alt text
tweet by Johann Hari: The core of addiction is not wanting to be present in life, because pour life is too painful a place to be. This is why imposing more pain or punishment on a person with an addiction problem actually makes their addiction worse.
Yup. It’s escapism. Anything to not have to be myself, even if for just a very short while.
A lot of people are in denial about how often they engage in escapism. Whether it’s alcohol, binge watching, reading, gaming, porn or their phone.
Personally I swapped drugs for podcasts, audiobooks, and audio dramas (shout out to BBC sounds). Helps drown out all the negative thoughts.
Not sure if that’s a good idea either, tbh. But I’m still here, so maybe that’s something.
Hope you’re able to get in a better place so you feel less need to escape from life. Not happy, happiness is overrated. But just that you want to live, experience your life, and what happens next.
This is why ADHD is so hard to diagnose and treat in adults. You have found your coping mechanisms, it’s never about escapism or denial.
It took me a long time to realize I was doing exactly that, self-medicating for adhd. Even a small dose of proper medication has kept me off everything else. Too bad it cost hundreds of dollars and took months, once realized. Not to mention fighting the stigma of an addict
If you’re taking Vyvanse, they just released a generic version that’s much cheaper. You might have to ask your doctor to mark that a generic can be substituted.
I appreciate that! My adderall actually isn’t expensive, but it was 500 to be tested at my uni
A lot of doctors even are starting to recommend not medicating as that can disrupt your coping mechanisms and make your issues worse in some cases.
I feel like those doctors must not have much of a clue what having ADHD is like - my coping mechanisms keep me from killing myself, sure, but they do sweet fuck all to help me get my laundry done…
Consider replacing your washer with a fire pit. You’ll find dealing with your laundry less of a chore, because fire.
Yea, I’m with you, nah, I need my medication. At least a small dose. I only take 15mg a day anyway
Yep so the doctor would recommend a service to do your laundry, leaves you more “me time” to handle the stress. Taking medication has side effects as well, very few of them are fun. My kid hasn’t gained a pound in a year since starting his medication. Sure it helps him focus, but he’s now falling behind on his growth and has trouble sleeping through the night. You’re trading problems for other problems. Medication is not some magic fix all, that’s pure ignorance.
It’s funny that you think a doctor knows less than you…….
It’s funny that you think a doctor knows less than you…….
A lot of doctors disagree with other doctors. Lots of them straight up don’t believe in ADHD, or adult ADHD in particular. Hell yes I believe I know more than some random random doctor about my own personal experiences, especially if the doctor refuses to acknowledge established medical science.
But maybe not doing laundry as often is better than feeling like an emotionless zombie… medication affects people differently. Maybe “just” coping and surviving is better than being “normal” and productive for some people.
That trope needs to die. Medication doesn’t make me feel like a zombie at all. Not even a little bit. I’d happily take more of my liver could deal with it.
I understand what you mean, but some people’s lives are very shitty, so I feel it’s a stretch to say it’s never escapism, even among those who have ADHD.
Fair I shouldn’t be so absolute, but taking away those coping mechanisms and replacing them with medication or other things can make it worse. Some people just need more “escapes” than others.
Escaping adhd-er here and present! Except not too present.
I just want to add a plus one for audio dramas, if which the BBC has some great ones, especially some old horror series. Sure, it’s not exactly a replacement, but every little bit helps. I’ve been clean of anything not proscribed for about six months!
Yeah.
One of the huge advantages for me is that, unlike tv/movies/gaming, you’re not exposing yourself to light from a screen.
That means you can distract yourself, but there’s also a relatively high chance you actually fall asleep. Light from a screen really messes up your sleep schedule.
IME also better than trying to sleep, and negative thoughts keeping you awake in the dark.
That’s such a good point overall. Something to focus on without additional unnecessary distractions.
I don’t agree with decriminalisation. Only full legalization makes sense. Treat addiction as a health issue instead of a justice issue. It’s amazing that we’re still stuck with the legacy of Nixon era policies, with 50 years of data to say the war on drugs cannot ever be won through prohibition.
I don’t think you need legalization to make the decisions necessary to help the health issue, I think you could work that sort of help in with decriminalization as well. However, people will still be using less than safe practices to get said substances without legalization as well, so I do agree it would be the overall better arrangement.
