I am building a new addiction site

Having found a very good deal on hosting services, I have taken the step of getting a new domain (a couple actually) and am in the process of building an addiction web site with forums. The domain is talkingaddiction.org and I have rather ambitious plans for the site. I would like to utilize the main page as a clearing house for information and have (ideally original) articles by addiction professionals, doctors and researchers posted a couple times a week.

I will also be creating a forum for people whose lives are affected by substance use disorders and people who suspect their lives are affected by substance use disorders - their own or someone else's. This is where I could possibly use a little help. I am committed to making this a space that is completely safe for people who are afraid of others finding out they are spending time at an addiction forum. This means that rather than just making it possible for users to post anon to the outside world, I want to provide assurance that administrators and moderator don't even have access to information that could identify forum members. This means not only providing means for creating accounts that hide all personal identifiers from everyone, but also hides their ip address and such.

I am honestly not to sure about how to make that happen, though I will be talking to the tech people who work for the host about it. I am using Drupal content manager, running on an apache server. I will also need to be able to keep track of the amount of traffic, even if I cannot keep track of any identifying information about the traffic.

The other thing that I am hoping to accomplish is the development of a forum for addiction professionals, researchers who study substances of abuse and MDs. Possibly even creating a whole different front page - or at least a feed (possibly keyword filtered for user preference) that identifies recent items. I know that this is less likely to come together - at the very least I expect it to be rather difficult to get people who are as busy as everyone who fits the requirements to actually take the time to make it happen. But I have long felt that communication between people doing relevant research and the people who actually deal with people with substance use disorders could be exceedingly valuable. And I think that MDs - especially those who work ERs, could also get a lot out of communication with addiction professionals. For that matter, it might be appropriate to invite emergency service providers into the discussion.

The other thing I am hoping someone might be able to help me with - or even possibly just create, is a news feeder for picking up addiction related news. Something that can be set to filter content from sites that turn out to provide inaccurate information.

Finally, I am also looking for people who have a bit of spare time, who could help as moderators. I have the tentative commitment of one person and would like to shore things up rather solidly. As the site isn't even up yet, I don't expect to need much help initially. But I am hoping to build things up rather quickly and would like to make sure that everything is covered. It really shouldn't be all that complicated. There are few enough restrictions that there really shouldn't be too much trouble. I am trying to set things up so that users can kill file other forum members if they run into conflict and also will be asking users to self flag posts that contain profanity, so that users who wish to avoid that can do so easily. Basically moderators would mainly deal with posts that should have been self flagged and weren't and personal threats. The only other issue that may be very complicated is users who set up multiple accounts so as to continue harassing users who have killfiled them - or who have been banned for refusing to respect the very few rules that will be in place.

Other than that, I expect to open the site within the next ten days. It will probably need some tweaking here and there - I have never set up a site before and have little help. But we will be ready to start talking by May 2nd at the latest. And unlike my last, rather blundered attempt at creating an addiction community (for smokers), I think this will work out much better. I think the biggest problem with that was the attempt to create what should have been a forum in a blog format.

I will also note that there will be no advertising on the site - I am rather up in the air about a donation button. I would like to recoup my costs if possible, but I am not terribly comfortable with creating any pressure for anyone who wants to use the site. I am going to keep the site as politically neutral as possible, not offering any "official" Talking Addiction position on anything except for the advocacy for more humane treatment of people dealing with addiction or addictive behaviors and people with other mental problems. I want this site to be a very comfortable and safe place for people to come and talk - including people who have yet to admit or who aren't really sure if they really have a problem.

Finally - a couple more important points; Sobriety is not a requirement for membership - or even for posting. And membership is not restricted to substance based addictions. There are all manner of behaviors that qualify as addictions and Talking Addiction will not discriminate. This is to be a site for people who are suffering from addictions and/or substance use disorders and anyone who either has (or thinks they might) those sorts of problems or knows someone who does will be welcome.

BikeMonkey and Equivalence of Oppression (update)

A certain lovely someone made the point to me that I wasn't particularly clear on a point that I am quite definitely not trying to claim that the bigotry aimed at atheists is like the persecution of the Jews. I am not at all. My entire point was that I have had to deal with some very intense feelings regarding this particular issue. Feelings that are completely valid.

PalMD wrote a rather upsetting post the other day, one that resonated with me on one level and made me spitting fucking angry on another. He finally felt the need to respond to Garrison Keillor's vile diatribe in Salon, trying to put non-Christians in their place in regards to celebrating x-mas. Pal comes from a very different perspective on this than I do, one that I cannot possibly understand, not being Jewish myself. His feelings on this resonated with me not because my experience is the same as his, but because Keillor's sentiments have been thrown in my face as well - sometimes by people who were once my friends and who despite my anger towards them and their bigotry, people I still care about. But that was not my first comment there - my first comment there was an expression of all out rage at something besides Christmas that Keillor ripped from Pal.

I am a musician and a midwesterner raised in Michigan - the same state that Pal hails from. I am not and never have been primarily into bluegrass, but bluegrass and hybrid mountain folk are nevertheless a part of my musical experience - a rather big part. Some of the best times I have had playing music, have been as part of a relatively large crowd of people hanging out and playing bluegrass and folk. Because of Michigan's automotive history and the importation of a hell of a lot of workers from parts of Appalachia, Tennessee and Kentucky, there is a huge presence of this sort of music here. There are professional and semiprofessional bluegrass and hybrid folk players, as well as dulcimer makers who can build instruments to rival the best instrument makers from the aforementioned areas. And I have had the pleasure of playing with a lot of these folks, as often as not, while sitting around a fire.

Here is the thing about bluegrass and folk - no one gives two shits what labels someone wears. If you want to listen and enjoy, you are more than welcome any time. If you want to join in, most folks don't care if you can't carry a tune to save your life, much less care what labels you wear. What matters is that you love music, love the community being fostered right then and there and want to take part - whether by listening or joining right in. That is what bluegrass and mountain music is all about - that is the point of it. Traditionally, folk music of any sort in most cultures has been a great leveler - a chance for everyone in a village or group to be equalized and enjoy themselves freely.

So when I read Pal's heartfelt sorrow at feeling that was taken from him, I got fucking angry as hell - far more angry than I did about Keillor's overt x-mas commentary. And I expressed my indignant anger at the notion that some motherfucker could take something so fundamentally open and inclusive away from anyone, much less someone I like. I was not invalidating Pal's feelings, I was expressing my own - and to some extent expressing my anger and refusal to let motherfuckers like Keillor "put me in my place" as well. Nowhere was I suggesting that Pal's feeling weren't valid or that he should just be able to ignore the bigotry and pretend it doesn't matter. Hell, I wasn't even suggesting that I can do that. Not letting not only people like Keillor or right wing blowhards or people who used to be my friend "put me in my place" doesn't mean it doesn't matter or effect me - obviously it does, rather fundamentally even. I just happen to have a different attitude than Pal does about how to handle it from there - in large part because I have a very different experience from Pal's.

But BikeMonkey, in his infinite wisdom decided that I needed to be put in my place, much like Keillor does - though in a different context. BM doesn't think that my feelings about this topic are valid, because my experience isn't Pal's and my overwhelming privilege means I should just shut the fuck up and pretend it doesn't matter. BM decided that there was some sort of equivalence being made, rather than what actually was happening and assumed he knows all about my great fucking privilege in the face of religious expression. I am going to address this idiot notion of equivalence first, then talk a little about my extreme privilege and experience with bigotry.

There is no equivalence between my experience and Pal's. None. Because I don't actually have a window into Pal's head, I cannot say for sure what he feels, but I do have his words to go by and can assume that this whole situation had a rather profound affect on him. Pal has a lifetime history of being Jewish that feeds his experience of Keillor's diatribe that I do not have and he has feelings that have nothing to do with Keillor that impact what he is feeling about it now. And we have to add to that that he was raised by people who are Jewish and who probably faced even more antisemitic bigotry than he has faced - something that probably had a pretty profound effect on his worldview. There is absolutely no equivalence to our experience, because his is not mine - I didn't grow up with the anything like what he grew up with.

That does not mean that my feelings are somehow less valid than Pal's. They are different - very different. They may not even have the depth of his own, though that is impossible for anyone to judge, because no one has a window into anyone else's head. I don't know what Pal's feelings are or what feeds them - I only know my own and what feeds them.

