Are You Suffering From Existential Dread?
By: Tyler Elliot Bettilyon
Tags: Humor, Philosophy

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 while brushing your teeth. Tina says that AED can hit you anytime. “Sometimes I’ll walk outside on a beautiful summer day, but the heat reminds me that all the ice caps are melting and 30 years from now this whole city will be underwater. It makes me sad — but at the same time nothing really matters — so maybe I should calm down and accept that we’re all going to die in a disappointing Waterworld kind of apocalypse, not a really badass one like The Terminator.” When I reminded Tina that according to Elon Musk it could still be both, she curled up into a ball and cried.

The most common form of existential dread, Acute Existential Dread (AED), is an intense feeling of inconsequentiality triggered by external stimuli.

Fortunately for Tina, most cases of AED can be overcome through distraction, intoxication, buying stuff, or holding a puppy. Tina was able to soldier on by mixing her triple-shot mocha with crushed Valium and a splash of CBD oil. Eyes red from staring at foreboding Twitter moments on her phone, she told me, “this way I can keep working, but I don’t care as much that nothing matters and we’re all going to die.”

But not all existential dread is acute.

Chronic Existential Dread (CED) is a condition that more people are struggling with. Repeated exposure to the monotonous stretches of meaningless tedium that fill our every waking hour has left many wondering, “What’s the point of all this bullshit? Is life really just an absurdly futile melodrama that never ends, until suddenly it does?”

Cedric has been suffering from CED since the ’70s. He told me, “on the outside you look normal, but on the inside you’re trapped in the doomed USS Callister spaceship from that episode of Black Mirror.” He blames the rise of existential dread on globalization. “When you see how other people are living in places like Syria, but you’re still pissed off that the barista forgot to add turmeric to your turmeric latte, eventually the cognitive dissonance gets to you.” He said, “It’s like… you know your latte is meaningless in the face of a limitless global supply of suffering, but you’re still mad.” After our conversation, Cedric stared into his artfully branded coffee cup for a while, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the frothy beige beverage was staring back into him.

If you think you might be suffering from existential dread, try to convince yourself that there is a god who loves you instead of dwelling on the cruel ironies of life. Religion has helped billions of people avoid confronting humanity’s cosmic triviality for thousands of years. Don’t contextualize those few thousand years as an infinitesimal fraction of the universe’s 13-plus billion years of existence — just take solace in the fact that some oldish books promise you a perfect eternity as long as you follow a few simple rules like abstaining from shellfish, butt sex, and tattoos.