u/kehsciences

Read: anyone else old like me? This was released in the Spring of 1996, peaking at a respectable #4 on the charts (the highest they'd chart for some one and a half decades) despite either critical indifference or critical 🖕.

My frame of reference isn't very good - I've heard all of four of their albums, having moved into different musical frontiers in the mid-to-late nineties - but I'll be damned if this one isn't charming, an earnest attempt to move away from their harder sound that they did so (to my ears) mediocre-ly and uninspiredly on their first two albums. Particularly on a song like 'Trippin' On A Hole in a Paper Heart', the band shows a keen ear for nifty melody, a decent little guitar solo, what sounds to me like a fucking MELLOTRON! in the last thirty seconds, and a memorably low-budgie music video that shows the band had a sense of humor along with whatever substance abuse problems they may have had along the way.

They're not all winners - 'Art School Girls' and 'Ride the Cliché' could have been anywhere on their previous albums - but, when they do it right, they do it well. Maybe it's the nostalgia for the fever of about to be graduating from high school and heading off into the waters of university but I don't think so; at least on this album, Stone Temple Pilots stole from the best and came up with something creative.

Let me know how I'm wrong and my character defects below!

As before, hints in the comments.

Hello. I’m currently 9 days clean after checking myself into rehab due to a 2g/day 7-OH addiction. I’m on suboxone for the withdrawal symptoms but have been tapering off. This is somewhat important context for my question.

I’ve been using for about six years and, in that time, have developed profound anhedonia wherein I literally feel no emotion 100% of the time. I’ve given up all hobbies and friends; my life became ‘wake up, go to work, go home, sleep, repeat’. I’m sure the anhedonia will pass - I don’t recognize myself any more - but I don’t know what to expect vis-à-vis a timeline.

Has anyone here had a similar experience? What was it like for you?

Just when you thought they couldn’t get worse.

Edit: hints will appear in the comments so remember your peers are your aids.