u/Notleontrotsky

Been thinking this for a while. Apartment #2 is about to collapse, and I cannot help but feel I’ve made a fool of myself trying to live around here. Working-class, and let me tell you, I can go days with 20 or 40 bucks in the city, museums, parks, chinese food, and feel content, but nothing is worse it feels than being broke in NJ. I moved to sussex to try and fix this because Hackensack and BC corruption was stifling me at every step I took, but at this point I think I want to leave altogether. We pay some of the highest taxes in this state and yet it feels impossible to have basic amenities run on time while being constantly treated like a second rate citizen in your own state. Not to mention the isolation, how many times I see someone post about “third-spaces,” it seems no matter where I go in NJ all I see is severe social isolation and only a modicum of support for that. Small business owners need money, people wanna go out and meet with each other, but still it feels like a fucking social collapse out here, not to even mention the difference in community between NY and NJ (or rather NJ’s lack thereof.)

If you use NJ as a highway to every amenity you need, terrific, but the whole no sidewalks, everything far away, nothing going on all the time + covid hours has really made things worse and worse over time. Local spots closing, new apartments everywhere, I have felt for the longest time squeezed out of my life, and like I work constantly for basically no pay while an upwardly mobile gentry gets all the benefits of a town I lived and paid taxes my whole life. If food, rent, and everything else costs the same here, but pay is still $16-$18 an hour for entry level stuff these days, there is a real level of disparity where a majority of people living around these parts couldn’t afford to live with three jobs. And again, maybe NY is a couple hundred more on rent, and yes roommates more than likely, but you are paying for all the things you get. I pay this much in NJ to be harassed by road cops, tolls, absurd taxes and the state can’t even toss you the bare minimum sometimes, for christ sake even our state affordable healthcare is a joke. You get used to the burrough-itis and craziness until you step outside of it for one second and realize how rigged the game is out here. Wondering other people’s thoughts because I know I cannot be the only one working all these jobs and getting nowhere in this state.

Went through some wicked withdrawals after all the years of messing with all sorts of shit after getting caught up on that 7OH crap (never do it, please) but something has changed in me. The long withdrawals over the weeks forced me to think so critically, and now I am in recovery (5 days clean) but let me say I know I will do everything in my power not to take life for granted ever again. There is something about this life, a sort of “confessions of an English-opium eater” becomes one’s many tirades into pharmacologic excesses. But this one has done it in for me, to the point I can hardly hold a joint up to smoke because I have lost the joy. This drug is the alpha-gal syndrome for any drug fiend, be warned (read in a Burroughs voice, if you will) because when you come down, it will all be over. And that is not a warning against getting sober from this junk, but rather, stick to dope, the ancient laudanums of syrup and dog food, because I fried my brain and specifically in a way I didn’t know possible. I am no longer constantly craving substances and really honor my sobriety now.

So the “saint” (tongue in cheek) Burroughs is one of many who passed from “symptom to sinthome” [Lacan’s thinking] and many (including myself) have read him like that even if we didn’t always understand the addled world of real, uncut dope. But anyone who has been through withdrawals and lived to tell the tale is a changed person, the bags under the eyes a little deeper, albeit earned. I respect Burroughs in a new way, knowing he not only went through withdrawals from his era’s junk but lived to tell the tale, and beat the stuff. Anyone who can get clean off an opioid should be given free ice cream and infinite love in their second life here on Earth, they fought damn hard for it. But please learn from me, and avoid 7oh altogether, because I am probably never going to be the same or really able to enjoy drugs the same (will miss them.) Paracelsus knew a dose makes a poison, but he did not know of a 4 hour half life, and if he did, he would have changed his mind upon learning of 7OH. There is no proper dose that could unmake it as a “brain poison” [joke term i have been flinging around: think BZ or NBOME, which both could be simply pharmacologically unsound and therefore have no specifiable safe dose, or one appreciable at least]. Save yourself, you are worth it.

