As a society, our various addictions often have very little to do with personal failings or indiscipline. They have everything to do with a culture that shames and stigmatizes normal, healthy behaviors that simply look “weird.”

Since we’re often punished for being ourselves and doing what we want, we have to sneak around. That creates guilt and anxiety.

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The self-destructive response is to forbid yourself from doing things you enjoy and then wait for the desire to spill over into binges. It’s a familiar story. Depriving yourself of something only enhances the desire. So most Americans live in a relentless loop of binges, purges, and moral panics.

You don’t have to be an expert in sociology to see how other cultures have consistently outperformed us in terms of health and happiness.

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As we near the end of industrial civilization, there’s no end to the prescriptions for mental health. Here’s one I haven’t heard:

Be weird.

Jessica Wildfire, The Case for Being Extremely Weird