But I do agree with the other commenter, starting with decriminalization is at least a step in the right direction.
I’m reasonably okay with crack and meth being unavailable at gas stations.
Marijuana has no damn reason to be illegal. Psychedelics are probably okay. Opiates, you can make arguments for. But some drugs are genuinely more trouble than they’re ever worth, individually or societally. I’d just like laws to be based on that reality instead of moralized by irrational liars.
Whoever said legislation means no regulation?
Walk me through how that’s an argument.
Currently, gangs will sell unregulated drugs to anyone. Those drugs can be anything, and cut with anything. Which is why calling them “controlled substances” is so fucking laughable.
So the harm for the average recreational user of substances like MDMA or classic psychedelics isn’t from the drug itself. It’s from having to buy it illegally, with no assurances of what is in it, and with the prospect of incarceration if you are caught. It’s the prohibition that causes the harm, not the drug.
There have been many deaths from dealers selling what consumers thought was MDMA but it turned out to be bath salts or even worse. Making drugs like MDMA legal, with appropriate controls on who can use it, and proper quality controls, will reduce harm.
When the laws cause more harm than the substance, and have done so for 50 years, it’s insane to pretend prohibition is anything over than a complete failure.
Meth addicts are mostly harmed by meth.
The danger from some drugs is absolutely the drug itself, especially the ones that are so addictive we use them as shorthand to describe addiction. With a wider palette of mind-altering substances available - we won’t need the ones that ruin if you stop taking it, or ruin you if you keep taking it.
And to get ahead of the obvious ‘but alcohol–’, it is impossible to stop people from making alcohol. Not hard. Impossible.
We don’t have to pretend all drugs are equal, to say no drug use deserves punishment. Quality control is not the issue with krokodil. Or bath salts. Or paint. Some substances really are bad for you, and nobody should be selling them as drugs.
Lumping together LSD and crack to say they’re both awful is exactly as irrational as lumping together LSD and crack to say they’re both fine. You should not do crack. Nobody should do crack. Crack is bad, mmkay? And finding something else to do to your brain will be easy when 7-11 has cocaine and quaaludes up beside the Pall Malls.
deleted by creator
Okay but can we start with decriminalization?
Honestly, decriminalization is possibly worse a drug war (if only barely). Where legalization creates a regulated environment with research and controls, decriminalization increases the use by individuals without giving a legal way to acquire - which just empowers organized crime to get bigger and sell more.
Pot is a weird magical exception because a lot of individuals started growing for their friends and family. But that wouldn’t happen with actual hard drugs.
Here’s an example that’s playing out live - the Australian Capital Territory is decriminalising several hard drugs as of tomorrow. The conservative media in Australia is making all kinds of ridiculous prognoses that I highly doubt will come to anything except a more humane approach to something most can’t explain coherently why flat-out prohibition has been the status quo around the world for a century.
I think the main consideration in decriminalisation is reducing the burden on law enforcement and the courts, but this cost saving must be passed on to the health services that must go further than they currently are resourced to do. The thinking is, since police treatment and imprisonment of addicts leads to worse health outcomes anyway, we might as well help them with their addictive behaviours and minimise harm instead of adding to this harm by vilifying hard drug users. Most who choose to use them in the first place are already suffering with other psychological and physical traumas but lack the knowledge or ability to address them in the healthiest way.
What does that do about the illegal sources of drugs? Are they not dangerous criminal elements like in most countries? It also seems to make all health-related responses reactionary. I still hold that having dispensaries that provide those hard drugs in as safe a manner as possible would alleviate both of those concerns. The gangs distributing drugs suddenly have one fewer tool, and the dispensaries could also be trained (and even incentivized) on addiction handling
Sure, and I agree, but what your approach is forgetting is that you’re not a dictator who can change the laws at will, and the people must still obey them. Politics takes time, and the community won’t let any democratic government force revolutionary new laws on them without trying them out first. So decriminalisation is the first step. The Netherlands has one of the most advanced drug policy frameworks in the world, and might be in a position to establish government dispensaries - however, even they started with decriminalisation, the rest of us are just behind.
