains that will motivate you to do more drugs to erase those pains. And since you’ll feel like you’re starving when you don’t feed your body’s addiction then the nature of your habit will gradually change. Instead of using drugs simply to chase euphoria you’ll use drugs to run away from the pain of withdrawals. You’ll tell yourself sobriety just sucks, but in reality, you’re making sobriety suck.
The longer you do drugs the more likely you are to come to the “logical” conclusion that if life is extra fun while you’re high then why not just be high all the time? Then you’ll be happy all the time. Technically that’s true, but the prize comes with many costs. If you’re a wealthy trust fund baby who will never have to work a day in your whole life then spending your life as a self-destructive hedonist is your choice. You’re going to die someday anyway. Whether or not you live a long, sober life or a short, euphoric one is an interesting philosophical question, but your addiction might not amount to more than that. However, if you’re from the working class then the consequences of addiction are far more serious.
Long before you develop health problems from your addiction you’ll suffer the consequences of having to pay for your addiction. Legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco are priced as high as possible and taxed as high as possible on top of that. Businesses price their goods high so they can make as much money off of killing people as possible, and governments make sin taxes as high as possible to discourage substance abuse (supposedly), but an addict will pay whatever they have to in order to cope with home much life sucks, ward off withdraws and feel euphoric.
Doing anything every day becomes incredibly expensive very quickly. Doing drugs every day requires you to set aside a significant percentage of your income. This means you’re going to have to sacrifice something else in order to free up room in your budget for drugs. At first, you might not go out to eat as much or buy as many new clothes, but the more addicted you become, and the more substances you become addicted to, the more money you’ll have to budget for drugs and the less other things you’ll be able to do and buy.
As I said earlier, life sucks for billions of people in this world through no fault of their own. They’re victims of a heartless economy, and they’re victimized most at work. We grow up in a world where the average worker is paid as little as possible to do as much work as possible while being treated with as much indignity as is it takes to get workers to meet their quotas and please their customers. Living like this our entire lives we take it for granted that this is the natural order of things and anyone who doesn’t like it is ungrateful and lazy. People who use euphoric drugs know how good life can be, and they know they don’t need to climb to the top of the corporate ladder to make their dreams come true. They don’t even need a fancy house or new clothes. All they need is a case of beer, a bag of weed or a needle of heroin.
Drug addicts tend to become disenchanted with the promise of a lavish retirement after a lifetime of being treated like shit at work. After using enough drugs you may even come to the conclusion that since you’re not going to live to old age you don’t need to save for old age or impress petty, sadistic bosses. The fact that your brain is skewed sideways from so much drug use it becomes easy to justify decisions you would have found illogical when you were sober, and since you’re feeling euphoric all the time, you don’t feel the consequences of rash decisions the way you normally do. So the more drugs you do the more likely you are to give up on traditional career paths and simply find whatever work will cater to your drug use. Ironically, most of the jobs that don’t care about your employment history and don’t make you take drug tests are inhumane minimum wage jobs that don’t offer benefits or retirement options.
So long-term drug use increases the likelihood that you’ll end up broke and working at a shit job. This will make you want to do drugs more, and since you won’t want to do anything during your free time unless you’re high you’ll spend more money on drugs. And since you won’t be able to function normally while you’re high you’ll tend to just stay at home and do drugs, and that will become your life. The scariest part is that you won’t feel bad about this. In your mind, you’ll have reached Shangri La, but to the outside observer, you’ll be a poor junky living in a sparse house who wasted your potential.
That’s a worst-case scenario. There are billions of people who have used, are using and will use drugs who won’t end up anywhere near that point. But the ideal life is nowhere near that end of the spectrum. I’m not saying that nobody should ever use drugs. When done in moderation you can experience majestic highs without selling your soul for it, but every time you use drugs you need to be aware of the fact that you’re warming your feet at the gates of hell.
The Wise Sloth 