/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3375190]

What set off your first existential crisis /lit/? A book? A film? A single moment? Your own thoughts?

For me it was The Stranger. First book I ever read for pleasure.

[Anonymous No.3375193]

being 13 and becoming self-aware

[Anonymous No.3375199]

>>3375193

I can't imagine going through a existential crisis at 13. I know it's a general consensus here that only teenagers have existential crisis, but that just sounds frightening.

[Anonymous No.3375202]

>>3375190
When I realised all that really exists is this very moment. Since about 13 when I thought about the nature of time for a while. Occasionally it comes back to haunt me but I've overcome it.

[Anonymous No.3375248]

>>3375193
This. Kept at is for about 12 years. Starting to get out of it now.

[Anonymous No.3375256]

Stranger @ 14

[Anonymous No.3375264]

I became self aware pretty late, I guess around 14-15, at the time I felt superior to everyone and I still do. I'm 20 now and still haven't had a real existential crisis only frequent urges to commit suicide.

[Anonymous No.3375266]

Recently. Maybe two months ago. I've met someone with big ambitions. I always aim for the best: excellent academic background, many languages, good looks. I have everything I've ever wanted since I was a kid and I just got an excellent job with high pay. And I met that person in the same situation. We both work a lot to attain these dreams. But he admitted that he's not doing it because he likes it; he's doing it because that's the only reason why he could continue to live.
And I asked myself the same thing: yes, I have a job but that's it? I get my money, I eat well and I buy a lot of books, I work from 9am to 11pm. I don't want to kill myself because I want to live, but I don't even know why I want to live, since my life is nothing but emptiness. And all I want to do now is discovering why I want to live. What kind of power is pushing me everyday to work hard, get money and not enjoying anything?

[Anonymous No.3375267]

What do you all mean by self aware?

There was a time when you were not self aware?

[Anonymous No.3375269]

>>3375190
I wish I knew, man. Then maybe I could stop it.

[Anonymous No.3375275]

>>3375266

Are you afraid of dying?

[Anonymous No.3375276]

I was in bed one night, around 14 years old. I was about to fall asleep when I thought about dying. In death, there was either an afterlife or no afterlife. That was it.

I didn't want there to be an afterlife because I couldn't imagine having to exist forever.
I didn't want there to be no afterlife because I couldn't imagine not existing at all.

Needless to say, I panicked about it a few times.

[Anonymous No.3375281]

>>3375193
>>3375248

>not becoming self aware at age 18-19

ishig

[Anonymous No.3375282]

What is an existential crisis? How dramatic does your emotional reaction to existence have to be to qualify? I must have been very young when I first had serious thoughts about the universe and my place in it, and I lost sleep over it a few times as a teenager, but I've never been fraught with despair or withdrawn because of it.

[Anonymous No.3375288]

>>3375275
Sometimes but then I become cynical, such as "Ah well, when I'll be 80, I wouldn't even care that much". Death is not really an issue.
Sometimes, I also tell myself to kill myself the day I can't work anymore. See, all I want is work, right now. When work eats away your life, your free time become golden, and you cherish it like your own child. What worries me is that my life will probably be like that forever, until retirement, and then what? Write obscure theories about aesthetics until I die?

However, my mind broke when I was 7. I started to burst, suddenly. My father asked me why was I crying and I just said "I don't want to disappear forever".

[Anonymous No.3375299]

aren't thoughts regarding these sort of things just a symptom of a possible mental illness, like depression or obsessive thoughts?

[Anonymous No.3375301]

>>3375266
I know that feel. Except I don't work nearly as long of hard. I think I'll travel, see if I'm still as miserable and then make a decision.

[Anonymous No.3375307]

>>3375299
Anything is a symptom of mental illness. Mental illnesses are just classification for behaviour. It's not like a disease or anything.

But no, they aren't. Most men have these thoughts at some time or another.

[Anonymous No.3375312]

>>3375266
>working 14 hours a day

Holy shit, what's your job? That's insane.