Sure, and I agree, but what your approach is forgetting is that you’re not a dictator who can change the laws at will, and the people must still obey them
There’s two types of philosophy about the law. There’s the philosophy that laws are meant to be followed for organized society. Then there’s the philosophy that laws are about taking (or reclaiming) antisocial elements out of society. The former has always been toxic to me. The latter would say "if a law says something useless or wrong, you should be changing it instead of mindlessly obeying it)
And “people must still obey them” is simply untrue. The fact that people won’t obey bad laws is exactly what leads us to this situation.
Politics takes time, and the community won’t let any democratic government force revolutionary new laws on them without trying them out first. So decriminalisation is the first step.
As I said elsewhere, making the black market stronger isn’t necessarily a step in the right direction. Politics aside, I think someone needs to get their head out of their ass and find a better way to get from “illegal” to “legal” without going through “organized crime paradise”
Then the capitalists will start getting people addicted to hard drugs, sold in stores.
Legalization does not necessarily mean deregulation
I can agree with that. I think that all drugs should be legal if doctors responsibly and in good faith believe that they are necessary.
Yeah, because this system of “I know this is a life-saving medicine. But if you don’t come have a physical and pay my copay, I’ll cut you off and let you die” works wonderfully now.
I prefer the Home Depot variant of drug sales. If you’re sure you know what you’re doing, you can go in and buy that mainline electric wire to install your own panel without once showing them a license. You don’t need to be trained if you buy a chainsaw despite the fact it will absolutely kill you if you screw it up. Pharmacies should be the same way. If you know what Xgeva (random drug name) does and are 100% sure it’s for you, you can buy it with or without a prescription. But the rest of us would go to a doctor first just like you go to an electrician.
But if you’re on something long-term, and you have no reason to go to a doctor, it shouldn’t be a contingency. I had a friend told she wouldn’t get diabetes meds if she didn’t get her annual female exams.
People aren’t responsible enough to go in and buy weed and only use it for medicinal purposes.
If we did that, Trump supporters would use it to get ivermectin for their kids.
People aren’t responsible enough to go in and buy weed and only use it for medicinal purposes.
People aren’t responsible enough to not drink enough water to kill themselves, too. What’s your point? Are you planning to have the government regulate food intake as well? Ban hamburgers?
Luckily you can’t OD on weed, and the psychosis rate even at high dosages is extremely low compared to other drug acute reactions (like coffee). If we’re going to legalize anything, it should be weed. Even before fried food.
If we did that, Trump supporters would use it to get ivermectin for their kids.
I’d rather they give their kid ivermectin (with a pharmacist telling them they shouldn’t) than them giving them a spoonful of lysol. Or are you suggesting we stop people from being able to buy lysol and bleach?
We cannot stop a bad parent from having access to things that harm their kids, we can only educate them and take the children from them if they are unfit to parent their child.
You can’t stop people from doing stupid things, but you can make it harder. We also don’t give in to emotional blackmail when hedonists threaten self harm to get their way.
I used to support legalizing weed, but I’ve seen how damaging it is to the type of vulnerable people who think it’s a miracle drug.
We already have governments that are passing laws against junk food. I don’t think that’s appropriate, but I think it would be acceptable to impose government intervention on people who demonstrate that they are incapable of taking care of themselves. Food stamps should not cover junk food.
I support extensive welfare, but only for people who are productive with it. If you have big government, then that government will come back and tell you what to do.
I mean, bold of you to assume they can’t do that with presently legal drugs…
Yeah, but they’re doing that already (see: opioid epidemic, pill mills). I’d much rather people be able to buy FDA-regulated drugs from the gas station than from some random guy in a parking lot that scraped the drugs off the bottom of an RV bathtub.
During the Covid lockdown, when there was nothing better to do, I was watching a court proceeding where a judge was really struggling with this while sentencing a person for possession.
He felt like his hands were tied, and he was essentially forced to sentence a drug user to jail, which doesn’t normally work, but he had already tried all of the other remedies allowed to him. And he basically said, “I’ve seen a few cases where people get clean in jail because they can’t get the drugs. I hope this happens for you.” The sentence was like a month or two.
