Blog Dis
I'm addicted to my addictions
2024-05-07
Prior to 2017, I used to subscribe to Scientific American Mind magazine and I loved it. While the magazine is no longer available in print form, you can access some of their occasional content posted on their site. I loved this magazine and always looked forward to its arrival in the mail. Subjects pertaining to the brain and all facets, i.e. consciousness, dreams, functioning, intuition and the like have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. One article has stuck with me and it has to do with brain damage and the predisposition toward addiction. Stand up and be counted, my friend. Yes, this means you! Who among us doesn't have an addiction?
Please read on...
Research points to evidence to suggest that those with addictions to heavy narcotics and alcohol are not causing damage to their brain normally associated with long term abuse or years of use. But rather, that the damage has been there since birth. Dopamine D2 receptors in the reward pathways of the brain don't produce the same levels as someone born with a so-called normal brain. Where the average person without any noticeable addictions would seek pleasure in the simple act of looking at their loved one, an addicted brain wouldn't find satisfaction in these pleasures and instead, will reach for that hit in order to create the same results. Scientists contend now this is why the addicted brain naturally gravitates to hard substances to help increase dopamine levels.
Compulsion, obsession, and hysteria are apparently subsets to the larger disorder called addiction.
I'm of the mind that addiction is just a word and yet, I'm Canadian and this context is relevant. I grew up with two brothers and a father who were addicted to watching hockey, like it was some kind of religion. Not one single game was missed, ever, and because we only had one television in our family home, it meant that hockey would usurp every other preference. You could point out to them that the majority of Canadian males are also beer-drinking, hockey-watching males and this wouldn't be too far off the mark. However, if you were to suggest, using the word 'addiction', that their habit of parking their keister for hours on end, to watch grown men pummel each other is just another form of addiction, they would laugh. Canadian males (and women too) love hockey and are addicted to it! This label in the context of hockey doesn't apply to me, though. I couldn't tell you which teams are in the playoffs this year and my idea of enjoying a beer is an ice-cold Extra-Dry Corona in summer with a wedge of lime, the one time I will drink beer.
I don't know anyone alive on this planet that doesn't have at least one addiction. Cigarettes will carry many to their graves much earlier than if they didn't smoke but cigarettes, as we all know, are considered to be more addictive than heroin. Remember that 1999 movie with Russell Crowe called The Insider, about a chemist who comes clean about the tobacco industry, and how they purposely add chemicals to make cigarettes addictive? I do. And for sure, I had smoked cigarettes at one time in my 20s, albeit socially. I was one of those types who could smoke three ciggies a day, only in the evenings, after work and night school, and only after I'd finished working out. So when it came time for me to quit, once I had been diagnosed with skin cancer, I quit in one night by forcing myself to smoke an entire pack, one cigarette after another, without a break. By the time I made it to the end of the pack, I was so disgusted with the smell of cigarettes, that I never looked back. Needless to say, this was one addiction I was happy to rid myself of, but I still have addictions.
I am whole-heartedly addicted to chocolate, the dark variety, which as we know directly acts on serotonin levels, and also another hormone related to pleasure. Dark chocolate affects the brains of women more than it does men, and if I were a man, and I wanted to romance and seduce a woman, for sure I'd begin the night by feeding her wedges of dark chocolate. Yes! Dark chocolate put us in a good mood, one might even venture to say that dark chocolate puts us in an amorous mood, so wonderful is its taste that it feels like an orgasm to the taste-buds and the brain. And speaking of which, I'm also addicted to orgasms. I love them. I love the way an orgasm makes my body feel, and how it lights up my brain with pleasure. I just wish that more men knew a little more on how to pleasure a woman with verbal or oral stimulation or how to make good use of their fingers before they plunge into their appendage into me. (I shall shelve this aspect of discussion for another thread, another time).
That's not all. I'm addicted to the communication of ideas. I love books and music and film. I feed these addictions regularly; books and music daily, and movies mostly on the weekends. Why, if it were not for the movie, Beautiful Dreamers, with Colm Feore and Rip Torn, I'd not have started reading Walt Whitman. And it's because of an obscure film called American Roulette with Andy Garcia, that I began to devour the gloriously romantic poetry of Pablo Neruda. The film, The Mission, with Robert De Niro also opened by eyes to the historical injustice of the deeply spiritual South American indigenous tribes. Of course, I could ramble on about the number of books that have inspired me or the number of times I got thoroughly thumped while listening to spectacular music.
