SHARE IT, DO IT
If you have a spouse, here is a positive worthwhile activity that can replace the martini over time.
Buy a couple of non fiction books, one for you, one for your spouse, such as Erroneous Zones. Real books, not the ‘e’ stuff and get some pencils and highlighters. Reality is doing, not just watching.
Pick some chapter or select paragraphs. Read, write, talk. This is no big secret.
What you both are doing here is sharing new ideas, new stuff. The growth is boundless. Reality is cool. Give it time. Over a year or two, you are not the people you were.
You can later look back and say chemicals were okay but new ideas gave life pizzazz. They made life worthwhile.
Tried that spousal book club w/ my wife. The deal was that we would only read a book neither of us had read before.
Worked great for a while, but we’ve been stuck on the Iliad for 8 years because she refuses to finish it.
I’m not giving in, because 1) Iliad is awesome; 2) a deal is a deal; and 3) neither of us have read Proust, and I have bad feeling that’s coming next as revenge if she ever finishes Homer.
Meanwhile, I pour a whiskey and read my books, she pours a glass of wine and reads hers.