Sobriety: The Unbroken Awareness of Who You Really Are.

many people say that you should
prioritize your mental health above all else and it's a beguiling lis simple dictum whatever it is you aspire to do in life presumably you can't do it if you're crazy whatever it is you want to enjoy in life presumably you can't enjoy it if your actual ability to think and perceive reality is impaired and if this impairment is something that is within your power to cure or solve then presumably you should first cure or solve it makes sense seems like like such a simple dictum uh what what is mental health I think it's interesting that this sort of slogan which might suggest that you um you should be less self-indulgent ends up being an excuse for even being even more self intelligent like oh well if you need to drink alcohol to make yourself feel good then you should make alcohol for the sake of your mental health if you need a vacation to make yourself feel good then you should prioritize the vacation for the sake of mental health and we had this discussion about another vegan youtuber put a natural vegan she was taking antidepressant drugs during pregnancy SSRI drugs that we know they do damage to the health of the mother they also do damage to healthy unborn child and we got to hear all the excuses from people who said no no no you should prioritize your mental health many years ago I saw the same debates about marijuana and people justifying smoking marijuana during pregnancy certainly in Canada I've heard it about women during alcohol during pregnancy quote unquote prioritize your mental health I think if we were really having a sincere and thoroughgoing discussion of what mental health means we'd have to say that drinking a neurotoxin like alcohol is not mentally healthy um feeling that you rely on a poison and in toxification that the brain toxicity achieved by drinking that that poison for your for your mental health for your equanimity for your moods for your you know for your self perceived sanity it is can't possibly be be healthy so you know to quote Marcus Aurelius once again we are debating for no ordinary prize we are debating for whether we are to be sane or insane I had a year and a half of my life here in three months in Scotland though those people back then maybe Scotland's change people tell me Scotland has changed but um you know to drink alcohol four days a week is it sane or insane that the the Scottish idea of sobriety at that time in Glasgow Scotland you know was alcoholism oh um yeah the Scottish idea of food and health and diet it was it was unbelievable was it was cartoonish but if you live in a society of alcoholics if you live in a society where it's reassured and you're told again and again this is normal and natural and necessary and will make you feel good about yourself and oh come on it'll it'll do you good it'll set you right it'll help you think clearly it'll help you calm down what what in that context is mentally healthy and isn't it in fact a strangely defiant thing you have to do to stand up against that tradition in that cultural context and say no I for my part I'm not gonna drink alcohol I'm gonna refuse this even if I'm the only person who's sober in Glasgow Scotland you know even if you know even if everyone perceives me as sick and strange and you know I know I know it may sound like a joke to you guys but it's not that's that's basically my situation with video games but I come on the internet and make youtube videos talking about the importance of not playing video games as an adult you know still still to this day I still get hate mail I just got more mail today some of its really book-length explain to me how no-no-no I'm wrong but I was supposedly you know and yes some of them sent me statistics that video games they now are the world's most popular hobby in the world's most popular pastime yeah and probably if you multiply the the number of people playing video games by the number of hours they spend playing video games they probably spend more time doing that than any other hobby because even people go skiing most of them don't spend that much time skiing as the people thing but yeah I'm the one person who's gonna stand up in my culture and say no you know there's a difference between a toy and a tool and when we're children we play with toys and when we're adults we try to do meaningful things with with tools obviously a pencil can be a toy or a tool it's how you use it and a computer can be a toy or a tool it's how you use it I got this email from a 25 year old man and he talks about his political education as political aspirations and his struggle with autism he's been diagnosed with autism formally and you know he admits that he's been on SSRI drugs antidepressants since the age of 16 and I'll just quote him verbatim here he says quote he is a weakened alcoholic he can go months without drinking but he always falls back he gets very drunk once a week he uses alcohol as a way to stop thinking he has a constant narration going on in his head and then he's drinking alcohol to to plot it so close close quote if you guys know I've been sober basically since 19 or 20 or something I mean exactly oh really my drinking was like it ever in 16 17 I drank a few times since then but I I quit early but I can I can relate to this I really can for me really the only thing that was interesting or rewarding about drinking alcohol was you could say the negation of consciousness was of blotting out and blacking out of consciousness indeed the suicide like quality of drinking and and feeling your your thoughts stop and there's no way that can be mentally healthy now he comments he has a constant narration going on is it but it's not always unpleasant is it when your life is miserable when your life is unhappy when you're dwelling on unhappy things when you feel the narration in your head is something you have to escape that's when it's unpleasant when you're consumed with thoughts of something a problem you're trying to solve or history or politics like you find rewarding it's thing you find interesting something you find meaningful then you don't mind your thoughts being a constant narration but it's not it's not the narration itself that's the problem right it's what's being being narrated so if this guy has been on antidepressant drugs for nine years it's very likely you'll have very serious side effects one quitting antidepressants if he's become emotionally dependent on alcohol which is what he's describing you know he's not an alcoholic and something needs to drink every day but he is emotionally dependent alcohol then quitting alcohol is gonna be very very hard to do in some ways a lot of indications here of positive potential for the future as a political leader and veganism when someone who just cares about law history politics participating a parliament in his in his country of origin but this comes back to the first promise of the video can you really enjoy anything in life without your mental health can you really pursue a goal or accomplish anything in life without your mental health now the problem is as I've already mentioned the people define mental health to mean their own self-indulgence and I will obviate this problem by restating the same slogan in slightly more precise terms can you enjoy anything in this life without self discipline can you accomplish your goals in this life without self-discipline it's really self discipline we're talking about and not mental health and self-discipline just like mental health in my opinion is radically and fundamentally incompatible with being dependent on alcohol with being dependent on antidepressants especially given what we now know a scientific fact about what their effects are and what they are not now I make this video at a very interesting time in our lives and in my relationship with my girlfriend because my girlfriend just went through a brief period in which she convinced herself that she ought to quit