Shana introduced me to Phillip K. Dick
when we were 16, he was part of the packaged world we collapsed into the
oncoming reality in lettered mirror fragments and window shards. Shana was a beautiful writer with true
fascination of works she left me to roll in, my therapeutic sandbox of her
cyberventure. I don’t know how she’d
feel about any of this, but I wish she were still here. So would anyone else
who had the opportunity of knowing her grace, which she truly had more than I
ever could.
From Philip K Dick, a Scanner
Darkly:
"Some people who were punished
entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they
were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of
them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play
anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling
but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time,
and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could
not believe it. "
"Drug misuse is not a disease,
it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You
would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people
begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular
life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are
dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a
memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human
existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all
takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash
and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if
the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime."
In recent years it’s been trendy to
call addiction a disease in the medical world and in popular PC language. People I talk to are usually more forgiving of
the subject, there’s the occasional fascist in denial who advocates for sterilization
of addicts and I have been the occasional goose shit on a document reflecting my functionality that somehow is interpreted as more human than anyone else who hasn't had the opportunity to check off the boxes no one can fit in any more or less than me, as we overflow those boxes filled with all the history, love and pain of a family riddled with addiction. In
spite of the presence of these disturbing attitudes, at least the public is
more likely to acknowledge how much harder it is for some people to stay away
due to genetic influence or upbringing. While it’s called a disease a
particular person’s problem is usually kept quiet in social circles, or behind
closed doors. My peers talk about
illnesses in general with varying degrees of discomfort. It is a painful subject, but addiction is
treated with a discomfort of not only sadness but shame. For many this
discretion is important, without it people could lose their jobs and
opportunities further perpetuating an addiction. This silence shouts the underlying truth;
people don’t want to lose respect and their better friends don’t want to
compromise their reputation with gossip and that fear is justified. No matter how much people call it a disease
their eyes usually look downward on addiction with quite a different assessment
of the situation. Even most addicts feel
vexed with guilt and confusion over how much responsibility to take for their
habit. They have to choose to stop, voluntarily, but it’s not like any choice
they’ve ever made and most of the time the difficulty of assessment leaves them
using the drug but in an absentminded way, like going to the bathroom. It’s technically voluntary movement, but even
the thought to go to the bathroom is instigated by involuntary sensory motor
systems that we can not directly control.
We can only estimate our body’s reactions to conscious decisions we made
hours in advance about what to consume.
When we choose to go to the bathroom our involuntary movements, our
voluntarily controlled movements and the links between the two in our gut and
spinal cord mingle for a brief moment of synchronicity between choice and
being, intensity and relaxation. This is in many ways exactly like doing a
drug. Except what if walking out into
traffic was what you absent mindedly did when you got up in the middle of the
night half dazed. You’re at a party and
you aren’t enjoying the conversation, you need an excuse to leave and the most
socially acceptable way to bow out of the situation is simply to walk out into
traffic. Your body tells your mind in
the morning and at night to make a “voluntary” choice to walk out into traffic,
then after every big meal, eventually at every social gathering. The quotes blanket the word “voluntary”
because if you don’t do it you’ll become incompetent, sick, and obsessed with
the idea of doing it. Eventually it falls
into its own category of bodily function right next to eating and sleeping, you
go to work and do what you do almost without questioning the entire reason is
so that you can seamlessly perpetuate these functions. In your mind there are all these other things
happening, but really you wouldn’t be doing any of it unless it were ultimately
leading up to the point you could walk out into traffic. Unlike bodily functions which ensure
survival, your mind has tricked you into treating your rapid demise as a
function that will insure survival.
Does this make it a disease? A
summarized dictionary definition of disease:
‘a disorder of structure or
function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific
signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a
direct result of physical injury.’
By those standards yes, it is a
disease. The closest analogy to any
disease not routed in conscious behavior I would compare it to is HIV or an
autoimmune disease. It’s like an
autoimmune disease of our mind’s ability gage our basic comfort level. Our bodies kill themselves by tricking our
body into believing it’s an act of protection even though many of the proteins
and cells are reacting negatively to the deterioration. The comparison is contentious because we
cannot choose to stop HIV at any given moment. On the other hand it’s much
harder to choose to turn down a drug than it is to hold your pee at a reception,
but it is possible.
