depresseddistraughtdisillusioned - Tumblr blog

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

It’s nearly October, which means it’s time for the greatest Halloween song of all time: Spider In My Room (I'm Tryna F*ck It)

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

We accept our pain

This is our pain. It's here with us. Spend some time with our pain. More's coming. Might as well be ready for a party.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

Why I think I respect jazz.

Jazz is patient. Think of the 1812 overture. Big, bombastic piece of music. What's it doing? Building to crescendo. Always building. Seeking the zenith.

That ain't jazz. Jazz is about getting out. It's about getting in, but it's about weaving. Jazz is the yarn. It's not trying to be the tapestry. It's the thread that escapes.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

It's always just enough

to get a little bit too fucked up.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

Why We Relapse

There is bliss in addiction. I hear a lot about the pain of being an addict. I've preached at that pulpit, railed at that lurking enemy, and hidden behind that shroud. Mental illness has, sometimes, become a place for social parasites to hide.

I'm nearly out of wine, though still stocked up on weed. Not my Drug of Choice (DOC) but one meets addiction on the field of necessity.

However, I have hit that bliss. Let's talk about addiction.

I have seen people I know on Facebook with their pictures of them climbing up the side of cliff. I have no idea why they're doing it. That's largely because I can find bottled joy at any convenience store, and some easy fun at the next dispensary.

Live fast. Die young. It's all bloody worthless.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

Yeah

Kill the bitch. I just want to fucking say it. That fucking little daughter of yours? Kill that bitch or put her on the open market.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

"You don't really teach a writer anything." -Michael Chabon

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

Marijuana Maintenance #1

Been a bad couple of days after a hard weekend of drinking. A bit shaky and having a rough time focusing. That withdrawal is never pleasant. Plus, I'd been slipping down slowly. Then went hard in the paint for a couple of days. Well, hard in the paint for 40 and not drinking regularly.

Anyhow, the withdrawal didn't go the usual way. For those who have never been through alcohol withdrawal, it's normally shaking, sweating, vomiting, loads and loads of anxiety. It feels a little like an anxiety attack, on the lower end of the spectrum. The problem is, it lasts all day. There isn't a lot of feeling like your heart is going to burst or terror you're going to die. Frankly, you often wish you'd just go ahead and die. Get the silly bugger over with. The anxiety just drags on and on. Then there's the loneliness. Especially bad when you're a chap of middle years who couldn't hold on to a relationship if it were coated in tar.

Those are just the initial parts of withdrawal. It's often like a bad stomach flu. It even comes with a dash of fever that brings on those sweet malarial chills. Incidentally, Malarial Chills is playing the Almost Acoustic Christmas. During withdrawal, you might get some hallucinations. Mine were auditory along with things shaking and bending slightly. Frankly, I've always thought those who start claiming that they saw "pink elephants" or the like are making things up that they heard somewhere. Though, I admit I could be wrong. My issue with claims of vivid hallucinations comes from a lifetime spent around alcoholics. They're prone to embellishment in service of a tale. Especially if it's a tale about them. People in recovery are often honest in the ways that matter, but hyperbole and colorful illustration often frequent their speech in a way that can be misleading.

Whatever the hallucinatory case may be, there is certainly the possibility to see, hear, or feel things that aren't there. I tended to hear mumbling or music, as if someone was listening to the radio in the other room, but you couldn't make out any words. It was just this variable mumbling drone. The first time I heard it I didn't quite realize it wasn't my roommates until I heard the sounds coming from the dryer.

Tactile hallucinations aren't as common with alcohol as they tend to be with stimulants. Meth, cocaine, Adderall, and similar drugs in the "upper" category tend to give the sensation of bugs inside the skin. Very common, from what I've heard. With alcohol, there's not so much the sense of bugs in your skin as it being extremely sensitive. This is because your body is producing stimulants. The natural stimulants are what your body uses to help reduce the effects of alcohol. Take the alcohol away if you've been drinking for a while, and your body doesn't know that it doesn't need to produce the stimulants anymore. So, while you're curled up on the bathroom floor, you're also going to feel uncomfortably aware of your skin.