[Anonymous No.3375314]

>>3375299
I used to have depression when I was a teen. Stopped taking AD when I was 18, so I am more or less cured. However, according to some people, I'm still depressive, but not in a self-destructive way. I don't hate my own guts but I blame myself for everything.

>>3375301
I used to travel a lot with my father. Been to the Amazonian jungle, to the Sahara desert, and the Himalaya mountains.
But I guess that I'm fucked up, I was never impressed by these. At least, that's not what I want. And I have no idea what do I want. I'm looking for an answer. Maybe that's why I'm still living, despite my shitty hours and my numb feeling about everything. I am not even sexually active, for fuck's sake. I have no sexual desire, absolutely nothing.

[Anonymous No.3375330]

>>3375312
Market analyst, so my ass isn't moving all day, it's okay. My brain and eyes are all fried up. These are not my usual hours though, I work mostly from 9am to 10pm. By the time I get home, it's almost 11pm, but sometimes I finish at 11pm or even midnight.
I don't have to, but I'm doing it because that's all I have in my life, because I don't do anything except reading and posting on 4chan while enjoying some fine music. The thing is, I can't allow myself to do too much of these fun activities or I'll start to get bored to death.

[Anonymous No.3375333]

>>3375267
you're right, of course one is always aware of one's body and presence and etc, but people here are talking about being aware of your self as a finite being

[Anonymous No.3375381]

What caused it were my own faggy and edgy thoughts at the age 13 or so.
I have had a more serious existential crisis later and this one is caused by observing other people and their lives. I don't know what I want to do with my life, I don't know if it's even worth putting effort in whatever it is a choose and I don't see the point in mindless entertainment.

[Anonymous No.3375385]

>>3375330
I wish I could offer you some advice, but just about every activity I indulge in is lazy as shit and would do more harm than anything. Have you tried exercise? I'm no /fit/ guy, and far too lazy to keep it up, but whenever I've exerted myself I end up feeling a little better.

[Anonymous No.3375394]

>>3375385
Not the same guy, buy funny enough, lifting has been really the only thing that has kept me going.

It's worth a shot, and a healthy habit to pick up

[Anonymous No.3375398]

>write a long post
>delete it
>write this instead

i don't even

[Anonymous No.3375399]

>>3375314

I meant travelling by yourself, it can be a liberating feeling.

Sounds like your job is slowly killing you. Do you really want to be a Market Analyst anyways? Is the Analysis that rewarding?

Quit that shit and do something else!

[Anonymous No.3375413]

anxiety problems and working at a stressful job compounded with marijuana and death metal.

the Houellebecq certainly didn't help either.

[Anonymous No.3375433]

>>3375385
It's okay dude. I'm not hating my job, far from it. It's the only way to make me feel a little useful in life.
I did try exercising (my company even offers to each of us a gym room membership for free) but I don't really feel the need to do it. I mean, I don't think that's what I really want. My looks aren't the problem.

[Anonymous No.3375442]

It may seem ridiculous, but it was when this girl who had become an idealised figure in my mind proved not to be what I had expected.

That's a pretty commonplace hurt, but it led me down a painful path. I began to think of my own upbringing and how my neuroses were the result of my parents’ actions, whose own neuroses were in turn the result of their own upbringing, which was in turn caused by the whole culture of my nation and, finally, the history of the world. I even convinced myself that my family problems were a result of bad weather conditions off the coast of France in the 1790s.

I realised - not just intellectually, but truly felt - that I was the result of set of circumstances completely beyond my control, and that these circumstances had brought into being an intelligence that wished to resist these circumstances. That is, a being that wished to resist itself and wanted to tear apart the things which defined it.

Of course, this idealised person never existed and was actually a symbol for something else. What had been idealised was not just the person, but the anticipated relationship with that person. And that anticipated relationship could only be between that person and some other person than the intelligence which had at first anticipated it. In fact, that anticipated relationship could only be between two beings other than the ones concerned, because neither of the people in question resembled the desired people at all.

