Further to my utopian blurt: now, say I don't like to self-medicate - what are the other treatment options, Doctor?
- Materialism - traditional politics. Global growth, Development, Reform. (Yes, but for what? The eradication of poverty? Good, but not enough. The end of alienated work? Yes, but not the end of only that.)
- Materialism - traditional hedonism. (with current drugs and people: cheap, unsustainable; for lucky unreflective folk only.)
- Asceticism - traditional religion. (It had its chance.)
- Asceticism - traditional philosophy. (Has worked badly and for few.)
- Aestheticism. (life as art if not life for art. See also Absurdism.)
- Existentialism - as affirmative philosophical anarchism.
- Mysticism. (Eh. It takes all kinds. See also Romanticism.)
- Other-directedness - the ruthless pursuit of Truth.
- Radical psychoanalysis. (Fuck knows if or how this would work. They don't seem to know, themselves.)
- Altruism. Personal-political, environmental, spiritual. The most common form, familial, is not really altruism at all. But it's something. ("I was not nothing, and did not do nothing.")
Option 0 (or 12, if you prefer) - biotechnology - is compatible with a lot of these. Unlike a lot of these though it's almost within reach, and is available to all regardless of intelligence or species.
Note that Nietzsche took options 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 - not being a man to let contradiction much impede him.