PSA that, while having said profound things about loneliness and addiction as of late, Johann Hari has a long history of plagiarism and making stuff up, and once really strongly implied in a TED Talk that if you have good social support then it can just vanish your opiate withdrawal symptoms
@5:00 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs generally just web search this guy
Vietnam soldiers who were addicted to heroin were able to stop when they came back because it was a different environment. Addiction is usually caused by circumstancely factors rather than actual chemical imbalances that cause them to seek heroin. Like depression would be the root causing heroin addiction not heroin addiction being the root. This means that when those other things are solved the addiction can usually solve itself so I’d say in a lot of cases a good support system could definitely go a long way to solving an addiction. Albeit I don’t agree w her other points
people wouldn’t have to steal to feed their habit or overdose on laced shit if you could simply buy a portion over the counter barrier free and fairly priced
So much of overdose etc is not having a regulated dose! Not to mention, I bought coke and it was fentanyl instead. Should have known to test, but learned the hardest lesson.
It’s the one time things don’t go right that you don’t make it back
I would hope that decent, mental health treatment would be the first option until drugs are decriminalized. You wouldn’t need drugs if people weren’t self-medicating.
That’s barely even an option for most people who aren’t struggling with drug problems.
It should be for everyone that needs or wants it.
If appealing to empathy worked for convincing the rich and lawmakers into helping the poor and miserable, there wouldn’t be (…as many) poor and miserable.
They’re too busy, uhmmm *checks notes* fighting abortion or some insanely and inherently evil shit like that
deleted by creator
You never hear about those who know how to properly use drugs because they blend in with non drug users. Nit that there are many of those as caffeine is one of the most used drugs anyway.
I smoke weed sometimes. I haven’t smoked in almost two years and was given some for free and two nuggets will last me a month because I make a bowl last several days. I use it to sleep or enjoy good more. If I don’t have any I don’t think about it.
I too enjoy good more, with or without weed.
As I’ve always said, stay in drugs, don’t do school and always, always listen to your grandparents!
Yea but you do hear of a few 20 something year olds who died from “sudden heart attack” “unexpectedly passed”
Do people keep annual statistics of how many people did suddenly?
don’t suffer any problems from it, and don’t do anyone any harm.
This right here is called denile. Nobody rocking some form of white powder is doing so without causing harm somewhere. Sure, maybe that’s the case because they are just getting started and their frequency of usage has yet to become problematic, but given time, the white powders will take over. As well, there are a ton of people who
just enjoy drugswill swear up and down that they are in control and don’t have a problem, so again, denile.I’m pro decriminalization because it reduces harm but your comment is pure ignorance.
EDIT Just to clarify, my comment is not aimed at weed
EDIT 2 add shrooms to the not so harmful list
EDIT 3 I find it ironic that someone else posted this today: https://lemmy.world/post/7421035
*denial
*The Nile
*Bill Nyle
deleted by creator
Are shrooms a white powder? Pretty sure I clearly singled out white powders. I guess other parts of my comment might make it sound like an absolute blanket statement, but I shouldn’t have to reiterate that condition in every sentence.
deleted by creator
… People are shot weekly where I live over spats about weed and money. The southern cartels deal heavily in weed and murder swaths of people over it still. Hell Avocadoes led to hundreds-thousands of deaths in Mexico over the last five years.
Let’s not pretend that the drugs that make people money are the ones that fuel deaths.
It’s why we need to legalize all drugs, and decriminalize all drugs.
The amount of denial pot smokers have is ridiculous yes, but don’t give them an out like they aren’t contributing their drop of water into that overflowing bucket.
Great points, and I agree with legalization as well as decriminalization (despite only listing the latter in my first comment).
My edit regarding weed was simply because it just doesn’t belong in the same category as “the white powders”, which are destructive on a whole other level.
My down votes are indicative of the denial that too many drug users exhibit.
My down votes are indicative of the denial that too many drug users exhibit.
The irony is that you’re in denial that you simply made a bad take.
We should have learnt this by now - that chastising people with a bad take, even by something seemingly as innocuous as mass downvoting, actually tends to cause people to hang on to their beliefs harder because they’re being attacked for those very beliefs. It causes them to harden and somehow paradoxically confirms they were right all along. Our brains do unintuitive things quite often!
Nobody bothered to give any arguments against it tough…?