I am an atheist. I am not an atheist because I wanted to be an atheist, I am an atheist because I finally was unable to perpetuate my faith in the face of so very much evidence to contradict everything I Believed. I feel free now, like a huge burden has gone from me - do not get me wrong - in many ways I feel much better for finally shedding my faith. But that has come only after a nearly twenty year struggle to cling desperately to that faith. I described a great deal of that experience and the abusive nature of my brainwashing here, here, here and a bit here, so I am not going to really go into the abusive nature of my relationship with my faith now - suffice to say, if you do not want to click the links, that like a lot of people I spent a very long time in a very abusive relationship with religion. I will highlight one aspect of that abuse though, because it speaks well to my immense privilege.

Before I do, I do want to be clear that I am pretty cognizant of my privilege. I am privileged and I have benefited from it my whole life. But privilege is relative - it is always relative.

One of the worst abuses my relationship with religion fostered, was my attitude about my neurological issues. At an early age I was taught that I did not have neurological problems - or if I did, it was totally a matter of demonic activity being at the heart of it. I was taught by my fundie mother that it was totally a matter of wholly surrendering myself to her god and following his plan for my life. That if I just believed enough - prayed enough - figured out and accepted her god's plan for my life, I would no longer have any of these problems. On the other hand, I was told by my atheist father that these neurological issues are just as excuse others were making for me and that if I just damned well did as I was told - if I buckled down, I would be ok.

Being a hardcore little fundamentalist myself, this god person was the obvious choice. Not that it mattered, whether my faith was too weak or my will to weak, my inability to overcome my neurological issues without help was entirely my seven year old responsibility. There was therapy in there when I was in middle school, but with a therapist ill equipped to help me, especially given that I was truly convinced by my parents that it was all on my head. Faith or will, it was all up to me and me alone. It wasn't until my entire world shattered around me as a teen, that I changed my view on that - unfortunately it only changed for the worse.

I decided then to embrace my mental illness and in exactly those words. I decided that just as my god obviously wanted me to have sex and use drugs - else he wouldn't have sent the opportunities for both my way so often - I became convinced that this is the way I was made, the way my brain was made and I should just accept it as it was. I decided that the only way I could ever be successful, was if I truly accepted who and what I was, because when my world shattered I didn't stop believing. My beliefs changed to be sure - they changed quite fundamentally. But the Faith was still there - the absolute Belief was still there. Not only that, but it was something that I described as Christian, though I explored all sorts of other beliefs.

I no longer denied that I had atypical neurology, but I didn't believe that I should try to change it - in spite of using a hell of a lot of drugs that did just that. As I learned more and understood more about the world around me and even myself, my feelings about my brain evolved. I accepted eventually that I really would probably do better with help, but help wasn't available and recreational drugs were. But still there was that faith - though even that had evolved further and further.

I should note that I was quite often subject to bigotry from other Christians, because I was not the right sort of Christian and as a rather serious substance abuser and horrendous slut, I obviously did not live their version of a Christian lifestyle. My advocacy for glt rights also counted hard against me, as did my acceptance of evolution.

There were times when I might have let it go, but for the simple stark terror I had of hell and the possibility of hell. That, combined with this belief that there were otherwise unexplainable interventions in my life - the biggest being that I was still alive and relatively coherent. And it was a great comfort when I moved to a new city where I literally had two friends before I moved there. My partner and I had split and I was pretty much bereft of anything approaching the support network that I had developed and fostered back in Lansing. I went to the church that my two friends in Portland were attending and was embraced into a wonderful new family.

Until it all fell apart - until I could no longer reconcile or justify any of it. Then I was rejected by this family I had been part of. I was rejected by people who were an important part of my life and the life of my eldest child - not just in the context of faith, but in a very holistic fashion. I was rejected and my child faced rejection for things he had no comprehension of, by people who were as important to him as they were to me. And ever since, I have either endured rejection from these people or pressure to just read this book or listen to that speaker - and it would all make sense again. Comments that they are still praying for me and have every confidence I will one day return to their god's grace.

And while it is certainly not all, many people I care about find it downright offensive that I would infringe on their holidays and any other aspect of their culture.

Being back in the midwest has brought on other problems. Friends who were my friends in spite of my identifying as a Christian - friends who had been rejected by most people who carry that label, but accepted me because I did not have come to reject me for rejecting any spiritual or religious beliefs altogether. To be sure, I still have many friends - including many gay and transgendered friends. But I have lost as many as I still have.

And I still have to make a lot of decisions about whether or not to admit to being an atheist to whom. There is a very common theme in the midwest (and many places) that people don't care what your spiritual or religious beliefs might be - they just take exception to people who don't believe in any sort of higher power.

I have been soundly rejected by most of my community of friends and loved ones. Was rejected at a time when I was dealing with the trauma of finally getting free of my struggle with religion. As abusive as it was, like many such relationships it was nevertheless a fundamentally important part of my life. It is over and I am free of it, but I am not free of it's influence. I am not only dealing with the hole left by faith, I am dealing with the hole left by many people I love - exacerbated by the bigotry of people I love, the bigotry of strangers aside. And while people can't just look at me and see that I am an atheist, I sometimes have to sit quiet and pretend I am not.

And it is only in the last year, while dealing with this rejection and pain, that I am finally actually getting help for my neurological issues and managing to repair the severe damage those problems have created in my life and in the lives of my children. At thirty three, I am finally getting an education in hopes of pulling myself and my children out of the poverty and near poverty that has been their lot in life.

So no, my experience is not PalMD's experience. His experience may even plumb greater depths than my own, I can only speak for myself on that count. All I can say is that my experience with religious bigotry has had a very painful and profound affect on not only myself, but my eldest son as well. There is no equivalency because Pal's experience and mine are very different and because neither of us could begin to know the depth of suffering the other feels to compare. But just because there is no equivalence, does not make either of our experiences or the feelings fostered by those experiences less valid than the other.

Dangerous Tropes: "I Can Do and Be Anything I Want"

Most of my generation was raised on this trite bit of nonsense and a lot of us really believe it. "You can be anything you want to be." "You can do anything you want to do, if you really work at it." "Where there's a will, there's a way." "I've got high hopes..."

Human beings are extremely versatile and resilient. We are very capable of being a great many things, every one of us. Nearly everyone has a variety of skills to draw from and a variety of innate intellectual talents with which to develop those skills. But my innate intellectual talents are not universal, neither are yours. An artist may not have the raw analytical talent necessary for experimental design. A scientist may not have the engineering talents necessary for affecting repairs on a car or their home. An engineer may not have the abstract creative capacity needed to write poetry, or a good novel. While we humans are versatile, we are not, any of us, infinitely capable of doing absolutely anything that might strike our fancy. And not everyone has the physical capacity to be this sort of athlete or that.

Now this may grate against the social conditioning of many people who grew up with the feel good tropes of the seventies and eighties, a legacy that still haunts many of our schools today. I am sure that the claim that we cannot, in point of fact, be whatever we might want to be is offensive to some. Having grown up with it, it goes dead against my own socialization to express it. There is a rather big problem though - it's true. We are not all the same and we do not all have the same abilities. About the best that can be said, is that most of us are rather drawn to follow our innate abilities - to do what we are good at.

The problem is that when we happen to pick on something that we just don't have the talent for, we often feel that our inability to succeed is a moral failing. That we just didn't try hard enough. It is so firmly ingrained into our psyche that we often cannot comprehend, cannot accept that there is any reason except our own laziness or insufficient will that we could fail. Even when reality is pointed out, there is often a part of us that truly believes our failure was a moral deficiency on our part. I mean come on, everybody knows that if you want it enough, you can totally make it happen. Except when you can't. At which point it is all your fault, for not wanting it desperately enough.

There is a very serious consequence to this mentality, when we try something and fail. Because we perceive that failure as a moral failing, it becomes rather easy to decide that we just don't want to try anymore - especially if we fail more than once. Conditioning can be crippling, even to people who have never shown signs of neurological disorders. Losing faith in oneself do very absolutely can and sometimes does break people. People commit suicide or slip into severe depression for a lot less than perceiving themselves a complete failure, unable manage that mythical, "what I wanted to be."

Then there is the very dangerous cousin, "you just need to think your way out of it, think your way past it." Like many people with neurological disorders, I have heard this one numerous times in my life, from many different people. Bad enough to hear it from family or friends who really don't understand or accept problems they cannot see. I would love to see damn near every psychotherapist who utters those words, or words to that effect, stripped of their licenses. Should they manage to kill a client with that kind of bullshit, I would love to see them prosecuted for it - and telling a severely depressed client, "you just need to think your way out of it," can be and sometimes is fatal.

Essentially telling someone who is severely depressed that it is their fault they are feeling this way, is a great way to send them into a major spiral. It is not uncommon for such spirals to bottom out into such despair that trying to continue to that next breath is inconceivable. And have no doubt, if you have never experienced it - there are times for a lot of people with neurological issues, especially those with mood disorders, when every breath is a struggle - a miserable eternity that you know it going to be repeated over...and over...and over again.

