Dissolving Figment
the examined life is miserable
- Aug 21, 2026
- 20
I used to be a lot more suicidal in my teens.
Back then I was an atheist, and troubled by determinism.
If the laws of physics held true, how could my conscious experience possibly affect reality in any way?
The state of the universe one day from now could be precisely calculated from the state of the universe one day before.
How could anything I do affect that?
Quantum physics wasn't of much help either.
Sure, if you add a dice roll to the movement of every particle, it's no longer deterministic.
But again, what mechanism does my conscious experience have to affect the movement of these particles?
If it did have one, then there would be a way to statistically skew the odds of particle interactions—breaking the laws of physics.
Or if it was in some very subtle, physically immeasurable way, then what kind of free will is moving a couple electrons here and there?
The butterfly effect would make the outcome of moving an electron over a couple nanometers completely opaque.
No better than random chance.
Then in my late teens, I tried psychedelics.
My first shroom trip was so intense I blacked out and awoke with no memory of it.
It was only through subsequent acid and shroom trips that I slowly remembered what I experienced that day.
I'm omitting the full details because it's technical, but for the nerds, I experienced something like a Fourier transform of the conscious experience.
The short of it is, I experienced living lives after lives, faster and faster, with each life flowing from one to the next.
I was living more and more lives in shorter and shorter amounts of times. Millions of lives in a millisecond.
Too much to remember. Too much to experience. That's why I imagine I blacked out.
But through my future trips I remembered the dreadful conclusion of that experience.
I had lived every single life there was to live. Each and every possible combination of place, time, beings, events, all of it.
And then the final life came. And it was my life. It was the place I left from.
That brought upon me a terror so intense I can't even begin to describe it.
Every single life, flowing from one to the next in a pattern that felt truer than anything I've ever known, what felt like a mathematical necessity?
It felt too perfect, too rational, it was the most intense feeling of certainty I'd ever felt.
And it had one hellish conclusion.
It was a cycle. After this life would come another, and another, and another. Until eventually I'd end up right back here.
How many times had I been here before? How many times had I experienced this loop?
The one thing I knew for sure is that there was no escape. For suicide would just lead to the next life. And the next. And I'd end up right where I came from.
I spent the next years traumatized, tormented by that experience nightly. I couldn't sleep unless I stayed up so long I instantly passed out.
I was terrified of death. I was terrified of having a heart attack and dying. Because it would lead to reliving the cycle.
It would lead to another eternity of suffering.
So, in a way, psychedelics did help with my suicidal thoughts! I had no more desire to kill myself after that :P
It's been almost a decade now, and I'm no longer bothered by that memory anymore.
However, it's part of the reason why I'm not in too much of a hurry to end my life.
Logically, it's batshit insane, but emotionally I still believe that I'd just relive the cycle again and there's no real escape.
It's hard to argue myself out of direct experience.
I still go through intense bouts of depressions. During those, it does start feeling like the pain of living through this life isn't worth it, and I'd rather just end things right away even if it means living the cycle once again. Maybe next life's better.
But it does make it hard to be excited about suicide.
It no longer feels like the comforting safety net it once was.
It's no longer the easy way out.
It's the hard, excruciating way out.
Back then I was an atheist, and troubled by determinism.
If the laws of physics held true, how could my conscious experience possibly affect reality in any way?
The state of the universe one day from now could be precisely calculated from the state of the universe one day before.
How could anything I do affect that?
Quantum physics wasn't of much help either.
Sure, if you add a dice roll to the movement of every particle, it's no longer deterministic.
But again, what mechanism does my conscious experience have to affect the movement of these particles?
If it did have one, then there would be a way to statistically skew the odds of particle interactions—breaking the laws of physics.
Or if it was in some very subtle, physically immeasurable way, then what kind of free will is moving a couple electrons here and there?
The butterfly effect would make the outcome of moving an electron over a couple nanometers completely opaque.
No better than random chance.
Then in my late teens, I tried psychedelics.
My first shroom trip was so intense I blacked out and awoke with no memory of it.
It was only through subsequent acid and shroom trips that I slowly remembered what I experienced that day.
I'm omitting the full details because it's technical, but for the nerds, I experienced something like a Fourier transform of the conscious experience.
The short of it is, I experienced living lives after lives, faster and faster, with each life flowing from one to the next.
I was living more and more lives in shorter and shorter amounts of times. Millions of lives in a millisecond.
Too much to remember. Too much to experience. That's why I imagine I blacked out.
But through my future trips I remembered the dreadful conclusion of that experience.
I had lived every single life there was to live. Each and every possible combination of place, time, beings, events, all of it.
And then the final life came. And it was my life. It was the place I left from.
That brought upon me a terror so intense I can't even begin to describe it.
Every single life, flowing from one to the next in a pattern that felt truer than anything I've ever known, what felt like a mathematical necessity?
It felt too perfect, too rational, it was the most intense feeling of certainty I'd ever felt.
And it had one hellish conclusion.
It was a cycle. After this life would come another, and another, and another. Until eventually I'd end up right back here.
How many times had I been here before? How many times had I experienced this loop?
The one thing I knew for sure is that there was no escape. For suicide would just lead to the next life. And the next. And I'd end up right where I came from.
I spent the next years traumatized, tormented by that experience nightly. I couldn't sleep unless I stayed up so long I instantly passed out.
I was terrified of death. I was terrified of having a heart attack and dying. Because it would lead to reliving the cycle.
It would lead to another eternity of suffering.
So, in a way, psychedelics did help with my suicidal thoughts! I had no more desire to kill myself after that :P
It's been almost a decade now, and I'm no longer bothered by that memory anymore.
However, it's part of the reason why I'm not in too much of a hurry to end my life.
Logically, it's batshit insane, but emotionally I still believe that I'd just relive the cycle again and there's no real escape.
It's hard to argue myself out of direct experience.
I still go through intense bouts of depressions. During those, it does start feeling like the pain of living through this life isn't worth it, and I'd rather just end things right away even if it means living the cycle once again. Maybe next life's better.
But it does make it hard to be excited about suicide.
It no longer feels like the comforting safety net it once was.
It's no longer the easy way out.
It's the hard, excruciating way out.
