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I aquired a new insecurity lately. Would you believe that I'm insecure about my sobriety of all things? I've told various people that I believe it's better to experience authentic pain or suffering than to use substance to avoid the pain. Multiple people have called me a masochist for that. How the hell am I supposed to argue with that? Suppose someone just goes "nah, you aren't sober because you like authenticity like you are always saying. The real reason you are sober because you just really like suffering and punishing yourself. I'm glad I'm not a freak like you!" Is there anything I could even say or do to disprove that? There are so many ways I could turn their argument back on them. Oh yeah? What if someone you loved died? Would you want to feel bad about it? Or is it better to be glad that they died? Or even to not give a shit at all? If you could take a drug which made it so you didn't greave over a loved one's death then would you take it? Here's another one. What if you could feel perfect, non-addictive bliss with no health problems and no side effects and all you had to do was torture and kill an innocent person? (The drug would also take away any feelings of built about it afterward.) Would you kill that person? I refuse to use those arguments however. Partly because I believe that analogies are always bad. And partly because those are really personal questions; asking about the death of a loved one is pretty insensitive, and my own insecurity doesn't make it right to stomp on other people's feelings like that. I should stomp on their feelings in a different, better way.

💬 10 replies

Replies (10)

Zsubmariner32d ago

Why argue at all. Anybody who calls you masochistic for being sober isn't your friend

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Scoundrel31d ago

You think I should completely ignore a criticism I care a lot about purely based on who is presenting it to me and how it makes me feel? I think the only reason you are saying that is because sobriety has such a great connotation. What if my "sobriety" is refusing anesthesia at the dentist because "they are going to be working on my teeth either way, shouldn't I experience the authentic signals my body is built to send me?" What if I'm refusing to drink coffee, take anti-inflammatory medicine, or even eat articifial sweetner just because they are "inauthentic"? Sorry, I take criticism seriously too. I'm not going to be satisfied until I come up with some reasonable way to address the criticism. It doesn't matter to me whether that criticism comes from a close friend, from a stranger on the internet like you, or from my own imagination. Even if I don't change my actions there is always room to improve my reasoning.

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Hoshi31d ago

just say that you avoid drinking alcohol, because you don’t want to risk to confess to anyone that you are a pedo. I doubt anyone would call you masochist

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Hoshi26d ago

consider going through a couple of hours of thorax surgery: would you consider narcotics beneficial?

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Scoundrel31d ago

Oh damn, why didn't I think of that? Jokes aside I'm not worried about revealing my pedophilia. I am such a massive control freak that any drugs or alcohol would probably sooner kill me than get me to do anything I wouldn't be okay with doing while sober. Like hurting someone for example.

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Hoshi31d ago

When you put it like „What if someone you loved died?“ you are telling your listener that he is doing something wrong. It would be easier if you talk about yourself „What if someone I like, like you, died? …“ and convince him that your point is valid in your case, and he does not have to endure pain from now or be an idiot. Also, address that there are boundaries: „If had to go through thorax surgery I‘d make an exemption.“ If you put it like that you should be called „masochist“ less often.

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Scoundrel25d ago

If it can prevent someone from going into shock and dying yes, but otherwise no. Invasive surgery is actually really fucked up from an objective point of view. When someone's thorax gets opened up, typically the only prognosis is death. In our genetic history, 99% of the time someone has voluntarally allowed their thorax to be opened up in order to "help them", the person performing the operation was a psycho witch doctor. I imagine that most of the people in our genetic history who did end up getting thorax surgery only did so because they were on lots of narcotics or they were otherwise very out of their right mind. I think it's very reasonable to demand a very high bar of justification from our doctors when they suggest opening up our chest. And it only makes sense that the right way of performing thorax surgery would require quite a lot of conviction on the part of the person getting the surgery. Even from a practical perspective, there are a lot of benefits to being lucid during an important surgery. What better feedback for if the surgeon fucks sonething up than a person who can literally feel it? How many stupid fuck ups like operating on the wrong organ or leaving things inside the patient could be avoided if they weren't knocked out? How many spontaneous decisions have surgeons had to make without the feedback of the person recieving the surgery? If the surgeon is going to be fucking up someone's body anyway then why take a bunch of anesthesia just to fuck up their other organs too? Don't forget that anesthesia is literally a poison. Pain sucks because it's so strongly associated with injury and death. If this thorax surgery is supposedly fighting injury or death, then shouldn't the supposedly informed and consenting patient be able to look past the pain to all of the advantages of the surgery? I actually read an article about someone who had to get open heart surgery with minimal anesthesia because injecting anesthesia in that area was very likely to kill them. It's been done before.

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Scoundrel28d ago

First of all, I don't particularly like them. Secondly I WOULD go through surgery without anesthesia if I could. And thirdly, that's still an analogy, so there's nothing stopping them from saying "those two things aren't analogous, or even saying "I WOULDN'T want you to mourn me if I died; I would want you to drown your sorrows in alcohol." I'm pretty much just left with the original issue just rephrased in a different way. If someone has authentic feelings like sorrow which they can't or won't act on, is it still the wrong to choose not to feel them? And if so, why?

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Hoshi28d ago

1. then you obviously have to say: „What if someone I liked, unlike you, died?“ 2. ouch 3. say: „to me they are analogous“ 4. it depends. Because it always does. Pain is an evolutionary invention. Its useful in most cases to motivate better behavior for an „imaginary“ cost.

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Scoundrel27d ago

✍👀Got it. If someone calls me a masochist then I should instantly roast them. As for your argument that pain isn't useful in every case, isn't that why humans are able and willing to manually ignore pain if they have enough conviction that it's the right decision? I mean, if someone achieves a good outcome through luck or due to other people's interference I don't see people trying to avoid their enjoyment of the consequences. Isn't there inherent value in experiencing reality, even if there WERE a negative consequence to it? (To be clear, I promise you there isn't one though.)

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