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Jan. 11, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:24:35
1251 Sunday Call-In Show Jan 11 2009

The Times article, a defense of drug use, and luxuriating in the absence of stress...

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Time Text
Well, good afternoon everybody.
It's Sunday, January the 11th, 2009.
It is actually Christina and I's sixth wedding anniversary.
And for some reason she seems to be all kind of nappy.
She seems to be getting a little bit lazy during the day of late.
I'm not sure what's going on at night.
But there does seem to be a certain amount of lassitude.
The silverware for my breakfast brunch, I guess breakfast slash brunch buffet tray was in the wrong place this morning.
Naturally, I went on about a 90-second hunger strike.
So I just wanted to sort of keep that.
Mentioning Isabelle is three weeks and three days old.
Now, it's actually coming up for a month.
and parenting is wonderful and exciting and thrilling.
And she's had a couple of tougher evenings just because she's going through these growth spurts.
And so she's had a little bit more trouble settling, but she's still been fantastic and wonderful and good-natured and sweet.
And so it's just been great.
And I'll do this in a more detailed podcast, but it's just one of the things that I've noticed about parenting and, of course, we're talking, I guess, a little over three weeks' experience.
So, again, it's all nonsense.
But I sort of noticed that parents, if you were to have kids because you wanted love from them, at least when they were very young, and you wanted authority, I can guarantee you that that will be quite a disappointment for you, that you don't get love from babies.
She certainly is quite fascinated by me, and she certainly does seem to react positively to my company, and I'm very happy that she's so able to relax and sleep on me.
Basically what happens, she's not having any luck sleeping in her room.
So basically she falls on me, similar to the way a tree would fall on a squirrel in the forest, and the squirrel then lies for an indeterminate amount of time, pinned underneath until it chews off an appendage to get loose.
That's very similar to having a baby sleep on you, especially if occasionally you are prone to jimmy legs, it's all too exciting for words.
And so she just, we put her in her bassinet, we put her in her crib, and from a completely deep sleep, she will wake in a few minutes upset because she's not being held, not being cuddled, not being sung to, or something like that. So it's a little bit of a challenge, but of course, that's, I mean, Christine and I, we're a very cuddly couple, so I'm sure that she's gotten that.
And of course, you hold nothing back from infants, and so what Isabella wants, Isabella gets.
But it's interesting because you certainly wouldn't want to get involved as a parent at least through this phase because you had any hankering.
For authority.
This is actually about the least authoritative position I've been in since I was probably about Isabella's age.
So it's really not about having any control or authority, but being a slave to a tiny and extraordinarily beautiful human being.
So it's a wonderful feeling and a wonderful experience, but you wouldn't want to mistake it for, you know, authority and a hunger for love.
So it's great.
Wanted to mention that we did have an article that came out in the Times.
This fellow, Tom Whipple, contacted me and he seemed like an honorable fellow.
So I talked to Tom and Tom agreed to talk with Tom Whipple from The Times on the sole condition that the full interview was going to be linked from the article.
And that was very clear.
That was explicitly confirmed three separate times before the interview went ahead, that the interview was only going to go ahead if the full article was linked in both the print and the online versions.
So we did the interview and Tom was stone genius, brilliant, fantabulous, scientist.
I was just happy to bathe in the brilliance.
He was just great and should be enormously proud, I think, of what he talked about and how he acquitted himself in a difficult and stressful situation.
Unfortunately, the Times reversed its commitment.
After getting the interview, a few minutes before the online version went up, I got an email from Mr.
Whipple saying that they weren't going to provide a link.
There was I don't particularly want to go into the article itself.
It's... I don't care about the media stuff anymore.
I sort of want to move on to new things and to better, higher and deeper things that we're talking about here.
But certainly, that to me was my last stab at getting reasonable treatment out of the media.
It's not... I mean, it didn't happen.
And it was a...
I mean, what I consider a pretty chilling...
Cancellation of a written and verbal contract.
That was the sole basis for the interview.
I think it's a shame, but of course you can't control people's behavior.
So anyway, that's out, that's done, and I think it's important to move on.
I would really recommend, and this is true, even if you are in therapy or who have been in therapy, Let me just see.
I just want to make sure I get the number right.
I had a great conversation with a listener who was hesitant about going into therapy.
And let me just make sure I get the right number so I don't lead you astray.
It's FDR 1249, Fearing Therapy, a listener conversation.
Even if you've done therapy, I've been in it for a while, I would really appreciate it if you would take a listen to that call.
It's got some good stuff about therapy and some good stuff about Some of the challenges that some people have in their lives, you know, if you've got challenging history and so on, I think it's well worth having a look at.
So I hope that you will check that out.
And so that's it for, I guess, my introduction.
I hope that everyone had a great New Year.
I guess we've already had one show since the New Year, but I hope that your New Year is going very well and thank you to those who have subscribed and thank you to, I won't go into your names, but thank you so much to those who sent flowers or Thank you so much to everyone for your generosity and I hope that Any useful tips that I can hurl out with regards to parenting as the years go on will be helpful as well.
And thank you for those who've said that this has created both happiness and sadness in them to hear about the kind of parenting that we're doing.
But it is, I think, very useful for those of you who don't have kids or do have kids or even those of you who have adult kids to hear about some ways in which parenting could work.
So that's it for the intro.
I haven't done the numbers for hits for last month.
Okay, sorry, that's not quite it.
I lie! Once more, that's not quite it for the intro.
I haven't done the hits for last month, but of course they will be relatively ginormous because we get a lot of interest from the media.
we have over 908,000 video views not last month but sort of since we've begun but it's been going up quite a bit and so every time we get the media we get 4,000 to 5,000 thousand new people hitting the site on the day that it comes out.
And maybe some of those people will stick around and listen to stuff and so on.
We'll find out as time goes forward.
So that's it.
If we have new people who wish to have questions, comments, issues, criticisms, problems, or what not, et cetera, what have you, now would be the time to speak up.
I'm I am all ears.
Hey, Steph. Hello.
It's Jessen. Oh, hi.
Sorry, can you just hold off on that?
I just wanted to give the room to new people in case we, because we have some new people in the call who haven't talked yet.
If you could just hold off on your thought in case we have some people who have yearning burnings who haven't spoken before.
All right, sure. Thanks.
Hey, Steph. Hello.
Hey, my name's Aaron.
I've never called him before.
Hey, how you doing? Oh, not too bad.
How about yourself? I'm fine, thank you.
So, I was listening to your podcast.
I've actually wanted to talk to you for a while now, but I've been listening to your podcast on drugs.
Sorry, can we just clarify that statement?
You're listening to my podcast on drugs, not listening to my podcast, comma, on drugs, right?
I just want to make sure of that. I don't know.
You weren't on drugs while you were listening to the podcast.
That's sort of what I want to clarify.
What do you define as a drug?
Is marijuana a drug?
Marijuana is in fact a drug.
Okay, well then, yes, I guess I was.
What is it like to listen to an FDR podcast on marijuana?
Well, actually, I've listened to like hundreds of new podcasts, and the majority of them I actually am kind of high, just because, you know...
I'm sorry, could I just interrupt you for a second?
It sounds like you're taking a small sledgehammer to your sound system.
If you could just hold still while you're talking in case there's loose connections or something, it's kind of loud.
Give me a second. What about that?
That's great, thank you. Okay, so I'm just curious, what is it like to list?
Do they make more sense?
Do they actually flow better?
Well, it's not like you gain any more knowledge or something when you're high, but like, I don't know, it definitely makes your jokes a lot funnier, that's for sure.
That's good to know. That's good.