While it may technically be a
disease by medical definitions, the knowledge that it is even possible to cure
it with conscious change makes the label a white lie. A soft word pillow to cushion the blow of the
bullet that is medical students on clinical rounds joking about the poor stupid
delusional crack head behind the hospital curtain who can clearly hear them. That bullet that is family members and
friends not saying anything to anyone, comforting them and encouraging them as
they deteriorate until they finally give up on them. It is the bullet of fundraising events and
initiatives to stop crime and reduce poverty, that will not employ or host
people who have a criminal drug record. The bullet has words etched in the side
of it “But you could stop, you’re the reason this is
happening to you.”
Thing is the only way to voluntarily
walk into traffic without a severe death wish is to not think about it, to
treat it like taking a shit, it’s just something you do. We all do this everyday when we get in our
car. In most places in the US car collisions
are the leading cause of accidental death.
Yet it is so normalized we are taught it’s a mark of independence when
we receive our license. When we have enough credit to owe car and insurance
companies a third of our income every month we have achieved a respectable
status amongst peers and are trusted with more responsibilty. We are trained to believe that polluting the
earth and putting ourselves at the greatest risk for a sudden violent death is
an efficient, practical, and responsible method to arrive and leave from
destinations for any reason. Everyone
who is afraid of getting shot or mugged in their car is much more likely to die
from unintended collision at the next intersection. We know all of this, but we all do it every
day anyway. The only thing in New Orleans that kills more people than car
accidents every day is heroin. It is currently the leading cause of accidental death
in the city according to the New Orleans DEA, and that’s only referring to
opioids specifically. The amount of deaths directly caused by or related to
other drug addictions pile on top of that sorry statistic burying so many
beautiful individuals.
“It is not a choice, it is a
disease” “It is a disease, not a choice.” Neither are sound statements, the
conflicting premises are not mutually exclusive. We all have genetics for diseases, but with
most diseases you acquire after birth just having a gene for a disease does not
guarantee the disease will manifest. You
have to choose to smoke a pack a day and eat fried chicken. You have to choose
to not exercise. Sure, smoking and fried
chicken are common knowledge examples, but I only gave three amongst hundreds
of known and thousands of unknown much more subtle risks for any given illness.
With any of the risks, it’s usually impossible to predict with accuracy how
much it will impact a particular individual as predicted. We all have heard stories about the man in
the Cuban cigar shop who smoked for the last 40 years of his long life eating
only hamburgers and didn’t die until he was over 100. Or the woman who did yoga
every morning, ate her vegetables, didn’t do drugs, and died of cervical cancer
at 35. These factors are so
overwhelming, individualized, and idiosyncratic that while we may be
‘voluntarily’ at risk for diseases all the time, we don’t say it’s somebody’s
fault when they get cancer, or diabetes, or lung disease. Furthermore, once they have it, there are
life style choices that can encourage remission or prolong life, but it doesn’t
seem as cut and dry as the answer that addicts have. The cure should be
obvious. You do the drug, you get addicted, you stop the drug. you recover, so
why is it the leading cause of accidental death?
Science traces the lie of our minds
obtusely like a finger painting of thought.
The genetic predisposition for addiction is passed down through
generations with increasing frequency as more addiction occurs. Even without a family history, this cycle can
begin independently with the introduction of a drug addiction to a single
person. Over time they’re genetic
expression changes to accommodate their thought patterns, their descendents are
thereafter more likely to experience addiction.
The more addicts in a family, the more likely proteins are expressed
which heighten reactions within the ‘reward center of the brain’ in off-spring. The ‘reward center’ commonly referred to in
pop psychology articles is in reference to an area called the Nucleus Accumbens
largely responsible for simple positive and negative reinforcement. A nucleus is a high density cluster of
nervous system cells or neurotransmitters.
The Nucleus Accumbens is located in the Amygdala, the largest localized neural
mediator of emotional states. The most
well-known neurotransmitter involved with positive feelings or reward in this
area is dopamine. The release of dopamine in the Nucleus Accumbens and the
corresponding relay systems to other areas of the brain correspond to
satisfaction.