There's another facet to alcohol withdrawal that doesn't get mentioned very much: a strange libido. I don't know if this is a male peculiarity, or if it's confined to just me and perhaps a select few. However, with the body being denied dopamine, and being flooded with stimulants, I end up wanting to have sex. This is largely because at that point I want just about anything that will make me feel better. Luckily, porn is always there, or I can find a shower and work with the data stored in my fantasy fucktage. I will be barely able to walk, shivering like a newborn in a snowstorm, and unable to eat anything more solid than purified water. Yet, dehydrated as I may be, I can still conjure forth the nectar of life.

I don't mention this to be crass. It's an interesting phenomenon to literally be so sick it could kill you, since alcohol withdrawal can be fatal, yet you're still such an addict that you're looking for a dopamine hit anywhere you can get it. If we couldn't satisfy our carnal desires, I bet you'd see alcoholics going through withdrawal who were skydiving or bungee jumping just to get their body some kind of rush.

That's what addiction is. It's so entwined with your personality that it can drive you to fits and feats of madness.

Once the major physical ailments wear off, you go into a sort of twilight stage between true withdrawal, and what was called "Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome" or PAWS. The name may have changed. Anyhow, during PAWS, you're going through a lot of physical, mental, and emotional changes. However, most of these changes are subtle. Before you really get into PAWS, you're going to have completely chaotic emotions. Those can crop up during PAWS too, but frequently the latter stages of withdrawal are an internal storm. Part of you wants to use again, part of you wants to ride it out, part of you hates the whole world, part of you is so lonely you think you've been not only hollowed out like a Jack-o-Lantern, but carved up for someone's macabre amusement, as well.

For me, since my withdrawal was fairly mild, I basically jumped into the latter stage. It's the agitated, depressed, irritable part where everyone is your enemy, no one understands you, and murder with a suicide chaser starts to sound like the only rational choice for a reasonable person to make.

It was a bad mood day, in the most extreme sense.

I didn't smoke any pot today, until tonight. Thank god for that drug. Look, it might drag me back to the booze, but it really eases the emotional suffering, and likely some physical symptoms. I need to at least try CBD to see how it impacts me. That might be a healthier solution.

I know going back and forth between cannabis alone and then cannabis with booze isn't the best choice, but trying to ride the cold turkey nightmare was really becoming painful.

As I was walking out to get high, perhaps to justify the behavior, I kept thinking, "The most common emotion I feel is pain. Then fear, or anxiety. Then comes rage or fury. I think there's actually another layer of pain before any other emotions come up. However, those miscellaneous emotions only show up a tiny percentage of the time. Pain, fear, fury. There's an increasing number of people for whom those are the totality of their emotional tableau. They prevent space for compassion or empathy. It's impossible to feel wounded and abandoned and wronged by the world and then want to be compassionate towards it.

Perhaps monks can do it, but I say turning the other cheek is for cowards, like me, often, who are too afraid to fight back.

The major issue is using a substance to alter one's mood. That's always why addicts use. Granted, to a degree that's why everyone drinks or uses, to feel differently, but it's often the only thing an addict uses. Tonight, I exercised, which helped a little, but only made me realize how miserable I was, and how it really didn't matter if I went ahead and got high. There was no upside to that breed of sobriety. That cur was going to be nothing but hate and insomnia. At least now I don't feel all alone and at war with the world. I can at least partially realize that other people have internal lives similar to mine and shouldn't be treated like disposable chattel, and maybe if I didn't judge them so harshly for the innumerable ways in which they let me down, I wouldn't have to harbor such an ire quagmire.

That's a cute little saying. Dumb, but cute.

Boy, howdy did I feel bloody terrible. Trying to manage all those feelings, and function in any minimal capacity is beyond anything Hercules could pull. Feats of strength are simple mechanics. Managing the monsters we have in our heads, who wear our faces, and know how to bait us to trouble is a game of endless knives.

I'm liking the writing more if I focus on actually trying to make it halfway decent, and don't worry about things like how many words are being put down. Easier to just explain it until you've explained it the way that sounds proper. It takes focus, which feels good, but which I never have. I'm always bent over some resentment, or thinking about money, or worrying about where I live, or merely watching the clock or counting the words until I can be done. It's a lot more gratifying to merely rest my attention on the words and keep them flowing together. Hold them front of mind.

I can virtually guarantee there's no way I will be able to do that tomorrow when the mental ghosts have been ressurected and my host of neurotic parasites can glut themselves tearing me apart with pain and discord, discontentment, and loathing to spare.

