popemarijuanavi

Become an instructor. Maintain your skills by teaching others and making money in the process. Almost recession proof, because people go back to school when they don't have work. Start out by teaching a free class somewhere locally, like a public library. Don't say you don't have the social skills to teach. Some of the very best teachers are introverts. Start off as a tutor maybe, but teach. Teaching has this remarkable ability to confer responsibility, whether you want it or not. You can be lazy teaching yourself, but teaching others will light a fire under you. You are now responsible for their well-being, and you have about 10 minutes before they call bullsh-t on you not knowing your stuff. Teaching keeps you on your toes. And yes, you can make a handsome amount of side money. You might like it so much, you become a full-time instructor.

Use your computer skills to help people in disadvantaged communities. I once found myself in San Antonio becoming a de facto employee of Comcast because I was the only person at my apartment complex who had a computer and could speak both Spanish and English. Have you ever tried to figure out your cable bill in English? Try doing that on the phone if English isn't your first language and you can't read English at all. This gave me great satisfaction, to be able to use my computer and language skills to help the disadvantaged.

Here it's important to recognize that the skills you have can seem like magic to people who don't have them. Something as simple as speaking English and knowing how to use a web browser to fill out a cell phone contract (for someone who cannot) is a priceless contribution that, while it might not make the money you seek, will give you far more satisfaction than will code-for-pay.

And when you help people, they help you. The person you help might not make you money, but they might open doors for you that will. That little old lady you helped at the library has tea with the governor's Mom's gardener. That $300,000/year cash-kush job you have now is a indirect result of you having helped her print out a PDF form in the library. And make no mistake! The very best paying job you will ever have will come through someone you know, someone who likes you, someone you've helped. It won't be your favorite job, but it will be the best paying job you will ever have. The world, for all its facets, is still very much an I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine place.

Your professional life really happens in the crevices, those little old ladies, that serendipity, not in the bullet points on your resume, pace dear Tolstoy. If we are brave enough to admit it to ourselves, a resume is a chronology of our "f--k this, i'm outta here" decisions.

I repeat: if you're skilled enough to be reading HN, you have the kinds of skills that are tantamount to magic for others that don't have them.

Go ahead. Try to buy a prepaid mobile phone from AT&T and set it up with a prepaid account on a credit card. You would not believe how ridiculously and stupidly complicated that is, even for very qualified you. There are people that spend days just getting their f---ing prepaid cell phones to work. You can turn that into minutes because you know how to use a computer and a website, and that's very valuable for people, getting rid of their headaches is valuable. It's not a headache for you, it's a simplicity. “Easy for you, difficult for them” is where you make easy money. Don't take that logic too far, please, else you become infected with capitalismus and start believing in that a $300,000 cash-kush is what you want. You do not.

You might not make any money here with the poor, but the tech unsaavy are rich and poor alike and they number in the billions: tech skills have tremendous value for those who don't have them, and they will pay for it.

It's the metabolic pathway that's most jarring: a poison that gets broken down into other poisons, themselves worse than the alcohol.

If your body (liver) didn't produce an enzyme called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, you would die from one drink.

A clarification: I'm a homeless nomad. I have the worst insurance available in my country. If I ask for Xanax, the assumption is that I will sell them to other homeless nomads, not use them for my own anxiety. This is but one of many subtle civil rights violations we poor suffer at the hands of the rich, who apparently can ask their doctors for Xanax and get them on request. Because homelessness is not anxiety-inducing. It's easy and free and safe and wonderful.

tldr; if you're poor, good luck getting any scheduled drug

Note to self. Sue the fuckers for violating my civil rights just to get Xanax. Clog up the courts. Finally! A windmill at which to tilt!

We are the most fantastic machines in the known universe. We are electrical, we are chemical, we are mechanical, we are magical. And we are what? To not use what we have? To not explore who we are? To be sober? That would tempt Gott with boredom. Worse: He might smite you for being so square.

I'm gunna use what I got.

“Who of us is to say that the goal of this life is not in the leaving it?” —Vladimir Nabakov.

</soapbox> with my apology.

OP doesn't have a substance abuse problem. OP enjoyed his substance of choice for a decade, with friends and responsibly. How is recommending the nearest possible replacement, marijuana, not a good solution?

Perhaps you should question yourself for bias against the substances being discussed, unless you wish to admit the obvious, i.e. that you have questionable reading skills. OP does not have a substance abuse problem. Billions of people across the planet use alcohol, marijuana and any number of other substances to achieve precisely the same thing that he is seeking to achieve, and they do so successfully and with aplomb.

I've found it so much easier to make a life changes for health reasons than for other reasons.

I think you chose the right reason to quit drinking, for health reasons.

Take one look at acetaldehyde to see what you've saved yourself from. Alcohol is a systemic poison. It affects every part of the human body in very dramatic ways.

Also, the drunk high and Xanax high are not compatible. If you can't enjoy being sober around drunk people, you won't enjoy being Xanax'ed around drunk people.

>>You probably won't have a hard time getting an ℞ for Xanax from your primary care doc for 30 pills or so, particularly if you intend to substitute it for alcohol.

Not in the United States. Try getting a script for Xanax and you'll be lucky you don't get reported the DEA re: our opioid crisis.

Try marijuana edibles. You don't have to smoke marijuana. It's plenty potent in edible form.