I always wondered what inhibited my success as a comedian, and it turns out that the audience was just sober, and really, that's the problem.
They had too much judgment. Exactly.
Sorry, my headset is broken here, and it kind of jiggles around, so I'm just going to hold it from now on.
Yeah, if you could, that would be great, because it's tough to follow.
Okay, so is that good?
Beautiful. Sorry, what was your question?
Okay, so the arguments that you brought up in the podcast are just kind of contradictory to my kind of experience of drugs.
And you say you have no moral objection to them, but then you go on to say that no one should do them.
Sure. And I would disagree with that because I would say that there is some positives.
And the arguments that you put forward, I don't think most of them are valid.
Like you said, you can get arrested, you can go to jail for years, and why would you risk that?
But if you're an intelligent drug user, the risk of going to jail is really minor.
You go into your dealer's house, right?
You buy the drugs.
You go back into your car. You go home.
There's no real point where you're going to get arrested unless you're downtown somewhere going up to random people you don't know or anything.
I'm sorry. You would be driving to and from the dealer's house.
Is that right? Oh, yeah.
Right. So you could get stopped by the cops.
You could have a taillight out.
Your sticker could be done.
But a police officer can't just, you know, if my taillight's out, he's not going to search my car.
He'd have no reason to suspect that I had drugs.
You know what I mean? Sorry, that's true unless you're excessively nervous.
Right, but I've had many dealings with police officers over the years, and it's not like that at all.
You play it cool, you're nice, you're polite, you're respectful, and you go about your business.
Okay. I'm perfectly happy to recognize that now that you have an established dealer, right, that you can go and get the drugs and get home and smoke the drugs or use the drugs.
Now, of course, getting the dealer can be a little bit risky for people, right?
Because you have to start with drugs, right?
So when you start with drugs, you don't know the dealer, and so there's more risk involved in that, right?
Once you have a pipeline, so to speak, I can understand that the risk goes down.
Okay, well, yeah, it's true, but if you know other people who use, then you can network that way.
Like, okay, my friend, my buddy does this, and he knows a guy, and he can vouch for him, so then you go there, and then you develop that relationship.
But yes, if you're going to go up to some random person, I would not suggest you go downtown Toronto, wherever you are, and go pick up some drugs, because that's going to be probably a dangerous situation.
Okay, let me just put out two, sorry, just before we go on, and I'm not trying to disagree with you, I'm just putting out two other possibilities.
If your drug dealer has been fingered by somebody higher up in the drug chain, because you know the way it works, right?
They arrest a drug dealer or they find a drug dealer and then they ask him to reveal who's up the chain, who's down the chain.
And so it's entirely possible that when you go to your drug dealer's house, that the house is under surveillance, there are videotapes and so on, right?
And they may get people that way, and they may also then put a lot of pressure on you to reveal anyone else you know who knows drugs, who uses drugs, any other dealers that you know, and so on, right?
So there's that potential.
Well, like, I don't know.
But that's so – okay, I'll give you that, that there's a potential risk that happens, but I think the actual percentage, like the chance of that actually happening is so, so small.
Like I couldn't even – like the guy I go to, I couldn't even imagine how the police would ever even find out about him or how they would ever have a good video.
Sorry, they would find out about him because somebody that he gets drugs from gave him up for a reduced sentence, right?
Okay, that could happen.
And then I'll let you talk.
I just want to get the last possibility.
And I don't know much about this stuff.
This is just stuff that's sort of popping into my mind.
The last thing that can occur is that the drug dealer will give you up in return for a reduced sentence.
Now, I consider that less likely because, as far as I understand it, the cops generally try to go up the chain rather than down to the end users.
But once you're in that orbit, the possibilities go up.
So I agree that the cop's not going to just grab you because he's walking by and sees you go into someone's house.
But there's a lot of surveillance and there's a lot of aggressive tactics that are used to try and sniff people out who are in this sort of area.
I mean, as far as I understand this, there are like hundreds of thousands Of people, I don't know where you live, and it doesn't matter, don't tell me, right?
But hundreds of thousands, if not close to a million Americans who are in jail for nonviolent crimes, a lot of those are to do with drugs.
And I'm sure that a lot of those people are smart and thought that they were safe and secure, but it did not turn out to be the case, right?
So certainly the odds are not, I'm not saying that the odds are very high, But they're also not tiny, because if they were tiny, they'd be almost nobody in jail for drug use, and that's not the fact of the matter.
Okay, well, what I would say to that is, first of all, most of the people in jail, I don't have any statistics on this, but I wouldn't think they're just like little possession charges.
It's going to be like dealers and people who are trafficking that are in prison, right?
Sorry, but let me just be clear about that, though.
We don't know, because it's the government, right?
So we don't know if drugs are being planted.
We don't know if people are just being told, look, you're going to go to jail for 20 years, but I'll get it down to three years if you give up a bunch of people.
And they'll just start naming random people, some guy, to take his sentence.
But I don't know.
I just don't know.
He might give you up and say that you're a dealer.
Right? I mean, we don't know why people are in jail, but we sure know that cops have to hit their numbers and that the more nonsense they come up with, the better it is for them in terms of getting raises and bonuses or, sorry, funding, not necessarily raises.
So we don't know why people are in jail and we certainly, I would not be at all convinced that the majority of people who are in jail for drug crimes that the facts of the matter are even remotely close to the truth.
I'm sorry, that the allegations or what they're charged with is even remotely close to the truth because I'm sure When you threaten some guy with a massive sentence, he's just going to start naming names.
He's got a life to live.
He doesn't want to be in jail for 20 years.
He'll bargain it down to two by just giving up anyone whose name he knows.
And that could be one of yours, whether it's true or not.
But even if he does give up my name, I'm not so sure what the police could do to me.
Like, what am I risking here?
Like, if he says, oh, okay, Aaron, yeah, this guy, you know, he gives me up, what are they going to do?
They're going to come to my house, and I don't think, is that grounds for a warrant?
I don't know, but, like, even if they came into my house, oh, they'd find, maybe they'd find something, maybe they wouldn't.
Like, I don't really think that that would be any real problems for me, even if my dealer did get arrested and he did give me, did give them my name.
Like, I don't really think that would affect my life too much.
And maybe you're right.
I mean, again, I don't know how all of this stuff works.
I know that there's a lot of creepy stuff that goes on in drug enforcement.
But, I mean, maybe you're right.
But my question is, why is it worth it?
Like, what's missing from your life that you need this enhancement that makes this even potential risk worthwhile?
Okay, but the potential...
I don't like you saying potential risk because it's like when you drive your car down the highway, there's a potential risk that you're going to get into a crash, but you still drive down the highway because that risk is so small, you know what I mean?
So I don't really think you can...
Well, sorry, but there's a bit of a difference there because highway driving is usually done when there's no option, right?
Right. I mean, for instance, when I worked at the other end of the city, when I did all these podcasts, there was no way for me to get to my job without driving at all, right?
And so that—I mean, unless I wanted to try and find some local job, which I couldn't, I'd either starve to death, which is a high risk, or I drove on the highway.
So the highway stuff is— It's something that is a part of life.
It's something that's not really avoidable unless you want to take huge changes to your lifestyle.
It's not optional in the way that drugs are, right?
Okay, well, how about a plane?
You're going on a plane. You don't have to go on a plane.
You can drive somewhere, right?
But, like, my whole point to saying that is...
Sorry, statistically, though, you're much safer in a plane than in a car, right?
I'd rather fly than take a car.
Okay, well, it just... My whole point here is just that for me, I think that the risk of me having any kind of legal or recourse, it's so small that I don't even really see it as a risk.