I'm addicted to TV too, mostly catching up w/ the news, music videos for when I work out in the a.m. and documentary-style programs like The Nature of Things. When it comes to entertainment, the pay network HBO (Home Box Office) produces, to my mind, some of the most cutting edge programs. I faithfully watch Real Time With Bill Maher every Friday because I want to challenge my critical thinking brain, and by extension, my political opinions, and this show fits the bill. There's a reason why it's been on the air for so long. HBO has launched some of the best limited, mini-series shows ever: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Boardwalk Empire, The White Lotus, True Detective, The Young Pope, John Adams, In Treatment, Big Little Lies, Westworld, Game of Thrones, The Pacific, The Last of Us, Barry... I could go on and on. If the quality of the content is good; if the entertainment kicks it up a notch, rest assured I will develop an addiction for it.
We are the sum of our addictions. Maybe for you it's being a foodie, or feeling compelled to take control of everyone and everything around you. Perhaps you're addicted to your alone time, just to be able to not have to speak to anyone, to be entirely by yourself when you want to spark up that fabulous twisty, rolled up with care and love, and blast off to euphoria, at least until it lasts. Or, your addiction is easy and simple, to spend time with your animals, minus people and to relish in their non-judgmental company. And others are wholly and passionately addicted to their video games. My niece tells me that when her husband and son play video games, they'll sit side-by-side for hours on end and barely say two words to each other; preferring instead to grunt, rather than articulate words.
Don't you fret one bit about your soft addictions, as I prefer to call them. If we had to submit our behaviour every friggen time to a higher authority for approval, there'd be absolutely no fun left in life. You can surely bet that at some point in time in the future, scientists will be able to tell if someone will be born with this D2 receptor deficiency. By this time, they'll have developed a drug to combat the predisposition toward addiction, especially the kind that destroys your life, and then you can become addicted to this drug that blocks the negative addictions that impact those around you. I'll more than likely be long gone by this time.
Until then, and because we're nearing the official beginning of summer, I'll add to my regular addictions the addiction of cycling every day, if weather permits. That rush of cycling, to glide along the pavement at a fast clip, to be alone without ear-buds, to hear the sounds around me as I whizz by... well, it's the kind of addiction that only another cyclist will get.
Please read on...
Research points to evidence to suggest that those with addictions to heavy narcotics and alcohol are not causing damage to their brain normally associated with long term abuse or years of use. But rather, that the damage has been there since birth. Dopamine D2 receptors in the reward pathways of the brain don't produce the same levels as someone born with a so-called normal brain. Where the average person without any noticeable addictions would seek pleasure in the simple act of looking at their loved one, an addicted brain wouldn't find satisfaction in these pleasures and instead, will reach for that hit in order to create the same results. Scientists contend now this is why the addicted brain naturally gravitates to hard substances to help increase dopamine levels.
Compulsion, obsession, and hysteria are apparently subsets to the larger disorder called addiction.
I'm of the mind that addiction is just a word and yet, I'm Canadian and this context is relevant. I grew up with two brothers and a father who were addicted to watching hockey, like it was some kind of religion. Not one single game was missed, ever, and because we only had one television in our family home, it meant that hockey would usurp every other preference. You could point out to them that the majority of Canadian males are also beer-drinking, hockey-watching males and this wouldn't be too far off the mark. However, if you were to suggest, using the word 'addiction', that their habit of parking their keister for hours on end, to watch grown men pummel each other is just another form of addiction, they would laugh. Canadian males (and women too) love hockey and are addicted to it! This label in the context of hockey doesn't apply to me, though. I couldn't tell you which teams are in the playoffs this year and my idea of enjoying a beer is an ice-cold Extra-Dry Corona in summer with a wedge of lime, the one time I will drink beer.
