The drug that taught me how much I should suffer

All of us, whether we realize it or not, are asking ourselves one question over and over for our whole lives: how much should I suffer? Should I take the job that pays more but also sucks more? Should I stick with the guy who sometimes drives me insane? Should I drag myself through an organic chemistry class if I means I have a shot at becoming a surgeon? It’s impossible to answer these questions if you haven’t figured out your Acceptable Suffering Ratio. I don’t know how one does that in general. I only know how I found mine: by taking a dangerous, but legal, drug. I’ve always had bad skin. I was that kinda pimply kid in school—you know him, that kid with a face that invites mild cruelty from his fellow teens.1 I did all sorts of scrubs and washes, to little avail. In grad school, I started getting nasty cysts in my earlobes that would fill with pus and weep for days and I decided: enough. Enough! It’s the 21st century. Surely science can do something for me, right? And science could

All of us, whether we realize it or not, are asking ourselves one question over and over for our whole lives: how much should I suffer? Should I take the job that pays more but also sucks more? Should I stick with the guy who sometimes drives me insane? Should I drag myself through an organic chemistry class if I means I have a shot at becoming a surgeon? It’s impossible to answer these questions if you haven’t figured out your Acceptable Suffering Ratio. I don’t know how one does that in general. I only know how I found mine: by taking a dangerous, but legal, drug. I’ve always had bad skin. I