It also has a con college element, as I could probably start a relatively powerful gang with a few phone calls now if I set my mind to it.
I bet.
Around what time did you begin to feel what you now consider the most profound changes?
Can you describe them?
Exactly.
Youll get to the dark either way though. A junkie simply finds it in the filthy death he knows he is heading for, a psychonaut must turn beyond any morals and end up mad or in philosophy.
(Allow me some rhetorical leeway here, its drugs)
Yes, it simply alters the brain, forging neural pathways, habits of association, which are deeply below consciousness levels.
Surely, but I contend that this lies beyond the “madness” I reference. Of course I am talking about shamanic madness, not psychosis. Madness as in the loss of continuity of consciousness, which allows nature to reprogram herself.
Im not so sure if we are really more addicted necessarily to life than to what the drug gives - I take drug-suicides, around a few of which Ive unfortunately grown up, to be reaching for - here it comes - value, which seems to such people to be lost in life - or fundamentally negative in life - and in some figment of the hearts mind, some hope they reach for.
Whether theres any value there in reality doesn’t change the fact that their valuing passed over the requirements of life and reached for something beyond.
Thats why I say the valuing is key, ontological ground, and the value is either there or not, is a projection.
Will and representation.
I go by that book.
Did you read it?
Schopenhauer is good for raw souls.
The fever I had while I read it - only one other writer ever managed that. WF Hermans, a Netherlandic Existentialist, -Nietzschean novelist. I could never put his books down, I read them in a fever, not remembering specific content, just a state of very explicit existence. Like sitting on a large hot rock in a shadowless summer for hours. "Nooit Meer Slapen ", never sleep again.
Singular, monadic existence.
Beyond logic, far beyond telos. Happiness as a form of madness, fever, hallucination - happiness as a knowing of the deceptive mechanisms of which ones mind is made - a refusal to trust them, yet a complete acceptance of them.
No, one must become greater.
Drugs are means to self-overcoming. One can overcome the self by becoming ruined, but also by becoming a … destroyer, of sorts.
I do agree in this: what separates a party drug user, 90% of humanity, from an addict, is the religiosity of the experience. I too think it frivolous to use substances which for all but a blink of human existence were used only by high priests and considered actually above magic to have a nice laugh and a pleasant situation.
Human has been billions of years in the making, and seeing more of it is not a fucking Friday night with friends. Says I.
And, but yet, the destruction is there. You either want it, or not. You either consider your own life more important than proving a point, or not. But you do, because this whole thread is about that.
But addicts are one stubborn motherfucker.
A destroyer of stupidity and presumption, on a basic level.
A destroyer of sicknesses. The sicknesses of all our ignorant humans debilitations, which people call their minds. How I cringe at their regarding themselves as capable of reason -
the cold plasma of assumptions they skate around on must be cracked, if I am to have any fun.
Destroyer of wicked shit on a next level. The Soul as I know it is at the centre of all time at once, time frozen in lighting, violent, resplendent wheel of fortune. We can only create-onward.
I bit in a chickens spine once eating in a tapas bar, I looked at the thing I just took from mouth and saw the intricacy, the work of a billion years. Thats when I realized. What Im trying to tell you without forcing it, as it must be in your most experienced minds regions already presenting itself to you in some form, or it can not exist. I say: Learn not to discard these experienced regions; it is not they who produce the yearning. It is our love of what they produce, and the feeling that they are closed off from us without drugs, that produce the yearning.
Drugs are a shortcut to the soul, plain and simple. Mostly we aren’t worthy of the soul when we take drugs, and so we are lowered to ourselves to make this apparent. We aren’t worthy of it because we think it is a sin, a party-vice. But what we are doing is noble, manly. Before cocaine became illegal, all the scientific community were using it, now mostly financial elites do and cocaine and capital, thus crime and capital, practically coincide.