There's always the worry about the future to get back to. More fantasy house shopping. Counting how many hours I can work to make the absolute bare minimum, because I do have aspirations of developing some of my actual projects. I just can't motivate stone sober. Which is in part because my emotional state, financial state, socioeconomic state, and social state are in such disarray that I'm barely keeping it together. I hang by the thinnest of threads.

Which is why so many of us who are addicts struggle so hard. Trying to juggle anything resembling life, while trying to cope with a lifetime of shame -- I forgot about shame in my emotions list! -- fear, regret, failure, trauma, and turmoil while trying to actually run a life is more balls to juggle than we can handle. It's why rehabs exist. To give them a chance to get internally stabilized, because that's where stability must be found.

Therefore the question is whether or not cannabis use can be used to help stabilize patients. So far, I've had a lot of failure at making that work. That's not to say it can't. It's to say there's some method necessary for the maelstrom.

Bong therapy turns into daily need, cravings, and ultimately failure of the drug as the requirements of the addiction grow. Synergy to alcohol, cycle repeats.

Maybe medical intervention? I'm barely limping along, and doing it without much hope of righting again.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

How Much can We Let go of?

I was beginning to wonder as I walked, half drunk and a little stoned, thanks perpetual addiction, into my bedroom, exactly how much we hold on to that we don't need to. How do we let it go?

I've asked this question before, and the answer I've encountered most frequently is Buddhist. We let it go by living in the moment. Our aim is not letting things go so much as letting go of letting things go. Releasing the expectations and the perpetual desires. Releasing to the point that you can let go of your body and your bowels without caring about it.

A 16oz beer and a half, plus some flower is all I've had today.

I always wanted to go back in time. I kept hoping that an older, wiser version of myself would show up and tell me the right path to take. The older, wiser version of me wishes that I had the confidence and recklessness of the person I was when I was a youth.

So, younger me wants older me to come solve my problems, and older me wants to turn into younger me to solve my problems.

The only thing I know is that I am ill-suited at this time to solve my problems.

Can we learn to let go of expectations of us? The requirements we think we have? Can we let go of our modern comforts? Can we let go of desires? Morality? Shame?

Probably none. All we can do is hide in chemicals. Which is better.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

Social Media Addiction Note

I started this blog figuring no one would see it. That it would be birthed into the ravenous maw of the internet to disappear forever. Then, I logged in after a few days, and there was a reblog here, a reaction there.

My addict woke up.

"I can get random internet approval dopamine for doing something I was doing anyway? I'm up on that."

Now I'm thinking about what made those blog posts connect with people, what I did right. All because I was using this as a way to learn more about life, about myself, about recovery, and about offering a journey to show others ways of dealing with things. It's a journal, it's just white noise. Frankly, it's the pointless project your father does out in the garage for hours on end.

It's just to get back in the habit of writing. Mostly, though, it's a place to hide and get high. Terrible habit I'm working on trying to work on. Full addict behavior. Full. Not half, full. Total denial that I'm not functioning like a person.

Now, that's bringing social media attention in tiny little drips, and I start wondering about posting more. Something I didn't care about began to morph into this tasty curiosity that might lend itself to the dreaming of yet bigger dreams.

When I should be learning about the job I need to get better doing.

I'm such a fucking nag when I'm high. Or, all the time and it only comes out when I'm high. It's not good.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

Day 17

Nothing new to report. Still smoking the demon weed and fantasizing about drinking. Can't accomplish basic goals in favor of getting high. Writing trash material, likely because of the pot, but certainly not in spite of it.

Feeling mostly better. Slept heavily today, and will likely do more tonight. Job's not looking hot, or maybe it's just my negativity. Seems to be getting more frustrating rather than easier. Meant to work on it, got high instead.

Don't know how to quit, still. Don't know how to want to ask for help. Blech.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

Can't Stop

There's nothing recreational about this usage. This isn't even medicinal. This is straight up abuse.

Let me warn you pot smokers out there, when you graduate up to the concentrates, and are using the torch on the banger to drop the shatter into it, you're acting like a junkie.

It's what I was doing, in the broken down RV between pissing into a 2 liter bottle.