So what I ended up facing was that I am a being completely divided against itself. A being that not only doesn't want to be itself, moment to moment, but doesn't even wish to be the product of the world which has produced it.

It was then that I had the experience of seeing myself in the mirror and regarding myself wholly as a stranger.

[Anonymous No.3375446]

>in bed, falling asleep
>suddenly wonder why I'm me and why here's here
>never fall asleep

[Anonymous No.3375453]

>>3375399
Well yeah, sort of. My company is prestigious so that's the only last thing I can be proud of.
But see, I was more or less like that when I was in university. It was actually worse because I wasn't sure to get the job I've always wanted. Now that I do, I don't give a damn about anything anymore. Maybe that's my fault for focusing too much on my education and my dream job since I was a little kid.
I could be anything else, I could be like my parents, earning millions and do whatever they want, but no, I am just stuck with around 5k USD per month, maybe more in a couple of years, but I'll never earn millions. And I don't I need them anyway. I spend quite a lot, but 5k is enough for me. I sometimes go to a restaurant or enjoy some fine music at a music hall and that's it.
But I really don't want to live like them, they never organize anything. They just suddenly take the plane for no reason. Or suddenly take a trip. I don't know why, but I really dislike this way of life. Perhaps it's from my childhood.

[Anonymous No.3375460]

>that feel when you are the lucky sperm

[Anonymous No.3375467]

>>3375460
>lucky sperm
>lucky

[Anonymous No.3375476]

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was sitting in the bath, i was in my teen years, i suddenly realized i was a meandering vessel of suffering and one day i would die

[Anonymous No.3375483]

had minor ones age 13-14, then a big one age 15-16, and been pretty much existing within one until now. I'm 18. I often get depressed, but recently I've helped that with herbal supplements and diet and other things.

The meaningless/mundanity/arbitrariness of all human values and existence is what bothers me. I also want a gf. Tfw.

[Anonymous No.3375499]

>>3375460

real lucky, kiddo.

[Anonymous No.3375504]

I was probably 18 or so.

dark, dark times until mid 20th year. things are much better now although I am afraid I no longer have a soul or any emotions.

[Anonymous No.3375507]

I had a revelation that the anticipated day of release from mediocrity and loneliness would never arrive and was simply a delusion fabricated by my reptilian hind-brain to keep me from killing myself.

I sobbed for hours, imagining as clear as if he was standing in front of me my middle-aged, unhappy self.

I wept in sympathy for the poor man I would become one day.

[Anonymous No.3375508]

>>3375281
First existential crsis at 18 is for amateurs. You should start at fifteen at your latest, but that's cheating a bit because by then you should already be reading Nietzsche. 12-14 for authenticity.

[Anonymous No.3375515]

>>3375507
Please acquire ataraxia by ways of Epicureanism.

[Anonymous No.3375521]

12-13. My own thoughts.

Fuck I was edgy.

[Anonymous No.3375523]

>>3375508
>HURR

[Anonymous No.3375528]

I personally resent the influence of the atheistic existentialists of the mid-20th Century because they promulgated all sorts of notions that objective meaning and objective value were impossible outside of the Abrahamic God. They played right into the Christian’s paradigms. They adopted as their own notions that the world without the Abrahamic God was a nihilistic one and by doing so they trapped many atheists within a false Christian dialectic that favored the Christians.

In other words: derp.

[Anonymous No.3375534]

I was 7, accidentally got a hold of some mushrooms.

I asked to start going to church that Sunday. Can't even explain the shit that happened.

[Anonymous No.3375537]

Katawa Shoujo.

[Anonymous No.3375541]

>>3375528
You mean they were honest?

[Anonymous No.3375545]

>>3375507
I wept for the kid who died. A kid with sincere dreams, driven by a luminous hope; just like a golden lighthouse in the middle of a soothing and yet shy blue, attracting this poor kid, only to attract him to his own death.
Drowned and crushed by the heaviness of the sea of stupidity.
I knew what happened as I was the prime witness. The soothing blue was nothing more than a poisonous purple, slowly killing the kid, until he drowns in his own yellow vomit, mixed with blood and tears. He died alone.
As a prime witness, I want him to forgive me. Forgiving me for not helping him out, for not warning him to get into the treacherous blue, despite the golden call. I wept again, and all I can do now, is waiting for the pink dawn, so the warm sun shines on his muddy tomb, only to give a reason for these flowers to delicately bloom again.
I promise that I will protect these flowers against the wind, the storm or even the hurricane. I will no longer be coward.

