u/Alternative-Use-6422

I don’t want to quit. I love smoking. Smoking has been my constant companion for 20 years. I know I have to quit, I’m getting older and I don’t want to get COPD or cancer, but I don’t fucking want to.

How do you motivate yourself to quit for health reasons when you just love smoking?

I am a counselor at a residential substance abuse rehabilitation facility. I was recently told that I will be joining a "Wellness Ambassador" program, which is supposed to be voluntary because of the extra work it entails.

I'd have to come in an hour early once a week to attend nutritional seminars, facilitate nutrition curriculums (which are very judgy about "good" and "bad" foods), "lead by example" (which heavily implied looking healthy and slim--I was very much chosen because I am thin), and insert myself into daily kitchen operations to monitor that the menu is being accurately prepared.

Here's the thing: I have an active eating disorder. Just going to the training made me want to get as thin as possible so that they would see that I am sick and let me out of it--not good.

My program director is extremely punitive, loves to humiliate staff, and would love nothing more than to make me participate anyway just because she can. I have to go to HR, there's no other option. My psych has written me a letter asking for an accomodation, and my therapist is writing one as well. What are the odds that I will be successful? Two other staff are already participating in the program, and many more aren't because it isn't essential and they don't fit the body type they're looking for.

Also, what should I document in terms of retaliation? My director is not going to like me going above her head and she has chased people out for less.

I work as an addictions counselor. What I am about to say is not strengths based and I apologize, but it drives me nuts.

I have so many clients with children, often 4+ with different women, and they brag about their “legacies.” Sir you are a homeless, unemployed, lifelong heroin user on your fifth trip to court-mandated rehab.

Also, these women seeing homeless, unemployed, lifelong heroin users and saying “Yes, I’ll push out a baby for you”? Addicts themselves.

So they’re creating a legacy of pain, neglect, and trauma. It makes me so mad.

EDIT: I believe that people can change their lives and get sober, which is why I work in a rehab. I believe that every person has value and potential. That said, it doesn’t change the amount of trauma a child goes through when their parent is an active user.

Ive had a reduced libido from psych meds for a few years, but was still able to engage sexually a few times a month. Since getting on Latuda 5 months ago, I haven’t so much as masturbated. Anyone else completely and totally lose their sex drive?

My husband and I were divided on kids when we decided to get married. We each agreed to see the others side and be willing to change our viewpoints. I went legitimately crazy during Covid and got pregnant; I immediately knew it was a mistake. The baby was severely disabled and I aborted it. Coming that close to having a baby completely solidified my childfree choice, and over time I’ve become an antinatalist.

My husband knows how deeply that experience affected me and has never asked me to consider a child again. That said, he now really wants a baby. He was born to a lesbian couple who borrowed a friend’s sperm, so his dad was kind of around like a family friend. My husband decided he wanted to do the same thing. His brother introduced him to a single woman who wants to have a baby on her own, and she and my husband hit it off. Now he’s talking about visiting her and the baby, being around in its life, and basically being a fun uncle to his own kid.

His plan is freaking me out. I’m not worried about him leaving me for her or any of that more practical stuff. He loves our childfree life and sees this as a side project, the same way he was to his own dad. The problem is that I will completely lose respect for him. Bringing a child into the world is the most selfish, awful thing a person can do, and it would disgust me to know that my husband played a role in a child being born to suffer. I don’t know that I could ever forgive his cruelty. He essentially wants a human vanity project and it makes me so angry.

I’ve offered to divorce him so he can go have kids and ruin his own life with some other woman. He assures me that he wants to stay married and just have this baby on the side. Am I crazy for wanting to get divorced over it? He’s not the man I married if he can be so cruel.

EDIT: I get that everyone is very hung up on how “weird” this idea is. I actually don’t think it’s weird at all for him to provide sperm to a single woman (via IVF, to all you weirdos saying he’d fuck her) or even to be involved in the child’s life. It’s how he was raised, he didn’t just come up with the idea on his own. I’m not mad at him for having this idea, I’m mad at him for wanting to create a life to suffer.

Everyone always asks “oh what will happen when you get old” “ what about when you’re in a nursing home and have no one….” I personally think people with kids have a much, much worse old age than childfree folks. At least when I’m old and infirm, I’ll die alone in a nursing home in peace. Meemaw with the four kids is ALSO going to be in the nursing home alone, but the difference between us is that she is going to be hauled to the hospital over and over again, full code, “do everything you can,” “Take her off those pain meds so she can talk to us” bullshit to placate her children. Peoples’ kids torture them mercilessly in old age, for what? So they can live in the nursing home, neglected, for a few more miserable years.

I’ll have my little DNR, I’ll be medicated to the gills, and die faster and more peacefully than the majority of people with kids.