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Relatable.

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If you’re an adult, do the stuff you couldn’t as a kid.

Like, me and my sister went to a museum, and they had an extra exhibit of butterflies. But it cost £3. So we sighed, walked past, then stopped. We each had £3. We could see the butterflies. And we did it was great. We followed it up with an ice-cream as well because Mum and Dad weren’t there to say no.

I was driving back from a work trip with 2 other people in their early 20s, and we drove past a MacDonalds. One of the others went “Aww man, I’d love a McFlurry.” And the guy driving pulled in to the drive through. It was wild. But it was great.

I went to a park over the weekend and I was thinking “Man, I’d love to hire one of those bikes and cycle round the park.” It took me a few minutes to go “Wait, I can hire one of those bikes!”

I guess what I’m saying is, those impulsive things you wanted to do as a kid - see the dinosaur exhibit, play in the fountains with the other kids, lie in the shade for 2 hours - you can do when you’re an adult. You have to deal with a whole lot of other bull, but at least you can indulge your inner 8 year-old.

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some ppl who grew up with siblings didnt rly Grow Up With Siblings. like if you and your brother are 10 yrs apart u just dont get it… if you had siblings within 3yrs of your age you had the genuine experience of primitive undeveloped human brains pummeling the shit out of each other because none of us have developed frontal cortices and the laws of man don’t apply in the confines of this house

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Today’s my veganniversary, and I’m eating an egg right now.

Vegans expend remarkable amounts of energy arguing that veganism is physically healthy. But is it psychologically healthy?

by Alicen Grey

Today’s my “veganniversary,” and I’m eating an egg right now. Before this moment, I was a vegan for five years. Before I went vegan, I was drawn into a one-on-one cult with a fanatic narcissist. Before that cult, I was born and raised into a cult-like Pentecostal church.

The major role of cults in my life, from birth to age 18, deeply affected my psyche, my behavior, and my perception of the world. Thanks to their ever-present (and at times overlapping) impact on my development, I have come to see fanaticism and high-demand group dynamics as normal. Without having some extreme belief system around which to build myself, I feel pointless and empty and lost. You could say I don’t know how else to exist, except in a state of unquestioning and intense devotion to something.

So I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that I converted to veganism just as I was leaving one cult at age 16 (the Pentecostal church) for another at age 17 (the one-on-one cult), or that my dedication to veganism accelerated after my one-on-one guru cut contact with me around age 18, leaving me leader-less and without a purpose. Within a year of being “kicked-out,” I became the president of my campus animal rights club; I spent my evenings waving vegan leaflets in passerby’s faces, baking copious amounts of “cruelty-free” cookies for food giveaways, and occasionally chanting SHAME ON YOU at oblivious tourists climbing into horse carriages; I gave presentations at animal rights panels and even appeared in a vegan documentary; I eat-sleep-breathed veganism.

The irony is that I began learning about cults at the same time that I was becoming more zealously vegan — but it didn’t occur to me that maybe this behavior was cultic, too. It’s typical of ex-members to unknowingly jump right into another cult after leaving one; cult expert and survivor Janja Lalich calls this phenomenon cult hopping.

“Wait!” the vegans cry. “Are you calling veganism a cult?”

Yes. Yes, I am.

To be a vegan, you have to pledge absolute adherence to this one rule: No consuming or using animal products. The reasoning seems sensible: To reduce harm. But in practice, veganism becomes more about purity-policing and less about harm reduction:

“You can’t eat refined sugar because it might have been processed through bone char. You can’t eat coconut products anymore because those might have been picked by monkeys. You can’t eat honey because it requires bee labor — and while you’re at it, no almond milk either, because almond production exploits more bees than honey production! You can’t eat at restaurants because they cook your tofu in the same pan as the meat! You can’t wear leather shoes, even if you owned them for twenty years and got them at a thrift shop!!! If you feed meat to your cat, you’re a hypocrite!!! Unless you do direct action, you don’t really care about animals!!! I DON’T CARE IF THAT EGG CAME FROM YOUR NEIGHBOR’S BACKYARD CHICKEN! SPIT IT OUT NOW!”

There is no room for nuance, no acknowledgment of context or exceptions. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Vegans who deviate from this absolutism, even on occasion, get their Vegan Card revoked – just look what happened to Ellen Degeneres and Alicia Silverstone. Lierre Keith, who had been vegan for twenty years, eventually started eating meat again. For this, some vegans decided to slam a cayenne-laced pie in her face.