[Anonymous No.3375549]

>>3375541
Sure, if telling yourself that makes you feel better at night.

[Anonymous No.3375551]

>>3375523
I'm partly serious. If you have your first existential crisis at 18 that means you haven't been thinking about more that tits and vidya for your entire adolescence.

[Anonymous No.3375552]

>>3375528
But they're right. Which is why you should accept His grace.

[Anonymous No.3375554]

>>3375537
So, what? You're pottering along day-to-day, and then suddenly, bam!

>tfw no qt3.14 disabled gf
>tfw 3D

And it went in a spiral out from there?

[Anonymous No.3375556]

>>3375549
It's the other way around. You crave objectivity, not him.

[Anonymous No.3375561]

>>3375537
I know that feel bro.

So majestic.

Rin's ending was as emotional for me as the conclusion of The Great Gatsby.

>Born back ceaselessly into the past, man.
>That feeling in your heart where you know everything is going to be alright.

So deep.

[Anonymous No.3375563]

>>3375190
I was five. overheard my mother and her friend chatting about the pointlessness of the destructive power of nuclear arms; the idea of the cold war, still extant at the time. my mind set to reeling.

[Anonymous No.3375571]

>>3375541
How can they be deemed "honest" when their notions and "beliefs" stem directly from a paradigm that Christians created?

[Anonymous No.3375573]

>>3375563
I remember when people were protesting against a nuclear power plant nearby.

They handed out cards depicting what a post-nuclear watseland would look like.

I kept picturing the world around me as if it had been transformed in a similar way.

I vomited with fear.

[Anonymous No.3375574]

>>3375199

teenagers? I thought it was for people around 20s

[Anonymous No.3375570]

When I was 7 going through the lunch line. I started thinking about why I was alive and why I did the things I did, like school, and what the point of it was. I thought about what it might "feel" like to be dead, because the concept of just dying and not existing anymore scared me. I wondered if everyone else experienced consciousness the same way that I did, then I got the thought of "what if I'm the only one that has this? what if everything else is made up?"
Obviously I didn't think these things in quite the same words, as I was 7, but that moment definitely changed me. I had a very trauma filled childhood and age 7 is when a few major events happened that shook me and I suppose that's what caused those thoughts. I ended up getting a generalized anxiety disorder and would stay home from school for a week at a time at least once a month. Stopped doing homework, stopped talking to anybody, etc. The school started making me go to the school "counselor" once a week.
I'm 19 now and only about a year ago did I get over my depression, and it does flare up every now and again, but the existential crisis has never really left me. I wonder if it ever will.

[Anonymous No.3375579]

>>3375571
Stop. Let's not go down this road.

Yes, the rejection of God needn't imply meaninglessness of itself, but a meaningless world necessarily excludes the existence of a higher being, Abrahamic or not.

The existentialists weren't reacting to Christianity any more than a fisherman "reacts" to the land he shoves off of in his boat.

[Anonymous No.3375581]

>>3375266

Jeez, it could be me writting this. Same work schedule too. Software engineer too?

[Anonymous No.3375591]

>>3375581
Nope, like I said, market analyst. You know, analyzing trends, explain them, spreadsheets, predictions and all.

Maybe you're me. Maybe we are one.

[Anonymous No.3375592]

>>3375288
pic source please

[Anonymous No.3375601]

>>3375592

<2013
<haven't heard of google images

lawd

[Anonymous No.3375602]

>>3375330
Have you ever read Albert Cossery?

[Anonymous No.3375603]

Actually the book was just an interpretation of a child thinking about dead people.