Loved ones do not make it any easier, when they try to push someone through this. It just isn't that simple. But when someone who is a licensed professional, someone who is trusted as a supposed expert on neurological issues does it, it is like telling them that this person who is trusting them to help them struggle through it is a failure. That it is their fault they are feeling like this. That if they really wanted to get better, they magically would be better. That is, to be clear, not likely what the therapist is trying to say. At least I should fucking hope not - though there are some ridiculously ignorant jackasses out there. But that is exactly what the client hears.

Lets think about getting past bullshit tropes that hurt people. Lets be realistic with our kids the way that the adults in the lives of my generation were not with us.

No, you can't be anything and everything you might want to be. You have innate talents that if you work hard to foster, will allow you to be good at what you really can do. If you work extra specially hard to foster those talents, you can even be great at what you do - though that doesn't always happen because life isn't always fair. And it is totally ok if you need some help along the way - all of us do really. It's just that some of us have brains that sometimes work against us. If you need medication to make it, that's ok. Getting cognitive therapy along with the meds is even better. No, you don't have to just think your way through it, because that is not how it works - unless you happen to have a very mild neurological issue.

Another thing to consider...A lot of substance abusers do so because they have failed too many times...

The Stigma of Addiction and other Mental Issues

The topic of stigma and mental problems has been coming up a lot for me lately, especially (of course) in relation to addiction.  So it was rather fortuitous to discover another great blog this morning and this post...

Sometimes I find it easy to forget about, because I have a lot of supportive, loving people in my life who just don't go in for stigma.  Couple that with having even less of a social life than usual this summer and I found myself in that comfortable place - the place where I just don't have to think about the destructive force of words - words that perpetuate shame.  It is that shame that really gets me fucking angry as hell.  I get enraged at the notion that a whole lot of people - some of whom I know - are so terribly ashamed of their own fucking brain.

To me, it is so obvious now...Feeling ashamed of the way one's brain works, is a lot like feeling ashamed of having brown eyes instead of blue, or red hair instead of blond.  It's obvious enough to me, that I forget sometimes that it is not so obvious to others.  It's obvious enough to me now, that I even forget sometimes that it wasn't always so obvious to me.  And even as obvious as it is, it is still easy enough to feel shame about who I have been and how I have behaved - because it is impossible to sort out where my neurochemical issues end and just plain old bad decision making begins.  It is especially hard, because everything I have done, all the bad decisions that I have made - all of it was at least influenced by the way my brain works.

How then, does one separate what one should be ashamed of, from what they should just accept as part of having neurological issues?

My short answer; one can't.  Trying to do so requires sorting through every factor that influences our decision making.  As a thought exercise, I would ask you to think for a moment, about the last book you read (or article).  I want you to consider everything that went into the decision to read it - don't just scratch the surface - dig deep into your motivations.  Follow the chain that brought you to the point where you wanted to read that book or article.  Where did your interest in the subject of that piece come from?  Where did the interest in whatever influenced you to get into that subject arise?  What else did you read, that indicated you might like to read this piece?  What influenced you to read that?  In short, try to untangle the skein of influences and motivations that brought you to the simple decision to read that book.  If it was a friend who recommended it, why do you trust their judgment?

If you just did as I asked, you probably got stuck rather close to the decision you made to read whatever it is you recently read.  Unless you took quite a bit of time and really went at it, you barely touched on a small fraction of everything that went into that very basic decision.  And even if you did take the time and focused, you quite likely still only scratched the surface - just a little deeper than some people would scratch.  Now think about this - we're just talking about the decision to read something.  How then does one sort out the decision to wander the country, sleeping outside as often as not?  How does one sort out the decisions to use virtually every mind altering substance set in front of them?  How does one sort out the decisions to have sex with virtually every woman and some men, who were willing and willing to use protection?  How does one sort the decisions that leaves one virtually homeless for more than five fucking years?  How does one sort the decisions to sell drugs, so one has drugs and sometimes a little money (and sometimes a lot of money)?  How does one sort the decisions to buy dope, instead of buying shoes that aren't literally falling apart at the seems?  How does one sort all the decisions that led to losing the roof over not only one's own head, but that of their family?

How does one sort the decisions that paint a picture of a reprehensible excuse for a human being?  How can such a person not be brutally ashamed of their own fucking brain - regardless of what actually influenced those decisions and how?

I wish there were a simple answer.  I really, really do, because it is hard being that person - hard not to be ashamed to the point of incapacitation.  It's hard not to extrapolate thirty some years of bad decisions into an inherent failure.  It is hard not to take those stigmas that are attatched to being mentally ill and accepting them as absolute truth.  But there is an excellent place to start - a place that not only helps the person who has made these decisions, but helps others as well.

Fighting these vile fucking stigmas is a very important place to start.  Being loud and proud of who and what one is, because as reprehensible as many of my decisions have been, I am also a good person on a great many levels.  And what makes me a good person, what fosters the positive - these factors are just as influenced by the way my brain works.  Just as the bad - the things that can foster shame - are influenced by the way my brain works, so are the positives.  The same chemistry that has seen me getting high on all manner of stupidity, has also seen me fostering my children's native intellect - communicating, reading and providing them with the absolute security of my absolute love for them.  The same chemistry that has seen me sleeping under bridges and in all manner of flops, has also seen me work feats of extreme beauty and grace in multi-million dollar homes.  The same chemistry that sees me lashing out in extremely harsh words, has also seen me develop a love for a wonderful women that transcends anything I ever thought anyone could feel in that context, let alone me.

Stigma is a trap.  Stigma is a prison of invisible bars that hold some people far more firmly than steel and concrete could ever manage.  Stigma does nothing but destroy and break further, people who are already broken and in need of healing.  Not broken because our brains are atypical, but because we haven't the tools to integrate our neurochemistry with the society in which we exist.  We are broken, because our society doesn't have a place for us - though that is slowly changing.  But regardless of what makes us broken, stigmas just exacerbate the problem - the brokeness - the shame.

I am not fond of asking for help - but I am not afraid to...Or to give something back for it.

Thanks to a very lovely commenter and dear friend, things are looking much better. If you really would like to help out, please call your local "sliding scale" clinic and ask about donating the funds for helping someone in your community get the prescriptions they need. Because I am far from alone with this problem and I can almost guarantee someone in your community could use the help...

We have run into a rather bad snag in my corner of the world. Overall things are rather sunshine and roses - at least as sunshine and rosy as they can be. But a somewhat nasty - scratch that - a very nasty problem has arisen. There is a need for medication, coupled with a very frightening lack of resources for meds for this month as possibly next. I think that next month is looking more promising and after that it is totally smooth sailing. But this month is most definitely fucked.

I really fucking hate asking for help, but I also dread the idea of school and honestly, life in general, moving backwards instead of forwards. I also want to be very clear that I absolutely do not want to impose on anyone who is in dire straights themselves. I am just hoping that some of you might have something to spare and would be willing to help out. It needn't be much, because I have come to gain a great many friends here on the intertubes and the need isn't that huge - though in relative terms, the cost of a months worth of wellbutrin - even the fucking generic, is rather high (for example, the combined cost of everything I take - sans my wellbutrin, is 1/5th the cost of my monthly scripts).

I also thought it would be fun to turn this into a something of a challenge - I will donate an hour of time, for every ten dollar increment towards the meds. I will grant that I was already intending to do some community volunteering, but I have simply been unable to form a solid plan for that. So if I actually get to my goal, I will commit to *52 hours over the next year, of **maintenance and repair to my local YWCA - who I understand can particularly use the help...

I am trying to figure out the whole fucking paypal thing and will probably leave the damned thing up, once I figure out how to actually get into my existing paypal account and how to post an icon. Until then, please email me if you can and want to help. And as an added bonus, I will be happy to hear what you might want me to write about and try to comply with requests as quickly as possible - which isn't to say it would necessarily happen quickly. I have a semester to finish up and boys coming hard on it's heels and......You get the picture...I am hopeful however, that the next semester will not be quite so brutal. It's a little heavier load, but in a regular, sixteen week semester, rather than this really short one I'm in now...

*above and beyond any other volunteering I am planning for - which admittedly is uncertain right now...

**Or whatever else they need done - as I understand that they also need donation pick-up help as well...

Skepticism and How the Internets Changed My Thinking

I think that I can pretty legitimately consider myself a skeptic now. I'm not really sure where or when it became a solid facet of who I am, but the other day in my Health and Wellness class I had a bit of an epiphany. I realized that where and when it happened are irrelevant - I really am a skeptic now. It happened like this...