This system produces conscious
signals that encourage us to eat tasty food, to do pleasurable activities, and
generally encourages people to crave things they enjoy. Usually it will have useful responses
encouraging emotionally satisfying experiences.
The heightened physical stimulation from sex, sugar, an adrenaline rush,
or a drug will also be mediated through this area. The intensity of positive feelings per a
given amount of a time is a physical phenomena.
Like any chemical reaction the solute or chemical component per volume
of the entire chemical solution in a given time frame effects the intensity of
a reaction. The more you get at once, the
higher the high and lower the low. Following the onset of relatively intense
positive feelings, the return to baseline will feel unusually depressing. In a
controlled environment this experience of reward is quantitative. In reality the complexity of our conscious
associations, our environment, and our context makes happiness or sadness much
more than a scale you can read off of in a doctor’s office. Every withdrawal from positive reinforcement,
whether it’s somebody saying something nice to you or a drug will instigate
cravings to do whatever it is that makes you feel good, but that all depends on
who you are and everything else about that moment.
Within your own particular
neurological boundaries consciousness can alter the use of the internal stores
of neurotransmitters and the electrical pathways they activate. Everyone has a unique ability in a particular
moment to excite or inhibit any positive feelings from a experience through dictating
conscious awareness. The more positive
feelings associated with an experience under these conscious directives the more these pathways are activated in
response to similar stimuli (components of stimulation). The more the pathways
are activated, the more available they become.
It requires less energy to make the same decision in the future, and
more energy to make a different one.
This is true of the brain in general with any decision, with repeated excitatory
stimuli of a positive experience this pattern is even more profound. In an
addict the physical framework supporting this conscious pattern becomes nearly
automated and produces desires and cravings in ways that are difficult to
compare to any other human activity.
With mild rewards that produce a
steady slow positive reinforcement it’s easier to make a decision that weighs
in all the factors we would ideally assess in order to maintain our health. Ice
cream isn’t great for us, yet it tastes delicious and the sugar gives us a rush
of positive feelings. It’s usually
relatively easy for anyone who isn’t a binge eater to stop eating before they get
sick. This ease is possible only when the positive feelings produced by the
reward center are meak enough to be potentially offset by conflicting signals
from other areas. For example, the hypothalamus can relay info on bodily
function telling you to stop eating because you’re full, or from the medulla to
stop drinking because you’re nauseated. We can offset instant reward with
frontal lobe activity relaying any necessary judgment that different activity
is necessary, that’s how we know when we can’t eat and sit on the toilet all
day because we have to pay taxes or go to work.
In contrast experiences like sex or
an adrenaline rush produce an extreme and sudden positive experience with so
much strong initial electrochemical activity it can temporarily overwhelm
someone. It is immediately more difficult to weigh judgment of repeating the
activity against any conflicting input. We
have to use more energy to maintain awareness of physical health, memories, inhibitive
judgement, or any other manner of inputs which would normally factor into our
judgment besides feelings of reward. The reward, and the subsequent craving as
it diminishes becomes the central focus of cognition.
When an external chemical synthetically
induces the same excitement as an experience, like heroin or sugar, the same
thing internally occurs as with a positive experience except for the return to base
line is in higher contrast to peak excitement.
The withdrawal from the experience is more painful, and the bodies ability to regenerate baseline is
less attainable. In most cases when we take
drugs that increase a neurotransmitter well above normal levels, the amount of
active receptors to bind that neurotransmitter diminish over time along with
the conscious effects they produce. The
body attempts to downregulate our ability to react to the chemical so that the
same dose produces weaker conscious awareness of its ingestion as we build a
tolerance. There is reduced subjective
response to the drug, but the ingested substance will continue to have the same
physical effects and risks with only a slightly altered effect compared with
the new user. The effects of cognitive deterioration, impaired perception and
motor activity, interrupted sleep, changes in glucose activity, and damage to digestive
organs continue even as the awareness of the drug’s effects subjectively diminish.
