I have been THC free now for like 18 months. Loved getting high, still miss it sometimes, but same as you, less anxiety, more in control, more ambitious.

My spouse got me the book Paddle your own Canoe by the very funny Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec)

One really good piece of advice in that book that I took to heart was that I needed something to replace getting high. We moved out to rural Ohio around the same time and I made working the land my hobby.

Mowing, pruning, sawing, digging, there’s always something to do and in the end I have this nice sense of accomplishment. Getting high used to be my hobby, I’d get high and play video games or watch a movie or listen to music and it was great and sometimes I still miss it. Realizing that losing one hobby is a lot easier when you replace it with another hobby though ended up being what made this stick.

18 months later I still occasionally think “it would be fun to get high” but it has definitely gone from craving to passing thought that I can dismiss.

Whether you stay thc free or indulge occasionally I hope you have a happy and wonderful life.

Additional context:

TSA is part of DHS (Department of Homeland Security). ICE and border patrol are also a part of DHS.

After ICE started shooting citizens, the democrats said “no additional funding without some reforms.” In trumps Big Beautiful Bill ICE was already given a huge chunk of funding for the next few years, but they would like more.

Democrats have been trying to fund TSA but want a separate vote for ICE. This arrangement recently passed the senate but republicans in the house voted it down because they think they can pin the blame on the democrats and force them to give ICE more funding along with the TSA.

Capitalism.

Now there are all kinds of things people think of when you say capitalism, the free market, democracy (for some reason), etc.

But I mean the idea that the guy that owns the means of production should get the value produced by labor.

If you boil it down to that, it’s kinda crazy. You want to start a company digging holes, but you don’t have enough money to buy a backhoe.

Fred has plenty of money and can afford a backhoe. He buys it and makes you a deal, you can use his backhoe and he will own the company, you go out and dig holes and he will pay you a couple bucks an hour.

Obviously he has to charge the people that want the holes dug more than he’s paying you to make it worth his while, and he has to recoup the money he spent on the backhoe in the first place.

Fred will never pay you enough to live and save up to buy your own backhoe. After a while he’s made back all the money it cost him to purchase the backhoe.

So now the situation is this. A customer wants a hole dug, you come and dig the hole, and Fred, who has done nothing and already recouped all the money he spent to purchase the backhoe, gets most of the money. And that arrangement just goes on forever. When Fred dies, Fred Jr will inherit that backhoe, Fred Jr will have never spent a dime for that capital, in fact Fred Jr will have had a very comfortable life paid for by the sweat of your labor digging holes.

Fred Jr will get most of the value of your labor for his whole life for doing nothing at all, just because he happened to be Fred’s son.

This is the way we decide who gets the rewards of all the work humanity collectively does (under capitalist systems) and it’s resulted in a hundred or so people so insanely wealthy we can’t even conceptualize how much money they have and everyone else scraping by.

And very serious people (often paid by those billionaires) will be on the news (or replying to this very comment) telling you how this is just the only system that makes sense. But listen closely when they do, they will always say it’s good because of free markets, or competition, or democracy or something that is NOT capitalism. Capitalism rarely defends itself by talking about why it’s good for the rich guy that owns the capital to get all the value, it always misdirects you to something else, a free market or freedom just generally. The freedom to pick between 10 different ultra wealthy companies that own everything and work to make them even more wealthy for your entire life.

My spouse has this exact same thing, the thing that worked for them is OCD therapy.

OCD therapy is a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, and occupational therapy (which despite the name is more just about strategies to use for practical things like going to the store, out to a cafe, etc)

It hasn’t been easy but they’ve been keeping at it and it’s really helped them in a way nothing else has.

There are very few problems so large that they can’t be solved, but that doesn’t mean the solutions aren’t big and scary themselves. It’s easy to say “go get therapy” but I know that the reality of doing so is difficult. I’ve seen it now first hand how hard it is, but it’s worth it.

The phone call to discuss whether or not they can help is free, NOCD

Take care of yourself, you deserve it.

I’m a software engineer that is also deeply uninterested in chasing shiny new things. I think another factor is that tech that I did care about has somewhat stalled out.

I’ve had iPhones since a I think the iPhone 4. I’m on the iPhone 11 which released back in 2019, I only really upgraded because my iPhone 8s battery was crapping out.

There’s just nothing exciting about these newer devices, same form factor, same OS, same basic functionality. And in a similar fashion, anything new is stuff I don’t really give a shit about. Oh it can do some kind of ai thing I don’t want, no thanks.

I’ve tried to see it as a positive. I have lots of stuff that I’ve filled my life up with, things that are meaningful to me. I think that’s what took up the space I used to fill with reading about and getting excited about this new gadget or that one. Now I’m excited to go see my niece’s Christmas recital or bake cookies with my wife to take to a friends of the library event.

Doesn’t hurt that every company seems to be in a non stop contest to see how little they can give the consumer for the maximum price while installing as much revenue generating spyware as possible.

The more disturbing thing that we are entering is a K shaped economy.

The consumer base of the United States has split, the wealthier part is doing better and spending more, the poorer part is doing worse and spending less. You have diverging lines like a K

One of the scariest things going forward is that the consumer base of America used to have an economic protection in that the economy depended on not crushing the consumers. With the split in the consumer base the poorer part now represents less and less of the GDP, down to near 10%. This removes the incentive to protect them and we will start seeing more and more bifurcation in the haves and the have-nots.

It remains to be seen if the have-nots will accept this, so far the American population has been pretty accepting of the slowly ratcheting person crushing machine that is late stage capitalism.