That's how I party. That's "recreational user" behavior.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

I Always Liked The Vizier

The villains I really enjoy are the type that operate behind the throne. I like the shadow operators, who don't come into daylight. They cozy up to power, or they ingratiate themselves to megalomaniacs and use them, letting their patrons take all the risk while they whisper sweet lies and turn people against one another.

I like the Machiavellian evil. I enjoy the man who needs not be king in order to slither around the palace.

Something to aspire towards!

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

Watch Your Posture

Being aware of how you carry yourself can tell you a lot about your internal world. Nearly every person in the world is confused and surprised by themselves. If you'd like a little more information about that mystery, then it's helpful to look at how your body behaves.

I found that I tended to walk hunched, trying to make myself smaller, unless it was a crowd situation, and then I'd try to make myself larger. I'm 6'3", which accounts for some of my hunched posture, but much of it comes from being a person with a lot of shame and fear.

Psychotropic therapy in conjunction with addiction counseling? Be realistic. That's a treatment for the obscenely wealthy which is more about playing with sobriety than about dedicating one's self to living a sober life day after day.

The very notion of that sent me running back to the bong just to assure myself the fix was still there.

As if there's anything more broken.

By noticing your posture, you will get a better sense of how you feel and what position your body is acclimated to being in. Many people find themselves hunched over, from a life spent on computers, phones, tablets, and laptops for years. Plus, they're crushed under the bootheel of the capitalist plantation lords who jerk the strings of our puppet government.

But, I digress.

We're hunched from bearing the burden of the opulent wealthy upon our backs, and noticing that helps us see how much of a battered, whipped slave we've become.

It's perfectly okay to feel that way. It's perfectly okay to notice that you seem more worn and tired than you've been pretending to be. Every person does that. Every person is a little weary and worn.

Noticing where our posture is poor can not only tell us about our emotional state, but improve our physical health. If you typically sit in a manner at your computer that reduces or inhibits circulation -- which describes most of us -- you're going to end up feeling sluggish, bored, depressed, uncreative, and stuck.

Begin moving with greater confidence, and you'll start to alter your feelings. By moving your body in a new way, you're forcing your brain to focus more on the action. This requires building new neurons. Because, you're re-wiring what your body does when it moves. If you tell yourself to keep your head up, or your back straight when you walk, then you need to think about that as you're walking. This forces your attention to not only your posture, but brings it into the present moment. If you're thinking about your posture, you're going to end up noticing your breathing, your tension, and all the other features of your frame. This body awareness is a form of meditation.

Generally, a relaxed body posture is best. You don't want to be puffing up, arching your back, squaring your shoulders like a lineman, nor curled over, unless you have some spinal injury or disease that impacts you. If that's you, you surely know your body's limits.

Being fully conscious of our body is an excellent tool in our arsenal of awareness. Knowing exactly how we feel, and where we feel it, is vital. Many of us ignore our bodies until they are shrieking. We do not always listen to what they need. Merely thinking about what your body needs begins by looking at what it's doing. Then ask what might be healthier for your frame to do? How might you increase bloodflow, or improve your lung capacity? Standing up is almost always the answer, if you're not already. Dancing is a great idea, as it stimulates your joints in unusual ways, which is good for your cardiovascular system and your musculoskeletal system. Though if you're shaking your sweet money-maker at the office, it may do strange and unexpected things to your social system. Also your financial system. Just notions to keep in mind if you're riding a cube for 40 h's a week. 'leve that.

If you can't get up or tango your way to good posture, consider how you're sitting and ask if you're doing it right. Are you upright, back straight, tailbone stuck out, or are you slouched in the chair like an orangutan that someone just poached for the ivory, right before realizing apes don't have ivory. So he just buggered off and left the orangutan slumped there like a sedated office worker.

Which are you, King Louis?

Body awareness is a tremendous tool.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

When You're an Addict

You never want to cease being an addict. I've never wanted to quit. Not really. Not for a moment. I might need to, but I can't convince myself I want to.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

If You Can't Have the Job You Love, Love the Job You Have?

Following our dreams, finding our passions, and chasing our purpose has left a lot of us bereft, directionless, adrift, and missing everything on the list.

Perhaps life should be defined as "Learning to cope with disappointment."

So I began to wonder, "What if I devoted myself to being good at my job? What opportunities might I find there? Since I've been without direction for years, meandering, why not grab whatever anchor is there and see where it leads me?"