Experience and conscious decisions
are mitigated and somehow produced by neurotransmitters in ways we may never
fully understand, but they also activate neurotransmitters and direct them in
ways we can observe both subjectively and scientifically. Regardless of prior chemical
ingestion or experience, there is some variably independent component of our
being that can change the ways that we react to the reward center. Anyone who
has seen someone successfully quit a highly addictive drug against all odds
knows this to be true, human choice can prevail. Withdraw rates from dopamine,
the plasticity of the cells within the nucleus accumbens area, and the
corresponding impact on a persons’ judgement can change throughout a
lifetime, before and after drug abuse. That
being said I believe we only have so many attainable choices in life and these
options are narrowed and platformed by our history and its effect on our
biology. People who have experienced addiction of any kind will have a
heightened sensitivity to their reward center.
It is easier for them to respond to a physically pleasurable activity with
an immediate sense of craving that ignores potential risks, conflicting bodily
feedback, and higher cognitive decision making.
This is reflected biologically in people who are genetically predisposed
to addiction, they are more likely to rapidly down and upregulate receptors in
response to a drug. This biological
disposition can produce a rapid tolerance, heightened cravings, intensified
euphoria, and increased plasticity of the reward center. Furthermore, people
from a genetic history of addiction are likely to have been raised in an
environment where drug use is normalized as a coping mechanism in day to day
life.
Many recovery programs are based on
the foundation that once a person is an addict they are always an addict, the structural
and functional cognitive changes are part of an incurable disease. I think this is a necessary mindset for many
addicts to have. the word disease seems often intentionally misinterpreted in
such a way that removes any responsibility from the subject. While I don’t believe that any person is
wholly independent from their illness, it’s never fair to blame someone with an
illness to an extent that would inhibit recovery or suggest they deserved to be
ill. No one intends to get sick, but
some people have the foresight not to make out with everyone at the company
Christmas party during flu season. Who
could blame the folks that do? After all some folks refuse to kiss anyone under
any mistletoe, and they’re the first to catch the flu. The pay off for being attentive, careful, and
even unpleasant is often ambiguous or negligible. It would seem intuitively less ambiguous
with drug addiction. You have to choose
to take the first hit, the first drink, and then you have to choose to continue
doing it. While this may be true I’ve
never heard of someone intending to be a drug addict, they simply lacked foresight
in the face of ambiguous consequences in a game with much more at stake than
work tension and a common cold.
With the stakes so much higher, why
would anyone risk it? Why do gamblers go all in after having the win of their
life? What if choosing to take the first hit wasn’t like the choice to make out
at the Christmas party, it was more like choosing to go to the bathroom to
avoid an awkward conversation. It seems
subtle, socially acceptable, utterly normalized. After you take the leak than you’ve realized
what you actually did was walk out into traffic, but it was bafflingly
difficult to perceive this event until you’d completed it. Only moments ago at the party it had seemed
much less ridiculous than kissing your coworker, it was simply a completely
normalized and socially acceptable reaction, a bodily function. What if, when you tried to stop choosing to
go to the bathroom, knowing you’d end up in traffic, everyone around you
continued to do it all the time. Eventually
all you have to do all day is go to the bathroom, until the point of stabbing
abdominal pain and all of your coworkers are happily taking group trips asking
what your problem is.
Somewhere in your conscious mind you
know that you’re not the problem, that they’re not just taking a leak, they’re walking
in to traffic, but you have to know this with an abstract awareness and ignore
that it seems as negligible and transient a risk as getting in your car in the
morning. You might die if you get in
your car, in fact there’s a higher likelihood that you’ll die doing this than
at any other point in the day. There are
other options, you can find something to do or somewhere to live that doesn’t
require a commute, you could ride your bike.
Ok, so, why not try? That would involve an entire change of your
lifestyle, braving the weather on a bike
over a non biking road, the risk of getting in a bike accident, and doing so
many other things that seem so economically and logistically unpheasable that
the very thought can quickly pass.
‘No, it’s ok, I’ll just drive to work
today, I won’t die. I can control it.’
