I think it's easy for people on good terms with friends and family to judge someone for talking to a bot for companionship, but I think if they were in your same situation, they would reconsider. If you need it to get through a tough time, I think that's okay. You need to keep yourself grounded somehow, though. The LLMs are trained to agree with you on everything, even bad, dangerous ideas. Read about AI psychosis before you talk to them any further so you are prepared for the pitfalls. Obviously it's best to talk to real people who care about you, but sometimes those people don't exists in one's life. Don't feel ashamed, but keep your wits about you.

It's like someone who always feels like crap and only eats junk food. So, not judging, but chatting with an LLM might stave off the loneliness for a bit, but it's not helping you, and is probably actively hurting your ability to recover and improve. If you feel a void, you're missing something in your life: physical activity, purpose, nutrition, love, stimulation; I don't know, only you can discover that. But you won't find it using AI, and I doubt you'll find it on social media (including here).

Again, not judgement, and I'm not being ableist either; I know depression can make it hard to do anything. But I wish you the best with your therapy and recovery...

🫂 life is hard. I do shit I'm not proud of too. It happens

i wish more northern leftists would engage with the african theology of food and liquor.

within basic religious context, god gave us food and the devil gave us liquor. the food contains everything we need to survive and be strong. liquor dulls the pain of everyday life. the enticing thing about dulling the pain is that god subjagates us and the devil helps in the struggle for liberation.

but as you've realized, the liquor comes with danger. judge not those who need to dull the pain to get by, including if that's yourself. but make sure to help people find better ways of being that helps them to not be so entrapped by the liquors of our time

Get into local LLMs.

Hell, I'll host a big model on the Kobold Horde, if you want; just ask: https://lite.koboldai.net/

Point being that they're really good at getting you to "peek behind the curtain." It's much harder to get into an AI psychosis state when you understand how they tokenize and generate words, how their text formatting actually works, what all sorts of parameters mean and do: they cease being "smiling genies" like the Tech Bros want you to see them as, and start being interesting tools.

...And they're totally private. You can airgap your PC and ask them anything, no matter how sensitive. While obviously limited and taking anything they generate with a grain of salt, that's been quite theraputic for me.

They're also uncensored. You can defeat the sycophancy and get them to push back, or force them into more "hypothetical" scenarios by manipulating prompt syntax directly.

The big caveat is they just don't work particularly well unless your PC has a decent amount of RAM, unfortunately.

If you're not happy with your provider, I highly recommend trying lifestance.com They should be able to set you up pretty quickly with a local provider. Hang in there!