I really resonated with your eventual realization that while others have their own battles, they are very rarely similar to this. I guess I knew it was unusual, but I took way too long to realize just how weird it was to feel soul-crushingly miserable for no identifiable reason, even when things are going well, even when I'm around friends I like and they're having fun.

Wishing you the best OP.

I have multiple family members who fit this pattern and it's absolutely godawful. The addiction literally rules them. They will perpetually ask for money for "needs" then spend it on drugs. If another family member houses them, they will sneakily maintain their addiction and steal from family to support it when necessary. If you offer them housing on condition of getting sober, they will choose addiction and homelessness. If you offer them housing without condition, they will use it to stay an addict in perpetuity, who everyone else is paying for. I don't think this last is a remotely viable solution with the number of addicts out there, which is only growing.

I'm not saying this to condemn addicts/mentally ill people. I just want to give an idea of just how hard this problem is to fix.

1) They like the worlds of the complex games, building societies or facing some major broad challenge. 2) Elaborate games are so open-ended and hard to analyze forward strategically that they are much more balanced across people of different skill levels. People who would have no hope of a competitive, fun game of chess will have a more interesting game of Brass: Birmingham or Eclipse. 3) The games can be played with a lot of players and involve a lot more human-human negotiation and discussion, rather than pure strategy.

I love the simple but incredibly complex games myself, but I understand why they're not everyone's cup of tea.

Making the main character and his brother hispanic is not "the same" as the game, especially when the remaining straight white non-hispanic men in the show are absolutely awful.

Or take the US version of The Office, where the one Christian character is a running joke, an awful person with terrible takes not meant to be taken at all seriously. Can you imagine how it would've gone over if the one black or hispanic character on the show was just a running joke?

* History/biographies

* Sciences (physics, chem, astronomy)

* In-depth nonpartisan analysis of political situations, especially current ones. The breaking news cycle does a poor job parsing out useless or incorrect information.

* How we've managed to create the insanely complex technology we have today, starting at the basics