The situation is hopeless but not serious. You can too become unhealthy with a few simple tricks, in less than a month.
Two years ago, I published 52 Odd Health Interventions That Work Instantly. It’s my most popular article, filled with easy techniques you can apply today and get results. By no means an exhaustive list or a comprehensive framework for leading a healthy lifestyle, it was written in the spirit of experimentation and having fun.
But where there’s yin, there’s yang. In order to maintain balance and harmony, I’m now obligated to write the “dark mirror” of that article to help those who desperately want to reduce their energy levels, feel like crap, and generally speaking, live like a miserable curmudgeon.
It takes talent and a little effort to escape the natural tendency of the organism toward vitality and expansion. Worry not! I’m here to hold your hand every step of the way. With enough willpower (or lack thereof), I’m confident you can too join the ranks of the destitute and sick.
You want less clarity, more brain fog. Doomscrolling for at least 2-3 hours every day is key. Short-form video content is your best option.
Spending the majority of your time inside four walls will do wonders for your mental unhealth.
While staying inside the house helps, you also need to avoid the sun when you’re forced to be outside.
Why would I want to expand my horizontal plane of vision, pump my second heart (calves), and ground myself?
Why trust your body?
You’re after all an introvert. Spending time alone is good for you; you have big ideas, and other people are too annoying. This is healthy.
Building muscles is overrated, brah.
But then again… obsessing over the gym, going every day, is a good use of your time that isn’t escapism.
Stretching doesn’t affect your nervous system anyway. Feeling comfortable in your body is overrated.
Whether you’re breathing through your nose or your mouth will have no effect on your face structure, tissue oxygenation, heart rate variability, and the state of your nervous system. Wink wink, you know what to do.
That constant drip of rage about imaginary issues will poison your heart with hatred and fear about the world. Splendid.
Authority knows best. Especially when they have very useful degrees they studied for 40 years ago and they speak with confidence and arrogance.
Doing what everyone else is doing will lead to a boring life. That’s what you want because you have infinite lives, actually.
Calcium isn’t one of the most important minerals in the body, or so they say. Everyone knows that after 18, you don’t need calcium.
You should vape more. Likely nothing will come out in the next 10-20 years that will prove vaping is risky and dangerous like smoking cigarettes.
But not enjoyable. It’s that middle ground where the magic happens, where you don’t feel good but also don’t feel bad. Just nothing. Perfect for you.
Why not use them everywhere, all the time? Just choke the silence out of your life.
Creating a digital life with like-minded individuals means that you can ignore your real life for longer.
Better stick to raw vegetables.
Another food group you must avoid.
It’s the name for fuck’s sake. FAT.
That fish juice that was sitting on their shelves for months sure smells like death. Chug, chug, chug!
I’m looking out for you. You don’t need to read more than a couple of books per year. That’s enough, Chad.
Nothing changed for you in the last 5 years. Same behavior, same results. Fear not! You’ll magically change in the next 5 years.
Refer to #12. Taking control of your life might lead to something positive. No bueno.
Alcoholism is good.
This is still alcoholism, so also good.
There’s no better way to build up deficits and food intolerances.
You want to store them in your body so they manifest as mystery illnesses.
Stimulants are ALWAYS the best option. There are no exceptions whatsoever. You always have the same biological needs. Even if coffee makes anxious.
What did I tell you? You’re too sensitive to caffeine. I’m sure it’s a sign that everything is going smoothly. The extra mold in your decaf will also help.
Bring everything down to your level. If you don’t understand something, it means they’re overcomplicating things. Or that’s what you want to pretend so you never make an effort.
But then again, running the same ~10 thinking patterns you’ve been having since you were a teenager is also helpful in keeping you stuck. You better fuel that fire!
Aim for 15-20 breaths per minute. If you can maintain that rhythm, you’ll eventually give yourself low-grade anxiety and panic. Which will help you develop…
Tracking your environment for threats will zap your available energy and keep your body in a state of constant tension.
If you want hypertension, the jitters, and brainfog (which is our goal here), you should prioritize sodium chloride over the rest of the minerals. You won’t have a problem with that since getting enough potassium and magnesium is quite hard given how depleted our soil is already.
If you can’t be bothered with balancing minerals, just avoid salt altogether. That should go well…
Hypercaloric malnutrition is perhaps one of the major perks of the standard American diet.
Chronic caloric restriction will give you exactly what you want: less energy.
Do everything in your power to stress over the little things, while running on empty. Skipping breakfast is also a cheat code.
Loads of food after 9 pm. Bedtime never before 2 am but ideally, every night should be a different time.
Ruin your routine to have a fun night out with your friends. Are you crazy??? It’ll mess with your circadian rhythm.
You want to keep your prolactin levels elevated for as long as possible.
Even if you exercise (yucky), sitting for 6-8 hours every day can mitigate almost all of the positive effects.
It’s just a meatsuit, all reflexes and hormones. No intelligence, no wisdom. It couldn’t possibly be trying to help you with that fatigue or ache.
Experiencing the seasons is for poor people. Are you poor? Crank up the A/C during the summer, hide in multiple layers of clothing at the first sign of a cool autumn breeze. You must NEVER allow your body to adapt.
I hear the author will instruct you to stand still for 30 minutes while you’re breathing so little you’re suffocating… deranged stuff.
Doing what’s expected of you like a good boy will choke out any semblance of individuality. And if you have some raw talent, you can even become an empty husk everyone misuses for their benefit.
The naysayers will claim that spiritual bypassing lurks behind our ascetic inclinations. I say go for it; your mundane problems require nuclear-power spiritual solutions lol
I think the optimal pooping frequency is a couple of times per week. Fiber? I hardly know her.
Sleeping on your back not only promotes sleep paralysis, it’s also a great way to induce sleep apnea, reduce the ability of your body to move lymph fluid, and impair the waste clearance of the glymphatic system. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Everything has the potential to harm you but it’s your own mind that will deliver the final blow. Cultivating orthorexia is your compass.
Recently, I was gifted the short, satirical treatise on unhappiness by Paul Watzlawick. It was written during a time when how-to manuals were popular; how to be a car engineer, how to fix your motorcycle, how to become a plumber. So, Paul figured out that the market was missing a manual on how to be unhappy.
A similar manual for unhealthiness is necessary, if only to highlight how easy it is to accrue a bunch of self-destructive habits out of sheer ignorance or arrogance.
Occasionally, I broke the basic premise of the article but don’t take it too seriously. You know what I meant :)
