Does anyone deal with hedonism and its negative effects?
Hi polymath. It looks like you are onto a truth about hedonism it took me many years to learn. It simply doesn't work. The more a person tries to make life a constant experience of pleasure, the worse things get. First there are the obvious physical effects. For instance, smoking, alcohol, and drugs lead to health problems, hang overs, accidents, e.t.c.. But there are also more subtle psychological issues. There is always a letdown equal to the pleasurable "high" later on down the road. When the pleasure of any new item or activity wears off, the hedonist is forced to seek something new to get the same effect, and usually in ever greater doses. When constant pleasure becomes the expected normal frame of mind, simple pleasures quickly become ineffective, and the hedonist must seek out greater thrills.
A lot of people in this society seem to be caught on a hedonism treadmill. They are constantly buying new consumer goods, changing relationships, taking drugs of various sorts, anything to keep the pleasure going. I've been one of them. By my late 30's, I was constantly indulging in a variety of chemicals and activities trying to overcome my depression. I phased back and forth from depression to exciting activity. I thought these activities were a possible cure for the depression, but in more recent years I realized the process itself may be the cause of the depression. After the high of an exciting vacation trip to somewhere exotic, the routines of daily life started to seem a depressed state when it was really just "normal". Now I am learning how to be satisfied with the maybe less exciting, but more dependable and less toxic simple pleasures.
The hedonism may be a learned response to the N-ish environment growing up. Since I didn't get much in the way of emotional support from the FOO, I learned to seek outside substitutes, such as collecting things. My parents couldn't provide any emotional validation, but they were usually good for a couple of bucks to buy something. They still operate this way. They talk about themselves constantly but buy nice Christmas gifts. Unfortunately "stuff" doesn't really fill emotional needs. You can't get enough of what you really didn't need to begin with. After being around the FOO for awhile, I feel the pull of outside emotional substitutes. They drove me to drink..