I was sitting in class, taking my notes and generally doing what students are supposed to do, when I was stopped dead. My instructor for this class stated that nicotine - not smoking, not tobacco - nicotine will dramatically increase one's risk of heart disease. This wasn't stated with the caveat that scientists suspect this is the case, or that there is some evidence this may be the case. It was stated as an absolute and that absolute wasn't coming from my instructor, it came from the source material for the class. And the epiphany wasn't "now I can't simply trust that what I am being told in this class is the best understanding that we have, based on available evidence." It wasn't even "now I know that I can't trust that what I am being told in this class is the best understanding we have, based on available evidence, as apposed to assuming that what I am told in this class may be suspect." Because that was already how I have been approaching my education. Rather it was the realization that instead of my first thought being the former, it was the validation of my baseline skepticism and with that I realized that no matter how prone to credulity I am - to the point that I have often described myself as pathologically credulous, I am a skeptic now.

This is not to say that I am immune to the knee-jerk reaction that I have often had in the past, when I hear something that sounds good or comes from someone I trust and especially when it's something that I want to believe. I still have those momentary "this makes so much sense" kind of feelings pretty regularly. But instead of letting it go at that and getting on with my life, I don't just take it for gospel. If it is something that I care enough about to actually repeat, I do my best to make sure that it's accurate before I repeat it. At worse, I will repeat it with the caveat that I haven't verified this information yet - after all, I am not always able to verify something that may be relevant to people I care about. And of course it is always possible to verify something and still be wrong - I have done it and had the unpleasant task of then going back and admitting that I was wrong. I hate having to admit to mistakes, but instead of just pretending the mistake didn't happen, I just try very hard to make sure that I don't make mistakes. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that I'm not still occasionally prone to being a raging asshole, but I sincerely doubt that my experience on the internets is going to cure that any time soon.

Here's how it's come together for me...

More...

I've spent most of my life finding interesting and creative ways to deal with depression, bipolar and severe ADHD. Among them has been this tendency to construct fairly elaborate perceptions of reality, in my head. I haven't really gone into detail about this before and I think that now is probably a good time to really explain how this works - in part because I think that it is probably not all that uncommon in people who are prone to certain types of magical thinking. I know that it's not uncommon among people who are trying to manage affective mood disorders and/or severe ADHD without medication - hell, even with the meds it's hard to avoid.

When one's brain is constantly running at high speed - no stopping, no slowing - constant inundation of ideas, words, pictures and music, an unrelenting deluge - one starts to relish anything and everything that will slow it down. One of the best ways of doing this is to keep your mind distracted - make sure that it is so busy with something that it can't help but slow things down. One of the ways to keep the mind busy is reading - I read a lot as a child and I am a heavy reader as an adult. And when I read as a child - and even now on the rare moments I have to read fiction - I get completely immersed in what I'm reading. I can see the characters, hear them talking and just sort of float through the landscape that the story takes place in - a passive observer. Like watching tee vee would be if the action took place all around you in 3D...But that was not enough. I, like a lot of people like me, needed more. So I created my own perception of reality.

I was a Christian, when I was a child and my Faith became an integral part of my reality. I was quite able to make my reality quite pleasant. I made my god a god who loved and wanted to have everyone bask in his glory. There were rules and those rules meant that certain things needed to happen for people to be able to do that - so I became very adept at proselytizing. The consequences to the people around me were too grim if they didn't come to believe. I also was able to compartmentalize my perception of the people I interacted with as a separate entity from people I didn't. People I knew were People, while all those other folks were people, a group that included the sort of people who would unfortunately go to hell - people who committed crimes and did bad things - hypocritical things. Those folks only existed out there - none of the People in my life were like that. And within my reality, everything was either just, or when there were wrongs, those wrongs would be righted and justice would prevail. Justice had to prevail - every time, even if it might take awhile. And of course, I would be anything and everything I wanted to be someday. It didn't matter that I wanted to be many different people, where many different hats - I didn't just think - I knew that I would be all those things and more. This made things complicated, but complicated was good. My mind was plenty busy trying to sort out inherent and irreconcilable contradictions and things slowed down a bit - sometimes more than others. Inevitably, when things were moving too fast again, I would end up thinking about how a loving god could massacre so many people, or I would work on how I was going to be an artist, a bounty hunter, a pastor/theologian and work for the army - not to mention a dozen or so other things - all at once. Impossible my ass - I knew I would figure it all out with time. My god wouldn't make me this way, with these desires and abilities, if he didn't want me to use them - right?

After I was smacked in the face with massive hypocrisy and contradictions that I simply couldn't ignore and definitely couldn't process fast enough - that reality crumbled and I started forming a new reality. I became convinced that my god wanted me to have the sex - I wanted some and god provided a partner. I was also convinced that god wanted me to smoke cannabis - I want to get high? There's a friend with some weed. And I knew for sure that god wanted me to use hallucinogens - I mean he really, really wanted me to trip, trip balls and trip often. God totally made that clear the first time I took acid. Thus, with my gods blessing - his encouragement even, I embarked upon a remarkable journey of substance abuse, sex, music - anything and everything that would contribute to total sensory overload. Didn't matter that I was basically homeless, didn't eat everyday - I was alive and I was free to wander the world, playing music, getting fucked up and having copious amounts of the sex. Meanwhile, I needed to use even more of my brain to meet the challenge of a stream of brand new contradictions needing to be reconciled. And it worked. During most of my moments of sensory overload, I didn't even need to reconcile stuff and when I was pretty straight - there was plenty to keep my mind busy. Besides, if I wasn't engaged in sensory overload, I was usually seeking it, which also took a lot of brain power and energy.

And I got into woo. Way beyond the religious woo that I was inundated and really rather extraspecially nutty with. I became convinced that plants were probably a far superior form of the medications derived from them - it helped that that was pretty much the only medicine I had access to. Wildcrafting plants that can help with problems that I have was much easier than spending hours on end in the ER, which was the only other way I could get anything and even then, would be limited to the meds they could give me through the ER. I could have left it there, but didn't. Because the same folks who were so keen on telling me about various plants, were also keen on things like magical water with memory, energy healing, Ayurvedic medicines (my favorite containing a strip of silver foil I later learned was actually silver and lead), acupuncture, acupressure - pretty much if it was magical and mystical and wonderful - I was there baby! I wanted to believe the things that these folks had to say - especially when they could reasonably connect their woo to my cultural faith, Christianity. I can't begin to express how exciting it was when I discovered a group of hedonists like myself, who, like I did, believe that their god wants them to get high and screw. I wanted to believe, because it was just more cognitive dissonance with which to douse the flames of my brain.

Then something happened on the way to the lunatic fringe. I discovered these interesting websites called blogs. Instead of just reading things that validated the woo I was inundated with - leavened with the occasional article or book that contradicted it all, I was able to interact with people who had an interest in the things that I did - but who didn't buy into all the crap. And while I had some magnificently crazy ideas, I wasn't one of those folks who developed an inherent distrust of science based medicine or "big pharma." I have always had a fascination with science and also had a pretty fundamental understanding of what science is. I didn't buy into the woo assuming that scientists were totally mistaken - rather I just felt that they were probably a little too focused on the material world. I accepted most of what I knew science has to tell us about the material world. It's just that I was ignorant of what science really had to say about certain things and assumed that science was simply incapable of ascertaining what was happening in the immaterial world that I largely inhabited. But now I had the opportunity to engage with actual scientists, to learn what science has to say about many of the things that I believed. I was able to learn a great deal by simply asking the right questions and there were a lot of great people who were willing to answer my questions.

Now anyone who knows me will assure you that I am not the most humble of people. There are probably one or two people out there who would go as far as to say that I'm actually a little bit on the arrogant side. I would be lying if I said that I haven't been this way for a very long time. But I am one for mostly being careful about my arrogance. I am only arrogant about things that I am very certain of - like I said, I really hate apologizing or otherwise admitting I was wrong, so I try very hard to be right. When I first discovered the blogs, I was pretty damned arrogant about things like creating music, repairing houses and my understanding of the human mind. I also was pretty arrogant about my understanding of Faith and a few religions. This meant that I was very keen on mostly paying attention to what people who knew a lot more than I did, had to say about a lot of topics in which I was sorely misguided. And I read the things they suggested I read, because evidence is an important key to ensuring that what one is being told is true. Or as true as we can best ascertain it to be.

I am pretty damned arrogant about a lot more these days. I am arrogant about a lot more, because I am confident that when I make an assertion, it is based on the best evidence I have available to me. My level of confidence in any assertion I make, correlates directly with my confidence in the evidence that supports it. Whatever my initial reaction to things that others assert to me is irrelevant. It's what I do with that information after that's important and what I do with that information is why I am a skeptic now.