DNA was figured out on Acid, which is now illegal. Whoever made it illegal committed one of the gravest crimes ever in our species. No one has a prerogative to look down on drug-use, but the drug user himself - and of course he inevitably does. It is a humbling experience to be able to change ones disposition so completely by some simple cheap means. It puts things in perspective.
Ok, fine. Ha! you’re skeptical.
Wow! That’s incredibly generous of you. Thank you! And you pretend not to care. 
I agree. The current therapist I’m seeing is not an ex-addict (as far as I know), but I’m seeing her more for the ADD/SCT, and in that respect, she’s not only a specialist, but she has it. It would be ideal if I could find a therapist in both, but that’s an extremely rare bread. Know any recovering addicts and ADD specialists qualified to be therapists?
(For what it’s worth, I did try to see a drug addiction therapist early in my journey, but he rejected me because he thought I had already past the point where I need help; he said his specialty was helping those who are currently struggling with drug/alcohol addiction.)
(Also for what it’s worth, this addiction therapist encouraged me NOT to lump recreational drugs in the same category as prescription drugs; “taking anti-depressants is not the same as dropping acid,” he said; so even with these specialists, they see the importance of prescription drugs.)
Agreed with reservations, but do note: recovering addicts serving as therapists also study psychology and want to be heroes.
Exactly! It doesn’t have the capacity for it.
You mean me personally?
Prepare to be called arrogant again. I’m not alienated from my family. I have really good relations with my children, better now than ever. I don’t get to see them all the time because my ex and I are separated, but I would hardly call that alienated. I have no doubt the separation had a lot to do with my drug/alcohol habbits (even though my ex never said it), but it was mutual. She had her own fair share of problems that I couldn’t deal with. And even though I consider myself recovered now, on the right track with my life, I wouldn’t take her back (no offense to her). I’ve enjoy life more as a bachelor than as a married man, so I call that an improvement. And as far as the losing jobs thing, I explicitely said in my posts that this happened during my 1 and a half years away from drugs and alcohol, and that it is obvious to me now that the main culprit is ADD/SCT. (Did you read any of what I wrote?). Same with the feeling of emptiness and hopelessness… that remains even while off the drugs and alcohol and has been shown to be a symptom of SCT. So yeah, it does come across as pretty arrogant that you think you know that these are caused by the drugs and alcohol. Project much?
(Unless, of course, you meant this in general, not me specifically.)
What it asks is immediate gratification. This might be drugs, but it’s alive and well even in those who have never done drugs or alcohol. The reason children throw tantrums when we tell them to eat their vegetable before they get dessert is because they have a well developed primative brain long before they develop a rational brain. It’s literally asking for the immediate gratification of dessert without earning it by eating vegetables. This is why I felt it important to be specific in what the Theoden/Wormtongue metaphor stood for: it represents neurological structures in the brain, structures which don’t only react to cravings for drugs and alcohol. But yes, drugs and alcohol will definitely be one of the triggers if one has a long history of use.
I do what? This thread is a tool to help bolt down the commitment. Announcing a commitment at the top of a hill so all can hear it is a well known psychological tool for fortifying that commitment. Not sure what you meant.
BTW Pedro, you’re an impulsive poster. Nothing wrong with that, but I feel bulldozed by your posts. I can’t keep up. I won’t let this be a distraction, so I’m not going to respond to everything you post.
Fixed Cross, I’ll try to carry on our conversation, but like I said to Pedro, I don’t want this to be a distraction (I’ve got a job interview to prepare for tomorrow). So I may or a may not, but I did read and appreciate your posts.
These first Friday nights were the SHIT though, the first year.
the second year some of them felt a little dragging.
the third year my friend threw himself out of the window and landed right there in the garden where we always smoked and had eaten shrooms the once.
Not so nice! As Borat would say.
Wow. Yeah, there is some hard truth here.
Proving a point to oneself mainly I suppose - this never had to do, whereas my dead friends all really very much did.
I already knew it was all bullshit except who and what you care about so much that you’ll do your best on their account.
That is the nature of the beast. How do you say “one must be a toreador to overcome the stubborn motherfucker”? Tengo que eres un toreador para … matar … el caracho puta de toro?
