Are You Suffering From Existential Dread?
How to tell if everything is meaningless or if everything is just meaningless
Does it feel like you’re trapped in an infinite Sisyphean nightmare? Does your personal hell feel trivial compared to the eternally expanding wasteland of the cosmos? Do you feel that in spite of its lack of cosmic significance, life on Earth is exhausting, all-consuming, and about to come to an end?
If you frequently think humanity has earned the rancorous apocalypse lurking just beyond the horizon, you might be suffering from existential dread.
The most common form of existential dread, Acute Existential Dread (AED), is an intense feeling of inconsequentiality triggered by external stimuli. I spoke with Tina, who suffers from AED. She told me the dread can come at you fast: “It’s like, you look up at the stars and think about the sheer enormity of it all — but you can still hear Donald Trump reading his tweets aloud in the back of your head — and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘fuck it… maybe humans really don’t deserve a planet as incredible as Earth.’”
AED is a well-known side effect of psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin, but it can also be triggered by opening your eyes, overhearing cable news soundbites, and catching your own eye contact in the mirror…
