This'll give you social anxiety!
Damn, all the responses are informative, interesting, and great! And some are new rabbit holes! Thanks!
I’m not against the use of plants and some psychedelics to assist people. But powerful forces demonize them, causing fear, redirecting attention to big Pharma or other messaging, obfuscating they uses, dosing, and how to be safe with them. In addition, I feel like there is a huge push by the state to throw all kinds of pleasure-seeking, anesthetizing, revenue-making things at us. The messaging is fucked up. On purpose.
It’s like, there was Just Say No/War on Drugs for decades. But now suddenly it’s ok to do now if you meet these criteria and we can make money off licensing, permits, taxes, and ESG scores and here are more commercials to do it and don’t overdue it but if you do here’s another state program to help.
@allie120 yes ^^^ agree with every word.
I was trying to think about who if anyone needed regular drugs after reading this again... I can name some people... diabetics. I had an aunt and a cousin that were born with type 1 and relied on insulin. But this was very odd, and you hardly ever heard of it. So, two in one family was a lot at the time.
I agree the majority of social anxiety that we hear about today is probably a shortcoming developed due to lack of real-world experience, due to reliance on screens.
But it could also be a trauma response. My MIL is a baby-boomer and she has really bad social anxiety. She is an adult child of an alcoholic. She can function perfectly well in her work which involves dealing with people face to face all day long. But when it comes time to socialize in groups, she gets diarrhea every time. She just started taking an SSRI recently and she says it's really helping with her stress levels. I'd guess that behavioral therapy would be even better, but that's her choice.
I had another girlfriend from high school who had the same problem. Both of them are people-pleasers, and they just have major trouble with relaxing in social settings.
@cocopeaches I agree with this as well. There are definitely traumatic experiences. I’m glad you brought this up because I can’t really paint this with a broad brush. There are real instances.
Heard this tale... gal dying in the gym. Everyone stares. No one approaches her to help. People just aren't used to real life interaction.
It's like even in public, you're isolated. It's mindboggling to truly think of it.
@elsa omg!
That’s horrific! Imagine dying and everyone is just … not fucking doing anything!
@allie120 so good to see you!
In hindsight, they start publishing stories about how you'll be sued.. that takes care of the older people. Makes them think twice.
But it makes sense to me the "new" social anxiety is a thing.
@elsa Hello!
Getting sued. Oh yes…that’s an unfortunate thing. Some places or other times, had Good Samaritan codes. I think the boating world still has that.
My sister-in-law is a nurse and obviously can administer aid in a situation. We were talking about having to do CPR. She admitted that she never wants to be in that position (outside of work) but she has and will always help. But she doesn’t want to. I’m sure many people fear that.
And then there is that new “social anxiety” thing. It’s a self perpetuating condition: if you always avoid it or are never exposed to it, you’ll continue to avoid it and will think you’re unable to function.
I don’t think anyone is comfortable with strangers. Maybe we aren’t supposed to be. I don’t listen to the messages that say Im supposed to be comfortable with something Im not and that if I am uncomfortable there’s something wrong with me. That’s the age old thing that has been manipulated since civilizations switched to…whatever the system is now (it’s called the patriarchy but it’s more than that imo),”don’t listen to yourself, listen to us”. Plus, it pays to have us drugged up.
So my claim is that anxiety is a natural reaction to unnatural circumstances. Neuroses is modern, that’s something that’s been studied. I don’t think people have changed that much, so let’s look at what has changed- we don’t live in tribal family groups anymore- that’s a VERY big change, and now we are forced to interact with people we don’t know, on a daily basis.