Merry X-Mas Gib!
Gib - as I read Pezers posts, I realize Im talking about another type of addiction, I have never been in scenes of amphetamines.
My posts can serve as some abstract context, not as concrete advice. Okay.
I can mostly congratulate you on your accomplishment. 1.5 years is a lot longer than you set out for.
Keep it up, Id say. You know cellular structure is only replaced after 7 years. That does include braincells too, or information to that extent was published a few years ago.
What’s the difference between my 5 consecutive short and medium posts, and you guys’s interminable single posts that take up half a page?
Anyway. I have said my peiece. I am somewhat glad at the warm reception, I must be improving somehow.
Also, I never said I didn’t care. You said that. Remember?
But I care as a fellow addict, not as someone with any particular personal attachment to you. So maybe that’s what you meant.
And,
There are no ex-addicts. Like there are no ex-diabetics. What it is.
“I’m an ex schitzophrenic.”
No.
Gib didn’t seem to value mine much, where as I was writing I had the impression it would be otherwise. Annoying but educational. Addiction isn’t philosophic. Just some drugs offer some philosophic ground.
Except the diabetic doesn’t have the power to not act on it.
Unless you want to equate an insulin regime with the will to stay clean in contradiction of ones natural inclinations.
No, that too is written in the stars.
Addiction is self-valuing in terms of self-expansion.
Nothing can replace any drug except a stronger drug, in all other cases, the self-valuing is constrained and needs to value its being-constrained in terms of itself - it must say “I am an addict” to no longer be an addict in action. Like “I am a hothead” doesn’t mean you absolutely need to knock the crap out of someone every now and then, you just realize oh wait Im rather hot-headed, lets have a glass of iced tea and play some races.
Discipline replaces the drug.
But one must get joy out of discipline - one must have some tyrannical tendencies toward oneself.
Yeah, that’s a pretty fair appraisal.
“Except the diabetic doesn’t have the power to not act on it.”
Except neither does the addict, really. This is why only an addict can be trusted to treat addicts. Only an addict understands this. Anybody else, no matter how well meaning, will always in the end consider it a thing about will power.
If an addict had a choice, they would choose drugs lol. The will power is fine. That’s not the problem.
It’s decidedly not about choosing not to. In asense, rehab is very Nietzschean. Freedom not to means shit. The Dwarf laughs at that. “Why not?” he knowingly whispers. Freedom to is what rehab gives.
In experiments where mice are hooked on morphine, they eventually stop eating alltogether and just go for the morphine all the time. And die. Does that sound like power not to to you?
But even with such a clear example, you would not understand it. Only an addict would. And that’s fine, we don’t ask you to. But that’s why addicts are treated like shit.
Can you choose not to take a shit?
Experiments indicate the urge to do drugs in an addict is 10x stronger than the urge to drink way-ter.
To explain how some, like Gib, ALLEGEDLY spend up to 1 1/2 dry, my therapist used to sy: yeah but a smoker can go on an 8 hour flight and not even feel a craving. Because he knows, as soon as that bitch lands, he’s smoking half a pack right there.
But he’s already decided, he’s not plotting to or considering, he already in his mind is set upon, to do amphetamines (that’s what ADD medication is).
Some people are genetically wired in such a way as that they can spend a whole year doing morphine every day and, even though they will have physical withdrawal after, they will be fine quitting. It just, their system isn’t affected. Something in how genes make a brain in addicts makes it so that as soon as it understands that it can be at once flooded with that amount of neurotransmitters, nothing less will do. Literally. You understand this philosophically. But not… physically. Treatment has been developed to deal with this, but I won’t go into it. There’s no cheating treatment.
Here’s the kicker, and in some place deep down all addicts know this: it is not that your life is fucked so you do drugs. It is that you make sure your life is fucked so that you can do drugs. The drugs are the deciding element. Drugs are simply more important. There is not even a vaguely close second.
We are children of the Earf.