I haven’t read in a long time.. and the philosophy stuff I read I have long forgotten however, (and this might sound basic) there are two books that I have read recently that have helped me get through my addict and after almost 18 years of struggle actually help me become content with my life and ready to move forward...

Dreamseller by Brandon Novak
Gucci Mane Autobiography

My addict led me down a similar path and both this books have helped me close that chapter on my life and allows me to look towards the future instead of focusing on the horrible things I’ve done and not only my life but the other lives I’ve ruined. The final quote in the Gucci Book has really stuck with me and I say it to myself almost daily.

“To start a new chapter you’ve got to turn the page on the last one. Still, every now and then I do think it’s okay to stop and look back, just for a moment, before continuing on your way. Especially when it’s a hell of a story”

This resonates with me so much because i kept focusing on good time and bad time’s and chasing the fun that was no longer there. Now I’m realizing to invest in myself, and look towards building a future, but I can still look back sometimes and remember who I was, while focusing on being a better human. Plus if Gucci and Novak can do it. I can.

I used to think the existentialism and nihilism books would change my life but after all is said and done. I’ve my own views on life and no philosophy book has ever actually persuaded me or made me think differently. I just criticize them.

My philosophy teachers used to love when I ripped apart a philosophy book.

no book (excluding The Bible) is meant to teach you how to think or change your worldview. We just take the information that's given to us and figure things out ourselves.

“When you are true to your word, you’re in charge” - Gabor Mate

Probably meditations by marcus aurelius

“I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind - and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.”

• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

out of context, but F*** i love faulkner

"A day comes, a day of great blessings, when meditation becomes your natural state.

Mind is something unnatural; it never becomes your natural state. But meditation is a natural state – which we have lost. It is a paradise lost, but the paradise can be regained. Look into the child’s eyes, look and you will see tremendous silence, innocence. Each child comes with a meditative state, but he has to be initiated into the ways of the society – he has to be taught how to think, how to calculate, how to reason, how to argue; he has to be taught words, language, concepts. And, slowly slowly, he loses contact with his own innocence. He becomes contaminated, polluted by the society. He becomes an efficient mechanism; he is no more a man.

All that is needed is to regain that space once more. You have known it before, so when for the first time you know meditation, you will be surprised – because a great feeling will arise in you as if you have known it before. And that feeling is true: you have known it before. You have forgotten. The diamond is lost in piles of rubbish. But if you can uncover it, you will find the diamond again – it is yours.

It cannot really be lost: it can only be forgotten. We are born as meditators, then we learn the ways of the mind. But our real nature remains hidden somewhere deep down like an undercurrent. Any day, a little digging, and you will find the source still flowing, the source of fresh waters. And the greatest joy in life is to find it."

Osho, The Orange Book

I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life

One of the most powerful descriptions of suicide I've ever read. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest

"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."

once you learn how to die, you learn how to live

s*** was a drake bar before drake bars existed

“He was an old Drag man with his bit getting short. He was the first to attempt to teach me to control my emotions. He would say, “Always remember whether you be sucker or hustler in the world out there, you’ve got that vital edge if you can iron-clad your feelings. I picture the human mind as a movie screen. If you’re a dopey sucker, you’ll just sit and watch all kinds of mindwrecking, damn fool movies on that screen.” He said. “Son, there is no reason except a stupid one for anybody to project on that screen anything that will worry him or dull that vital edge. After all, we are the absolute bosses of that whole theatre and show in our minds. We even write the script. So always write positive, dynamic scripts and show only the best movies for you on that screen whether you are pimp or priest.” His rundown of his screen theory saved my sanity many years later. He was a twisted wise man and one day when he wasn’t looking, a movie flashed on the screen. The title was “Death For an Old Con.”

Iceberg Slim - "Pimp: The Story of My Life"

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear result of a hundred battles. IF you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. IF you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Sun Tzu, Art of war