‘I’ll just walk into traffic. Maybe tomorrow I’ll figure something out, but
today I’m just going to walk into traffic this one last time, I can dodge the
cars’
Drug addiction is a choice and
it is a disease; but it is not a normal choice, nor is it like any other
disease. Unlike other diseases its complications are not entirely dependent on
the internal mechanisms that instigate and maintain it, a component of the
disease is a choice. Unlike other choices, the choice to get
healthier requires the addict to expend energy and employ will power that many
will never subjectively know. It is a
disease of its own terrifying category, a disease that attacks our ability to
make a choice, and then self perpetuates that choice. It’s almost as if drugs produce their own
sentience, hijacking our consciousness like a virus trying to prolong its life
cycle in our minds. There are as many
medications and caretaking techniques available for addiction as there are for
any other disease, but that nearly impossible choice is the only sour medicine
that will ensure survival of the addict. Given care, if they’re making those hard
earned choices an addict will survive, but they will not be cured. In order to
cure an addiction, a person must restructure their entire conscious
relationship to their reward system.
One drug is only that: a button, the
trigger accelerating a vicious clock, but we all look at that same clock to
check the time and it was certainly ticking before the trigger was pulled. The
heart of addiction is not in the drug but in the societal and internal
structures of decision making that create the choice to take it in the first
place. Those downward glances at doctor’s
offices and family gatherings, they see the stop button and want to tear it out
of the walls of the addict’s minds in frustration. It’s just one choice! One button!
Why can’t we just get people to push it or to not push it? Thing is, it was never just one button, the
internal clock is wired to an internal bomb, you have to cut the wiring just so
or the entirety of our western societies’ faulty notions of pleasure and pain
tear the patient, eventually the hospital, the city, and finally the country
limb from limb.
You take away the drug just right,
slowly release the trigger, the bomb loaded with 4Cs and all of the internal
mechanisms are still there waiting for a new stop button.
The fatality of addiction is the
oncoming traffic you walk into, but the disease is the desire to walk into it
in the first place. It is the inability
to gage danger in the face of a mental goldmine of pleasure. HIV is a disease, but it’s not what kills
people, it just mames their bodies ability to detect and cope with danger. We can not cure people of HIV yet, and many
claim addiction can not be cured either, but at least death looks preventable
on clinician paperwork if you can get people to live with their perpetual intense
desire to ignore dysfunctional systems of reward that may or may not lead to
likely or certain death.
If an addict does choose to stop
using their drugs of choice, they’re usually inclined to adopt a new addictive
substance or habit, getting a new stop button then quickly succumbing to the
same habits they knew previously. The
varying levels of intensity of the new stop button might make their behavioral
adaptation to the disease more or less apparent. They may switch from alcohol to amphatamines,
or simply to AA meetings, television, coffee and cigarettes, exercise,
televangelism. These activities are so
grossly disparate in their nature, many of which don’t entangle external
chemicals. Sure the addict may be at
less risk for sudden death with compulsive AA attendance or coffee benders than
if they choose to smoke meth everytime they want a drink… but the underlying
mind set of their addiction, their subservience to their mentality, their handi
cap, and their own persistent belief in their lack of agency is what truly
holds the disease next to the ticking of their heart. It is a disease that effects many people who
have never even used narcotics.
Addiction is embedded in the mental framework of western culture, the
extreme physiological and neurological manifestations of which are biologically
expressed in addiction. The disease of addiction is born from a systemic mentality
very much on the same coin that diabetes has physically manifested within the
extreme negligence of a society that increased average sugar intake by at least
300% over the course of a few centuries, fabricating a need alongside a fabricated dependence on the slave trade economy to those willing to sell their souls to sell others.
