April 23, 2005

• I caught myself thinking.
  
  Did you ever catch yourself thinking something you knew you shouldn’t
  be thinking?  Well, unless you never think self-defeating or
  erroneous thoughts, if you don’t catch yourself at it and make yourself
  quit, I pity you.  I feel pretty good about having caught my
  defeatist line of thought this morning.  It made me realize how
  far this recent flare-up of illness has gotten me down.

  When I expressed that to Greyfox, I said that some of the fight had
  gone out of me, that I was losing my will to live.  Not entirely,
  or I’d not be talking about it, of course.  I’d just be lying
  there waiting to die, or I’d be out seeking a dope connection to help
  me hurry it along.

  I still have some fight left in me.  I also have some tools to
  help me:  a lifetime’s worth of experience at being sick and
  getting better, and a small library of motivational CDs and tapes that
  have gotten me through other crises before this.

  Just now as I was driving back from the spring, from a water run on
  which Doug did all the filling and carrying of the jugs and all I did
  was get the car running and drive it, I caught myself playing mind
  games with myself again.  I can tell we’re not all on the same
  team in here –  “we” being the committee, me, myself and I. 
  Ambivalence R us.  I can’t honestly say I’ll be all right.  I
  don’t know.  I’m here and it’s now.  I know that.

  The damned battery was dead again today when I went out to start the
  car.  The battery charger was doing something odd while it was
  charging, too:  oscillating between “charging” and “full charge”,
  the needle jumping back and forth, the green-light full-charge
  indicator blinking on and off.  I’ll take this annoyance and
  distress I feel over that minor crap as a positive sign that I’m not in
  a terminal state of despair over my health.

  ---

  WyRMFaery
  asked me if those musk ox poachers having their snowmachines
  confiscated was like it would be to have one’s driver’s license
  suspended in Arkansas.  I’d say it’s more like having one’s pickup
  truck confiscated.  Weapons and vehicles used in poaching are
  subject to confiscation.

  ---

  LuckyStars said this: 

  ah addiction.
  sometimes i wonder if it isn’t all an addiction.
  the old “if it’s not one thing it’s another” saying.

  I think
  that [please notice the use of "I" here...it's just me thinking outloud
  as I tend to do here] if we were to try to kick all of our addictions,
  there’d be nothing left.  I did learn to not let alcohol take over me
  as it did my dad and brothers.  I did learn to not take drugs after a
  few pathetically paranoid attempts.  I do know that I have an addictive
  personality.  The computer.  yep.  Bookstores.  yep.  diet coke.  yep. 
  but i don’t consider any of them to be harmful to me or others. 
  I
  guess what I’m beating around the bush at is that sometimes I worry
  about you [shhhh...you know this already and I know your response...pod
  sister].  I worry that you take almost anything that brings you
  pleasure and label it as an addiction.  Almost as if you should punish
  yourself whenever you’re having fun.  Y’know…if you’re feeling like
  total shit [as you were when you wrote this] but you could muster up
  the energy to play some video games, what the
  hell…play…the…video…games.  Set a timer.  You’re stubborn.  I
  know this because I can be, too.  Give yourself an hour.  *bing* shut
  the game off.  If it will help you relax, take your mind off of your
  physical pain for a little while…just…some pleasure, kathy.  An
  hour of time that might take your mind off the pain. 
  Again…it’s just me.  Just thinking outloud.  No harm or offense meant.  Ever.  Not here.

  Marian — no offense taken, no harm done, and I hope the fact that I
  disagree and argue with you will never discourage you from telling me
  what you think.  What I think in this case is that you’ve
  misjudged me.  I’m not a prude or Puritan who believes that
  pleasure is harmful, nor am I so ignorant of the nature of addiction
  that I think anything pleasurable is addictive.

  Doug and I just had a brief, amusing discussion on the question of
  whether I’m stubborn.  He thinks I am.  I say I am not nearly
  as stubborn as I could be, that I make conscious efforts to give,
  to be flexible.  He says the fact that I have to make such
  conscious efforts proves that I am stubborn.  Maybe you’re right
  about my being stubborn, but that has nothing to do with addiction.

  Besides that debatable trait of stubbornness, there are some things I
  definitely AM, no debate possible.  An addict is one of those
  things.  I’m poly-addicted, cross-addicted and sure of it, though
  neither ashamed nor proud of it.  There have been several comments
  in recent weeks from people who used the term, “addictive personality,”
  and I’ve been meaning to address that.  I just didn’t have the
  energy.  This morning’s realization that I need to get to work on
  getting better has somewhat energized me, and your words about
  addiction above have galvanized me.  I can’t let such bullshit
  slip by me unopposed.

  I do not relate at all to your initial statement that you “wonder if it
  isn’t all an addiction.”  All of what?  How are you defining
  “addiction?”  That idea is nonsense to me, even more than the
  nonsense of “addictive personality.”  The idea of addiction as a
  personality disorder was current a generation or so ago.  At the
  time, addiction was seen as a psychological thing.  That was
  before the brain chemistry of addiction was understood.  There are
  still professionals in the mental health field who think in those
  terms.  Not everyone keeps up with the state of the art in any
  field.

  There is no such thing as an “addictive personality.”  You can
  find the term in common usage, yes, and in old books and maybe even new
  books written by people who don’t keep up with the times.  You
  won’t find it in authoritative new works. 

