I hate to be that annoying fuck who mentions having money to get by.

But I have been broke for such a long time (until I started working on getting my life back on track), I even once got evicted from my then relatively cheap apartment in Berlin. I spent all the money I had back then on smoking pot. Tried getting away from my problems, mainly caused by being broke, by being stoned off my face 24/7. You can imagine how that went.

So yeah. 15 years later, having saved enough so I don’t have to worry about these things anymore is a huge deal for me.

Getting fully sober including quitting weed as an escape mechanism brought me a huge amount of peace, plus $500/mo back in money. I’m still struggling in many ways, took a huge pay cut to get into my current job (protected from AI for many years) but I have a savings account and a retirement account for the first time ever. Paying down debt, slowly. I get dopamine hits from interacting with people, fixing problems in my life. Instead of from a glass bowl and lighter, a bottle, etc.