(Aside: going to be distributing SR1708 to those in my community struggling with this stuff. We are living through a new opioid epidemic and it is a war of the worst people [to say malcontents: “lets get these bystanders hooked”] verses the benign, say, 70 year old grandma isolated after her husband’s death. I’ve never been put somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, and since I got clean without the SR, I am going to do an anarchists clinic and help those who I know are still suffering and who truly wish to quit the means. I work at a smokeshop [thus how i got hooked, only job i got where i live] and now I am right where I need to be to help fight back against this crap. If this post does well, maybe I’ll post the donation link as I am going to be doing a non-profit system, where I operate on donations and fundraising via bake sales, to turn it into more SR to help others. If your community is under attack by 7OH like mine is (and it is war, as Hobbes once said, “war of all against all”) you can use this model. I was never a proponent for anarchist or “decentralized” clinics but this model could save lives.)

(Title a reference to audio played in Vietnam to soldiers invading: “Your government has abandoned you GI”)
Posting this here is a bit out of sorts but I moved from Bergen County after living there my entire life. I loved my town but the cost of everything and New Yorkers moving in displaced me and NJ gov never really bailed us out. I was doing so well right before Covid but ever since there the bar keeps going up and my life keeps getting worse. I moved to Sussex because I couldn’t afford it, hoping I could make money out here (when I worked cannabis they told us all the jobs and labor was up here, so I took a chance and relocated) and got even more fucked. The town I moved is having a full opioid crisis which I inadvertently got caught in the middle of (worked at a smokeshop and felt so isolated I took this 7oh shit which I would have NEVER done if I 1. Got any other of the jobs I applied for 2. Didn’t have to fucking move out here) and I’m just losing hope.

I’ve tried so hard and everyone always puts it on the individual, but I slipped through the cracks, the system repeatedly has fucked me, there is no room for improvement or ever any time to rest. What the fuck is the point anymore in NJ? We are a two-tier class population, a K economy, where all us on the bottom can do is serve those on top of us while never getting a shred of decency. Plus everywhere I move has some fucking pollution problem, here it is Ethylene Oxide, but in Bergen County it is all the air pollution from Teterboro. Why is life in NJ made to be so miserable and to poison you? I’ve lost friends to brain cancer and other illnesses as young as 30, and I’ve fucking had it. We have money to support Delaney Hall concentration camp but there are 0 busses going from Sussex to Bergen so I’ve been trapped. Audit every town, end boroughitis, NJ needs a complete overhaul bc this place is a mad house. Mikey Sherill cannot even see these facilities mind you, to say, who the fuck is even really calling the shots in this state?

There is not one reason every young person in this state should stay. Go to New York for better pay, go to Maryland or Pennsylvania for cheaper rent, but what is there to stay in NJ for in general. I’m so pissed I lived in this state, and that because we all grew up in one of the most expensive places in the country, no matter how much you work, how much you do, you’ll never be around your friends or family because everyone is always working and too far apart. And we all are too atomized to collectively say shit, that is why in other states they cannot do what they do here, but they will fully roll out Data Centers and ICE facilities here because we all are a domesticated population of serfs. I’m saving my money and never looking back at this wretched place, audit all of NJ, end easytoll, and stop the endless class war against the poor and middle classes with these ridiculous taxes that we never see go back into our communities. NJ, and Bergen County is just a big money generator to send to Israel. NJ has sold itself to the rich and all us poor at the bottom just have to either accept it, get rich, or die.

Life is easy until the feeling you cannot breathe. I see posts on here w people saying they didn’t even meet anyone until 35. Really trying to find a way to have any hope. I have no physical contact or any love whatsoever in my life, platonic, familial, or love. I am so miserable and feel worse every day/year. I’m just posting this here because I have no one I can talk to and no place to vent this, do not want to ideate. Life feels like endless misery, I just read to cope. Living in a socially isolated town with very little means there is very little hope. It doesn’t matter how many good choices I make, eat healthy, quit tobacco, I do these things and feel proud of myself, but then it all feels the same because I live in an empty world. Working and seeing all the beautiful people walk in and out of my story makes me feel a particular kind of sadness. I wish as a human I could feel I don’t need love, I go weeks and sometimes months, but this feeling comes back, a voice that says “aren’t you lonely?”

Side note but funny because if I ever mention this, I get the codependency talk. Am I codependent for wanting to feel love once after 6 years (relationship in the past ended)? I just want to kiss someone or like hold a hand. I am so miserable.