I am a hedonist

[yetineti]

Technically, I do not think that pleasure is the most important pursuit - but I certainly do not act that way.

I am addicted to weed, porn, thinking, video games, etc. 

I like pleasure, duh, and I began using it in a stage orange sort of freedom way to cope with some first world problems that, while pretty much all I got, admittedly, are kind of stupid and petty.

I realized that pretty much the opposite path is better than where I’m going. It’d be much better to do ice baths, workout again, push myself, etc. 

Itd be much better in the long haul to make myself uncomfortable, rather smothered.

The good news is I have been attempting to start working out again and that feels great. Overall I did stop buying as much sugar and eating better but I have been falling back as I have been stressed recently. Oh, and I have been taking more cold showers. Just a minute or two tho - I like my hedonistic hot showers.

But that’s the good news. Nonetheless I’ve been slipping and going backwards as I struggle to manage stress and what worries me.

Idk, I think I’m just typing this in hopes of some pleasurable responses. Hoping someone has some good tips how to be less hedonistic when really the answer has always been here. I must suffer to manipulate reality further, if I wish for the consequential numbness to recede from my pleasure seeking behaviors.

Idk the weed fucks with my head, I never know if I’m making sense.

Any of y’all used to smoke a ton of weed, play games and touch yourself until you woke up and starting working towards something bigger / any tips on how that went? 
 

Cause I’m sick of being a numb loser who geeks about infinity and ideas of what there could be instead of what there is.

Edited November 25, 2021 by mw711

[Flowerfaeiry]

31 minutes ago, mw711 said:

Any of y’all used to smoke a ton of weed, play games and touch yourself until you woke up and starting working towards something bigger / any tips on how that went? 

If there’s something in your life that hasn’t been worked through like a painful situation especially in childhood it can sometimes come out in under achieving. 

[yetineti]

@Flowerfaeiry Yeah that’s exactly what it is. Idk why my childhood would make me underachieve, that part I do not get. 
 

But I am certain you are right

[Preety_India]

@mw711 how do you relate hedonism with spirituality? 

 

[Carl-Richard]

On 25.11.2021 at 5:16 AM, mw711 said:

I am addicted to weed, porn, thinking, video games, etc. 

This was me. However, after my first meditation-induced awakening, I went from smoking weed every day for 2 years to quitting for a month straight. When I finally went back to weed, it was initially not on my own supply, because my experience of the high was completely altered. I actually didn't like it anymore, because I no longer got a nice body high or a barrage of interesting thoughts. Still, I somehow forced myself to get back into old habits (because hey, habits are safe). Took another 2 years to quit it altogether.

Not coincidentally, the same effect happened with things like junk food. I stopped getting that insane reward signal. Discovering the permanent ground of consciousness makes you more aware of the impermanence of sensory phenomena. All experience gets an empty quality. My priorities shifted from chasing hedonistic content to elevating the quality of my consciousness. Today I can get a qualitatively better body high from simply sitting down after a workout than I ever did from weed.

[SonataAllegro]

I’m in pretty much the same place. I’m trying a new tactic: I’ve made an agreement with myself that in a given amount of days I will have a certain amount of “hedonistic experiences” available to me (10 highs in 100 days, 15 masturbations in 100 days, etc.). This puts me in a mindset of abundance; rather than feeling like I’m prevented by some external force from doing these behaviors that I genuinely enjoy, I instead make each one special by limiting the number while choosing a number that feels reasonable to me based on the strength of the addiction and how much it throws me off balance.

The fundamental idea is YOU need to be in an agreement with YOURSELF so you aren’t fighting with yourself and so you feel like you are in abundance rather than scarcity.

[mandyjw]

Create something. Someone expressed this in a creative self accepting way and it's got over 2 billion views cause so many people relate. Kinda funny and ironic, right?  

https://youtu.be/fLexgOxsZu0

[AdroseAkise]

I'm not a Christian, but the Christians have a good insight in this when they say that ''comfort is the enemy of the Lord, it is the enemy of God''.

When they say that , they don't mean it literally of course as God has not enemies, but they mean that as long as your bathe in comfort then you will never be in contact with God, as communion with God requires the renouncing of hedonistic earthly pleasures and comforts (unless you're a tantric). This philosophy is reflected in the Buddhist ''middle way''.