Do. Or don't. It doesn't really matter. That's the beautiful thing about embracing nihilism as an outlook, a personal philosophy. Ultimately it all ends in the heat death of the universe, so fuck it, what does it matter? Life is what you make it. Speculation on that rumination provides justification for just about anything - and that's something to be mindful of for sure. But that's also the horror about the whole thing. When you're stuck in a neverending cycle of anxiety, pain and regret. When that's all you know how to make, it eventually coalesces in to a black hole of terror and emptiness, a spinning vortex of loathing and fear that sucks you down, trapping you forever in that maelstrom of hurt and sorrow. Everything collapsing to a single floating point, just you all alone. No-one's coming to save you.
If all this sounds like so much the self-absorbed ravings of a gothy teenager who's just discovered Schopenhauer for the first time, I guess that's a fair enough criticism. Some things you never truly grow out of. Some things just sear themselves into your psyche, to become scar tissue, inestimably bound to the concept of 'you', and some things are just too painful, too shocking to be forgotten. The first time you experience ego death at the hands of a panic attack, you discover the true extent of the horror the mind can exert on itself, with you as its hapless victim. It's not too strong a descriptor - having experienced ego death in the traditional fashion from psychedelics, there's really no mistaking that feeling of the mind separating from the body to be carried away by the power of its own silent scream, and the terror you feel scrabbling at the cliff face of the edge of the self, thinking this is it, this is the moment 'I' as a concept is obliterated, leaving behind a spastically writhing body only fit for the insane asylum. And if that's not bad enough, we can set this cycle to repeat dozens of times until you're too afraid to leave the only place you feel remotely safe. So forgive me for the angst both caused by and contributing to a touch of cabin fever.
When nothing feels real, when the very matter of 'real' is utterly meaningless, how do you make peace with that? When it's the feeling of derealisation that triggers the sudden spike of adrenaline and cortisol that instantly flips the world from mundanely intimidating to existentially threatening obliteration. It's kind of like asking how do you prepare yourself for a car crash. In terms of the emotions involved, the level of fear, the neurochemicals and the psychic aftermath, that's not as hyperbolic as it sounds. There's an arsenal of tools at my disposal that I'm slowly, clumsily working out how to wield. I can't always stop the crash from happenning but I'm working on learning how to ameliorate the impact as best I can. Psychotherapist, psychiatrist, mindfulness, medication, dialectical behaviour therapy, self soothing, distress tolerance, emotional crisis management, radical acceptance, progressive muscle relaxation, breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
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