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Dec. 5, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
16:28
The Purpose of Pain
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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
Just a note from a listener, a very sort of sad note, and something which I think, like most people, have sixes and sevens about.
So he wrote, Okay, here's my attempt at my own lived wisdom to give back to this community.
Do not believe absolutely ever in the lie that weed isn't a drug.
It will absolutely destroy families like it did mine.
My mom was a weed addict.
Still is, from what I understand.
It's painful to bring up all the examples, and I've already went over it across therapy, back when therapy was kind of competently accessible to more people.
Briefly, things like...
Lying and not paying rent.
Stealing my stuff.
I have fun with friends just to get the next high.
Being overly negative and critical.
Moodiness for like three to five day periods.
And parents fighting.
Arguing when where I wouldn't smell weed coming from their bedrooms.
Complete denialism of being addicted.
The adoption of pretending as if the drug is later needed for pain management.
They were already addicted and they didn't care.
The mindset that everyone will use their addiction against them.
And they have to play it off how everything centers around them getting high.
But you have to make pretend everything's normal.
Don't believe these effing drug-addicted homeless people or high-functioning, I'll call them compromised functionalists.
I have tons of stories about all these fights my mom would have with me over stealing money out of my drawer.
When I had a job and a friend slept over to go to the mall with, if I wake up to her tiptoeing over us into my drawer to steal the money, and then she'd send my dad after me when I stood up for myself.
And my dad tried to pretend it was only her when he would smoke pot with the door to his room open.
My stepsister, elder lady, smoked pot with both my parents while I was still a kid.
I'd rather die than be a pothead.
It's so painful to me to see it and be around it.
If I had the money, I'd pay ten times to live somewhere where there's absolutely no drugs allowed, especially weed.
So yeah, kind of like how Steph can't be tricked by single momdom.
I can't be tricked into thinking weed is just a cool way to pass the time off bigly.
Now that's tough, man.
I really sympathize hugely.
And, you know, I mean, I've never wanted to do weed because, I mean, obviously I heard the negative or scary stories about it, bad trips and so on.
But it's just one of these things that just never seemed like a plus.
My basic reasoning, as you know, goes like this.
Well, I'm fairly happy to begin with.
My happiness levels are around 7 to 8 out of 10. That's my sort of default position, is sort of that level of happiness.
Of course, it goes up.
Sometimes it goes down.
I really can't think of the last time that it went to a negative.
But, you know, to me, 7 to 8, that's pretty good.
If you aim for higher, you end up going lower.
It's sort of like working out.
You want to work out hard, but not too hard so you injure yourself.
I don't want to aim for like 10 happiness.
I think that would just be too stressful and, you know, frankly, kind of unsustainable.
So for me, it was like, okay, well, my happiness in general is 7 to 8. And if I go, if weed gets me higher, so to speak, on the happiness scale, right?
So if weed ends up...
Getting me to a 9 or a 10. Then the problem is...
Seven or eight now feels less happy.
And of course, when you go to a nine or ten happiness artificially, then you'll crash down to a four or five or maybe even a negative, right?
So it's just that calculation didn't seem to make any sense to me.
Plus, you know, of course, when I was a teen, it was illegal and expensive and risky, right?
Because, you know, you'd be around some pretty sketchy people and there was not exactly a quality control.
In how it was manufactured.
So I'm like, okay.
So if it makes me happier, then that's a problem because now I'm addicted to that level of happiness and I've got to commit crimes and I've got to pay a lot of money and I've got to take a lot of risks.
So all of that has the potential to make me far less happy in the long run.
Plus I could have a bad trip or something like that.
So if I like it, it's bad.
If I don't like it, what's the point?
Like there just is no rational case for that kind of stuff.
Now, of course, I'm not talking about pain management or managing the effects of chemo and nausea and so on.
That's sort of a different matter because then it's a medicine, right?
But then you're not trying to achieve a high.
You're just trying to avoid a low, right?
So, right.
That's like, if you have an operation, then you should take some opioids if it helps with the pain, right?
That's not you trying to get high.
That's you just trying to not be in pain and so on, right?
And I assume that helps the healing process to not be overly stressed.