We are in a culture that commends a
feeling of satisfaction so great it comprehends no obstacles, not even
death. Freedom is not just a sacrifice of security, it is over coming electrical short cuts, short circuits- automated judgments. The opposite of freedom is addiction, forfeiting willpower to the lie that I'm not good enough telling others to tell me just to make sure I remember it lest I almost forgive myself. The phenomenon of addiction is neither mutually inclusive or exclusive with the actual existence of any externally manufactured and targeted chemical force. Blaming an addict or a drug undermines not only the internal emotional conflict an addict scientifically experiences, but it also white washes the entire drug war, the ill fate of those who graduated from the DARE program, and the amount of money private prison systems make off of the American peoples in the corporation of justice that's simply a word costume for contemporary race and class based slavery with a xenophobic swirl. It's a well versed money making machine, but how often do more sober individuals stay on that soap box when deciding how to handle 'that guy' at a party. How much compassion do I give myself or anyone else when we are ostracized, self isolated, and finally made to feel like a victim to chemicals, systemetized discombobulation, disorientation, and romances of desirable disengagement. We believe there is a love that
is worth self harm, there is a positive feeling that is worth risking illness,
there is a state of mind that is worth increasing likely foul behavior and
imminent deterioration. The romantic
notions of self destruction, and the concept that their antithesis necessitates
the apathy and blind conformity of the bourgeoisie is, in lew of any possible
measurement likely the greatest predictor of addiction. It's walking in to traffic as if it would properly overwhelm my aversion to a company Christmas Party full of horny zombies. There are physical structures in humans to
support these notions unto death once you simply introduce any ingredient that
is as harmful as it is enjoyable. These physical structures are succeeding and
developing from generation to generation through conscious acceptance of our
own demise in the face of self loathing hedonism. The truest momentary pleasure
is usually depicted as the thrill of near death, I’d love to instead celebrate the
synchronicity of odds with my self awareness. I want to be happily surprised with myself as much as I want to know you feel it too. Self awareness is neither
bourgeoisie, nor self destructive. It is
an awareness I want to make sexy, satisfying and truly rewarding within my
ability to see all of the outcomes and have them overwhelm me. Wishful theoretical rambles but I must do it with so much more than a wish and yet so much less, or I will wash away in a sea with more dangerous litter than poison. MOOP Miscellaneous objects out of place. I refuse to become moop, a tragic trace burners pick up so they can keep partying in obscenely treacherous environments on some huburous distortion of hallucinagenic invention. I want it to be a slow stead self awareness growth, a tumor that infects me with joy and bleeds electrifying beauty from my pours like electron dances between ours and yours. True stability without the material guise of my honky goose femme glitter shit CV or candid status updates featuring only two checkboxes for my job and my lover. It is stability not security, in fact this
awareness comes at the greatest risk of breaking all concepts of sanity. It is so painful, arduous, and overwhelming
that I go through life and accept so much unnecessary pain avoiding this
awareness like so many others. Many believe it's too much to
compute, to change, but it as simple as any condescending med school student
would think refusal of a crack pipe is.
It’s a simple no, I won’t do it, I will be the change. No he can’t objectify me, no I don’t have to
get married, no I don’t have to work in a cubicle, no I don’t need to drive
that car to work, no I don’t have to look cool and tattooed, no I don’t have to
bite the bullet, no… I don’t have to sacrifice my well being, my life, to this coping
platform laid down before me, and the only escape is so much more than a
narcotic, it’s an entirely new way of being.
It is a life that I have to figure out in America as a community with you, with all of us,
within communities, and build communities doing it regardless of our histories
with a particular narcotic or obsession or self reflection. I have to pay the bills, you have to feed your children, we have to go to school, we must stay at this job, but fuck we can take anything within our power away as long as we find something more beautiful to replace it. Sometimes you have to swim against the current to even know it's direction let alone be carried by it's flow. Death is never worth the thrill, love is never worth death, ideas are
never worth self mutiliation even in our eternal paradox. My truest romance and spontanaeity is
knowledge, awareness, skilled decision making.
Responsibility is bravery, it is not cowardice and defaults. The moment when I reward myself with
candy, with spending money for making money, with a night of black out drunk
damage for aceing a test, with doing X amount of drugs for wethering a sour relationship,
these are the moments that lay bricks on a highway with unlabeled exits. The
fast lane and the middle lane are all still on this highway that we have built
with no speed limit, no signage, and a death wish masked in the desire to ‘get
there’. Burn it down with me, walk through our fear of melting into intentional mutation, when we see each other with no road or destination or journey beyond each other and ourselves then I will truly be
cured.Chill the fuck out and there's no great glass elevator to chase only levels to comprehend in all directions where our wits begin.
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