If veganism was really about reducing harm, why do these vegans direct their rage at people who have arguably saved thousands of farm animals, rather than lifelong meat-eaters? I’ll give you a hint: the way ex-vegans are treated closely resembles the way any ex-cult member is treated. We are punished for leaving the cult, whether with guilt-induction tactics, social excommunication, harassment, or straight-up assault. Our reasons for leaving are null. Our explanations fall on deaf ears. When it comes to cults, you’re either with them, or against them.

I understand that this sounds like an insufficient reason to stop being vegan — most of all to vegans who don’t struggle with cultism, and thus can’t (or don’t want to) sympathize with me. But first of all, let’s be real: vegans don’t think there’s any reason to eat animal products. I’ve already explained to some vegan friends that this restrictive lifestyle triggers my eating disorder, and that I have a laundry list of health issues that ~*~mysteriously~*~ started after I went vegan, but do they care? Nope.

Point being: many sound, reasonable arguments in defense of ex-veganism have already been made. And they’re all a simple Google-search away. But, like all cults, veganism has created a reality-immune bubble for itself, safe from counter-information and the uncomfortable feeling of cognitive dissonance. All our reasoning and logic and attempts at civil discussion may as well be in vain. People who can’t be vegan, regardless of their reasons, are all just lazy. Or immoral. Or sociopathic. Or under-evolved. Or stupid. Or selfish. Or we don’t exist at all.

At this point in my mental recovery, I can’t afford to play with a fire like that; I can’t risk fostering the black-and-white thinking, the elitism, the absolutism, the self-harm, the doctrine-over-person, that underpins veganism. I can’t keep making decisions about what to eat based on guilt or a feeling of being under surveillance. I can’t be part of a movement that punishes individualism and nuance. As a cult survivor, this feels counterproductive to all the progress I’ve made so far. So now, the same way some people leave veganism for the sake of their physical health, I’m leaving it for the sake of my mental health.

From now on, I’m making it my practice to embrace ambiguity. I feel this is the best approach to cult recovery, because ambiguity is the antithesis to extremism. This is how that looks:

What’s the most ethical lifestyle? I don’t know. How do we solve global climate change? I don’t know. Does boycotting animal products actually save animal lives? I don’t know. How do we end world hunger? I don’t know. Will going back to animal products restore my health? I don’t know.

But embracing ambiguity is not just about admitting that I don’t know. It’s about being okay with not-knowing. I’m okay with the grey areas, I’m okay with the nuance, I’m okay with the possibility that I’ve been misinformed for 5 years of my life. I’m giving myself the space to make mistakes, to figure things out by trial and error. And if one day, I recover enough to be able to hold a belief without becoming cultic about it, and/or I encounter compelling evidence that veganism really is The Truth, then I’ll return to it. Until then, I accept that not only do I not know everything, but I can’t know everything, and I shouldn’t want to know everything.

Vegans expend remarkable amounts of energy arguing that veganism is physically healthy. But is it psychologically healthy? How has accepting veganism’s core principles changed the way your mind works? Your capacity to navigate the world with non-vegans? Your ability to accept nuance and embrace ambiguity? Be honest: do you find yourself ignoring your hunger or health issues for the sake of your cause?

If you feel personally attacked, or anxious, or horrified at the statement, “I’m eating an egg right now,” then I can answer all those questions for you: you’re being cognitively distorted. That is no way to live. Take it from someone who’s gone through many a period of debilitating extremism. I don’t want to go back there again, and what’s more, I don’t want you to have to learn the hard way.

So I’m eating an egg right now. It feels good. Liberating, even. And you’re more than welcome to join me.

  Alicen Grey is an award winning writer and author of Wolves and Other Nightmares, a collection of poetry about healing from a cultic relationship. A passionate artist and activist, she strives to inspire her audience toward change and healing. More of Alicen’s work can be found at her blog, www.alicengrey.com.

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nice dick dude! awesome penis! your balls look like shit though

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You gotta understand that some people never really grow. They never learn their lesson. They never recognise their mistakes, they never acknowledge their faults, they never admit they were in the wrong. You will never receive an apology from them, and you will never see their behaviour change.

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“6 months from now I will be in a different situation.”

Speak it into existence.

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Risky boopness