30 People In This Online Group List Things That Have A Much Darker Reality Than One Might Think

dev_doll said:
In America, land of the free, land of opportunity, I pay a health insurance company 1/3 my pay check. Just so I can pay an additional $4,000 before they will help me with surgery and medication costs. Gonna have to get a 2nd job just to pay for health insurance.. this should not be an issue in a 1st world country. ETA "what most people consider a 1st world country" And No this does not include state federal and local taxes, Medicaid or social security which is paid out of every check. Yes I spent 2 weeks shopping around this was the best plan I could find to fit my BASIC needs. And the gov't decided I made too much money to qualify for assistance.

greendino71 replied:
As a Canadian I can't even fathom going into life crippling debt for necessary medical issues.

My buddy had cancer, went through it for years... never paid a penny for it.

Yes we get taxed for it, but I can go get stitches at the hospital and the only thing they need in return is my ID and Healthcare number.

How ridiculously sexualized everything is.

I don't mean this in a pearl-clutching, "offensive to good family values" way. I mean that twelve-year-olds are being convinced that they need to buy clothes and makeup that make them look eighteen. I mean that high schoolers are convinced that there's something wrong with them if they don't lose their virginity by graduation. I mean that the entertainment industry compromises the health of their talent to make them look good for one shot, one show, one music video.

And so often this problem is framed as "you don't need to do/look like/act like X to be sexy!" You almost never hear people saying, "Hey, actually being sexy is not that important and it's okay if you don't want to be."

Drug overdoses… how many result in brain injury/death. Before working in critical care, I naively thought overdose = stop breathing = dead.

So many get a round or two of CPR, left with a severe brain injury from lack of oxygen, and left to finish out a miserable life of a tracheostomy, feeding tubes, ventilators, recurrent infections of nearly all body systems, in an understaffed nursing home… Especially if they have no family who can be found (or willing to compassionately withdraw care).

On the note, it’s extremely [messed up] the lengths we go to to keep people alive. Especially when it is clearly past their time.

mr_oranje said:
In America (at least), you can pay strangers to kidnap your kid from their bed in the middle of the night and take them to a reform school.

DawnDeather replied:
Yup. Happened to a friend of mine when he came out as gay to his dad. Woke him up at 3 AM, threw him in the back of a car and drove 9 hours straight to a reform camp in Utah. He's trying to sue his dad because of it.

hkm316 said:
Breeding dogs with horrible health issues, like French and English bulldogs who struggle to breathe their entire lives because we think they’re squished faces are cute.

IiASHLEYiI replied:
Spider Ball Pythons are another example of an animal that should not be bred. These snakes have neurological issues that leave them unstable, and give them a very pronounced head wobble.

They can potentially drown in their water dish; in severe cases, the snake can't even strike its food properly - that food usually being a thawed frozen rat offered with feeding tongs. It's very sad seeing videos of Spider Ball Pythons.

Whether you like snakes or not, you cannot deny that it is horribly cruel to continue breeding an animal with neurological issues.

pizzadazze said:
Influencers sharing their child's ENTIRE life on social media. Feel so sad for these kids.

Sea_Puddle replied:
Particularly when they make videos to shame them! Like the one when a kid got a bad report card and their mum was videoing them crying and begging them not to upload it to the internet. I can’t even imagine having a mindset like that.

StuffToday said:
Sending 18-year olds to war.

StalinsPerfectHair replied:
What if we just shortened this to 'war'.

Pizza-PhD said:
Alzheimer’s disease. It’s brutal (so much worse than the basic forgetfulness or confusion portrayed in movies).

abilliondollars replied:
I went to visit someone in an Alzheimers-dedicated rest home once. Walked into a common area and there was a room full of people but no one was really there. Was sad and horrifying.

idiodic-genious replied:
Alzheimer's is my genuine greatest fear, having your mind being slowly destroyed and not knowing what is true and who you are is just horrifying.

ThreeNC said:
Tinnitus. I have a mild case and it really sucks. Protect your hearing!

grm12k replied:
Holy [smokes], this. "Ringing ears" might not sound bad if you don't know better, but it's hell when it never stops. I will never have another moment of true quiet, and I can't properly describe how soul crushing that can be sometimes.

Anyone who reads this, please use ear protection.

Dying of natural causes. In movies and tv shows, it's perfectly normal people with white hair closing their eyes and going to sleep after saying something meaningful.

In real life, it's losing speech... then after a few days losing the ability to swallow food... then there's a couple days of groaning and wheezing... the eyes dry up, the lips crack and dry up... the tongue dries up... you have to dab at it to keep it moist, the whole while you are wondering if the person is conscious and enduring this in pain and madness.

The last hour or so is that weird and loud breathing that is both a gasp and groan at the same time. Each breath is a desperate act by the body to keep going until it finally stops.

