If the item does sell for that much, money laundering seems like the most likely reason. The article says “selling” but it’s only “selling” in the sense that someone is trying to sell it for that price. There’s all kinds of shit listed for crazy prices.
What’s “flat chat”? I don’t/haven’t ever done AA. I know a lot of bits and pieces - my mom kicked the habit through AA 25ish years ago.
I had close to two years once in the past. And a year or so another time. Complacency and “forgetting” what it was like are the insidious things that led to me relapsing. “I can drink responsibly” was such an easy lie I told myself because things were feeling easy. Thankfully I’ve learned that lesson and plan to not forget it.
44 days, I take it?
The first few days and weeks were the hardest, of course, but around two months in it would also get a lot easier for me. That’s when it stopped becoming such a frequent thought and I’d even have days where drinking wouldn’t come to mind. Stay strong. Keep it up!
Thanks! You can do it!
I don’t know how many times I had quit drinking before it stuck. Never quit quitting.
I lost track of when I had quit drinking a year or two ago. I was pretty sure it was during the first quarter but couldn’t remember if I quit in 2021 or 2022. I’d tried searching through old messages and stuff but didn’t have any luck.
I just figured out that bank statements would tell me. Looking back, my last liquor store purchase was late March 2021… so I just hit 4 years sober a week or two ago.
I haven’t felt a desire to drink in a long time and it’s really really nice. I went through the worst 6 months of my life last year and worried at the start of it that I would find myself “needing” to drink. But somehow, I never even felt tempted. It kinda blows my mind. 1,465 days without alcohol. That’s a lot of days.
There’s no way in hell I’m drinking today. No question.
My friends and family absolutely know and see what is happening. When I go to the park and walk, I often hear people talking about what is happening (from the angle of “this is insane; how are they getting away with this.” The lady that manages the corner store that I chat with sees what’s going on. The people I work with are very aware.
Most of the people I know are scared and feel powerless to do anything about it. Of course, some are more aware than others and some are more scared than others, but they are at least moderately aware.
BUT, I live in a very liberal city and the people I just talked about are people I choose to associate with. My sample is heavily skewed.
I also run into a lot of people that are pro Trump. Drive 10 miles outside the city and you start running into a lot more MAGA folks. There are also people that avoid politics and are good at sticking their heads in the sand. Somehow they manage to remain unaware. Ignorance seems to be a concerningly common American trait.
BTW, OP, there’s a good chance the “both sides” people you know are republicans but are embarrassed to admit it. They’re the quiet trumpers — the ones that chose to elect a criminal who tried to violently overthrow the government four years ago. Unlike the rabid, loud MAGA folks, they are uncomfortable talking about this stuff because they know people find their views abhorrent. They use “both sides” as a method to indirectly defend their views without having to admit to having them.
Either that or they’re willfully ignorant about what is going on around them. But I find willfully ignorance and Repubicanism go hand in hand.
Funded and authored by the company wanting to sell you their disinfectant.
Conflicts of interest: Drs. Julie McKinney and M. Khalid Ijaz are engaged in R&D at Reckitt Benckiser LLC. The other authors declare no competing interests.
Funding/support: This study was funded by a grant to the University of Arizona from Reckitt Benckiser.
Not the person you replied too, but I think this is still considered money laundering. If a person is selling illegal drugs (or whatever illegal product) and wants to receive the money “cleanly”, this would be a way to do so. Instead of selling the illegal item, they sell (or pretending to sell) a legal item but provide the illegal item. The seller now has clean money. I think this is still called money laundering.