[Anonymous No.3375605]

As a child I was always plagued and tormented by nightmares. Every night from ages 3-4 and later 10-11 was filled with horrors one can only find when dreaming. I find myself to be a very broken individual, misguided and full of hate and anger. I find this feeling of 'otherness' to everything in this reality. When I was 14 or 16 I realized that I was a part of that reality and that nothing was heading in the direction that I wanted from myself bodily. I panicked, I wanted to die. I frantically searched my mother and father's medicine cabinet but found nothing. I am aware that I will cease to be one day and am not troubled with being dead, the process of dying however frightens me. I feel like I should've never been born, that I was not meant to be alive.

[Anonymous No.3375610]

cheer up everyp0ny!

[Anonymous No.3375608]

>>3375282

This, although where does it usually end? Is it normal to just think, "there's no meaning, lol" and then go back to living life?

[Anonymous No.3375614]

>>3375574
The kind of people who claim that only teenagers experience existential crisis are the kind of people who haven't really had an existential crisis. A teenager does not have a full intellect. They may experience troubled intuition, but it isn't backed by an intellectual understanding of their situation, by and large.

If you haven't committed yourself to hours of sobing over the fact that you are who are, that the world is what it is, that human relationships on which you previously placed such high importance are based on nothing but habit and confused pursuit of desire, that you are always in part interacting with preconceptions of others and thus never truly seeing another human being in any meaningful sense and that you have been abandoned by all comforting principles - "the past", "the future", "God", "love", "morality" - then you haven't had a true existential crisis.

I mean, have you ever sat and felt burdened by the weight of your own being? Have you ever wanted to tear yourself a part, but felt unable to identify that quality of yourself which could engage in this project of destruction without at the same time destroying itself?

No?

Get on my level.

[Anonymous No.3375616]

>>3375574
The people in their 20's (and up) that still follow existentialism are 3edgy5me hipsters that can't find meaning in their hyper-materialistic lives almost always because of addling their brains with copious amounts of prescription benzodiazepines and psychostimulants which their shitty parents happily pay for as long as it keeps their unwanted and often accidental offspring out of sight and out of mind.

[Anonymous No.3375620]

>>3375616
Are you serious?

[Anonymous No.3375621]

>>3375592
Francis Bacon (not the philosopher). Check his stuff. Pretty awesome. I can totally relate my panic attacks with his paintings.

>>3375602
Nope. What can you tell me about him?

[Anonymous No.3375623]

>>3375579
>Stop. Let's not go down this road.

Typical existentialist/postmodern argumentation. That was essentially Derrida's response to Sokal. Too funny.

>The existentialists weren't reacting to Christianity
I lol'd forever. You're clueless. Then again you're also an existentialist. The two almost always seem to be mutually exclusive.

[Anonymous No.3375626]

>>3375616
Fuck you. Benzos are great.

>can't talk to girls
>take benzos
>can talk to girls
>get rejected
>don't care cuz benzo lol

[Anonymous No.3375629]

>>3375614
Are you between 20-30?

[Anonymous No.3375630]

>>3375623
Firstly, that wasn't an argument, it was an introductory statement.

Secondly, you haven't presented an argument, just called me a douche.

And that hurts my feelings, which is objectively wrong.

[Anonymous No.3375637]

>>3375629
I'm whatever you want me to be, bb.

[Anonymous No.3375641]

>>3375190
Every time I watch a Bela Tarr movie

[Anonymous No.3375638]

>>3375620
Quite. I'm sorry your shitty parents engendered an equally shitty and myopic worldview within your psyche.

Maybe you'll break the cycle one day. Maybe not. At the end of the day it doesn't matter what some depressive, drugged out hipster sitting in his mother's basement believes out the nature of our existence - and that, if anything, is what should send you into a quasi-suicidal despondency.

[Anonymous No.3375642]

>>3375638
So when did you become the ubermensch?

I'm so jealous. Why can't I be like you?

