Now this is the kinda stuff Oprah should be putting on her SuperSoul Sunday lineup.
Reddit user “plzsendhalp” recently posted about how his Bacchanalian vacay south of the border saved him from himself. Depressed, he’d outlined a whole suicide plan, traveled to Mexico to get the right kinda chemicals for a euphoric farewell, and then – in the midst of his death plot – life happened. It started with a taxi driver offering him a bit of the ol’ white girl, then finding a hotel over brothel, and then a miscellany of threesomes. Then, when he started to notice his only problems in this heavenly alternate reality were whiskey dick – fixable with Viagra – he had a sudden moment of spiritual awakening level insight:
“Somewhere in the midst of my coke-fueled orgy I decide life wasn’t so bad after all.”
(Yeah. That’s definitely not ’cause you’ve got more Bolivian marching powder coursing through ya than blood.)
It’s nuts that one has to go nuts deep in “god knows where this’s been” to realize this.
But I get it.
’cause that’s exactly what it takes sometimes to break us of our brain habits. I think that’s what strikes me most about this story – not the Hunter S. Thompson-esque debauchery. Not even the last minute decision to hang around a little longer. It’s the microcosmic representation this is of a helluva lotta people out there – people who spend their days feeling like crap, debating a .22 for lunch, but never actually making the final decision to go through with it. Even if you’re one of these morose folk who can’t seem to book a one way ticket out of here, it still sucks to be in a headspace where you’re constantly thinking about it and hating life. Normally, this is where I’d come in with some good, reasonable advice about self-soothing and spiritual fapping (see: meditation, yoga, etc.)
However, Reddit dude’s trip may just offer an excellent alternative to that.
I mean, no wonder we hate our lives when even our (comparatively average) vacations end up existing within the non-spontaneous prison confines of a constructed itinerary, all laid out with military times. Holidays are meant to be a fun escape away from all of that “Be there by nine. Get sodomized with your own extracted soul which your job now possesses for 8 hours. Emerge at dark o’clock. Sit in traffic. Acquire new frown line by 8 P.M.”. That shouldn’t be part of your wanderings away from work. No, if you fly somewhere and see a hotel you like better than the one you booked – go there instead. See a roadside winery on your way to scuba diving? Stop and try it out. Get a brochure about donkey show? Sure! What is it? Nevermind, I’ll find out! No one’s going to fire you here. You don’t have to be afraid of el jefe. Even when we’ve designed them ourselves, routines can start to get really depressing. Once those routines become ingrained habits, they’re hard to change. We’re stuck in them. And even though they depress us, it’s all we know how to do. So we start applying those same by-the-numbers habits to our one annual week in Hawaii like some gestapo version of Alice’s rabbit, and imposing them on everyone with us.
And then we wonder why we need a vacation from our vacation after.
Homeboy had no plan for his trip. He was literally living like he was about to die – because he thought he was.
The yes-and to this dude’s self-discovery is that you don’t have to wait for an annual trip to live like you mean it. You can tone it down and even make some version of this weekly thing. If prozzies and proboscis powder ain’t your thing, force yourself to do something else every Sunday after church that tickles the taint of your soul till it jizzes adrenaline. Your brain loves new stuff when you’re stuck in a rut. So do it a favor and eff your “I’m tired; I just wanna rest”. You’ll thank me later when you jump out of an airplane – leaving your parachute behind along with your “goodbye cruel world” note (only to survive and thusly carrying out the remainder of your life like Humpty Dumpty breathing through a straw). Some of us can recognize this before the downward thought-spiral into an aneurism followed by self-murder ensues. Good for you. You go, Glen Coco. But for others, sometimes you’ve just gotta smack yourself with smack, blow, and blowjobs back into reality. And remember that you can do whatever the eff you want.‘cause it’s all ending eventually anyway.
Whether or not that was on your itinerary for this trip.