After all is said and done

This is my first post on this board, but i’ve been reading peoples posts for a few months now.  I have been depressed, with thoughts of suicide, since i was about 12 years old.  I am a 19 year old male.  For the same period of time, i have suffered from crippling insomnia brought on by an inability to shut off my thoughts at night.  Most of these thoughts are about death, and I have reached a decent conclusion on what i find life and death to be.  Following are some of my thoughts.  Wondering if anyone else feels the same way.  Also, this is not for anyone who believes in god.  I’ve already decided for myself that there is no god, so my thoughts are reminiscent of that belief.

If God does not exist, then what happens when we die?  Without an afterlife, where does our consciousness go as it fades from our body?  Do we return to a pre-birth state, blissfully unaware of the existence of even the universe itself?   Or is it that consciousness cannot even become entirely diminished?  Does time distort as we die, turning our final second of life into an endless eternity?  It is known that when we die, our bodies release a chemical called DMT into the brain.  DMT is often used as a recreational drug, and is the most powerful hallucinogen known to man.  Like many other psychedelic drugs, it distorts and prolongs the feeling of the passage of time (for more info on the drug, heres the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine).  So it seems obvious, at least to me, that our mind prolongs the time that passes by as we die.  For all we know, the last second of our lives can feel longer than our entire lives before it.  To me, this means that everything that we ever feel and accomplish is done in vain.

The fact that our lives end means to me that our lives are ultimately meaningless.  Nothing we ever do matters.  Your friends and family don’t matter.  The entire human race doesn’t matter, because it is inevitable that one day it will perish.  While this nihilistic view on existence has been the greatest obstacle of my life, it is also my greatest comfort.  Knowing that nothing matters means that there is no reason to ever be upset about anything.  The people who cause you trouble, and the people you strive so hard to please, will die just the same as you.  Knowing this relieves me of all anxiety about anything in this world.  This makes me free, in the truest sense of the word.  I am not bound to any destiny; i can do whatever i please with my life.  If i die tomorrow it will be no different from if i were to die in 60 years.  I end up in the same state of being – the state of nothingness known as death.

So if my life is so trivial and meaningless, then why do i go on living?  Why do i bother, knowing that all of my troubles are for nothing?

Because, why not?  What is the point of killing myself if i already know that i will eventually die anyway?  Why not experience all that life has to give me, because life is a very rare thing.  I don’t believe that it’s something any of us will experience ever again.  Any reason for suicide seems so silly to me.  Human society is such an absurd, nonsensical thing.  We conform to all of these rules and regulations which, in the cosmic scheme of things, are entirely random and pointless.   Instead of physical suicide, i would much rather commit “social suicide”.  For me this would mean taking all the money that i have, traveling, forgetting about all the people in my life, and experiencing life in it’s purest, most basic form.  Only when i feel i have lived my life to the fullest extent will i be content with killing myself (Suicide is my preferred way to die).

This philosophy i have is known as Existential Nihilism.  It is an extremely bleak outlook on life, and many people who first start to experience it become more depressed than theyve ever been in their lives.  It made me feel incredibly empty, and emotionally, i was completely hollow.  This unbearable emptiness was what i felt for many months.  Many people would refer to what i went through as an existential crisis, though i don’t think crisis is the right word for it.  “Awakening” seems more suitable to me.  The emptiness i felt came from my realization that life was pointless.   It wasn’t until i did LSD for the first time that i realized that the emptiness that i felt was actually freedom. (By the way, taking drugs such as acid can be an extremely uplifting part of a persons life.  It can also make a person go completely insane.  While i do not recommend acid for everyone, for some people, i do.  If you want to know more about my experience with acid or anything or the sort, please let me know)

This freedom made me realize that it was up to me to create meaning and purpose in my life, knowing that no all powerful god would do that for me.  And this philosophy is probably the reason I am alive today.  The only things that matter to me are the things that I allow to matter to me.  I have complete control over every single aspect of my life.  Once you accept the freedom that is inherent within yourself, you’ll come to realize that nothing is ever worth being upset over.

Sorry if my post was a bit rambly, i’m not all that good at organizing my thoughts.  Some philosophers to check out who are way better at explaining this kind of stuff are…

Jean-Paul Sartre

Friedrich Nietsche

Dostoevsky

Albert Camus

and Martin Heidegger

I hope that some of you will find the freedom that I found, and enjoy the ability to live life for what it truly is-something that we will most likely never experience again.