[Anonymous No.3375646]

>>3375528
Shit dude, you're from America, ain't you? That fixation on christianity-atheism dichotomy sure is edgy.
Existentialism wasn't necessarily only about denying the existence of Jahweh, it was denying absolutely everything, thus "trapping themselves in a false dialectic" that favoured anyone but existentialists

[Anonymous No.3375662]

>sobbing
>vomiting with fear
You're a delicate bunch /lit/. I didn't know girls had existential crises.

[Anonymous No.3375663]

I didn't get existential til I was about 14 but I remember on more than one occasion, when i was younger that that, closing my eyes and trying to imagine nothingness. I remember a headache following that thought like I was falling into the imagined 'nothingness in my mind and opened my eyes in panic.

[Anonymous No.3375666]

>>3375662

They don't even lift.

[Anonymous No.3375670]

>>3375662
No, you don't. You know girls who experienced depersonalisation on fucking weed.

If you didn't react strongly to your crisis, it wasn't a crisis.

I've had to deal with suicide attempts and I remained totally calm.

This shit is different.

[Anonymous No.3375679]

>>3375642
I went to a good school, had great parents and was smart enough at the age of 16 to realize that Nietzsche was essentially the 19th century equivalent of Tucker Max.

Listening to a syphilitic forever-virgin's advice about becoming a "superman" is like listening to Arthur Rimbaud give advice about performing cunnilingus on a woman.

[Anonymous No.3375692]

>>3375679
You're even cooler than I thought. I give up right now, man. Game over.

By way of compensation for my unworthy existence, I offer up what energy is in my mortal flesh for you to consume.

I wish only to help sustain a superior being before I rot and become even more useless.

[Anonymous No.3375702]

Will you guys lets your kids in on this early? I feel our parents held out on us. The next generation should be fun.

Personally, I will absolutely be crushing my childrens' lives. No censorship.

[Anonymous No.3375711]

>>3375702
Nope. No fucking way. I'm raising my child in an atmosphere of life-affirming beliefs. All competing dogmas will be crushed.

My child will live for experience, thought within a prescribed range, art, music, literature, love, sex and altruism toward their fellow man.

There will be no mounful naval-gazing in my family. If you start to feel lethargic, it's time to practice an art or sport of some kind.

Never stop to think. I want my child's life to pass in front of them like a brief but joyous blur of activity. I never want them to have to gaze too closely at the human heart, because I know it's disappointing.

[Anonymous No.3375712]

>>3375621
I would you recommend you read all of his books. You can easily read all of them in a month.

He just wrote eight during is lifetime.

Let's say he has a word about working and a place for lazyness.

He was also a friend of Albert Camus. Their ideas are kind of similar.

[Anonymous No.3375718]

>>3375646
Not anymore edgy than Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith" or Ivan Karamazov's claim that "if God did not exist, everything would be permitted" and so on and so on.

Just stop now, you're embarrassing yourself.

[Anonymous No.3375727]

>>3375711
>>3375702
So where on the scale of "cognitive dissonance" does wanting to have kid and procreate while pretending to be an existentialist fall?

Just wondering.

[Anonymous No.3375737]

>>3375711
You don't think it can be discussed without depressing them? I mean, at this point, most of us are over it, or over it to an extent that we can function happily. I would think it better to be done with early.

>>3375727
Who here is an existentialist? That shit died years ago.

[Anonymous No.3375735]

>>3375442
Camus is that you

[Anonymous No.3375736]

every fucking day

im 15 hurr existential crisis

[Gant No.3375738]

If we define being self aware like >>3375333 did, then like 5. I was in bed one night and saw through the bullshit; I knew that after life there was only the void, no after life. Or I at least considered the idea that if there was no afterlife, what was the point to my life? I fucking cried so hard that night, I woke up my parents with it. Existential crisis for a 5 year old is some scary shit.

[Anonymous No.3375740]

>>3375727
I don't actually want to have kids because I know I could never raise them in the way I think it best to.

Coastal shelf, and all that.

[Anonymous No.3375744]

>>3375616
> implying you need to live with your parents to have a existencial crisis

[Anonymous No.3375748]

Remove yourselves for ~6 minutes from your self-imposed nonages and watch this please:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OX77Qv66qw

[Anonymous No.3375754]

>>3375692
Are you me?