Having gone through it twice with my parents, I volunteer at a palliative care ward because a lot of people go through this alone.

ifeelgodinthizchilis said:
Social media. It has damaged the way we look at ourselves/our bodies and has arguably caused much more harm than good.

Az0riusMCBlox added:
And it has allowed the stupid to have an absurd amount of influence.

Lack of accessibility for disabled people. For most people it’s an afterthought, but for those who need it it can be life-changing, in a good or bad way. One of my friends has a neurologic disorder so that he has to move very slowly and very carefully or he falls and cannot pick himself up. People constantly give him [flack] because he’s in his 30s and he doesn’t look sick, and they think he is on drugs or something.

There have been many times when he had to give up on simple things like going to an appointment or meeting family and friends, just because of some random obstacle thrown his way, and no one giving him the time of day to help (or worse, abusing him). The frustration literally reduces him to tears sometimes. Every time he tells me one of those stories, and there are always new ones, my blood boils.

Be kind to people who struggle to move around. Not every disabled person is in a wheelchair.

gravisj1 said:
The amount of disrespect for the common retail worker...

Am retail worker, I'm not your slave.

fearme101 replied:
I worked in retail for several years. I waited on a woman for clothes, shoes, etc. Helped her and did what I could. She came out of the dressing room carrying everything in her hands. I briefly thought wow is she going to buy all of this? Then she dropped everything on the floor in front of me and left. Man, that made me feel like [dung].

Health and wealth preachers. Not only do they essentially steal well meaning people's money, but they are also leading them astray from truth. Health and wealth gospel is the gnosticism of the 20th and especially the 21st century.

The foster care system. I’m glad it exists for obvious reasons, but good god is it a nightmare. If you have ever looked into adopting a child you will find out very quickly that it costs almost as much as a down payment on a house. In economical terms... the supply is way too large, and the demand is equally large, but the price is set so high it closes a lot of very loving families out of the equation. Not to mention the abuse a lot those poor kids have to go through in the foster care system.

Bitter_Product said:
Obsessive compulsive disorder.

It’s only ever referenced in a funny way, and sometimes it is funny and ridiculous. But on the flipside it really effects people and can ruin lives.

unsexme replied:
I’ll add is that a lot of OCD is invisible since it’s about thought patterns. Not everyone with OCD will be obsessed with germs or safety (though the process of checking is really common), and the things they are preoccupied with and even the compulsions they act out may just exist in their head or in solitude.

_hunnuh_ elaborated:
As someone who is diagnosed with functional OCD, you hit the nail on the head. That’s the one thing I try to explain to others who don’t quite get what it is. I have my tendencies and my subtle routines of course, but it’s nothing life-breaking. But it’s the thoughts, especially in solitude, that are the toughest. Over analyzing every action, reflecting on conversations that happened and analyzing the way things were said or how they could’ve been handled differently, and the complete inability to make it quiet in your own head are all things I just deal with. In the same way that some struggle with physical routines, equally difficult to deal with are the mental ones.

Low_Delivery_3453
The history of Japan. Japan wasn't always this UWU ONIIIIIICHAN country.

jarNO_WAY
I still believe the war crimes in Nanking to be the worst event of all of human history that I know of. Reading about it literally made me puke. There's a statue of a Nazi in Nanking who stopped as many atrocities as he could. Think about that, the NAZI is the good guy telling others to tone down the violence.

[Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)]

People either seem to view it as a joke disease, or react like, “oh, yeah, my stomach gets upset sometimes too”.

They don’t realize how painful, isolating, and horrible it can be. People have straight-up committed suicide because of the impacts of IBS. Without having experienced it, it is basically impossible to imagine how much it [messes] your life up to be legitimately afraid of food. It’s like having a chronic illness AND a severe eating disorder all rolled into one.

I sometimes wonder how much different my life could be if I weren’t constantly trying to manage the trade off of “do I avoid eating so I don’t get sick and then risk passing out/being too hypoglycemic to safely drive/etc, or do I eat and basically give up on all my plans for the next 24 hours because of the likelihood that I’ll be incapacitated?”

Jehovah's Witnesses

For those born in, social isolation is forced upon them. Only permitting them to create a social group within the religion. They also advise those kids to not go to college, and that they should spend all of their time going door to door. They socially cripple them, and then convince them to sabotage their own independence. That way when they turn 18, if they're not towing the Jdub line, they'll often just be kicked out ASAP. All while losing their entire social network, including just basic life advice from their own parents. In many cases, it sadly does lead many of those children to return to their dependent state.

It's a much sicker power dynamic than people expect.

no_seas_carepicha said:
Obese animals. Everyone laughs and thinks chunky animals are cute and funny but it’s really sad.

garbageman2112 replied:
I read a recent review of my dog's vet from some dude that was flipping out because the doc told him his dog was way too fat and unhealthy. The doc jumped on yelp quick and told him that she had warned him of the weight gain over the years and that her job is to stand up for the health of her patients. And now she treats my puppy.