Given my penchant for psychology and my rather vast experience with a wide variety of magical thinking, I am going to write about magical thinking fairly regularly. I tend to think that there is some value in understanding why people engage in certain behaviors, especially when those behaviors often contribute to dangerous decision making. I can't say how regular it will be, but I am hoping to write substantively on this topic at least once a month.

In Which DuWayne Discusses HisTherapy

This last Friday, was my last session with the therapist I have been seeing. Her internship is up and I am probably going to be out of therapy until June.

I am very grateful for the experience that I had in eleven sessions with Theresa and can state categorically, that she is one hell of a therapist who will serve her clients well. I was rather reticent in the beginning and she admitted yesterday, that she was as well - for some of the same reasons. For my part, I was concerned about her lack of experience and the fact that she's a women. She was concerned because she believes that I am more intelligent than her and that I would find therapy more effective with a male therapist.

I have been trying to figure out how to explain the methods used in my therapy with Theresa and keep running into something of a wall with it. The reason is that the therapy was by needs, rather unconventional - utilizing a great many tools that are not generally used together. The diversity of the problems that I need to deal with make any singular approach simply impossible.

The first thing we did was to define the issues I am dealing with and my goals. This was excruciating, to put it mildly. We discussed a great many, very difficult issues in a very short time and explored issues that I was mostly unaware of. The biggest issues were figuring out where the cognitive problems end and the neurochemical issues begin and helping me recognize my emotions. The former is not something that can be accomplished with absolute accuracy. What we were really trying to do is help define broadly, the parameters of my neurochemical issues. The latter was and is, far more of a problem. When I first walked in the door, I knew that I needed to learn to deal with my emotions more effectively - instead of just shoving them away, into the recesses of my mind. What I understand now, is that I have very little grasp of my emotions.

On top of all this, we were also dealing with the nuts and bolts of managing the situation with my family and my reaction to it. This was in part, the hardest aspect of therapy to deal with - mainly because it really was what caused the realization that I have very little grasp of my emotions. It was also the hardest, because the situation with my family has been so absolutely insane.

In working out the parameters of my neurological issues and their interface with my cognitive issues, Theresa really probed my understanding of managing cognitive issues. Not necessarily in direct context to my own experience, but in a more generalized context. She then probed for how I've been dealing with a lot of my problems - what has helped and what has not. Finally, we delved into my experience as a child - not so much what was happening around me (though that was explored some as well) but what was happening in my head. Through this we were able to make some reasonable assumptions about where this therapy should be focused and also where my discussion with my doctor should be focused.

Exploring my problems with emotion was considerably more complicated. This is also where Theresa's ability as a therapist really shined. It's not that I was purposefully skirting the issue, it was just very hard to bring me to the place that I could actually see what's been going on. She had to ask a lot of questions, sometimes pretty much the same question - restated after we had managed to work out another point. She had a very good grasp of what was going on, but due to a need for me to figure it out myself, we had to get there the hard way.

Like any effective therapy, it was entirely based on asking the right questions and through that leading me to figure out what the hell is going on. When the problems being discussed are as diverse as my own, a baseline difficult task becomes huge issue. And to make it far more difficult for Theresa, I came into therapy with a few beliefs about who and what I am, that turned out to be entirely wrong. I truly believed that I had a pretty solid grasp on my emotions - I just didn't think that I was really capable of many of the emotional responses to various situations, that I saw in most of the people around me. While it the context in which it was said is important, alexithymia came up and I wasn't the one who mentioned it. She was clear that she didn't think this was a perfect descriptive, only that based on our discussions, she saw some alexithymic tendencies in me and the way that I manage my emotions.

One of the very few times she actually pointed something out to me directly, was when I came in and told her that the short-form assessment I had taken at the doctor's office had claimed that I suffer depression. This was certainly news to me and my surprise at this was pretty obvious. She then pointed out that when I was very young, I had desperately wanted to die - that when I got over wanting to die, I then moved to simply not caring if I died. Then she asked me how I felt about dying now, to which I responded that I don't want to. It finally sunk in when she asked me why I no longer wanted to die, which I explained was because of the boys...Not because I had somewhere developed a desire to live, but because I have children who need a dad. Just to make sure, she was clear that most people, even people who aren't really afraid to die, want to live and would really rather put off death - excepting those who get particularly old, or who suffer some debilitating disease or injury.

No, I'm really not a moron. This does however segue well into another important focus of my therapy - my own little world, the world that I built for myself when I was really young and wanted to die so badly. The world that I built as a form of self-medicating. The world that I thought was no longer a factor, after an early version of it shattered when I was thrown out of my church so many years ago. The world that has continued to be a huge aspect of my life since I was nine or ten, though it has seen a great deal of remodeling over the years.

A great deal of my life is spent inside my head. There is a rich and diverse universe to experience there, where I will never run out of ideas to explore, sculptures of words and music to explore and occasionally attempt to express on the outside and completely abstract mindscapes to ride, like a helicopter ride over the most beautiful landscapes this planet of ours has to offer. I have always been pretty capable of occupying myself for extended periods of time, with minimal external stimuli (I basically did just that when I spent a little more than a month in the woods once, completely isolated from human contact).

A side effect of spending this time in my head, has been my presumption of self-awareness and my ability to compartmentalize. Combined with my ability to feel at all, I firmly believed that I really understood my emotions and what I was capable of. I just believed that I wasn't really suited to feeling the way a lot of other people seem to manage.

I am not setting a course to vacate my head though. It is an important aspect of who and what I am. I am working on spending less time there and deconstructing some of the more prohibitive aspects of my own little world. Mostly, I am trying to learn who and what I really am - learn how to feel what I am really feeling and embrace it in all it's glory, horror, pain and ecstasy. I am trying to learn what DuWayne is actually capable of feeling. Thankfully, outside the parameters of therapy, I have found the most remarkable help with that.

One of the earliest discussions that came up, one that's pretty relevant, was about my belief that I am incapable of feeling romantic love, the same way most people do. I believed that I am incapable of loving a women the way women should be loved. I explained that the reason I had been so keen on my children's mom, is because I thought she was pretty much the same. I have since discovered I am very, very wrong. And while there are issues to iron out, Juniper is all about working it out together and loving me, in spite of my rather fucked problems with feeling, which she is aware of.

My therapist was excited when I initially told her about Juniper and was positively thrilled when I told her that I had told Juniper I love her. And while there are definite logistical issues that complicate our relationship, it has it's advantages for a person who is as broken as I am - offering a chance to explore feeling and understanding it, without the pressure of my lover being with me most of the time. At the same time, we both get the support that can only come from someone who loves you so much that it hurts - and both of us need that support.

I am far from done with therapy. I doubt that I will ever not be in therapy, though the focus and needs will change with time and context. I am a firm believer in those who work as psychotherapists should always be seeing a therapist for their own sake. And I am going through a hell of a run with school that is only going to be more challenging - not to mention the situation with my kids is not going to get easier any time soon. I need the help maintaining, above and beyond learning how to be not broken. But I am definitely in a much better place than I was when I first walked through the door and sat down with Theresa to talk.

And I have a supporter and teacher who provides me with something that no amount of therapy could begin to challenge. A remarkable, brilliant woman who accepts my love and beyond reason loves me as desperately as I do her.

Off to see the Wizard and other thoughts...

So I am getting set to see my therapist shortly. I do have a post in the works, hopefully for this afternoon - one that rather steps away from most of my recent posts. I am working on a post about Meaning post Faith. I intend to write several posts over the next few months, detailing some of the issues that helped hold me back from shedding my Faith, we'll see how it goes.

I am definitely thinking that Seroquel is not going to work out real well. I know a couple of my wonderful blog friends are into neurology and/or pharmacology. I have discussed this with one of my pharmacology friends who recommended that I discuss the possibility of switching off Seroquel in favor of Clonidine and Welbutrin. If others have any thoughts on that, I would love to hear them. I have a week before I see the doctor next and would like to have some solid ideas to discuss with him.

The lowdown on my problems with SSRI's is that I had sex drive problems - on steroids. The lack of sex drive really isn't a problem for me - indeed at the moment it would be kind of nice. But mine went beyond mere lack of desire, I actually experienced discomfort in the genital region. A sort of dullness that was accentuated by a prickly feeling. I have been told that I probably wouldn't have the same problems with Welbutrin, but that it is a possibility. It may seem a silly concern, mainly because I just can't really know until I try, but I would prefer to avoid trying anything that is extremely likely to be a problem - I am paying out of pocket for my scripts and on student loans this is not a small concern.