[Anonymous No.3375756]

>>3375702
I will not become a parent.

[Anonymous No.3375759]

>>3375737
No. I would raise them to believe in a set of principles which are designed to produce happiness and vitality. Inquisitiveness for its own sake is worthless.

[Anonymous No.3375760]

>>3375702
>having kids

I'm not a fucking psychopath.

[Anonymous No.3375761]

>>3375759
>>3375727
Natural Selection at work here.

[Anonymous No.3375764]

13-14 I just kinda thought of it myself. Then at 15 I told myself to stop giving a shit. I obviously still think about it and stuff but don't get any anxiety or anything anymore.

[Anonymous No.3375775]

>>3375735
Yes, my son. I have come back to tell you all to repent and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.

[Anonymous No.3375778]

>>3375621
Thank you, I will Google that name. It reminded me of Breughel

[Anonymous No.3375783]

I take it no one in this thread has extensively read the work of Jung, or has any familiarity with the psychedelic transhuman experience.

Pic related. Go eat some.

[Anonymous No.3375784]

>>3375626
Are those sleeping pills?

[Anonymous No.3375787]

>>3375748
forward, ever forward!
thanks.

[Anonymous No.3375795]

>>3375784
Anti-anxiety meds.

>>3375783
I'm trying to get my hands on some.

[Anonymous No.3375796]

>>3375748
This is happening right now through the internet.

[Anonymous No.3375794]

>>3375760
this

[Anonymous No.3375797]

>>3375784
No, anti-anxiety drugs. Have that function though.

[Anonymous No.3375805]

>>3375748
It's literally frightening to me how smart McKenna was.

[Anonymous No.3375808]

>>3375797
>>3375795
How do they relate with existencial crisis?

[Anonymous No.3375810]

>>3375808
They make you feel good about yourself.

[Anonymous No.3375824]

>>3375810
I already take Prozac

[Anonymous No.3375831]

>>3375824
Hey, I wouldn't know the difference because I haven't done prozac, just bennies.

[Anonymous No.3375841]

>>3375824
lol, that's not the same.

[Anonymous No.3375851]

My only drug is human will.

[Anonymous No.3375852]

No singular moment, but a gradual process. A feeling of fear, of wanting to be withdrawn my whole life, coming to final fruition, becoming aware of itself and more palpable. If I were to discern one moment of particular significance, its most likely when I really realized the implications of death. Which is the common thing, I suppose.


"Ordinary people seem not to realize that those
who really apply themselves in the right way to
philosophy are directly and of their own accord
preparing themselves for dying and death. If this
is true, and they have actually been looking
forward to death all their lives, it would of course
be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes
for which they have so long been preparing and
looking forward.
—SOCRATES, PHAEDO"

[Anonymous No.3375863]

The day I realised communism wouldn't work because greed and the thirst for power were part of being human. It sucked, cause I was on vacation with my parents and I was a little... let down - by humanity in general. I was 11 at that time.

[Anonymous No.3375871]

>>3375863
I have a friend who still believe in communism. He even wore a Lenin pin. He's very attractive to women because his boyish outgoing nature.

I fear telling him the truth, because it would surely crush his spirit. Then I'd get all the girls.

But I couldn't do that...
I'd feel like Iago...

[Anonymous No.3375875]

>>3375190
The day I met someone who was everything I wanted to be.

[Anonymous No.3375876]

>>3375824
That's like, what, an SSRI? Big difference, a benzo gives a more immediate result too, and can make it easier to sleep.

>>3375808
Beats me, they just cut stress.

[Anonymous No.3375880]

>>3375570
well duh its an existential crisis, for as long as you are alive it sure as hell wont be gone. Kill yourself and everything will be alright my friend.
Source: Ive done it

[Anonymous No.3375889]

>>3375875
I know that feeling.