Because as long as you're intelligent about it, As long as you're mindful, you're aware of what's going on around you, and you know how to deal with the police, stuff like that, I don't think that you are going to have any problems.
And yes, there are lots of people in jail and stuff, and they're probably intelligent people, but they're just probably, I guess, not being mindful of their surroundings, or they're in a bad situation, or they took risks that they shouldn't have.
And I want to move on with this, but I just want to reinforce – to your next point, not to another call – but I just want to reinforce that you're assuming that you're in control of the variables.
Like if you act intelligently enough, you're not going to run into problems with the police with regards to drugs.
But the problem is that you're actually – you are not in control of the variables because there's lots of stuff that's occurring in your society or in your environment, assuming you're not currently in a cafe in Amsterdam – There's a lot of things that are occurring in your society and in your environment with law enforcement that is beyond your control, right? Whether they nab someone and that person then just names whoever they can name, including their babysitter from 10th, you know, 5th grade or something, you're not in control of the variables.
And I think the illusion that you're in control of these variables may not, I mean, I don't think it's accurate, which is not to say that you have no influence over it, but you certainly don't have total influence over it.
Oh, I obviously don't have total influence over it, but I'm just saying that you can take steps to reduce the risk so that the risk is so low that, you know, it's very, very unlikely that you're ever going to have any run-ins with the law.
All right. That's all I'm saying.
Anyway, okay. And you know more about it than I do.
I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but sorry.
Go ahead. Okay, can I go on to your next argument?
Sure. Okay, so then the next point that you make is you say that you have no control over the quality of the substance that you put into your body.
And what I would say to that is, well, that's true that you don't have any control over it, but if a dealer is going to...
Well, I've been a drug user for probably about four years, and first of all, I've never had any sort of bad batch or bad drugs or anything like that.
But if a dealer was to sell poisonous drugs or dangerous drugs to people, Are you still there?
I sure am. Okay.
If they were to do that, people would hear about it, they would know about it, and it wouldn't be profitable for them at all.
Because as soon as someone hears, if someone's selling bad stuff to someone and they die or they go into the hospital, no one's going to go and buy anything from them because they'll be like, okay, well, this guy's got some bad shit, so I'm not going to him, you know what I mean?
So it just doesn't make sense for a dealer to put out a bad product because it's not profitable for them.
So that's what I would say to that argument.
Let me just respond to that briefly before you continue.
I fully agree with you that a drug dealer is going to face catastrophic negative repercussions if he passes on some bad drugs and somebody either doesn't get high or gets sick or dies or whatever.
For sure, absolutely.
But there are two impediments to that which raise the level of risk.
The first is that word of mouth is not hugely effective in this kind of situation because there's no advertising, there's no objective and market-based quality control.
Word of mouth is limited because you don't know the other drug users of this dealer, or at least assume you don't know very many of them, if at all.
So if one of them gets sick, you may never find out that that sort of...
Unless you're really immersed in the culture that word of mouth doesn't work very well.
I am pretty immersed, and I know most of them.
But anyway, continue. Oh, you do most.
Okay, that's fine.
But then other people may not, right?
I mean, your situation is not obviously the same as everyone's, right?
Exactly, yeah. So, I fully accept that the quality is a requirement for anybody who puts anything out, particularly ingestible stuff.
Now, the other problem, though, that occurs is that your drug dealer, with the best of intentions, unless he samples everything that he hands out, which means, of course, that you may need to get another drug dealer relatively quickly...
He doesn't have the kind of objective quality controls that would occur in a legal free market, right, where you've got independent verifications, you've got labs testing for purity, you've got independent groups that will constantly monitor the quality of what is being produced.
You don't have that. So even though your drug dealer may say, well, of course, I don't want to pass out anything that's bad, he doesn't have the...
The capacity that would occur in a legal free market to have independent testing and verification quality seals.
You know, there aren't even those safety seals on drugs that you get with aspirins and stuff like that.
So he may just end up getting something and passing it along with no knowledge of his own, regardless of his own intentions, if that makes sense.
Right. Well, obviously, if these were all legal, then we would have that, right?
Sure. That's why they should be legal.
Exactly. Exactly.
Right. Sorry, can you repeat the last thing that you said?
Well, yeah. I mean, in a free market, the drugs would be safer, of course, right?
Which is why they should be legalized.
But that's not where we are, right?
So that's just what I wanted to mention.
Okay. Alright, we can move on to the next one.
I don't think I have anything else to say.
Okay, then the next point you make is that it's some sort of It's a hard pursuit or something to get a hold of the drugs.
There's no eye drug or whatever that will send it right to your door.
There is websites that will send it right to your door or to a P.O. Box.
If you know people that do drugs, it's really not hard at all to get them.
I go over to a guy's house.
Go in there, talk the weather, talk sports, you know, for like 10 minutes, chat, pick up what I need, and then leave.
Like, it's not really, it takes maybe 15 minutes.
It's not like this hard, horrible, you know...
And a drive, right? Yeah.
Sorry, a drive? Yeah, you've got to drive to get there, I assume, right?
Yeah, yeah. But that's not like a negative, right?
Like, you have to drive to go to the movies.
Like, that's not a... I just don't understand how you put that point as a negative of drugs.
Well, sorry, it is a negative, right?
And it is a negative that we have to drive to go to the movies, right?
It's just a negative that's outweighed by the positive.
That's all. I'm not saying it's a net negative, otherwise nobody would drive to get drugs.
But it is a negative in that people don't say, you don't say to somebody, what's your hobby?
And he says, driving around the neighborhood, or at least very few people do, right?
Because we drive in order to, it's a means to an end.
It's not a positive end in and of itself.
Well, if you really don't want to drive, you can just go on the website.
Like I said, I know there's a website right in my town here that will ship all over the world, and they'll send it to a P.O. Box or right to your door.
Sure, but then what you do is you lose that personal relationship that you talked about earlier, which is one of the ways in which you would be more sure of the quality or the security.
Yeah, that's definitely true.
Now, sorry, unless you had something, I'm not saying I've clinched anything here, right?
This is not a black or white situation.
I just wanted to mention earlier, you said, well, I think it should be legalized and I think that no one should do it.
Well, that to me is not an incompatible position.
Like, for instance, to take an extreme example, self-mutilation should be legal, but people should not do it, right?
You know, people sort of cut up their arms or whatever because they're sad or upset or for whatever reason.
So, to me, saying that something should be perfectly legal and people shouldn't do it is not a contradictory position.
I just sort of wanted to – suicide, of course, should be legal, but people should not kill themselves, at least in my – unless they're, you know, whatever, real special circumstances like some horrible brain-wasting illness or whatever, right?
But I guess my position is, though, when you say that they should be legal and no one should do them, what I'm disagreeing with is that no one should do them, right?
Well, tell me what...
Sorry to interrupt, but tell me what...
You know, give me the... Because I've never done drugs, right?
So I don't know what the big whoop is.
I don't know what the benefit is.
I can't imagine, in a sense, being happier.
So... Although I'm sure that if I took heroin, that would make me happier for a while.
But I can't imagine because the anxiety of going to procure it and injecting it or doing whatever I was to get it into my system, the anxiety over possible addiction, all of that kind of nasty stuff, that to me would outweigh whatever plus benefits I would get from whatever the high would be.
But tell me what...
What does it add to your life?
What's missing from your life that drugs add in terms of happiness?
And is there no other way that you feel you could attain that without all these attendant risks?
Not to mention the costs, which can be considerable.
Okay, but see, I don't think those risks are risk, and I don't think that the...
And again, the cost, it's not...
Compared to other forms of entertainment, I don't think it's that costly either.
But back to your first point there.