Back to the wizard.

I am going to be discussing the meds of course, but also will be delving into the problem of feeling. I really wanted to write another post on how DuWayne got to where he is, continuing my series from last Thursday, but the damned Seroquel was not making that easy. I am going to try to get on that in the next few days, because it really seems to be useful for me. We'll just have to see.

The big issue that we have been running up against, is my issues with really delving into my feelings. I had this inane notion that I was pretty solidly in touch with my feelings and emotions, but have been realizing that this is not entirely accurate. Rather I have been very keen on dancing around my feelings and focusing an awful lot on others, to the detriment of my own personal connections to me. We'll just have to see how it goes, I'm definitely going to try.

I would also like to apologize to those who have been writing me this week and not gotten a response. I am not ignoring you, I just have not had it in me to write much. Also, I would really appreciate it if folks wouldn't IM me. I really hate to message like that, with very few exceptions. Please feel free to email and I promise I will get to you eventually. Messaging is just a little too much for me.

Why I am pursuing a education for a career dealing with addiction

I am now busy as all hell. I have a lot of writing to do in the next week and posting may get sparse, though I may throw some more up as I get into the nuts and bolts of my paper. For now, I just wanted to mention the abysmally poor record of the dominant substance abuse paradigm.

There is very little information available about recidivism, but what there is is chilling. I suspect that the figures we have, strongly contribute to why we don't have more. This is a link to Comments On AA's Triennial Survey, from 1989. This is analysis of survey compilations performed by AA. Of particular interest, is the graph on page twelve, showing that of those who start attending AA, only five percent are there after a year. Other studies (scroll up a couple pages) have shown a slightly better picture, but there is little question that twelve step programs are not for everyone.

Meanwhile, American taxpayers are pumping out two hundred billion a year for substance abuse issues. Add to that the loss of production and other factors, substance abuse costs us more than five hundred billion every damned year.

Listen to Your Doctor.....

I finally got through the hell of trying to get into a doctor and went to the one I grew up with yesterday. I am now on regular old methylphenidate (Ritalin), which will allow me to exert a great deal of control over my dosing. So on days when I need to go to class, I can take two 10MG in the morning, one at lunch and generally call it good. On days when I need more time to study, I can take two in the morning, one at lunch and one mid-late afternoon, while on weekends I can minimize, unless I am studying.

Though I have to admit that I really would love to try Vyvanse. Unfortunately, at ten dollars a dose, it's just not feasible, as it's a total out of pocket cost. Basically, Vyvanse is a prodrug equivalent for Adderall. It is theoretically superior to Adderall and Ritalin, because instead of being an extended release because the pill is made a particular way, it's release is extended through metabolizing. This apparently reduces many of the side effects found especially in Ritalin, but which are also occasionally found in Adderall.

We also discussed the possibility of a close generic equivalent to Adderall, dextroamphetimine which is the actual generic for Dexedrine. The thought was that this might decrease or eliminate the headaches I often get when I take methylphenidate. The problem with that being that the script is twenty some dollars to fill, as apposed to six for methylphenidate. Unfortunately, cost is a significant factor, so for the time being, I am taking methylphenidate.

I was also prescribed Alprazolam, which is the generic for Xanax. I am not going to take it often, as I really only need it for certain, specific cycles. I am starting out with the ability to get a refill before I see the doctor next, because he felt that it might help me getting used to the methylphenidate. Mostly I am keen on having it to help me nip off the cycles that got me diagnosed with bipolar. Though it was nice to see my old family doctor again, as he agreed with my assessment that it is more likely that the symptoms are a result of a lifetime with far less sleep than most people should get. The other reason I was interested in Alprazolam, is to help me through therapy. Last Friday's session was really intense and left me pretty shell-shocked.

So now we get to listening to the doctor.....

I have a really tough time remembering to take my meds, when I am on meds. Even worse, is if I have to take more than one, at different times. It is much easier if I can just take them all at once. So my doc explained that I should probably not take the Alprazolam, until I am getting towards lunch time, or unless I really felt the need for it before then. But he wanted me to take my first dose of methylphenidate without it, figuring that if I really was going to have trouble, it would be with the second dose of the day. He also warned me that I probably would do better to offset the mythylphenidate and the Alprazolam by at least forty minutes to an hour. I asked him if taking them at the same time was dangerous, which he said it really isn't, it just causes a lot of people to get a little buzzed.

So what do I do? Screw that, I say to myself. I'm going to forget the Ritalin if I don't take them together. Then came my remedial algebra (yes, I am math inept - failed pre-algebra in high school, twice). I had no trouble focusing on class. I was able to pick up the concepts we were learning today. I could not however, ask either of the questions I had, to save my life. I was actually afraid if I tried to talk that gibberish would come out. Thank the gods for email and a instructor who is happy to answer them.

Amusingly, when I was out having a smoke after class, I mentioned it to the smoking clan. One of them explained that he had experienced the exact same thing. He said that the offset in taking them really makes a difference. Of course he also mentioned his fondness for taking them together on weekends. I have to admit, that while not at all conducive to full functionality in class, it did feel pretty good. Thankfully, I have years of memories of getting high and don't feel the least urge to abuse the drugs that are here to help me function. I did seem to have an easier time in humanities, which follows the math.

No problems contributing to the discussion - though that may be because we were talking about the Roman Empire, a topic that really gets me excited. Though I should admit that I did have to leave class early, but that was because we were watching a documentary I've seen twice and really hated. There's a twit who makes the assertion that the Romans built Hadrien's wall and never went north, because they felt it was a wasteland. That was just their excuse. The reality is that the naked blue warriors had the invulnerable Roman Legions pissing themselves in terror. So by building Hadrien's wall, the Romans saved face and the Picts were left alone again. Watching the video might have worked anyways, but the sound was kind of warped in my head and was making me very uncomfortable.

Harm Reduction Part 2: How do we Define Success?

The dominant addiction paradigm makes some very strong assumptions about the nature of addiction. It assumes a one size fits all approach, stating categorically that the only measure of successful treatment is complete abstinence from psychoactive drugs. And it assumes that the best method for achieving abstinence is a confrontational model that forces the addict to accept that they are powerless to deal with their addiction. That only through dependence on a higher power, can their addiction be brought under control. This is the basis for the twelve step program for treatment of addictions.

What is truly remarkable about this paradigm, is that it encompasses over ninety percent of addiction treatment in the United States today. It is a multi-billion dollar industry and firmly entrenched in our educational system. Go to med school and you're quite likely to be taught that this is pretty much the end all of addiction treatment. Public policy is based firmly on these ideas. This is remarkable to me, because not only is there no evidence to support this confront/depend on higher power paradigm, there is a lot of evidence that it simply doesn't work for the vast majority of people. Because of the lack of reporting on the part of most twelve step programs, it's hard to come up with very definitive figures, but the estimates range anywheres from a five to thirty percent success rate. Most science based research tends to assume the low end of the spectrum.

This is absolutely insane. At the high end estimates, this means we are failing seventy percent of the addicts who seek treatment. And yet this is the treatment paradigm that we allow to dominate our society and public policy. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe there's some vast conspiracy out there, propping up a failed system for profit. There's very little profit to be had in all this. At it's heart, I think it has to do with the Us/Them dichotomy that makes non-addicts, and especially addicts who haven't accepted what they are, feel better at night. This dichotomy is also very conducive to reinforcing addicts who are sober, because they've beat tremendous odds and manage to stay clean. This makes it really easy to just say; "Screw the other seventy to ninety-five percent."

"They're weak." "They just don't really want it." "They just haven't hit bottom yet." And underlying it all; "I'm better than them." Which isn't to say there isn't a lot of "we failed them," intermixed in all that. But which is more likely to keep this failed system propped up, "I'm better than them," or "we're failing them?"

At the core of this are some important questions to be asked. The same sort of stark, realistic assessments, very much like the self assessments that are an integral part of any addicts quest for control over their own lives. For this post, I am going to focus on one of them; How should we define success in one's battle with addiction? To try to answer this, I am going to ask you to try for a moment to ignore that nagging voice in the back of your mind that insists that success can only be defined as abstinence. Please, just try to pretend you've never heard of AA and other twelve step programs. Open your mind to the understanding that black and white is a flawed, simplistic dichotomy - that life exists in the shades of gray.

