Maintaining one's sanity

"People say I am mad. That might not be far from the truth. You see, son, I drink, I get the occassional lay, I work. That is how I maintain my sanity. It works too. I know that I'm tottering on the edge of that dark mental abyss and I will do anything to stop me from going over. Because if I do not, and I end up falling into that tar-black hole of insanity, I'll be gone, son. It won't be me anymore; I will not be the same. I will never return. And I will die before I ever let that happen." Prof. Drinx Lackafish (2015)

Let me just point out that the professor is a fictional character of mine. But, he does have a point. Most of us sometimes reach a point where we feel like we're going to lose our minds. You have a lot of crap going on in your head you just want to scream at the top of your voice. But, of course, we manage to restrain ourselves, or at least make it look that way. We look calm on the outside while in our minds, we're still screaming. It is quite a struggle, bottling it all in, trying not to go bat-shit crazy. Some end up losing it; most of us do not.

We all have ways of coping, of maintaining our grip on sanity. Some, like the Prof, drink a lot. That helps some, with others it only makes things worse. Some use sex as a reliever. That works too, so long as you don't catch anything or get addicted.  Others focus on work. Others focus on the bible, their relationship with the man upstairs. That works wonders, I hear, if you don't take it too far and start killing people in the name of your faith or start seeing everyone else as possessed by demons. I'm pretty sure the guy with the horns and pitchfork just loves that. Anyway, the point is, almost each one of us is at risk of losing bricks from their building. But there are a lot of ways out there in which we can try to prevent that. What's yours?

van Daks.