It just... When you were talking about your video, I completely agree that if you're completely unhappy and you're using drugs to make you really, really, really happy, that's obviously, and you're just addicted to them and you keep doing them, and you just kind of escape from reality.
That's not a good thing.
I would say that I'm a pretty happy person but that the drugs can make me, you know, happier.
A little bit happier.
You know what I mean? But I'm not saying that, you know, Well, why are you unhappy?
You say that drugs mask the body's pain signals, but I'm not saying that you shouldn't try and deal with the issues in your life that are causing you pain and unhappiness, but that you can use drugs in addition to self-improvement.
Like when you say you go to a dentist and you get a Novocaine or whatever for a toothache, and then you get the dentist to fix the tooth.
Well, why can't you use drugs to numb the pain?
Sorry, that analogy doesn't work, and I certainly do appreciate it, but that analogy does not work because Novocaine doesn't make you happier.
What Novocaine does is it prevents you from feeling pain.
That's different from saying it makes you happier, if you understand, right?
All you're doing when you go to get Novocaine for a tooth drilling or whatever is that you're saying, I don't want to feel too much discomfort.
You're still going to feel discomfort, but it's not going to be as bad.
Whereas drugs, as far as I understand it, if they're being used to deal with emotional pain, that's obviously bad, right?
I mean, that's not a healthy or positive way of dealing with emotional pain.
But that's not the same as using Novocaine to minimize discomfort as opposed to using drugs to increase happiness.
So I don't think that particular one works.
Let me ask you a practical question or two then, if you don't mind.
How much time a week would you say that you spend driving to get drugs, you say 15 minutes at the dealer's place, driving back, unpacking them, smoking them, and so on, and the time that you spend both smoking them and with the resulting high, how much time per week do you think that...
Okay, go for it.
Sorry about that. Okay, so I probably go to my dealer's house once a week, maybe once every two weeks.
And that's, you know, about 15 minute drive there, 15 minute drive back, so that's half an hour.
And then it depends on, you know, the week, but I'm probably down to about maybe three to four times a week.
Using drugs.
Is it mostly marijuana or exclusively marijuana?
It's different things.
It's mostly, when I say four times a week, that would definitely be marijuana, but I have used lots of other drugs as well.
And how long does the high last for you with a particular marijuana use?
It depends.
Like, that's such a – if I'm – like, a high would last – if you're smoking, a high would last, like, maybe an hour, maybe two hours.
But then if you keep smoking, you can have it on longer, and some days maybe I will smoke a bit more, and then it would go on for three or four hours, or sometimes I would just smoke a little bit, and then it would be maybe an hour or two.
Okay, and so let's just focus on the marijuana stuff.
So let's say that you do an hour, it's an hour and a half per use, right?
And you've got four times a week, so that's six hours a week that you would spend high, plus, I guess, half an hour, 45 minutes to get the drugs and so on, right?
So let's just say that your drug habit or your drug use is seven hours a week.
a week?
Is that unreasonable or is that too low or too high?
I'd say five to seven hours a week.
But that's significantly, like it used to be a lot, a lot, a lot more than that.
It's come down significantly in the past years.
Okay, but I mean, that's like a work day, right?
So you're spending a work day either pursuing the influence or being under the influence, which of course limits the other things that you can do, right?
I wouldn't say limits.
Yes, it does. I hope it limits, because I hope you're not driving and stuff when you're doing this, right?
Oh, no, yes, for sure I am.
Marijuana does not impair your abilities to drive.
If you actually look at scientific studies, you'll find that most of them actually say that you are more focused and a better driver under the influence of marijuana.
Yeah, I don't believe that at all.
Really? I'm not even within 10 light years of believing that.
I'm sorry to say it so bluntly.
But the idea that a mind-altering substance has no negative effect, but in fact a positive effect on driving is just to me not...
Well, it makes you more focused, right?
Sorry, and are you saying that people have done scientific studies of drug use and driving?
Okay, well the studies that I've seen are, it was a British study and what they did is they had a whole bunch, I don't know how scientific this is, but they had a whole bunch of people and they would test them, their driving abilities on like different driving courses like through pylons and stuff like that when they're not under the influence of marijuana and then they would test them while they're under the influence of marijuana and it actually showed that the people The majority of the people actually did better while they were under the influence of marijuana.
Okay, I just did a quick search here, and again, I can't vouch for the site, but there's this place called Alcohol Problems and Solutions.
It's got a little article here called Drug Use, Marijuana, and Driving Impairment.
It says, using marijuana, cannabis, or pot can lead to dangerously impaired driving according to a three-year study at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
Research leader Dr.
Catherine, sorry, Papa Futiu of the University's Brain Science Institute said those who smoked marijuana were more likely to lane-weave, stop too close to vehicles ahead of them and make other driving errors.
Most people are aware of the dangers of alcohol-impaired driving, but not of the dangers of smoking marijuana before operating a motor vehicle, according to this researcher.
And again, this is just one, I'm not saying either of us is right, but this was the very first thing out of a list of thousands that I found.
Which, you know, you might...
There's something here which says it's from the website Medical Marijuana.
And so...
Well, I know that, you know, from four years of marijuana use and, you know, me and all my friends who use marijuana and drive, never been in an accident, never crashed, never...
Yeah, that's not science, right?
The fact that you...
No, that's just my experience. You know, that's like saying, I smoke cigarettes and my friends smoke cigarettes.
And none of us have lung cancer yet, and therefore there's no relationship.
Anecdotes is not science, right?
Don't you think if it was an impairing thing that it would have some negative consequences in my driving?
Well, the fact that people can drunk drive and don't get into accidents, that doesn't mean that drunk driving is not dangerous, right?
Oh, well, alcohol is a completely different thing.
I would never drive drunk.
Okay, Stephen J. Heishman, PhD research psychologist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, presented the following at the 95th National Conference on Marijuana Use.
Driving and marijuana do not mix, that's the bottom line.
The data from these laboratory studies show that marijuana impairs balance and coordination, functional components important to driving in a dose-related way.
These effects may be related to reported marijuana-induced impairment of automobile vehicles.
Driving. And again, look, I don't know, right?
All of these, the facts are behind it, right?
But I would implore you not to do it, like not even to think about doing it and just not to do it.
Of course, if you get, you say you're all about managing risk, right?
If you get into a vehicular accident, and even if you are not at fault, and you're tested, and you're found drug positive, you're screwed.
You understand that? If someone hits you in the car, you're sitting there at a red light and someone hits you in the car and you're found to be impaired and driving, you're in shit, right?
Well, the only way they can even find out that you're impaired is if they did a blood test and they wouldn't be able to do that roadside, so I don't think that would ever happen.
But, like, they don't actually...
Okay, let me just stop for a second here.
I'm going to just ask you a question or two.
I don't want to take up the whole call with this because I think my...
Opinions are pretty clear, but you're a young fellow, right?
Right. And if I remember rightly, from the board post that you made, you grew up with some significant trauma in your childhood, right?
Yeah. Now, would you say that you have done a lot of work to, you know, go through therapy, to do all of that kind of self-examination in order to deal with the terrible, sad, and unfortunate effects that arise from the kind of childhood traumas that you experienced?
If you ask me that maybe like a year ago, I would say no, but I would say in the last year, I have been trying to, for sure.
What does trying to mean? Well, just trying to, you know, like introspection, just trying to figure out, you know, why I think the way I do, like why if I am unhappy about something, why I'm unhappy, and then try and fix it and change it.
Which I think is fantastic, but you haven't done any therapy with an accredited therapist or anything like that.
I know I sound like a broken record all the time, but I just wanted to sort of check.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm definitely completely open to it.
I would love to go into some therapy.