Meet Steve. Steve is an alcoholic who drinks from the time he gets out of bed, until he passes out, later in the day. Catch Steve in a rare moment of lucidity and you'll discover that the man is absolutely brilliant, rife with penetrating insight into human nature and it's interplay with the people around him. Steve first got high when he was eight years old. His drinking was out of control by the time he was thirteen years old. Not surprisingly, he never graduated high school, though he did manage a GED. He managed to stay sober in the Marines, at least when he was on duty. Steve spent several years in LA as a gangster, existing in a very ugly frame of reference. When I met him, he had left LA to get away from it all - but the memories of what he had seen, the things that he's done, drove him into the absolute depths of alcohol abuse.

Now meet Allen. Allen is an alcoholic who drinks in the evenings. Allen has, over the years, built a great business. He's also raised one of the very least dysfunctional families I've ever met. He has four fantastic kids, who absolutely adore their parents and who all have the foundation for great success in life. Allen has wonderful friends and is a very well respected, highly regarded member of his community. Not that he or his business are perfect, but his failings are the human failings that everyone can fall victim to, rather than being the result of his drinking. And make no mistake, Allen can drink. He proves that nearly every day of his life. As often as not, he proves it by getting fairly drunk. And it is quite likely that ultimately, Allen's drinking is going to foreshorten his life, though probably by very little.

So lets explore these two people, both men addicted to alcohol, but with very different lives, very different relationships to their drug of choice. According to the dominant paradigm, the only measure by which either of them can be successful, is for them both to abstain from the use of alcohol and other psychoactive drugs. But I would argue that success is in the eye of the beholder, that rather than searching for absolutes, success is very much a relative concept.

If Allen stopped drinking altogether, stayed absolutely clean and sober, what benefit would he gain? Certainly, his health would be positively impacted, though I should be clear that his health is very reasonable for a man his age. As such, this can really be counted as a minor benefit. It won't improve his family life, which is already quite rich and fulfilling. It isn't going to do anything for business, which while less than perfect, is that way because of the economy, not because of Allen's substance abuse. It certainly wouldn't improve his social life, which is largely focused around his brewing of great beers and appreciation for the. To be sure, he does have more to his social life than these, but a lot of his social activities are centered on his appreciation of fine drink.

Ultimately, we need to take into account Allen's relationship with alcoholic beverages. Why he drinks, what he drinks and the circumstances in which he drinks. Allen is a beer hobbyist. He belongs to beer a couple of beer clubs and has even taken classes for judging beer. He and his wife both take part in these activities together. He's taught his son to brew beer, along with a number of friends. He doesn't drink alcoholic beverages that aren't pretty much top of the line. And he never seems to drink alone. For Allen to quit drinking altogether, would require a major shift in how he lives and how he interacts with his friends and family. Since his drinking causes minimal harm to himself and no harm to others, I would argue that there is simply no reason for him to change.

Now lets look more closely at Steve. At first glance, Steve seems to be the typical, at the bottom alcoholic. It would be easy to make the assumption that Steve simply must either quit drinking altogether, or die an alcoholic. Honestly, that may well be the reality of things. The question becomes; Is abstinence from any psychoactive drugs the only measure of success we can use on Steve? What if Steve quit the destructive drinking, but took up smoking pot in the evenings and on weekends? How about if Steve was able to get help from a therapist and get a handle on the problems that have pushed him to drink to such destructive excess and started drinking only in the evenings? Could it not be said that some level of success has been achieved, if Steve is able to functionally work and take care of his family - even if he isn't completely abstinent from alcohol?

While I think it is safe to assume that in Steve's case, abstinence is the underlying ideal, helping him reduce his drinking and become more functional can be considered a success. This is not to say that when he's reduced his drinking and become more functional, that the work is done. Steve has goals that will ultimately require he quit drinking altogether at some point. Taking the step of reducing the drinking would be huge for him and more importantly, his family. Being able to hold down a job and support his family would also make a major difference. But ultimately, Steve wants to be in a position to ensure that he never gets this bad again.

Steve runs into a few problems with our dominant paradigm. One, it requires that he get sober now, instead of letting him take steps to get there. With the exception of his stint in the Marines, Steve hasn't managed to get to sleep without alcohol in almost twenty seven years, since he was thirteen years old. And even in the Marines, it was tough for him to sleep without it. After busting ass all day in training and maneuvers, he was still having trouble with sleeping. And the haunting memories of being a gang banger are still there, even if he gets the drinking to settle into a more functional pattern. But if he can manage to reduce his drinking and work with his therapist to deal with the underlying issues that push the hard drinking, it is likely that he will get there in the end. The other problem that Steve faces in the current paradigm, is that he simply cannot contend with the notion of a higher power. He believes that either god doesn't exist, of if he does, hes "one evil motherfucker," as he put it to me.

It is really easy to stick with the status quo. It doesn't take any work to assume that people who use drugs are out of control and simply cannot get through it on there own. To paint addicts as powerless to deal with their addictions. It's also very easy to create an us/them dichotomy. To assume that "us" are somehow better people, even as we recognize that addiction is a disease and not necessarily the fault of the addict. We all have a mix of feelings about addiction and addicts that just make it really easy to denigrate substance abusers. From equating the worse of substance abuse behaviors, such as driving while intoxicated, or destroying one's family, with everyone who has substance use issues.

Harm reduction, on the other hand, is a good way to get past the black and white and embrace the gray areas. Because most addicts and people with substance use issues live in the gray. Simplistic dichotomies rarely apply. But even harm reduction isn't the end all that some would assume, or at least hope it would be. There is balance that must be struck and there needs to be a tacit understanding that while it fails most people, the current paradigm has it's place as well. In the next post, I will be exploring this, as well as the shortcomings that I see in the harm reduction approach to substance use and abuse. I will be trying to get back into this and posting links to various sources of information, but I am mostly using these posts to try to lay down the information I want to put into my paper. That way I will have all the information in front of me and ready to organize.

I am also thinking on discussing some of my other friends with substance abuse issues, from time to time. Having been a very voracious abuser of substances, I spent a lot of time around abusers of substances and there are several I want to write about. In every case, I am renaming the people involved and trying to change as many details as possible to protect their identities. I am more than happy to post stories with the actual name of the person and more pertinent details about their situations, but will only be doing so with their permission. The thing about harm reduction, as I mentioned in my last post on this topic, is that it is very natural for some people to engage in it. The problem is that the current paradigm assumes that if they don't abstain, they are just deluding themselves. More to go in; Harm Reduction Part 3: Where I Digress or Harm Reduction Falls Short

Harm Reduction Part 1: Addiction, Substance Abuse and Therapy

If you haven't already, I would like to strongly recommend that you listen to this podcast, or read through some of the transcript here. It will provide a very solid introduction to the Harm Reduction approach to addiction treatment. And please, do not take anything said in this post as an excuse for addictive patterns that lend themselves to self-abuse. This is something ideally discussed with a therapist. Short of that, discerning what any individual is really dealing with in their substance use requires a great deal of honest self assessment.

I am having some trouble with pushing on through this discussion. I want to warn you that one, I am using some strong language in this post and two, I am going to take a while to tie it all together. I expect to put two more posts into this discussion. I really am going somewhere with this and am arrogant enough to say that it's a point worth getting to. I really hope you will understand that while I am not afraid to discuss whats going into this, what I am talking about is rather painful - pain that I am dealing with right now. Bear with me, I like to think it will be worth it.

More...I am really glad that I decided to relax last night, instead of pushing through and finishing the post I was working on. Not only do I feel better now, I have a somewhat altered perspective to talk about. I had a rather busy morning and really have a fair amount to get done this evening and into tomorrow. But I think I need to take the time for this right now.

I just had a very intense session with my therapist. On top of my general neurological proclivities, on top of being in school for the first time in sixteen years, I am trying to muddle through the very worse experience of my life. And it's been fucking brutal. Not one to deal with stress and anxiety very well in the best of times, it takes a lot for me to simply stave off meltdown. Add to that, that I have been abstaining from cannabis, traditionally my warm comfort in times of extreme anxiety. For the first time in years, I'm really having the urge to drink and get trashed (as apposed to simply wanting a beer or good bourbon, because I enjoy them).

To make things worse, I have been trying to get in to see the doctor so I can get on meds. I set an appointment for the 20th, back in early December - only to have them call and cancel because they made a mistake. So I tried to reset, twice they've set then canceled, again, due to mistakes. This has not helped with my anxiety issues. All together it's everything I can do not to curl up in a corner and descend into fucking hysterics. The upshot, is that I have an appointment Monday, to see the doctor I grew up with. It will cost money I really don't have, but it will also help me succeed in school and make it easier to avoid losing it.

What the hell does any if this have to do with addiction you ask?