So, I don't want to make this about me, but the challenge is, of course, that the people who, and this is sort of the Galbra Mate view, which is more than a view, I fully accept it, that the people who Used drugs recreationally are not chasing a high, they're avoiding a low, right?
So you have trauma as a child, you're unhappy, stressed, depressed, anxious or whatever, and you find that doing the drug helps with that, right?
Helps sort of alleviate the symptoms.
But the problem is, it then changes your personality.
Because when you say, I have no way to deal with my trauma except through drugs, Then the problem is it changes your relationship with yourself.
You then say, I can't fix myself.
The trauma is so big.
The trauma is so deep.
I can't fix myself.
Therefore, I need these drugs.
And it changes your relationship with yourself as a whole.
And...
In House MD, the show, the house has a permanent limp and is in permanent pain and doesn't take any drugs to deal with it, and thus is kind of cantankerous and cranky in the sort of one episode where he shaves and is more pleasant, and that's how people know he's taking drugs again to manage his pain.
So, of course, there are times when taking drugs to manage pain is perfectly sensible, right?
If you have an operation, Then what you need to do is you need to be knocked out, right?
If you have some big painful operation, you know, whether it's that icy stuff in the veins or whether it's full anesthesia, you need to be out, right?
Because you can't manage that kind of pain.
And in fact, that kind of pain is dangerous, right?
Because if you move or jerk because of the pain, then the operation can go very badly.
So, yeah, there are times when the pain is something that you should not manage yourself.
But if you make that about your past and your emotional pain, you're saying that the trauma and the pain is bigger than yourself.
It's bigger than your consciousness.
Emotional pain is different from physical pain because emotional pain is open to reason.
Physical pain is there to protect you from injury and to give you negative stimuli so that you avoid unnecessarily risky or dangerous things.
Emotional pain is there for what?
Emotional pain is there to protect you.
And the way that you, at least I think, the way that you deal with emotional pain is you let it protect you, right?
I mean, if your hand is in the fire, then you take your hand out of the fire.
That's what the pain of the fire is there for.
And in fact, it's instinctual.
Like, the pain will hit your spine and your spine will jerk away your hand before you even are conscious of the pain, right?
Because it's that dangerous.
So, the purpose of emotional pain is to protect you, right?
I mean, I remember once as a kid, I ate a banana that had a weird rotten part at the end, and I, like, didn't eat a banana for, like, a year or two.
So, it's there to protect you, right?
I mean, if you look at the negative, I'm sure everyone's had this, where you drink some milk that's sour, or you eat some bread that's got that dusty, moldy taste to it, and, of course, you spit it out, right?
It's a negative experience designed to keep foreign bacteria out of your system, right?
So, the purpose of emotional pain is to protect you, to have you leave situations or avoid situations or prevent situations wherein you're going to be harmed.
And there's this huge battle between people's instincts to avoid abusive people and abusive people's desire to keep their victims around.
And this is one of the really, really fundamental battles that goes on in the world, is you want to get away from abusive people, right?
But abusive people Don't want you to get away, right?
So how much of culture is about you getting away from abusive people?
And how much of culture is run by abusive people convincing you to stick around and continue to be abused and exploited?
Now, of course, everybody knows where this show has landed on that, and there's been a fair amount of blowback, of course, over the years, which is I'm aiming to help people avoid situations of abuse, destruction, and exploitation.
But the people who abuse and exploit and destroy it don't want people to leave.
So this is why, you know, family is everything, and anyone who tells you that you don't have to spend time with family is a cult leader and so on, right?
It's just like, well, no, they...
Well, and not only do they not, they just want to keep their victims around, but everyone...
Abandoned this over the last couple of years, or most people abandoned this in the mainstream media around this for the last couple of years on the twin and interlocked mountains of COVID and leftist politics, right?
So now it's acceptable to ostracize family for many people based on COVID and based on political differences, right?
So they never believed it really at all.
They just wanted to keep the weapon for themselves, right?
So, I get that there's all of this emotional pain, and it sounds like the writer here, the emotional pain, has done its job, in that you don't want to spend time around people who are addicted to drugs, obviously.
And you want to stay away from entire environments and societies where there are drugs addicts around.
So, of course, I sympathize massively with the core pain that causes or is a...
It paves the way, though you don't have to take the journey, it paves the way towards taking drugs.