all of her medication that she ought to be able to regenerate her physical health you know what I think I think keeping it all a real part of your optimism vote that was your relatively positive experience with reclaiming your own mental health you can put it that way or your own self discipline really that's what sorry in your case that's it's perfect that's what we really mean so she's mentioned on her own youtube channel she discussed this a little bit but she my girlfriend has a history with antidepressants she has history with marijuana specifically basically no other drug just just marijuana but again marijuana causes brain damage marijuana changes how you feel and how you think and the type of emotional dependency marijuana produces it may be invisible to the people who are themselves dependent on it but it's very real I've since I was a teenager I've said that marijuana was the most dangerous of drugs because it makes intolerable things tolerable even when I was a little teenager like 15 16 17 I saw there would be people and they hate their job and they hate their roommate this is Toronto so everyone at it roommate no one at their own apartment everyone was sharing they hate their job they hate their roommate they hate their family they maybe they hate living in Toronto or whatever and you know there's so many things they hate and they would smoke marijuana every night and intolerable things became tolerable and things they wanted to change would have an impetus and a motivation to change that week that month that year instead went on unchanged for years and years SIA Melissa had a relatively positive experience getting motivated by my channel and then getting motivated by getting to know me and falling in love with me to really kind of reclaim her self discipline I think nobody can define mental health so it's but you know certainly taking taking a step for it that way and she adapted to living a completely sober lifestyle and a lifestyle I mean you know she's been highly driven highly motivated to learn new things and to grow as a person even when there was nothing in particular she was trying to learn or become you know it's worth pointing out you haven't had like a single career ambition or focus but you have nevertheless been focused in the things you apply yourself to in your life and you know we're lucky cuz it turns out she's got a talent for the Chinese language which she's been applying herself to lately but you know what physical health problems they are beyond their beyond the reach they're beyond the scope of what self-discipline can do for you right with self-discipline you can learn to cope better with autism and it sounds like this young man in many ways he's already way ahead there is doing pretty well but you know so if this one can never rehearse autism it can never cure autism it can just help you cope better self discipline can help you cope with having only one leg I mean a really simple physical condition and you know Melissa you've now had the process unlike your experience quitting SSRIs unlike your experience quitting antidepressants your experience quitting marijuana Melissa's experience quitting drugs that feed it treated or physical health which she did to some extent with a lot of encouragement and optimism from Nina and Iran and another clear skin diet the idea that by having a more it's it's really about this of what the idea that by having a more disciplined diet you were gonna you know you were gonna solve these other problems in your life in your body you've instead had the kind of question reminder that no no it's in some ways we like to say that the mind and the body are one but the mind is the mind and the body is the body and there was only so much the self discipline can do for you physically with medically real medically real conditions and autism is a medically real condition whereas depression is not even though it may seem the the realest thing in the world to you it may seem all-consuming overwhelming you know the depression is not and the treatment of depression with SSRIs asthma discussed at great length on this channel it's not so look this guy wrote to me he's not really asking me any questions I think he's already got the right questions and I think he already he already has the answers even so you know I think the only thing you can really hear from want to hear from me is that I sympathize but he says he's just about to finish the degrees currently enrolled in university I think you can have absolutely no higher priority than your own sobriety brutally as honest as that and he mentions a lot of other things in his life just people he can't get along with and stuff well if you can't get along with them drunk you tell me maybe you're gonna get along with them even worse when you're so I think you absolutely have to make your top priority quitting the mind-altering drugs you're currently accustomed to shall we say and you know that there's probably no way to really prepare yourself for the struggle that involves you know what let's let's keep it over real you know some Melissa I've been through this with my girlfriend in real time part of her struggle with this sobriety this absolute sobriety and me until tomorrow like Western cultural standard she already was sober nobody considered her a drunk or a STONER and we're close to her own parents had no idea she smoked marijuana she wasn't perceived as you know a STONER or no one perceived the antidepressant Pro but you know what most you know what I've seen with you part of your struggle in the last two years has just been facing up to what kind of a person you really are or what kind of a person you really were I think the drugs you used even though they're considered soft drugs made it easier for you to deceive yourself about what kind of person you are and being really sober all the time and being self examining and having nowhere to run you know I mean like you're always seeing yourself in the mirror you know what I mean always knowing who you are and knowing why you did things you know what you said and what you meant to say and you didn't quite say that and what what you were feeling and then reflecting on that and then towards like if you're a jerk knowing exactly how why you're a jerk and having no refuge from that reality no refuge from the narration in your mind that's been really hard for you to deal with that's been a kind of second coming into adulthood for you and last in the last couple of years and I can imagine you know for this for this young man if you really quit drinking and quits the quits the mind-altering drugs you know one of the one of the most sobering experiences of all is recognizing who you really are but hey guess what there's good news we're all malleable not infinitely malleable but malleable you know I've had periods in my life where I did math everyday complex math and you change you adapt now I haven't done math in so many years you know it's it's very slow my appearance my life where I was thinking in and speaking in lotion every day and just yesterday i sat there with a lotion phrase book in the bookstore and looked at it wow I haven't thought in or spoken that language again and elements of your character that you exercise or leave in abeyance you can develop you can become in appreciable and significant ways a different person above all morally ethically you know that's that's within your grasp in terms of self discipline what you care about and how much you care and how you express that care those things can change you know the in many in many ways the aesthetics of who you are and what have a person you are they they really can't change but yeah if you don't really have the experience of sobriety as an adult because for him yeah age 16 to 25 you know yeah you're in for a series of rude awakenings and probably a struggle both with recognizing who you are and with figuring out what kind of person you aspire to be and how to day-by-day cope with that gap