  The ease with which changes in diet or nutritional supplements or
  various medications alter addictive responses gives the lie to their
  being personality disorders.  Recent findings in neurochemistry
  have cast the entire field of personality disorders into
  question.  But to return to the specific case of addiction: 
  an addictive response is a cycle of neurochemical excitation and
  exhaustion. 

  The new, current, state-of-the-art neurochemical model of addiction
  answers longstanding questions that have always surrounded the issue,
  and resolves mysteries such as the question of why one person’s
  response to a specific chemical is different from another’s.  The
  concept of “addictive personality” was nothing more than an explanatory
  principle, a name given to an imperfectly understood phenomenon.

  If what you say about having nothing left if you were to kick all of
  your addictions is true for you, that’s very sad.  It is far from
  true for me.  I have many “things” in my life, both activities and
  material things, that I enjoy and from which I derive various benefits,
  to which I am definitely not addicted.  Those things include my
  work with stones and metal to make jewelry, the healthy foods I eat, my
  volunteer gig driving the rehab van, the cats and my dog Koji, my
  collections of baskets, pitchers and mugs, writing my memoirs,
  blogging, studying… I could go on.  Perhaps it would be more
  informative to list my addictions.

  I am  (or have been) addicted to amphetamine, codeine,
  barbiturates, caffeine, alcohol, capsaicin, games (video games and
  others), TV, news, detective stories, sexual orgasms, and probably some
  other things but that’s enough for now, to allow me to illustrate my
  point and to point out the differences between addiction and simple
  pleasures. 

  With any of the things in this list of addictions, the more I get the
  more I want.  When circumstances prevent me from indulging or when
  I force myself to stop, I can go long periods of time without any of
  them and in general the longer I go without it the less I will crave
  it.  When I indulge in any of them, I find it hard to stop. 
  I will usually continue to indulge until something compels me to
  stop.  During the initial “detox” phase after I stop, I experience
  cravings and withdrawal symptoms.

  A timer won’t stop me.  I can ignore a timer.  A polite
  request, such as Greyfox asking me to stop playing solitaire so he can
  use the computer or Doug asking me to let him use the PS2, is more
  likely to get a quick, harsh, dismissive response if it gets any
  response at all, than it is to stop my addictive play.

  I must emphasize, this is not a personality disorder, not simply
  something I choose to do out of stubbornness or selfishness. 
  Addiction is a matter of brain chemistry.  The hook with the
  detective fiction is suspense combined with the dopamine reward system
  for learning and figuring out problems and puzzles.  Likewise with
  the games.  Something similar is going on with the news and
  television addictions.  They grab me and won’t let go, but after I
  turn them off and spend some time in withdrawal, I feel revulsion for
  them and don’t want to become enslaved again.

  Another thing that these activities all have in common and share with
  the substance addictions is that when I’m in the midst of active
  addiction, in a crisis of indulgence, I neglect other needs and I have
  feelings of guilt and self-loathing because I know I am doing things
  that are damaging to me physically, mentally and/or socially.  Any
  halfway aware adult is not going to feel good about herself if she is
  wasting time and/or other resources and just can’t bring herself to
  stop.  Fortunately, sometimes I must sleep.  When I go to
  sleep, I turn off the TV or the PS2, and sometimes when I awaken, just
  as a drunk at the end of a big binge or a burned out speed freak after
  a long runner, I opt not to turn it back on, and I go cold turkey.

  Your advising me to play a video game is not significantly different
  from suggesting that I go out and spend a few hundred bucks on
  speed.  It is especially unfortunate, or would be unfortunate if I
  were not aware of the danger and determined to evade it, right now when
  I’m already in crisis.

  I know, I know… you were very careful to shield yourself with all
  those protestations about it being your opinion and “no offense,”
  etc.  Perhaps it is because you’ve had such a sheltered life and
  have no knowledge of how easily an addict can be encouraged and enabled
  to indulge.  Maybe that’s it, maybe not. 

  I don’t know where it was coming from.  It could be coming from
  your own denial regarding your own true addictions.  Maybe saying
  that it’s “all an addiction” is the way you avoid looking at what
  really is an addiction.  Greyfox picked up on that very telling
  statement that, “if we were to try to kick all of our addictions,
  there’d be nothing left.”  Dear one, pod sister, that is an addict
  talking, as any other addict will recognize.  It’s an addict in
  denial, rationalizing, justifying and trying to hang onto her
  addictions.  It’s pathetic and unhealthy.   I will say, and
  this is not “just my opinion,” this is an expert, informed opinion that
  you can take to the bank:  your diet coke addiction is harmful,
  cannot be otherwise given the chemical makeup of the drink, and you are
  in denial about it.

  If you keep it to yourself, then it can only harm you yourself and
  those around you who care about and depend on you.  If you, as you
  did in your comment to me, allow your denial and your perceived
  emotional need for support in your denial to motivate you to encourage
  and enable other addicts to indulge, then the harm from your denial can
  spread out in ever-widening circles.  Watch that.  Addicts
  stay out of trouble only through vigilance.  We indulge our
  addictions at the risk and expense of our self-respect.  Some
  addictions are relatively easy to kick because to indulge them is very
  expensive, risky, illegal, etc.  The toughest ones are the ones
  that can be denied, that may masquerade as “harmless”.  The ones
  that don’t kill our bodies can still kill our souls.

  No thanks, I’ve enough to deal with already.
  

  • 7:22 pm
  • 10 Comments