>always wanted to travel the world
>always wanted to be loved
>always wanted to be handsome
>meet handsome guy who travels the world and has sex with countless women

Welp. Can I really live with just being an imitation of that guy?

[Anonymous No.3375908]

>>3375889
It wasn't just that this guy was everything I wanted to be - it's that there's no discernible excuse why I *couldn't* be like him. We grew up in vaguely the same manner, with the same traumas and problems and privileges.

We're good friends, now. I don't think he knows how much I lust after everything about him.

[Anonymous No.3375918]

>>3375190


Not getting laid op and two mormons coming to my house telling me about jesus.

I didn't become a mormon of course but it made me interested in philosophy.

[Anonymous No.3375922]

>>3375908
That's rough.

I had something similar, but it was because he became sexually and romantically active with somebody I desired very badly, and I began to wish I could swap experiences with him.

I began to think everything about him was good, because it had been conducive to the ultimate goal of consummating relations with this person.

[Anonymous No.3375927]

>>3375871
Man, I know that feeling. I'm still going to school (19, repeated year 11 cause I wasn't contempt with my grades), and there are so many people that have views which are just... flawed in every sense possible. I got the communists, the radical democrats (yes, that's a thing), I've even got a guy who's telling me how Germany should go back to dictatorship (I'm the only one who would listen to his ideas, so he talks to me A LOT). It's really a pain in the ass, especially since I've been meaning to write a book on political philosophy one day.

[Anonymous No.3375941]

When I was about 9 or 10, my uncle gave me a book about the universe (stars, planets, nebulae, etc.). After reading the book, I was outside one day and looked up. I was suddenly struck by the vastness of the sky and the universe. It was more than my adolescent mind could comprehend and I remember sitting on our back steps almost ready to cry over that thought.

[Anonymous No.3376974]

>>3375702
My parents had no clue what was I experiencing.
They do not believe in depression and they thought that I would never experience such thing, simply because they spoil me like madmen. I had every single thing I've ever wanted. They even asked my opinion if they should buy the apartment next door.
But they didn't realize that all of this made no sense at all for me. At the end, I realize that money doesn't please. As long I can live inside a warm house or apartment, buy some books and cook, I'm materially pleased. But I will still feel empty.
I had my very first panic attack at 9 years old, on the motorway. I begged them to fucking stop the car because I felt I was dying t and they asked me to calm down. I suddenly opened the door and almost tossed myself on the road, while my father was driving. Since that day, I experience panic attacks almost every day, until I entered university. I'm having less panic attacks but I feel empty, just like a shell with an agonizing soul. When I was 14, I was crushed and had to take AD until 18 years old. My parents never spiritually helped me. It was tough, I was all alone during that time of my life. Everybody was shitting on me, but at least, I wanted to live, even if there's no purpose, so I could at least find an answer to all of this bullshit. Hell, even my mother opened the window and asked me to kill myself because I wasn't good enough in my high school. But I didn't want to die, I still need to find an endearing answer. I partly hate my parents for their ignorance, but I can't really blame them.

[Anonymous No.3376987]

somewhere around 13.

deep feelings of depression, loneliness, sense of helplessness over the "point" of life. hard to explain. just sittting in my room stuck in some kind of funk, feeling like i would never break out of it.

[Anonymous No.3376993]

>>3375190

I was 5 when sudently I thought that death is infinite, no matter what happens after you die
Haunted for like 10 years until I finally realize that God may exist.

[Anonymous No.3376999]

>>3375276
This, except that I realized it younger and that I finally understood that heaven doesn't mean eternal life but eternal happiness, which is not quite the same.

[noko+dice+1d20 No.3377015]

>>3375190
12, the day I told myself magic didn't exist. 4 suicide attempts since.

[Anonymous No.3377023]

>>3375863
"I'll see you in Hell or I'll see you in communism!"

[Anonymous No.3377030]

I wish I could say it was something romantic like a book or a movie. But sadly it was just me realizing how I had no idea what to do with my life and how difficult it was for me to connect with anyone emotionally. I've felt this way ever since my early teens and it's very much ongoing.