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tl;dr two danish girls I befriended died of methanol poisoning in Laos. The story went viral and I feel terrible about all of it, including the mean comments
This is a little verbose, I wanted to write more but I don't wanna wreck the thread's quality.
Nearly every comment is blaming them for travelling, some accusing them of being lesbian communist sluts who were travelling to get dicked by backpackers. In reality, they were apolitical normal girls who were travelling for the first time in their lives and had planned a long trip in SEA just like thousands of other Europeans. here is a photo I took with them when I bumped into them in Chiang Mai. This is me at my skinniest due to shoulder issues and work stress, I had dropped 12 kgs. The comments hurt because they come from people who are a part of my ingroup. In case you come across this news on Twitter, please do not be mean if you can.
Pai is a special memory and they were at the centre of one of the strangest nights of my life. It is a mountainous party village next to Chiang Mai, a slice of heaven if you are young and broke. I met them on my final night there, my first solo trip/vacation ever in my life, 24 and had never travelled alone till then. I was on walking street with some backpackers I befriended, saw these two, asked them to join for a bar crawl and they obliged. I don't know how much I should reveal, I wanted to give a detailed backstory too but it would just seem wrong and this forum is not my blog where I can post whatever. We had a lot of fun apart from the bad parts of the night, got drunk, I did some substances, and tried to drop Freja, the one with tattoos to her hostel when she got super drunk and started making out with me. Our night out lasted 12 hours, and by the end I saw some things wierd even for me, I left Pai that morning in disgust but it was the happiest week of my year. I was meeting another backpacker friend three days later in Chiang Mai, they were there too by random chance and that is how the sole photo came about.
Life is short, far more fragile than we think it is, I offer condolences to their families and I hope no one on this forum or other people I befriend or anyone in my family ends up dead this way, not at such a young age. 20 is way too young, I was 19, 5 years ago when I posted here for the first time and I have changed a lot as a person, mostly due to people here helping me out and experiencing life. A poster here, on themotte introduced me to cold approach 3 years ago after I had a crippling oneitis issue and it helped me experience things I otherwise could not have, including what I described here. My life has been fortunate, as I have never seen a close family member, relative or friend die if you ignore my grandma when I was 4 and could not understand it. Something about this hurts. Maybe they were the only young people I have seen die after turning 18, I am not sure.
Seeing a grown child die is the worst thing a parent can witness, I hope that their parents are doing alright, that their souls find solace and that none of you reading this ever turn up dead this way. They met 100s of people, and I met many too, somehow I feel terrible, good chance I am attaching more importance to this than they would have had it been the other way around. All of it is still vivid, Anne-Sofie talking to Freja in Danish when they were hammered, how my Spanish friend did handstands and maybe backflips after outdrinking us all, sitting on the sidewalk across the seven-eleven for hours, how they both were gonna start uni and suggestions they gave for places in Denmark. I am glad I bumped into them and finally got a photo. It was just one night, it feels like it happened yesterday, their laughter still lingers in the back of my mind, their voices, the way they smiled, various mannerisms, all lost to time. We felt young and alive for once, it was amazing even for a man as jaded and bad as me. Anne-Sofie and Freja, thanks for everything. It was fun while it lasted, I will always cherish the good parts. For a moment things were perfect and I know they will be again soon.
On a small tangent - a friend of mine told me about a friend of her committing suicide in a smaller town in my state after her dad went through her phone, and found sextapes of her with her boyfriend. The family took the girl out of the engineering uni, started torturing her, and tried to get her married to an older guy, she overdosed on sleeping pills and passed away. This might as well be considered an honor killing.
I promised to not be whiny but I am just sad for now and had to post this. Going back to work now, I wanted to write a well-thought-out post about the fall of alt-lite on culture war thread but put that on hold because of this, I really wanted to log this here. Back to doing cs and math, have to meditate too. I am happy to be alive.
This is the sort of thing Wellness Wednesday threads exist for. I'm sorry for your loss. It's real, despite your brief acquaintance, and your sorrow is understandable.
This is surprising to me; I heard reports of the Laos deaths on the radio here in the United States, and all commentary was really focused on the methanol angle. But I suppose the Internet will do what the Internet does.
I suspect a big contributor to anyone blaming these girls for their fate is the tendency of humans to turn tragedy into a morality play. Sometimes bad things just happen, and there's nothing anyone could reasonably have done differently. Other times, there are actionable lessons to take away. Very, very often, that actionable lesson is "drugs and alcohol are a completely unnecessary risk." It's unfortunate that your friends, instead of learning that lesson in a recoverable way, are now being turned into an object lesson for others, which I think probably explains some of your sadness. These girls were not a cautionary tale, to you; they were people you knew. And now they're gone, and that's a tragedy regardless of how it came about, or what lessons may or may not be taken from it.
thanks
A friend of mine told me the same thing yesterday, most people dont travel, dont want to travel and dont want you travelling, you can replace travel with any kind of action and plenty of detractors spring up. Many times, bad things just happen.
I could have collapsed in Pai given the things I took and I am not even a regular user, I just did it for the novelty. In this case, it truly was random because this hostel in particular has always been shady, deleting reviews, giving you free shots for a good review, paying off cops.
I will see more people die at higher frequencies each passing year and they would be far closer as death comes for all. Every moment in your life happens only once, no matter how much I wish for it to be otherwise. My week in Pai was magical and I wanted to try to write down things in ways that would show my appreciation towards them. It felt like another life and they were good people. My life is fairly turbulent, I found quite a bit of relief bumming around, theirs was not and it is a shame that they never got to live out more of it. A big regret I always have is not concentrating on the present moment, stuck in the future or the past, at least I made the most of what I had with them and going forward I aim to make even more out of my life.
Some day soon I will fix my issues and do a whole lot of degenerate things I want to as a young dude, till then I am happy I got to at least experience things I did.
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Got nothing productive to say....but damn small world.
yeah, it's a damming feeling. Perhaps I am giving it too much importance, would others act this way had it been me? I don't know.
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I saw reports of this yesterday. Apparently methanol poisoning in Laos has been increasing recently, something to do with the locals making booze to sell to the tourists and not being particularly careful about what the hell it is they're serving. There have been arrests apparently though to what degree this represents justice I have no idea. My condolences to you. You may find, as I have, that death hits constantly, all around--acquaintances, family, friends--and more often than any of us would like, and tends to happen when you least expect it.
This blew up in Australian media due to a couple of Aussies also dying from methanol poisoning (to the point where the Prime Minister publicly offered his condolences to their families). Apparently it was all clustered around the same hostel.
The hostel is very shady, it deletes reviews by girls routinely. A guy I know stayed there, laos has a big scene where people get drunk inside hostels and stuff.
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Yeah, I am grateful for being alive, I dunno why I care so much about this but I do.
It will only get worse now since people age with time. I need to be more mindful.
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