Since ppl obviously disagree with your view - here is some anectodal counter evidence:
When i was younger and went out often, I had a close friend group of like-minded ppl. In that group we experimented with different drugs. The most common one was probably MDMA in pill form, but we had things that where in powder, liquid, crystal and organic form. For new drugs we read up and usually had a trip sitter, all our stuff went through the lab - so we knew what actually was in there. In our high time, we had a trip every weekend and a comming down with some weed. I know for a fact that we did not harm anyone else. Did we harm our bodies? Possibly, but for sure less than smoking tobacco for the same period and frequency would have. Did we develop an addiction? I can’t speak for the others, but i know i did not. And those i am still in contact with have a clean and organized life now.
It will be extremely easy for you, to simply say ‘denial’ and not take in what i wrote. But trust me when i say i know what an addiction is. During my time in the military i developed an addiction to alcohol. I am fine now, but i know how it is to be dependent on a substance and i know how it is to look back at it.
Thanks for the great response
all our stuff went through the lab - so we knew what actually was in there.
I too was friends with an organic chemist. We were luckier than most to have that kind of insight available
My down votes are indicative of the denial that too many drug users exhibit.
No, they aren’t. Most people think your arguments are wrong and awful.
I originally posted a response listing my experiences with a variety of drugs, but then I saw you’re just calling everyone who disagrees with you a drug user in “denile” so I figure there’s really no point, is there? You clearly don’t want a discussion unless it’s in agreement with you. This is your immovable soapbox and no ones reality is gonna change your ignorant stance. So enjoy yelling at the clouds I guess.
Also, it is denial. It’s not spelled like the dad joke. “Why didn’t the Egyptian know he was drowning?” “He was in De-Nile”
Removed by mod
Isn’t there also a chemical element to it that makes trying to get a heroin-addict to go cold turkey kinda like shaming a diabetic for using insulin?
Yes. The withdrawal symptoms are real and physical.
I have a nerve disorder and the original neurologist kept trying different opiates on me (they didn’t work). I never got mentally addicted, but there must have been some physical addiction because I definitely had withdrawal symptoms when I switched to another type of medication and it was not a pleasant few days. I can’t imagine what it must be like for people with serious heroin or fentanyl addictions.
Probably about the same. They they take low doses usually, only a a subset of users go on to take heroic doses and or IV. That’s what makes it so dangerous, you are yo-yoing dosage trying to find that sweet spot, all it takes is one too large of a dose with a few drinks and you are night night forever, or choke on your own spit or vomit.
“I eat because I’m unhappy. I’m unhappy because I eat.” - fat bastard from Austin powers.
Also me.
This is anecdotal, but I think it’s a good qualitative example. When I was marginally employed I was routinely drinking, smoking, and getting high. Well as routinely as I could afford. Even when I was homeless, first thing I did when I scored $40 for a day’s work was go and buy a tallboy and a pack of cigarettes.
Fast forward, and now I have a fancy WFH job with good bennies and a future, and I no longer drink, smoke, or do drugs. Part of that is age, but it’s not like I didn’t want to quit those things. It’s just that it got easier when life got more relaxing, and I could just chill out rather than try to escape.
But it would be cooler if you did
Hahaha undeniably. But I’m more about the cozycore vibe these days.
Oh gross I just looked up what cozycore is, and that is not my vibe. My vibe is more, like, actually cozy
I got banned from /r/cozyplaces, because I pointed out that every picture posted was of some room with a tall ceiling, tons of huge windows, cold light throughout, a concrete floor, and some sparse plant, and that it seemed like the point of the sub was to gaslight people about the meaning of the word “cozy”.
It’s not necessarily your life, but your mind. You could be living in objectively sweet circumstances, but coping with past traumas via addiction. The problem is that by trying to hide from your problems, they just get worse and bigger, which turns into a self-reinforcing cycle of addiction. Breaking that cycle takes an extreme amount of courage and sustained determination.
Just gotta keep feeling the pain, even though you’ve got the means to end it right there. You have to be willing and able to deal with whatever it is that makes you recoil and reach for the pipe whenever it enters your mind.