I don't know anyone alive on this planet that doesn't have at least one addiction. Cigarettes will carry many to their graves much earlier than if they didn't smoke but cigarettes, as we all know, are considered to be more addictive than heroin. Remember that 1999 movie with Russell Crowe called The Insider, about a chemist who comes clean about the tobacco industry, and how they purposely add chemicals to make cigarettes addictive? I do. And for sure, I had smoked cigarettes at one time in my 20s, albeit socially. I was one of those types who could smoke three ciggies a day, only in the evenings, after work and night school, and only after I'd finished working out. So when it came time for me to quit, once I had been diagnosed with skin cancer, I quit in one night by forcing myself to smoke an entire pack, one cigarette after another, without a break. By the time I made it to the end of the pack, I was so disgusted with the smell of cigarettes, that I never looked back. Needless to say, this was one addiction I was happy to rid myself of, but I still have addictions.
I am whole-heartedly addicted to chocolate, the dark variety, which as we know directly acts on serotonin levels, and also another hormone related to pleasure. Dark chocolate affects the brains of women more than it does men, and if I were a man, and I wanted to romance and seduce a woman, for sure I'd begin the night by feeding her wedges of dark chocolate. Yes! Dark chocolate put us in a good mood, one might even venture to say that dark chocolate puts us in an amorous mood, so wonderful is its taste that it feels like an orgasm to the taste-buds and the brain. And speaking of which, I'm also addicted to orgasms. I love them. I love the way an orgasm makes my body feel, and how it lights up my brain with pleasure. I just wish that more men knew a little more on how to pleasure a woman with verbal or oral stimulation or how to make good use of their fingers before they plunge into their appendage into me. (I shall shelve this aspect of discussion for another thread, another time).
That's not all. I'm addicted to the communication of ideas. I love books and music and film. I feed these addictions regularly; books and music daily, and movies mostly on the weekends. Why, if it were not for the movie, Beautiful Dreamers, with Colm Feore and Rip Torn, I'd not have started reading Walt Whitman. And it's because of an obscure film called American Roulette with Andy Garcia, that I began to devour the gloriously romantic poetry of Pablo Neruda. The film, The Mission, with Robert De Niro also opened by eyes to the historical injustice of the deeply spiritual South American indigenous tribes. Of course, I could ramble on about the number of books that have inspired me or the number of times I got thoroughly thumped while listening to spectacular music.
I'm addicted to TV too, mostly catching up w/ the news, music videos for when I work out in the a.m. and documentary-style programs like The Nature of Things. When it comes to entertainment, the pay network HBO (Home Box Office) produces, to my mind, some of the most cutting edge programs. I faithfully watch Real Time With Bill Maher every Friday because I want to challenge my critical thinking brain, and by extension, my political opinions, and this show fits the bill. There's a reason why it's been on the air for so long. HBO has launched some of the best limited, mini-series shows ever: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Boardwalk Empire, The White Lotus, True Detective, The Young Pope, John Adams, In Treatment, Big Little Lies, Westworld, Game of Thrones, The Pacific, The Last of Us, Barry... I could go on and on. If the quality of the content is good; if the entertainment kicks it up a notch, rest assured I will develop an addiction for it.
We are the sum of our addictions. Maybe for you it's being a foodie, or feeling compelled to take control of everyone and everything around you. Perhaps you're addicted to your alone time, just to be able to not have to speak to anyone, to be entirely by yourself when you want to spark up that fabulous twisty, rolled up with care and love, and blast off to euphoria, at least until it lasts. Or, your addiction is easy and simple, to spend time with your animals, minus people and to relish in their non-judgmental company. And others are wholly and passionately addicted to their video games. My niece tells me that when her husband and son play video games, they'll sit side-by-side for hours on end and barely say two words to each other; preferring instead to grunt, rather than articulate words.
Don't you fret one bit about your soft addictions, as I prefer to call them. If we had to submit our behaviour every friggen time to a higher authority for approval, there'd be absolutely no fun left in life. You can surely bet that at some point in time in the future, scientists will be able to tell if someone will be born with this D2 receptor deficiency. By this time, they'll have developed a drug to combat the predisposition toward addiction, especially the kind that destroys your life, and then you can become addicted to this drug that blocks the negative addictions that impact those around you. I'll more than likely be long gone by this time.
Until then, and because we're nearing the official beginning of summer, I'll add to my regular addictions the addiction of cycling every day, if weather permits. That rush of cycling, to glide along the pavement at a fast clip, to be alone without ear-buds, to hear the sounds around me as I whizz by... well, it's the kind of addiction that only another cyclist will get.
