As a child of the nineties I went through all the anti-drug campaigns – D.A.R.E., ‘just say no,’ that fried egg commercial, watching my dad’s alcohol abuse slowly alienate his friends and loved ones. In hindsight, those methods were not only ineffective, they were filled to the brim with misinformation! Chief among them, the belief that people depend on drugs to feel happy. That’s so laughable it makes me want to get high. I have never used drugs to feel happy. I use them on a per hour basis to temporarily ward off the insatiable misery and self-doubt lurking just under the surface of this confident facade.
I’m healthy.
Achieving happiness isn’t neuroscience. When I want to feel happy, I just do something that makes me feel happy! I’ll take a bike ride, call a friend on the phone to catch up, or work on my car.
But once I am alone in my apartment and the sun goes down, the silence creeps into my bedroom and my mind is filled with the dread of an uncertain time that will inevitably come where my world will be consumed by never-ending blackness. My weary, yet hypervigilant mind races past the brink of sanity and I need something, anything to achieve sweet, sweet release.
Then I take a trip to Bongtown (population: me) and everything’s fine again!
Seriously, now that I’m looking at it in this light, everything’s gonna turn out okay. When I get up in the morning I’m gonna go on a hike and really get my body and mind going before work begins. I love the rush of a hike or a run and feeling the elements hit me in the face first thing in the morning. Really makes me feel alive! What doesn’t make me feel alive is the long, stop-and-go commute to my drab workspace, only to close my office door and feel the doubts begin to creep in.
I’m not good enough. I am a fraud. In time, my clients will realize it and then my bosses will know. And then my family and friends will find out and soon everyone will abandon me like a runt of the litter left in the woods to starve fore they, like me, are not worthy of love or attention or even life. My heart is rust.
But then I hit up the bathroom and take some swigs from my good ol’ pocket flask!
They say it’s five o’clock somewhere! Probably China. Either way it’s 9:52 in here in Pittsburgh and I fucking LOVE my job. Everyone here is so fucking stupid. Not me though, because I found the secret to happiness. Just avoid all negative feelings and live a worry-free life for close to forty years assuming you’ve got a good liver-guy.