I’ve had a few days where I decided to stay sober and I just spend hours and hours thinking about all the mistakes I’ve made and how I can’t unmake them and how twisted up my social responses are and then there’s calculation about whether to kill myself and I’m like “fuck this” and grab the pipe, and then I just feel comfortable, and play some video games, and fuck around on reddit, and eat a huge amount of food to make me pass out.
At work it’s not so bad because Im always busy but at home it’s either high or hell of my own making.
Aye
Author of this tweet (I dunno maybe it is copypasta) is a trip.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari
Example: Hari is gay. He wrote an article claiming he had sex with men who were members of homophobic far-right and Islamist groups, stating that with drugs and “a lot of flattery” he “coaxed” a nineteen year old Muslim into "wild gay sex.
So he admitted to raping a probably-closeted gay man?
Sounds like, yeah
Here is what he wrote. Judge for yourself.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/dec/13/gayrights.thefarright?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Now, I doubt that many of these blokes were shagging each other, not least because, for religious reasons, none of them drink, so it was hard to lower their inhibitions. But after a long smoke and a lot of flattery, Mo was fairly easily coaxed. Of course, he seemed a bit hung-up about it afterwards. Since I was nearing the end of my undercover gig, I tried to persuade him that perhaps gay people weren’t evil, especially in light of the fact that he had just been having wild gay sex.
Slam-cut to LA and Russ. He was a harder nut to crack, but at least he could (and did) drink an awful lot of vodka. I’ll spare you the details: suffice it to say that Germany did successfully invade Poland. So what’s the moral of this tale? Part of me wants to trumpet it as a victory for gay rights. Even in the most intense centres of homophobia and gay-bashing, you can still find the odd bit of sodomy. We are, quite literally, everywhere, including (literally) inside homophobes. Part of me is a bit ashamed - in the cold light of day, both Russ and Mo have some pretty repulsive views. But there’s something uniquely rewarding about bagging a homophobe. In fact, I reckon that this should be the new path for the gay rights movement. Every gay reader of the Guardian should henceforth dedicate himself to seducing every gay-basher they can find. Our response to hatred shouldn’t be to hate back; it should be to give them a jolly good seeing-to.
Yeah but I’m not sure if this is even real. It sounds like something from The Onion if it were more R-rated:
On September 11 2001, the smoke and the fumes and the blood were barely settled on Manhattan when I was delegated to go undercover at the Finsbury Park mosque, the most hardline in Britain. Fortunately, I have always found Islam fascinating, and I was able to bluff my way in fairly easily - stuff about needing to rally around to keep up the assault on America at this time, and so on.
But this mosque (which is, by the way, totally atypical of Britain’s overwhelmingly decent and moderate Muslim population) was hardcore. The blokes were swapping videotapes with titles like Jihad tactics: how to kill and kill again.
You guys I think Hari might be gay
I’d agree but feel the need to highlight a difference between chemical addiction and addiction for the sake of escapism. Though both can absolutely be present at the same time. I am neither a psychologist or neurologist, but have some experience. I’ve largely dealt with addiction in the forms of self harm, as well as an addiction to sugar.
Self harm absolutely was about escapism. And the addiction was not chemical other than the brain creating a need for it in order to soothe negative thoughts and feelings (anxiety, trauma, stress, sadness etc…).
Sugar on the other hand was a mix of escapism and chemical addiction. When I felt worse I naturally craved more sugar. But even when I felt glad or elated I would still crave it.
I can’t speak on addiction to drugs like heroin, opiates, cocaine, among others. But in my experience of addiction to self harm and sugar. Punishment would only end up deepening the addiction as I sought to escape the punishment through addiction as well. Even if that punishment was self-inflicted.
I appreciate your response and hope you’re well.
The language keeps evolving, but this is also described as the difference between substance use/abuse/dependance. Anyone that falls into any of those categories could identify as having an addiction, but each have different issues to be addressed when seeking recovery.
I’ve worked in substance use disorder treatment and have some challenges of my own but anecdotally, I think the starting point is almost always escapism whether it’s the persons circumstances or mental health. Occasionally it’s living a certain lifestyle or use being normalized by key people in a person’s life. Dependence comes later, and adds extra layers of things to overcome, as you described.
IMO one of the worst aspects of the punishment is when people who are in the stages of use/abuse are punished (whether criminally or otherwise), and after the punishment their circumstances are even worse.