I just don't really have the money for that right now.
But you have the money for it, right?
That's the obvious response, right?
Oh, but therapy is actually...
I was looking into it and it's a lot more expensive than the money I spend on my drugs in a week.
Well, but not necessarily because you can get therapists who will give you sliding scale and so on.
And even if you can only do two hours of therapy a month, that's a lot better than obviously doing...
How much would that cost, like two hours of therapy a month?
Two hours of therapy a month, if you negotiate and if you find the right therapist, and of course depending on where you live, you could probably get that for between $50 and $75.
And I know you're spending more than that a month on drugs, I guarantee you.
Oh, I'm probably...
80? Yeah, I'm really not.
Well, if it's...
I'd definitely be...
The ones that I was looking at were in the hundreds, so maybe I was looking in the wrong place or something, but...
I mean, if you're broke, right?
And you're a young fellow, right?
And youth equals broke for the most part, at least that's certainly my memory of it, then you can definitely get them to...
I mean, Christina does it, right?
For people who are really broke, she'll give them a sliding scale, right?
Can you define sliding scale?
I'm sorry? Can you define sliding scale?
I'm not sure what that means. Oh, I'm so sorry.
It just means that relative to your income, you can get better prices or cheaper prices.
Okay, okay. And the other thing I wanted to mention, too, is you said that you're doing a lot less drugs now than you used to, which, of course, I think is fantastic, right?
I don't want to come across like the director of some anti-marism reefer madness or something, right?
I mean, I hope that I'm not sounding horribly square, though I probably am.
But you say that you are doing less or fewer drugs now than you did in the past, right?
Right. And you also say that over the last year you've worked to really try to help to understand your own thoughts and your own feelings.
And again, I say this with immense amounts of sympathy for what you suffered at the hands of your mother.
But you're doing fewer drugs now than you used to, and at the same time you're also working on trying to understand yourself and have more empathy for yourself and so on, right?
Right. So that pattern is that you're becoming happier and you're doing less drugs, right?
Right. So, take the money from the drug, put it into therapy, and then get all of the benefits of being high and happy without the risk, without the health risks, without the problems, without the potential arrests, without the potential record, and without the...
I mean, therapy is an assessment.
You put it in and then you don't have to keep paying for it.
Whereas, of course, if you are using drugs to manage anxiety or pain that comes from your childhood, then it's a never-ending proposition, right?
In fact, it will only get worse over time because you're masking the pain rather than dealing with it.
You will find yourself able to achieve far greater happiness even than you can with drugs and you won't need to stay in therapy whereas if the drugs are being used to patch yourself up or to self-medicate so to speak it will be a never-ending and possibly re-escalating situation if that makes any sense.
Well, I guess I don't see why it couldn't be both.
Like, I don't understand. Like, why couldn't you be using drugs and go into therapy, you know what I mean?
Like, it's just kind of like a thing that helps you along.
Like, if you want to be happier, you have a certain amount of unhappiness, you take the drugs, they make you happier.
Oh, sorry, and you're probably not aware of this, but there's actually a pretty objective answer to that, which is it doesn't work.
There's no possibility of getting substantial benefits out of therapy while you self-medicate.
At all. And there's no therapist who's got any kind of reasonable credentials who will ever take an active drug user into therapy.
If you talk about drug use, your therapist, if he or she is worth any salt, will say, I simply cannot do therapy with you if you are still using drugs.
Right? And there's lots of reasons for that, which we don't really have to get into.
You can research them or you can ask your therapist about it.
But drug use and therapy never, ever go hand in hand.
And this is true even of alcohol abuse, right?
A guy who is an alcoholic, I'm not putting you in this category, but just, you know, to give you the lay of the land.
A guy who's an alcoholic who goes into therapy simply cannot drink while he's in therapy.
If he drinks while he's in therapy...
His therapist will kick him to the curb in about 10 seconds.
They simply cannot work together.
There's tons of reasons, tons of studies.
It simply doesn't work at all.
So as to why, you can look all of that up or you can ask a therapist or you can read it up or whatever you like.
But that is a very, very well-established principle of therapy.
Okay. Sorry to be annoyingly.
I mean, I don't mind being gray about all the other stuff, but that's pretty much a black and white one.
Yeah, okay. Obviously, I don't really know anything about...
There's no reason why you would.
I respect your position.
I'm not saying there's any reason why you would, but I just wanted to point out what the facts of that one are.
Okay. Um...
All right. I'm just trying to think if there's anything else that I want to say here.
Well, I'd like to... You can mull it over.
I mean, I obviously...
You know what I think, but I'm going to say it anyway just for my own annoying, you know, sort of peace of mind.
I think that you had a, from what you posted about, I think you had a depressingly wretched childhood.
And, you know, I hope that you understand that I have nothing but massive, enormous, deep sympathy and empathy for all of that.
I know that I've been annoying guy about drugs on this call, and I hope that you won't hold that too much against me.
But, you know, what you posted about going through as a kid, massive sympathy.
It really was nasty what you went through.
I want to see you happy.
You may disagree with the way I'm going about it, and I apologize for any of that.
I do want to see you get the kind of love and joy and passion in your life that really does help keep us happy and excited and thrilled to be alive.
I'm telling you in a most annoying way, and with all due apologies and sensitivity, it's not going to come from drugs, and it's going to come From self-knowledge and in particular because of the history that you went through therapy.
You have the money for drugs.
You have the money for therapy.
Even if you have to cut back.
And there's lots of work you can do in conjunction with a therapist.
As you say, you've got this journaling and stuff going on which is great.
And you should keep up with that.
Journaling in the absence of a therapist is much, much less effective.
Right? Because you grew up with pretty negative and horrible authority figures.
And so for you, to put yourself in the hands of an authority figure is going to be really tough.
But that's the only way you will end up with authority over your own life, right?
You need to be around a beneficial and positive authority figure so that you can end up integrating and internalizing that authority and that direction into your own life.
And I'm sure that you absolutely knew I was going to say all of this moralistic, annoying, you know, guy who's 42 stuff.
You knew that, right? That's probably why.
But I would absolutely take the money from therapy.
Sorry, take the money from drugs and pour it into therapy.
It will serve you just incredibly in the long run.
And that would be that. That's my that's my little speech.
So I apologize again for being old, folky, annoying, bald guy.
But I just wanted to sort of point that out.
Alright, yep. Well, thanks a lot for the conversation.
Thank you. You made great points, by the way.
This is what's annoying, too, is that you've obviously got a ferocious intellect, and you're obviously a very, very intelligent young man.
I swear to God, you people are going to completely put us to shame.
I was thinking about this when Tom was talking to the reporter.
This next generation, you guys are like stone-freaking geniuses, and I'm just honored to be, you know, even somewhere in the light of perplex with your life.
But if you stay hiding in the drug world, it's really not going to work out that way.
So that's, you know, my massive compliment to you as well, if that makes any sense, that you are a very, very intelligent young man and obviously have a huge amount of willpower and resourcefulness to get through what you got through.
And, you know, don't hide that from the world.
In a haze of dissociative drug use, because I think you have way too much to offer.
Alright, well, thank you very much, and I just want to say, you know, I really, really respect all the work that you're doing here, and I really appreciate it.
Thanks, man. Will you keep us posted about what you're deciding?
Uh, yeah, I will, for sure.
Thanks, man, and all the best.
I really appreciate the call. Alright, take it easy.
Alrighty.
Next.
Hi, Steph.
It's Crystal.
Hello! Hello.
So I had a question about phobias.
Because I... I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm sorry, just when you get started, I'm just getting quite a buzz.
Could you just check the connection of your mic?
