I don't know, maybe a proclivity but our family wasn't really the type for diagnosing mh disorders. I had to fight like hell to get my own diagnoses as an adult.

Quitting smoking and vaping is harder, last year was the first time in my life where, after not having a cig in a long time, I was at a thing and people were smoking and I bummed one and it was absolutely disgusting to me. Felt great to hate it tbh.

But in like 13-15 years of habitual smoking I never had a psychotic episode from it.

Granted I was an almost constant user, I maintained a "high" basically from when I woke up until I went to bed at night. It was def a form of self medication, it did help with a lot of ADHD symptoms because rather than getting lazy I would get hyped and very active. Used it that way basically from a little before covid, all through covid, until November of last year. It did affect my work performance, looking back, but I interviewed for that job high, I went to work high most of the time, still got good reviews, raises and a promotion. I was addicted or dependent or whatever term you want to use. But like high functioning I guess.

But in November I crashed hard. Had a complete psychotic break. I thought the government was using 5g to beam mind control beams, an array of numbers containing hidden brainwashing instructions, to make me believe I was this person, when really I was a fake, an android put into this life to do their bidding, they killed the real me and I was the replacement, and this happened all the time, I just happened to pick up on one of their transmissions.

I'm a rational guy, I don't know where this shit came from. I have pages in my notebook documenting it. Luckily my wife is amazing and I was kind of able to talk myself out of it enough to have her convince me and remind me of what was real. Since then I had to quit. I def got some intelligence points back. And I haven't had any more episodes. But damn that scared the shit out of me. I didn't even know it was possible.

What? Please elaborate

Omg I remember having this argument with my friends. "Well there are some home remedies that work, modern medicine doesn't have a monopoly on all knowledge" OK but homeopathic medicine just means its water, plain water that remembers being able to cure a disease, its fake "Yeah but they're not all like that some of them work, my grandma would use a half of an onion to take the pain out of bee stings" jfc I'm literally not talking about that, I'm talking about water sold as medicine that is covered by most major insurance! look it up!

What I have thanks to money, what i pay for, i.e, what money can buy, that is what I, the possessor of the money, am myself. My power is as great as the power of money. The properties of money are my- (its owner's)- properties and faculties. Thus what I am and what I am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy myself the most beautiful women. Consequently, I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its power of repulsion, is annulled by money. As an individual I am lame, but money can create twenty four feet for me; so I am not lame; I am wicked, dishonest man without conscience or intellect, but money is honored and so also is its possessor. Money is the highest good and so its possessor is good. Money relieves me of the trouble of being dishonest, so I am presumed to be honest. I may have no intellect, but money is the true mind of all things and so how should its possessor have no intellect? Morever he can buy himself intellectuals, and is not the man who has power over intellectuals not more of [an] intellectual than they?

--Marx, 1844 Manuscripts

They're vertically integrated so I doubt the stores themselves are making all of that profit. But you're right, they're very profitable as a company I was only thinking about the stores. especially since they handle every transaction from the moment its hits our shores to the moment it leaves the stores, accumulating little markups along the way as it's passed from legally separate business to business, the warehouses are a different company from the trucking and logistics, as well as the stores; all owned by the parent co. But the store's profits probably aren't much higher percentage than any other box retailer or grocery store.

So this is being sold a certain way, as a tech advancement that takes advantage of "surge" pricing, as if retailers are adopting the latest tech and profitability schemes. And in fact, wrt a huge company like Walmart that operates on wafer-thin margins scaled up to mass consumption quantities, I don't doubt this will have some effect.

But the fact is, these chains already had extremely dynamic pricing schemes, and would change many prices daily or at least weekly; its just they had employees walking around who manually scanned the items and replaced the labels. When I worked at a box retailer we had 3-5 people where this was their only job. And i didnt work at a place with half as many skus as walmart. So the real savings is in the value of the labor the company will cut from implementing these smart shelf labels.

The initial investment will seem quite high, but businesses split up their capital investments over 10-30 years. So despite the hype, and even the predatory valance on the philosophy of the tech itself, in fact this technology, just like most technical advancement, is to automate the tasks of workers and eliminate their jobs. Profit is made from stealing from workers.

So this is being sold a certain way, as a tech advancement that takes advantage of "surge" pricing, as if retailers are adopting the latest tech and profitability schemes. And in fact, wrt a huge company like Walmart that operates on wafer-thin margins scaled up to mass consumption quantities, I don't doubt this will have some effect.

Remember! Capitalism isn't capable of fixing the problems that it causes, it can only exploit the people affected by the problems for higher profits

Read my response to this, you gotta keep fighting for yourself. I'm not against therapists bug I think there is something in their training, or maybe something to do with the business of mental health in general, that introduces all these disincentives to treatment for some people. If you take the self assessment and it seems like you have it you gotta fight like hell. I can't even begin to describe how much better my life is and how much happier I am now that I've been treating it for a few years

Don't self diagnose based on a single internet discussion but self diagnosis is crucial to getting yourself some relief. I didn't get a diagnosis until I was about 40, and even at this point the change was dramatic. I don't take stimulants but I take a few medications and it made life so much easier, I doubled my salary in 3 years, bought a house, just had a fantastic few years. But I also have a ton of trauma, I hurt a lot of people and myself from being so chaotic and depressed and incapable of processing thoughts or feelings, or being able to handle basic finances. I also lost like 15 years of good life where I could have been successful and happy instead of depressed and stuck in a shitty job with no clear way out.

If you're reading these discussions and realizing that it seems a little too familiar, take this seriously. If you decide you have it, don't take anyone's word that you don't. Its hard to get treated IMO, so if you see a therapist and they don't want to treat you for ADHD, then bye bye, find another one who will take it seriously. I went to therapists on and off for years trying to figure out why I was depressed, and they basically told me I was okay, the normal amount of unhappy with regular life stuff. I finally got on a mild antidepressant and it helped immensely. I fought and found out the antidepressant had an off label use for treating mild ADHD, and when my daughter got diagnosed I looked more into it. When I went to therapists to get treated for ADHD, they told me I was just depressed. so you gotta fight for yourself, but this world is a fuck, and it can be extremely worth while once you get what you might need.

But it was a mandatory training!

Yeah okay but our company IT dept sent out a security training link in an email titled "Win a free cruise!!!!" None of us clicked on it it's like you tell us not to open emails like this, but you send an email like this in order to train us not to open emails like this.

What do you think politics are? A willingness to deprive people of human rights, that's politics. "Human Rights" is politics. I agree that its important to take complex concepts apart and study them so they can be understood, but you have to put them back together, otherwise you can't tell that these gears and belts and levers and pulleys are actually a machine with a function

I used to work for a retail company that signed people up for preferred customer accounts, and there are largely 2 kinds of emails: Robert.Layfield@gmall.com and BigMon3yT_Bone69@hotmall.com

I don't use my phone for that, I swear!

Cronenberg be cronenbergin

The way Alito and his wife feel about defending america, I feel about defending queer people. The way Alito and his wife feel about queer people, I feel about supreme court judges

I think so. I'm kind and caring, I have really great friends who wouldn't be if I wasn't also a genuinely good person.

I haven't always been but I always tried to be. For a long time I was really chaotic and had some personal issues that made it hard for me to like actually follow through with it. But I worked on myself a lot and I continue to. I still fuck up and I'm sure there's people who think I'm a dick. But for the most part I'm a nice, kind person