Those who weren’t dependent before are headed right into the revolving door of hospitalization, jail, rehab, outpatient so on and so on.
We should do better.
IMO the chemical addiction just acts as a mechanism to enact the escapism. Like with a cigarette I could shake my brain like an etch a sketch, switching to a new mental scene, by blasting it with dopamine.
Also, when I was out of cigarettes I had a mission: get cigarettes.
That chemical dependency thing just adds a new magnet to the mental filings so they align less along the lines of feeling bad about my life.
A drug habit is like a video game for your emotions. You assign yourself this arbitrary quest, and a whole set of missions and adventures come out of it, and it kills the time.
Glad someone points out the difference! I did not have to deal with psychological addiction, but during military I developed a (luckily mild) physical/chemical addiction to alcohol.
I did not notice during service. But when i was out, i noticed my body craving for it. This could take many forms like sleeplessness or general physical unsettling. In my experience the physical addiction is less about external pain, but the body giving you pain if it is missing that substance, it got too much used to.
I had a traumatizing amount of pain once. I mean it fried me from the inside and I screamed for three days. Doctors wouldn’t help because they figured I was faking it to get high. Not continual screaming, but screaming for a couple hours at a go, maybe five times a day. And I don’t mean yelling and begging I mean screaming. No words, just incoherent, uncontrollable vocalization from the level of pain.
When I came out of that I was fucking fried. The slightest hiccup in my routine would send me into a panic attack. Any exercise would send me into an anxious state for like a week, full of insomnia, symptoms sort of like dehydration despite me being hydrated, super tense muscles, headaches, foggy mind, irritable as all hell.
It was the worst in the few days after this pain ended. It’s now been four years and I’m like 80% recovered. I still can’t do a heavy workout without re-activating the insomnia, the muscle tension, the anxiety and feeling close to overwhelm. Basically if I do a heavy workout the adrenaline spikes and just stays up and my heart rate doesn’t come down it’s bad.
But not nearly as bad as it was the first few days. Like I’ll give an example. I made a pair of waffles in the toaster. No clean fork. There was a dirty fork in the living room that I could grab and clean. But I’d have to soak it. Meanwhile the waffle’s getting cold.
Panic attack. That situation sent me cowering against the wall on the kitchen floor, crying and wincing and trying to unwind but unable to.
Later that particular day, I went for a drink with my friend. And — I’ve never done this before — when I ordered my beer I just said “and a shot of vodka”, just the cheapest they had. I downed that shot then brought the beer back to my table.
And boy, when that vodka warmth was spreading into my chest, it was the most perfect thing for those nerves I had.
It made me realize why certain guys look at booze that way. I realized that if a guy’s got those nerves, from wherever it is he’s been, he experiences alcohol in a totally different way.
It was like watching a hot water hose melt the ice off a windshield, the way that vodka cut through it all. Just perfect. Don’t know how else to describe it.
It’s not like that any more, at least on a daily basis.
I hope you’ve found a place that makes you feel safe and cozy here.
That sounds like a truly horrible experience to have happen. I’m glad to hear you’re starting to recover, though that is often exhausting on its own.
I avoided alcohol for most of my life simply because I feared becoming addicted to it. Now that I’m in a somewhat better place I’ve carefully joined in on social drinking. And I can definitely see how easily alcohol could become an addiction. It can free your nerves and worries. Not to mention it is widely socially acceptable to drink, as compared to other drugs or behavior.
Hot water melting the ice of a windshield is such a good metaphor. It really gives an understanding of how easy it is to turn to the “easy” solution. Rather than spending 5 minutes scraping the ice off your windshield.
I would say self-harm is akin to restarting your car because it’s making that weird noise again. It temporarily removes the noise but it never fixes the actual issue. So eventually the noise gets worse and you restart more and more until your car gives up and dies.
So it removed the worry and thinking? Is that what your pointing at with the car’s noise? Or more of a visceral feeling of anxiety or some other emotion maybe?
It temporarily relieves the anxiety and emotion. The pain and shock from an injury supercedes the stress and emotion giving you temporary reprieve. If you have a tooth ache and stub your toe. In that monent the tooth ache won’t hurt as much because the brain cannot process both equally.