Yeah, I think this mic is not good.
No, it's no problem. If it can't be fixed, that's fine.
We'll keep going, but I just wanted to check.
No, I don't think that it can. Okay, phobia me away.
Pour a bunch of spiders into my brain.
I'm all ears. Right.
Well, I started therapy last week, and well, this guy's not going to work out, but along with that, I want to go in and get a full medical examination, have blood work done and all that, but I have a terrible fear of needles, and it's really...
I mean, just thinking about them.
I've had to actually lay down and breathe just from people talking about things like that.
And so it's pretty intense for me.
And so I was wondering if you had any information on phobias.
Now, do you want facts or theories?
Like, do you want actually useful stuff or just my rambling nonsense?
Or both? It's really your choice.
Both would be great.
Oh, God bless you.
I'm going to send you a donation. Okay, if you could just turn off your microsectors because I'm getting a bit of an echo.
No problem. Okay, the first thing, which is complete nonsense, which I'll keep very brief because it's all just idiot theories on my part.
So, you know, take this all with as much salt as you can muster.
If you find it useful, you find it not useful, that's great.
I also had a fear of needles when I was younger.
It seemed like in the 70s they would inoculate children by strapping them to a brick wall and using one of those harpoons that you see on whaling ships.
It seemed like it was touch and go as to whether you'd survive.
But I remember having quite a fear of needles.
And my fear began to diminish over time.
And this may sound unrelated, maybe it's total nonsense, maybe it's just my experience and so on, but to me, needles were at their most terrifying when I had the experience, and this was in particular in my family, though it also occurred in education, of having my boundaries changed.
So my boundaries were violated through physical force and through violence, through beatings and so on, and also through verbal abuse and through a crazy kind of intensity which would be very invasive towards my consciousness.
So in hindsight, this is the way that I appreciated or understood this phenomenon, which again might only be personal to me.
Where there are significant boundary violations, people have a great deal of phobias With things like needles and dental drillings and so on.
Because the way it worked in my unconscious was that, at least I think, was that the needles and these other kinds of invasive things were boundary violations of my body which resonated or had a metaphorical link to the violations of my body and personhood that occurred through significant and extended child abuse both in the educational system and at home.
So... That invasiveness, that lack of boundaries and so on, was for me very much tied up with a fear of needles.
And when I had to go and have my butt checked, that was a whole other level of excitement as far as that went, right?
It felt very invasive and it awoke...
A lot of defenses for me that occurred when I was a child and facing that level of physical invasion.
So that's a possibility that I'm just going to toss out there with no backup and no facts whatsoever, but that's the way it sort of worked for me.
So that's the one level which it may be worth looking into or looking at.
The second thing is that phobias in particular are very responsive to To psychological treatment.
Very responsive to psychological treatment.
In fact, it can take no more than 10 to 20 seconds to overcome.
Sorry, 10 to 20 seconds.
Seconds we would already be done, but 10 to 20 sessions to overcome phobias if you get somebody who's trained and experienced in dealing with these kinds of phobias.
And not to the point where you can grit your teeth and get through it, but to the point where it actively does not become that same kind of ferocious discomfort that you would probably feel right now in the realm of I've got a needle phobia, and needle phobias are common, of course, as far as phobias go, right?
And so you say, well, I've got a needle phobia.
How is it that you would deal with it?
What's your estimated time frame for helping me with this and so on?
But of all of the things that go on in our psyche, phobias...
And those kinds of avoidance mechanisms are actually the most treatable when you're with the right person.
So I would strongly recommend...
You know, getting to somebody who's trained and experienced in that, putting yourself through the program.
It's just, it's continual exposure, escalating exposure and so on.
I didn't go through it because I, you know, I went deep.
But if you want to get this done more quickly, then that would be my suggestion.
And that's it for my, you know, half nonsense, half bit of fact response.
Does that help at all? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually.
That was something that I was talking to somebody else about, and that's kind of what came up.
And that makes a lot of sense.
My dad was definitely physically abusive, and also, I mean, not even just for punishment, but he would tickle us terribly, and we'd be begging him to stop.
And so that was another kind of way that he...
That he, you know, crossed our boundaries.
And that's very invasive, right?
I mean, and that's one of the tragic things.
It occurs in families, right?
People will upset you or whatever and then say, oh, it's a joke, right?
And they don't seem to get that it's not really a joke if only one person is laughing, right?
In fact, it's probably quite the opposite.
So I'm very sorry to hear about that, but that may be another reason that that And tickling in particular is one of these.
It's very invasive because it completely takes over your physicality, which is not to say that it can't be fun, but there's that line where it becomes about really control and, in a sense, humiliation, at least in my experience.
So I'm very sorry to hear about that.
It may have something to do with this needle phobia.
But again, there's things that you can do that are very specific to deal with that and then in the longer term therapy to deal with the boundary violations and restoring those healthy boundaries.
And then I think that one, two will probably eliminate that as a factor from your life.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Thanks so much. And if you do, I would really appreciate it if you wouldn't mind.
If you do end up going through a specific phobia reduction program, if you could post your thoughts and experience about it.
On the board.
I mean, it's a common thing that people face.
Yeah, absolutely. No doubt about it.
I will do that. Thank you so much.
Thanks. Alright.
That was chillingly fast.
Even with me talking about myself, that was chillingly fast.
All right.
I take the gorgeous and talented Isabella.
And we shall see. Oh, she has the hiccups.
Fortunately, she's not at all bothered by the hiccups.
They drive me a little bit mental, although I don't get them more than once a year.
I don't know if you guys can hear that.
It sounds like ping pong.
I'm so cute.
Daddy moment. Please go ahead if you have any other questions or comments.
Actually, I have a question.
Please. What would be the distinguishing factors between, let's say, just a common fear and a phobia, in your opinion?
That's a good question.
The difference between a common fear and a phobia, as far as I understand it, a phobia is something that is overwhelming.
A phobia is something that you can't talk yourself through, you can't reason yourself out of.
It's like a panic attack.
Normally, you know, if I'm walking through the woods doing a podcast late at night and I hear a bunch of branches crackling or something, I'll feel nervous and then I'll say, okay, well, it's squirrels or whatever, right?
And so I can sort of reason myself in or out of a particular fear or a thought.
Or when I was younger, I went skydiving.
And I was not, of course, entirely thrilled.
To be jumping out of a plane, although I was quite excited to do so.
But I was able to...
So I felt a strong fear, but I was able to talk myself into it by saying that I'd already paid my money and there were no refunds.
So basically my cheapness warred with my fear.
So those fears which we can manage, which we can deal with, which we can talk ourselves into...
Putting in perspective, those would be fears, but a phobia is something which overwhelms consciousness and cannot be negotiated with.
That's sort of my understanding.
Does that make any sense?
Yes, it does. Actually, the reason why I asked the question was last night I was in the conversation on phobias in the chat room, and something I was thinking about is that I have a fear of trains, but it's predominant in my dreams.
If that makes any sense.
The fear of trains, that's fascinating.
How interesting. Well, I can't even think of anything that would have set that in my mind, but I can remember elementary school, I would have dreams where I was just running from miles and miles of track, and there would be a train coming at just pretty much any given time, and this was a recurrent dream.
I want to say I probably stopped having the dreams maybe about a year ago, but it's something that's followed me my whole life.
But then in real life, I can ride on a train, but I don't want to be near the tracks.
How interesting. How interesting.
Now, I mean, I'm obviously, I love to dig into this kind of stuff, but it doesn't sound like it's a particular issue for you at the moment, because as you say, the phobia has sort of diminished, though, of course, you know, it would be fascinating, but I don't want to waste time solving a problem that is not a problem.
