Some people use pop culture trivia as the basis for their identity, get preoccupied by trying to prove they’re a ‘real fan’ to other people just like them and forget to enjoy any of it.
Having been a cannabis smoker myself for years, I can understand the danger of self-medicating with psychedelics. They aren’t entirely harmless.
Any drug with a high is a dopamine button. It’s easy to hit that button instead of doing something else to feel good. It’s easy to stop doing other things in favor of just hitting that button all day. But the effects of that button diminish over time, so you hit it more often, and the more you hit it the less other things you want to do.
Psychedelics powerfully activate and deactivate different parts of the brain, changing the way you think and process information. Controlled and intentional, this has huge potential for positive mental health outcomes. With chronic recreational use, cannabis leads toward negative mental health outcomes like depression, disordered thinking, anxiety, and low agency.
Quitting is an interesting grey area for cannabis; culturally and functionally people misusing the drug are able to do so indefinitely, usually not reaching the “rock bottom” emergency state that other drugs (hopefully) convince the user to seek treatment. So it feels like “just weed” isn’t serious enough to warrant a 30 day treatment center, but the behavior patterns can be so ingrained it can be hard to see breaking them without.
I haven’t quit but have pulled back and am using it far more occasionally rather than most of the time.
The sense of increased focus after smoking is a big plus for me, but the decrease in focus after that coupled with the overall disorganized thinking is a big minus. Disorganized thinking can be great if you are trying to generate a variety of ideas, but bad if you are trying to communicate them. Learning more about what is actually happening in my brain with focus, memory, agency, etc has been one of the biggest motivators in pulling back from chronic use. I don’t enjoy it much knowing that I’m avoiding other things or going to be grumpy and depressed later because of it.
Agree about the grey area for quitting. There isn’t a rock bottom, but with chronic use there is a kind of dull limbo where everything feels harder to do, but you’re demotivated to make a change. It is literally a drag - it slows and lessens you overall.
For me after daily use for 6 months or so I just had a realization that it’s a net negative. I was always tired, cranky, forgetful, and the highs weren’t that high - more like maintaining some rather low level of life satisfaction. If you use it a lot there is probably some root cause why you think you need to get fucked up all the time.
What helped me quit was really seeing it for what it is - it was making a few hedonistic experiences “richer” but kind of draining the color out of all the experiences outside of that. I never had any negative effects while high - like anxiety so it seemed harmless. For practical tips think of something to do for the first few days at least when you’d normally toke up if youre just bored at home. Out with friends, walking, playing a new game, hobbies, etc
I also just created an account to reply to you. I too feel strongly the same - that AI images are not art just because they look like art.
Art is a form of meaning making, thought processing, and an attempt to communicate and compare and comment. It is a language in and of itself. It is about all of the stuff that led to the creation of the thing, and the context of the time and place it was made. Successful art helps the viewer make a connection or gain a perspective they may not have otherwise. It can invoke big questions about deeply philosophical things, and make fun of you for thinking those things are important at the same time.
AI art scrambles all that up, borrowing from here or there without much going on beyond what you directly see. It is often focused entirely on the aesthetic output, which is mostly beside the point.