But every time you take the drugs, you say, I can't manage this pain on my own.
This pain is bigger than me.
This pain dwarfs me.
And I am helpless in the face of this pain.
Now, of course, there are times where you are helpless in the face of pain.
Again, anesthesia and local anesthetic or you've got to get your teeth drilled or something.
You want that sweet, sweet Novocaine, right?
Because it's kind of dangerous if you jerk around when they're drilling your teeth.
Or it can be, I think.
So, if you say, not my physical pain is bigger than me and I need to take something to take care of it, like if you've got a headache or whatever, you can take an aspirin or something.
But if you say, my emotional pain is bigger than me and I need to diminish it, then what you're doing is you're saying, my emotional pain, I cannot act upon it to keep me safe.
My emotional pain, I cannot act upon it to keep me safe.
Like, if you have to live among, you know, dangerous predators, then you might as well drug yourself.
Because your pain is useless.
You can't escape.
You can't get out.
Let's say you're, I don't know, locked in with some dangerous predators as part of some punishment or some, you know, psycho group does that to you.
Well, then you might as well drug yourself because your pain cannot, right?
And of course, if you submit to surgery, then your pain can't save you because you have to go through the surgery for whatever reason, right?
To make you healthier in some way.
And so your pain is supposed to help you avoid getting injured.
But if the voluntary injury, quote, injury called surgery is there, then your pain can't help you, right?
So you might as well get rid of the pain because your pain is actually harming you, right?
It's like the people who have, you know, desperate fears of needles and maybe they need to take a needle for something important, then the pain is not helping them, right?
So you might as well find some way to reject or overcome your, sorry, reject your pain or your fear.
So if you're saying emotionally based upon prior abuse, That your pain is overwhelming.
You're saying your pain can't do its job, which is to get you out of a dangerous situation and keep you safe.
And if your pain can't do anything, then your pain is kind of your enemy.
In the same way that your fear of needles might be your enemy if you need to take a needle for some reason, right?
Like if you need to have your blood tested for something, right?
So you're saying that your pain is your enemy and needs to be drugged and moved away.
In other words, you're not letting your pain do its job to keep you safe.
Your pain is in fact putting you in danger, but that means that you can't ever escape the predation or the predators of your childhood.
And so the abusers win.
The abusers win.
And if your abusers win, you continue to live in misery.
And if you continue to live in misery, you're going to continually need these drugs.
So you can't escape.
You can't win.
The abusers are going to rule you forever.
And that is really, really tragic when it comes to people's lives and how they perceive their possibilities, right?
So, I really do.
Again, I sympathize with the pain and trauma that causes people to consider drugs.
But my solution has been that you get away from the abusive situation.
You get away from the abusers.
I mean, you talk to them and see if you can reform them and so on, but nobody has to put up with being in a situation of perpetual abuse, denigration, threats of ostracism, Or even just you're unimportant to people, right?
Because that's harmful to your sense of self, right?
To be viewed as unimportant by people.
So you are perfectly free to get out of abusive situations and environments.
And if you do that, then the negative stimuli called emotional pain or trauma or upset or fear or anxiety, then that pain and trauma has achieved its goal.
You've got your hand out of the fire.
Now you can begin the process of healing without additional trauma, right?
I mean, your body won't really heal if you keep traumatizing it, right?
If you've got some bad bruise and you keep whacking it with a bullpen hammer, your body's not going to heal, right?
The pain's just going to be continuous and then you might say, well, this pain is continuous, so I need drugs, right?
But if you get away from the negative stimuli, You know, again, conversations are important to see if people can reform, if you can do that safely, but if they won't reform, in other words, if they're just committed to treating you badly for an ever and ever amen, then the only way to reduce your trauma, if people are committed to re-traumatizing you for the foreseeable or imaginable future, Well, the only way is to get away.
And that way you're saying, thank you trauma, thank you anxiety, thank you fear, you have done your job, and I'm safe.
And then your emotions are smaller than you.
You've made a decision based upon your emotions to get to a place of safety and security.
And that's the purpose, and then you won't need drugs for the most part.
At least that's my general theory.
I hope this helps, and I really do appreciate it.
People posting this kind of stuff, and I wish you the very best.
FreeDemand.com slash donate to help out the show.
Lots of people.
Take care.
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