But certainly, those kinds of associations can be important.
I mean, when I was in my In my early teens I became quite fascinated by sharks and read every book and so on.
I was going to apply to go and work in Sarasota, Florida as a teenager.
I actually did apply but couldn't get the work permit to work at this sort of shark institute and I became just fascinated by sharks.
And in hindsight of course aggression that strikes through under the water with water being a metaphor for For the unconscious and because there was both conscious and unconscious violence within my house.
So it sort of made sense. And once I began to understand all of that, what to me was that particular focus of interest began to diminish.
So when I look at particular things that I've become sort of that become ide fixes within my own mind, there are usually very good psychological reasons for it.
And there may be, you know, a train and tracks has to do with a feeling of choice.
Right.
When you're on tracks, a train doesn't have a choice really about where it goes.
Right.
It just has to go on the track.
So maybe there was something around you not feeling like there was a lot of choice and impossible situations.
Like if you're on the track, you can't get on the off the track, but the train is coming.
That's an impossible situation.
Again, I'm just I'm just speaking nonsense.
But those kinds of things might have something to do with why it became any day fix for you.
Amen.
Alrighty. Well, yeah, it's not really an issue.
It was just something I was curious about because I had a few other people say, well, that is kind of interesting, although I can't tie it back to anything.
I'm definitely planning on looking into it, so thank you.
Yeah, and if you do figure it out, I hope that you'll let us know.
That is a very, very interesting one.
Absolutely. All right.
Thanks. All right.
Alright, if we don't have any other questions, I would be happy if you wanted to pop back in, the Divine Miss J. Hello?
Hello. Yeah, I just wanted to talk about a strange emotional experience I had the other day.
If there's any time.
Absolutely. I just...
I guess since the holidays have come around and I haven't been going to school, I've just kind of...
I felt very, very lost.
And I woke up like at midnight the other day because my sleeping pattern has shifted from like 2pm to midnight now.
I sleep through the afternoon and I looked at the time and I just felt really disorientated but not in a physical way like in a psychological way if that makes sense.
It does and I just wanted to double check to make sure that I hope everybody got it.
Well, my sleeping pattern has actually switched to the times when everyone is in the chatroom, so yeah.
Right, okay. Well, fair enough, because it's American people, right?
Okay, so is there more that you wanted to say?
I don't want to interrupt you if you've...
Well, I was just like, you know, what's going on with me?
Why do I feel so disorientated in my life?
Because... I've just been kind of floating around doing nothing.
I haven't really left my apartment much except to get food.
I just mostly stay in bed all day and stuff like that.
I feel really directionless in my life.
You're right. Okay, go on.
That's all really.
Well, and this is no criticism.
This may be entirely the right thing for you to be doing, but it's, you know, like the song says, it's more than a feeling, right?
I mean, you are directionless at the moment, which, again, is not a criticism, and it may not even be a problem, but it's more than a feeling, right?
Right. I mean, and this is without trying to put any stress or pressure on you.
This is just out of sheer curiosity.
I mean, what is it that you want to do with 2009, right?
I mean, that's the great thing about this orbit.
Of the planet thing that you get the reminder that life is fleeting and, you know, we don't have forever.
And so what is it?
I mean, where do you want to be this time next year?
And again, you may have no answers to these kinds of things and that's perfectly fine as well.
But I'm just sort of curious, right?
What is the plan for 09?
Well, I want to start therapy again and really get into therapy.
Just get a job and have a normal life, have friends and stuff like that.
Because right now, I just sit in my apartment all day doing nothing.
And what is the...
I mean, if you think of the alternatives...
I mean, okay, let's start.
You had a huge year last year, right?
I mean, you got into therapy.
You broke up with your girlfriend.
You had a very big year in terms of growth, right?
Yeah. Right, yeah.
Oh dear, she's wandering off.
Sorry, I'm just cooking my lunch at the moment.
No problem. So you do nothing all day until you need to talk to me, and then you start cooking.
No, I'm just kidding. Okay. Now that I have to talk to Steph, let me get through my list.
Okay, so you had a very big year, and that is something that it's important to remember...
At least for me, this is all, again, just nonsense theories, but life to me has been a series of progress and consolidation.
In the same way that if you think about when you are an athlete, you have times of exercise and you have times of recuperation, right?
So when you go through a particularly big growth spurt, so to speak, which I think you did objectively this last year, there is a time of consolidation of the progress, right?
So I find that lassitude, or you could say laziness or whatever, is an important part of achievement.
So that's one possibility that there may be absolutely nothing wrong with what's going on for you at the moment, given the year that you had, to take some time to laze, right?
Because that's good.
That's something that's different from the stuff you've been doing in the past, right?
Right. And inaction takes a certain amount of confidence, right?
I mean, there's none so frightened as those who are always busy, right?
Because it means that they have an excess of self-criticism.
Don't they, sweet dums? Sorry, not you.
They have an excess of self-criticism, which means that they can't not be doing something because then they self-attack, right?
Right. So there is a certain amount of potential confidence that is in not doing something, right?
Right. Or not doing anything at times, right?
Right. So the first thing I would say is to be the broken record dude that I generally am is to say to remain curious with yourself about why it is that you are where you are.
Not to have a judgment about it.
This is good. This is bad. This is right.
This is wrong. But just to say, well, that's interesting.
What do I feel like doing today?
I don't feel like doing anything today.
I wonder why. Not with, I wonder why, like, it needs to be fixed so I can get stuff done and, you know, build a better jet aircraft or, you know, launch myself up to the mirror with a massive medieval catapult or something, right?
But just from, I don't really feel like doing anything today.
I wonder why. And also, what are the alternatives?
Like, if I think, I mean, to take an ancient 42-year-old guy's example, if I say...
It's Saturday night, you know, if Christina, say, is passed out and drooling on the baby who is passed out and drooling on Christina, if there's basically a drool mode around the family, And it's, you know, the grand old time of 9 p.m.
Then I sit there and say, oh, well, you know what?
I could go clubbing, right?
I really could. I'm not saying it wouldn't require a Mohawk or an Afro, but I could go to a club, right?
I used to go to clubs all the time when I was in my teens and in my 20s and so on, right?
So I could go to another disco.
And I could. I could do that.
But... I don't want to, right?
Because the only chicks I'm interested in are in my house, right?
So I don't, right?
I could, but I don't. So when you think of, okay, well, I'm home.
I could be out. I could be having some job.
I could be doing stuff with new friends or whatever.
If you're like, well, I desperately want to, but I'm terrified of that, or that makes me enraged, or whatever, then that's stuff that needs to be worked out, right?
Like, I'm not sitting there going, oh man, I'd really love to go to a club and gyrate up against the cage dancers.
I can do that at home when Christina's sleeping.
But if I'm sort of, oh, I have this massive desire to go and do that, but I feel inhibited because I feel like I have to be a good father and be home and blah, blah, blah, then I have to deal with that ambivalence, right?
And say that I have a desire, that I'm fighting, and deal with that.
But if I just don't really have any desire to go and do that, then that's just where I am at the moment.
And I don't imagine there's a lot of clubbing in my future, but that's fine because I have sowed my wild oats and I'm very happy to be a family man.
So if you're sort of thinking about the...
The job and the friends and all of that and the new life.
And you're like, well, I don't really feel like doing it right now.
That's important, right? But if you have this huge desire to get all that stuff done, but then, you know, I'm just making stuff up, you have like, you know, big attacks of fear or whatever, and so on, then those would be ambivalences to deal with.
But I don't get a strong sense that the latter is the case.
It's more like you just don't have a strong desire to do that stuff at the moment.
