How do I deal with the pain I've had to go through, throughout my life? Some of ya are extremely brilliant. How do you deal with the idea that your life was wasted and the great war is coming soon to kill us all?
This is catastrophic thinking. Basically you have been focusing only on negative things until your perspective gets skewed.
You can't actually "deal" with these thoughts because they aren't 100% true.
Let's take "your life was wasted" for a start. It is obvious that you mean that your life does not look like what you imagine you life is capable of being. But your life isn't over so you need to start changing what you focus on to improve your thoughts about it.
How do know that without the drugs your life would have been significantly better? Do you know that is true 100%?
The truth is, you don't know. You speculate. You wonder if things would have been different, but you do not actually really know. There is even a possibility that your life would have been worse.
But none of that matters really. What matters is you don't like your life and you are feeling sorry for yourself. I feel sorry for you too! It is tough to figure out what you can do and if you can do it. That part sucks. But that is where you really are right NOW.
You can not change the past. You can only acknowledge that you want the future to be different.
What do you want? What do you really want at the heart of the matter? Weath? Fame? Peace? Love?
Identify
that thing. You want that thing because you imagine that it will
make you happy. But happiness isn't a thing you acquire. You cann not get happiness like a disease or new furniture. Happiness is really a state of mind. You can not get happy by focusing with unhappy, negative thinking.
All of these other things, like improving where you live, are simply exercises in problem solving. It can take time to solve those problems but they are solvable.