I hope that makes sense.
I was hoping for a more subjective description of what it did for you.
Sorry, kind of a personal question and you don’t have to answer. Very much a getting to know you question so if that’s too private I understand.
It’s not too private at all. I often times find talking about it helps relieve some of that stigma.
To give a better understanding, the background to my anxiety and other issues come from bullying, a verbally abusive father, social isolation, and being transgender (male to female). All of this caused me chronic depression from a very early age. And a lot of issues in dealing with stress, anxiety, stigma & emotion.
When any if not all of those emotions become too much I have no healthy way of dealing with it. I can’t sleep, constantly fidget, extreme negative emotions and thoughts, withdraw myself, & and become suicidal (assuming I have no relief for some time). The way that self-harm comes into this is that it sort of… releases some of those issues. I’m not 100% sure of how it actually works. But when my self-harm was very active, often times the only way to sleep was to cut myself. I couldn’t sleep while all those thoughts and emotions ceaselessly raced through my head.
Of course it wasn’t just for sleep. When things became too much to bare I cut myself then too simply to relieve it. One of the biggest problems with self-harm is how it easily and quickly escalates. Just like how 1 cigarette a day won’t be enough for a chain smoker, you build up a kind of tolerance. You cut more and cut deeper.
Warning graphic stuff!
hidden or nsfw stuff
I started with simple epidermis or dermis cuts. This depth of cuts are what you might get from day to day life and the scars will eventually fade given 6 months to a year. Then it quickly progressed into open fat cuts (hypodermis), the kind you definitely go to hospital to get stitched or stapled (I didn’t). And at one time I ended up with a fascia cut which is really bad.
The above picture only shows to hypodermis. But underneath you have fascia followed by muscle and then bone. The escalation to hypodermis happened in only 2-3 months. And as such my left leg is entirely covered in thick scars at this point.
In essence self-harm acted as a release valve for everything that was bottled up inside me, whatever it may be.
Sorry for the long post. I hope I was able to answer your question :)
One of the best books I’ve read on drugs is by him. If you read Chasing the Scream you’ll truly understand this post.
Or, hear me out, help those consuming them get out of that addiction and crush those who prey on them by selling drugs. They are the actual evil ones here.
On the one hand, you’re right. However, I would say most societies have already drawn that conclusion and have attempted to do what you say we should do. Can you think of any place that has been successful? Certainly not the US.
The US hasn’t succeeded because they haven’t really done shit. They will help people detox if they have insurance, or people can go to a state-run facility, which in most cases are horribly depressing jail-like environments. In those places they sell you the cure, which is a program developed by a guy in the 1930s based on an evangelical Christian program for sobriety. I’m sure you can guess but this program requires a belief in God to become sober and live a fulfilling life. You might hear about so called amazing treatment facilities but those places cost thousands of dollars a day, push the same “cure”, and good luck getting insurance to pay for it.
I agree with your assessment of the US. The point I’m really trying to make is that I haven’t seen a successful implementation of this approach in any free country, even though most countries buy into the premise of going after drug dealers. Whether it fails because the implementation is all wrong or human failings, the fact that nobody has been able to get it right makes me wonder if it’s time to conclude that we aren’t going to solve it this way.
Portugal
I think you misread. I was saying that the idea of solving the drug problem by going after the supply is flawed because it’s never been successful.
Legalize them. Consistent supply means clear perception of the situation, control over dosing.
To heal from trauma a person must willingly face the thing that traumatized them. Unwilling encounter only deepens the trauma. If a person is addicted because reality has traumatized them, forcing them back against it doesn’t help. They need to have control, and it has to be their own choice to stop.
With a legal market, a person could ramp themselves down off heroin by reducing their dose 1% per day. They can fiddle with it, roll it around in their fingers, poke and prod at their habit and take it apart.
When supply is sporadic, the instinct that develops is to always be drawn, to always say yes. When supply is sporadic it mixes the thrill of the hunt with the drug. You score just by getting some, and you celebrate the win by taking it.
It’s a whole thing that doesn’t exist when you can always walk down the street to the 7-Eleven and grab a six pack of Horse Girls with your reese’s peanut butter cups and gatorade, and pop a couple of them while you watch the game.