I am an addict, an abuser of substances. By most measures I'm an alcoholic, in spite of being capable of the occasional drink without falling into a binge. It wouldn't be inaccurate to call me a marijuana addict. No question I'm thoroughly addicted to cigarettes. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I'm an addict, an addict who has a fairly high degree of success at manging his addictions - excepting the cigarettes. But according to the dominant addiction paradigm, I am an abysmal failure.

My measure of success is not that of the dominant addiction paradigm. I am not abstinent. Even though I am not drinking, it's because I know that if I have a drink right now, I could well lose it and fall into self-abusive behaviors. A year from now, hell maybe in a few months, it will probably be perfectly safe for me to have a drink. I like good beer and I love good bourbon, but my fondness is limited to a single drink, two at the most. Beyond that I don't like to drink.

My reasons for abstaining from the weed are a little different and will probably be a very long-term, if not permanent decision. It was no longer performing the function I wanted it to and in some cases was actually increasing my anxiety instead of reducing it, as it traditionally has. Beyond that I have other motivations for quitting that far outweigh the desire to get stoned.

How did I get here?

Several years ago, I had a fortuitous encounter with a cognitive psychology professor who busted me, sitting in on one of his lectures. We ended up spending more than an hour talking in his office and one of the topics that came up was my ADHD and a theory that's been floating around for a long time about it. He explained that it seems likely that ADHD is in part a dopamine deficit. This was ultimately pretty earth shattering for me, because it ended up having a profound effect on how I looked at my use of psychoactive drugs and even some of the things I love to do, like writing and playing music.

Over the course of the weeks, months and years after that conversation, I began to formulate a whole new personal drug use paradigm. The initial concept was simple and not necessarily well affected - it's ok to get high, the problem is getting wasted all the time. As time passed, I began to take increasing ownership of my drug use. Never having heard the term, I had stumbled upon the harm reduction approach to substance abuse, or as Dr. Denning puts it, substance use issues. I am far from unique in this. I don't have some special knowledge or brilliant fucking insight that no one else can have. I figured this out because with a bit of introspection it just makes sense.

I will continue this discussion a little later, maybe tomorrow. It was a productive day and a very good session in therapy, but it has also been a fucking brutal day in many regards.

Here I am, I am just a man
this is my life, starting all over again
nearing the end my last life was broken.....

ADHD, Bipolar and other neurological issues: A Quick Note

To be clear before I go further, the information available to me about those hitting this site is very limited. But one of the things that my site meter tells me about, is the referring URL, i.e. where you clicked in. And when a google search brings someone here, while I don't know who that person is, I do know what the search string was.

I have noticed that I get fairly regular hits from searches on ADHD, bipolar and neurological disorders. Often included are methylphenidate, ampehtamine, adderall, ritalin, substance abuse, etc.

Please, let me make you welcome. If you are hitting this post, feel free to peruse the rest of the blog, but more importantly, please let me know what you are looking for. While I am painfully busy right now, I would very much like to provide links in the sidebar to help facilitate your search and the searches of others who come after you. I do have several links that I intend on posting, but school and, well, ADHD behaviors have kept me from getting to it. Meanwhile, there are links to some forums that may be of use. Discussing our problems with people who have similar issues can be a major help in itself. And some of the forums provide links to other information - and you can always post a request for links.....

More than just a place to foster interesting discussions, I want this blog to also be a place where information on topics that affect me and those I love can be found. I have rather severe ADHD and not so intense bipolar issues. I have many years of experience with substance abuse issues and am studying psychology with the intent of going into addiction research and clinical work.

If you happen to be looking for substance abuse links, please take a look to the right of this, you may have to scroll down. There are some links now and that list will be growing as I have time to get to it.

So please, if you don't see what you're looking for, let me know. You can post anonymous links or email me (just write confidential in the subject line). While I am not a therapist and cannot provide mental health care, I can point you in different directions and am often happy to talk. While there is no legal compunction for me to do so, I am very discreet and will never post or talk about you. If you give me permission, I may discuss things you share with me, but would make sure to keep your identity private.

Eugenics Is Not A Four Letter Word

Quick note, the baby is not here yet, though momma is bursting at the seams. We are incredibly busy all around, preparing for the baby, preparing for Christmas and preparing for our adventures into the world of homeschooling. I have managed to find some work to cover a little break that I didn't need, which should keep us afloat. On to the posting at hand then.

I have paid little attention, as I have been busy, but Seed's SciBlogs have been been hammering away at one Jim West of the Discovery Institute, a “think” tank devoted to pushing the teaching of creationism into U.S. Public schools. Suffice to say that DI is nothing more than a PR organization, rife with dishonesty. PZ Meyers started in on West a while ago with this post, which I admit I haven't actually read (I include the link for context only).

Lately, sciblogger Greg Laden joined in the fray, ruffling the feathers of sciblogger Orac. In short, Laden made some rather outrageous claims about the origins of forced eugenics programs, both those that happened in the U.S. (dark enough themselves) and those of the Nazis (i.e. The extermination of millions of Jews and other undesirables). Orac corrects the mistaken notion that the intellectual propagators of these atrocious eugenics programs were mostly Christians. In comments on both Greg's and Orac's posts, Colugo adds a lot of very interesting information to the mix.

Now I am not going to argue that the early part of the twentieth century was not to a strong degree, a world gone mad with some truly frightening notions about eugenics. From forced sterilizations, to mass exterminations, forced eugenics was a very ugly, fundamentally bigoted beast. But that is not the whole picture, not by a long shot. There is something important missing in this discussion of eugenics, that is the notion that not all eugenics is bad. Indeed, much of what falls under the heading of eugenics isn't even controversial. Unfortunately, some of it is controversial. Some of it skates very fine, ethical, dare I say, moral lines. The problem with making eugenics into some bogey man, is that it inserts a certain hysteria into a very important discussion.

So what is eugenics?

Let me start with this simple exercise. When you were choosing a mate (assuming you are a breeder of some sort), did you ever consider what your children might look like, if this person or that, was the mate you chose? Did you ever consider their intellect, for the same reason? In short, was one of the factors in choosing your mate, what they might contribute genetically? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, congratulations, you practiced a very basic form of eugenics. Not the least bit controversial, evil or unreasonable.

Lets then up it a notch. I have gotten to know quite a few folks in the world of neurodiversity. Many of them great folks. Several of them have made the conscious decision not to reproduce, because they do not want to pass on what are likely genetic disorders (at least influenced by genetics) to the children they would produce. I.e. They have identified some genetic trait that they believe it would be best not to propagate and therefor chosen not to reproduce. This too, is a form of eugenics.

Now we get to some meat. Herein lies a more controversial aspect of the discussion of eugenics, one that I will state outright, I don't have a problem with. Nonetheless, there are plenty of people who have serious objections, including readers of this blog. Right now, today, medical science has progressed to the point that we can identify many disorders and congenital diseases, in vitro. My partner and I had a bit of a scare, when the nurse called about an elevated risk for downs syndrome, with the baby that is due any time now. Lets just say that she handled it badly – leading us to believe it was a significant risk, rather than a less than three percent risk.

We want this baby. Our whole family is excited (no matter how I whine about it). But with a child already, who has followed in his papa's ADHD footsteps, there is no way that we could raise a child with those sorts of special needs. Not without seriously undermining the care and attention that the son we have now requires. Nor would we find it reasonable to burden society with such a child. It would have been a hard, but simple answer; abortion. For those who have rather profound objections to the notion of abortion, please do not judge me too harshly. Yes, this decision was reached without very much discussion. Mostly we just looked at each other, already knowing the way it would be. It took little time to consider it. This is because we are all too aware of the implications.

Nor is this limited to down syndrome. There are a host of disorders that can and routinely are diagnosed in vitro. While it is not a frequent occurrence, this does lead to decisions to terminate pregnancies. This too, is eugenics.

Finally, we come to even more controversial aspects of the discussion; where is the science going?

Our understanding of genetics and DNA, is increasing at an exponential rate. Already we have developed many gene therapies for treating certain disorders, Tays Sachs being a huge one. We are very close to viable therapies that can be started in vitro (I believe some already are). The question becomes, what is acceptable? What can we reasonably eliminate from our society? For instance, what about ADHD? Bipolar disorder? Schizophrenia? Autism? What about homosexuality?

The flip side of this, is the discussion of enhancements. What if it becomes possible to enhance certain characteristics, such as intelligence, endurance, fine motor skills, or spacial reasoning? What about absolute engineering, such as Aldous Huxley describes in Brave New World? A vast panacea is opening up before us, right now. Unfortunately, we are too busy freaking out over the terminology to actually have a serious, coherent discussion. Eugenics is not a four letter word, but it does carry rather serious implications, that require their time in the limelight.