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Comment by 0000011111 | Hacker News Reader

I would like to add two other ways to get off the hedonic treadmill for a bit.

1. Backpacking for a 1 week time period or longer. Living out of a backpack is a great way to help rest your brain terms of its standard perspective on what it thinks it needs to be happy in day to day life. Also, there are some nice places you can walk to with a backpack on that you can not drive to.

2. A Therapeutic mushroom trip - read how to change your mind by that hippy Berkley professor. This is not for everyone though. So proceed with caution.

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The generalization is that you need some "stress" in your life to remain grounded, i.e something that you engage on a level that produces a sense of urgency. Backpacking and living minimally can definitely do that. Taking up a sport that has some element of fear/danger can do that as well.

>A Therapeutic mushroom trip - read how to change your mind by that hippy Berkley professor. This is not for everyone though. So proceed with caution.

Mushrooms are way, way, way safer than what people believe. For people who are sane (i.e not suffering from psychosis) it is perfectly safe to do an entry level 2-3.5 gram shroom trip with a trip sitter. You can read all the studies, the negative effects are pretty much non existent, the only stuff that gets mentioned is the meta-effects from things like being disoriented and tripping and falling - thus the trip sitter.

I've done an extended backpacking trip (4 months). Probably took about a month before feeling like a truly therapeutic break. I don't think a week would have been nearly enough.

Did you live out in the wilderness that whole time or travel around out of a backpack? The two are obviously very different so am curious your experience. I have had friends who have backpacked along the PCT, CDT, AT, etc. and they all returned different people.

AT 2016 SOBO section hiker. Just the northern half (from Katahdin to Harper's Ferry), so I might have only came back half a different person. :) I took it pretty leisurely and stopped in at towns often, so I probably averaged about 9-10 miles per day. I'm not an outdoorsman by any stretch, but it was nice to just get away for a while. Definitely made me appreciate the small and simple conveniences of civilization that I often take for granted.

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