Is that fair? Yeah. Well, I think I do, but I just can't motivate myself.
So you think you might have a desire?
Yeah, because I really do want a career in graphic design, but I just can't seem to motivate myself much at all.
Well, but wanting, and this is an important point that you're raising, Wanting something in the abstract is very different from wanting it in the moment, right?
So it's like, I don't know, everybody watches, I don't know, some rock concert, right, or some music concert, right?
And everybody says, you know, man, it would be great to be a rock star, right?
Everybody, I'm sure, has had that thought at one time or another.
And... We have that desire, but that's very different from saying, okay, by this time next year, I'm going to be a rock star.
I'm going to get music lessons.
I'm going to get singing lessons. I'm going to get Shake Your Money Maker lessons offered by the James Brown Foundation.
I'm going to get all of those things, and I'm going to make it like a project plan where I have goals and steps and stages and milestones and this and that.
So there's a very great difference between wanting something in the abstract and actually making it Project status, so to speak, and taking the necessary steps, drawing up the timeline, planning, executing, all that kind of stuff.
And it sounds, and again, tell me if I'm way off base, it sounds like you're a little bit on that, it would be great to have a career in graphics design, but you're not quite at the place where it's like, and here's the steps I do tomorrow, and here's the steps I do the next day, and here's the steps I do the day after that, and so on. Right, yeah, I think you're right there.
Well, take a moment, mull it over.
I mean, this is just my way of thinking.
Like when you said, and you've mentioned this, I think, in the chat room too, like I want this, but there's not a strong sense, and again, there's no criticism, it's just an observation, there's not a strong sense that I have that you have the sequence down, right? It's like, that would be nice as an end goal, like it would be nice to visit China And maybe I'll look at some books of China, but that's a long way from when am I going to leave, what am I going to pack, how much is the plane ticket, and so on, right?
Right, yeah. So to give you an example from your own post, and then I'll turn it back to you, you are interested in coming to the barbecue in the summer, right?
Yep. And so that's a goal that you have, and you took some steps to begin to achieve that, right?
You said, okay, I need this amount of money, oh, my laptop busted, so I lost this amount of money, so I'm going to ask for this, I'm going to sell art, whatever it is that you want.
That's called moving it to project status, so to speak, right?
Right. Not just like an abstract, it'd be great to be at the barbecue or whatever, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And actually, you don't need to shift to North American time just yet, because the barbecue's not till June.
I just wanted to mention that, although that is good planning.
Just kidding. But that would be...
So as far as a career in graphics, I think it's really important to differentiate the daydream from the action plan.
And the daydream, just because it's a daydream doesn't mean it will never be an action plan.
I daydreamed about being a philosopher my whole life.
It doesn't mean it can't happen, right?
It's just it's important to differentiate the two and to realize where you are because until you're in alignment with yourself, so to speak, until every part of you is gung-ho, it's almost impossible to get anything done of any real significance or that which requires a lot of planning.
And it just sounds like you have a goal that's pretty hazy and pretty distant, but there's stuff that you're working on right now internally that is not putting that to the front burner, so to speak.
Right, yeah. That doesn't mean it's not going to happen, but I would stay curious about that and recognize the difference between a dream and a practical or active goal.
Okie dokie. And nothing's going to happen until it moves to that active goal phase, right?
The daydream is not going to get anything done.
And my concern is that you're going to sit there and say, well, I've had this daydream for three months now and nothing's happened.
You get mad at yourself, right?
Right. But nothing will happen until it moves to that project plan status.
How do I get it to project plan status?
Well, I don't know.
This is an ecosystem question, right?
How do I get all the parts of me aligned to this goal?
Well, I think that the important thing is to remember, to accept that you're not there yet, to also accept that you cannot will a goal.
I mean, if you could will a goal, everyone could quit smoking, there'd be no alcoholics, and everyone could lose weight whenever they wanted, right?
Nobody would ever be in abusive relationships, there would be no war.
You can't will a goal.
You can only be curious about why you're not excited.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, that really helps.
Now, I did a lot of talking about your problem.
Was that actually helpful or was that less?
I must tell you that my daughter got so excited that she peed all over me again, which is really quite a talent that she has.
I think she feels that I'm going to leave and she wants to be able to recognize me when I come back.
She does not pee on my wife.
The fluid transfer between my wife and Isabella is a one-way street and it's pretty much the same way the other way with Isabella and myself.
But... But sorry, I mean, I did a lot of talking about your particular issue, and I just wanted to make sure that, or to ask if that was helpful or useful, or if there's anything else that would be useful to talk about that.
Yeah, it's given me a bit to think about, so yeah, it's been pretty helpful.
Yeah, there's no rush, stay open, stay curious, and don't, you know, you're not in a state yet where it's going to start working, where you're going to start making tangible goals towards that.
And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that at all.
There is a state of warming up to your own life that is around lassitude and curiosity.
But recognize that the time that you have right now is a real gift.
And that to actually take the time to be curious about yourself.
And this is relative to your life as a whole.
This is pretty stress-free, isn't it?
Yeah. Oh, baby geeks getting...
Totally stress-free, actually.
Right, and as far as I understand it as well, you've not had a stress-free life before, right?
Nope. So, I would say, run a bubble bath and luxuriate in your first stress-free time on this planet.
Okey-dokey. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Thanks, Steph.
All right. I think your food is ready or we're done here, right?
I'm halfway through it, sir.
Okay. All right.
Thank you so much. I hope that was useful to other people.
I'm sure that it was. I guess we have time for a tiny, tiny, teeny, teeny, itsy, bitsy, yellow questionini with a martini from anyone else.
No? All right.
Yeah, the question should come from Isabelli.
Why don't your nipples work, daddy?
Why is it all taps and no plumbing?
It's just not fair.
It's amazing. I was just about to point out, it's also absolutely amazing how adaptive babies are.
Everything which works with babies doesn't work 48 hours later.
You know, whatever juggling trick you've got, whatever unicycle on the ceiling trick you've got to do X, Y, and Z, simply will stop working within 48 hours.
They're incredibly adaptive.
For instance, we used to get her down very quickly after she was born.
We used to get her to sleep with Crantini's.
Now, it's changed to Bailey's.
Actually, no, Baileys now actually see single malt scotch now.
It has to be at least 17 years aged and we're going to sort of switch to new things.
So they're incredibly adaptive towards their environment that way, which is really quite exciting because every time you sit there and you say, aha, I have a trick that works, it's like, no, it really doesn't.
So anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
So thank you everybody so much.
I appreciate everybody's kind support.
I think that we can sail on to new and higher and better horizons.
I also think that this media stuff was not bad.
It actually, I think, has some real positivity to it.
And I think that I've tried to really hang back from having judgments about it as good or bad because it's all new to me.
So I don't know other than to act with as much integrity and commitment as...
Possible. I don't know how else to handle anything, so I don't really know what the long-term effects will be.
I suspect very strongly that they will be positive and not negative.
I certainly have found them to be positive so far, and of course it was a bridge that we had to cross at some point, and the predicted source of someone in politics whose kid took a break was predictable in advance, was predicted in advance.
That's exactly how it occurred, and I think that It is a positive thing overall in that it's bringing more people to be interested in philosophy.
We'll move on to new things and we'll put all that stuff behind us and I'll continue to bat off the potential interviewers because it just doesn't have any appeal to me at all.
There's nothing better than real closure with something that doesn't work in terms of getting any kind of balance into the equation.
So, thank you everybody so much.
Have yourselves an absolutely wonderful, wonderful week and thanks again to Monsieur LeTutel for setting up the Psychology Book Club yesterday.
That was a great deal of fun.
And we will pick up again next week.
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