I've never learned much about storytelling nor plot arcs, nor character development. I barely pay attention to all my grammarizing or syntacticality.

Incidentally, syntax is among my favorite words.

What if I really started throwing myself into it? Started taking more shifts for more money, just to expedite moving. It might not be the greatest thrill, but a little workaholism might not be the worst thing to indulge in right now.

I'm just concerned about what that does to my psyche.

It's hard to know exactly where to focus your attention. Sometimes you're better off seeking something to pursue, rather than something to avoid. For instance, becoming really involved in exercise could be the same goal as not smoking pot. If your goal is not to smoke, you're moving away from something. That can be more difficult, because you're still focused on the activity. Focusing on not doing it is not that different from focusing on doing it.

The reason for this is neurological. In a very rudimentary sense, your brain sends two signals when you tell yourself not to do something. The first signal says "do the thing." The second signal negates the first one, sending a "do not do the thing." When most people stand near a ledge they will get this sensation. You will likely get a wild thought about jumping off the edge. This can happen if you are a perfectly happy person who is neither a thrill seeker nor suicidal. Many people have this happen to them.

The reason is the brain is thinking about jumping off the ledge, and then saying "but actually, don't do that."

It's very similar to the mental trick "don't think of an elephant," which forces someone to immediately think of an elephant, because they do that in order to tell themselves not to think about it.

What this means for quitting an addiction is that if you're focused on stopping, you're still reactivating the part of your brain that thinks about engaging in the addiction.

This is why many people then focus on recovery, as their replacement. That is thinking about healing from the addiction and engaging in life again, rather than simply stopping. It also provides an outlet for emotionally clearing out the difficult thoughts and feelings that led to engaging in the addiction in the first place.

This was about learning to love your job, huh?

If you focus on making your job better, or becoming more adept at your job, it can become your passion, and take on purpose for you. You can start to see how doing it allows you to impact the world in some way. Learning more about it, you'll see even being a good cashier is something that can work wonders for you. That's about reading people, understanding shoppers, seeing how a business operates from within. Seeing where there is potential to learn and grow.

Otherwise, I'm focused on being resentful and thinking they are wrong and that I'm a bitch who isn't standing up for myself. Actually, I could find a better way to interact with my editor.

See, pot mellows me out enough to think of these things. It's a crutch, but it's not all bad. Minus the paranoia part.

But, I'm going to shift my mentality to trying to be better at my job. I've actually been listening to my editor, and just trying to learn to play the game they want. Which is a good start. It wouldn't hurt to voice my opinion in a way that is kind and approachable. There's no need to silently stuff it.

Being a better writer, better marketer, and learning more about the operations of a bigger site isn't a bad education. So, I'll play the game and see how they do things 'round these parts.

The scientific mindset is a powerful one to acquire. If everything is an experiment to see the outcome, your ego doesn't get involved as easily. You merely observe the outcome without feeling like you handled it badly or are weak, stupid, or wrong for your thoughts.

If you feel like something dark and bloody, watch the Hannibal TV Series. I mention that because Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal is always watching people, gauging their reaction. He is never really involved with their feelings. He is merely observing them and how they respond to the grim and dour circumstances. The show itself fades after about the second season, if not a bit before, but the early parts are such masterworks that it's really worth watching. That's from a lifelong lover of the original "Silence of the Lambs" film, the whole Thomas Harris series of books, though also a harsh critic of the "Hannibal" book itself. I barely bothered with "Hannibal Rising" because I felt like Harris was going back to a well that worked, but his inspiration had fled.

Anyhow, Mikkelsen's performance is a great example of someone who treats everything like an experiment. Constantly removed, and making little mental notes of how you act, what you say, how the strain shows. Weighing your heart against a feather.

[depresseddistraughtdisillusioned]

Most Frustration

Most frustration comes from trying to control things that we can't. Worse, we often forego things we could do to improve our circumstances while trying to change things that are beyond our grasp.

I just want to live alone again. That's all I really want. To live alone without needing to kill myself at work and to be able to enjoy some space from other people.

Except, how long will that last? It's not just quitting the addiction. It's filling the additional time. It's developing healthy habits that you can use moving forward. You don't really have any of those, nor do you have any plans to acquire them.

My problem has many components, which lead me to wanting to move. This could be true of anything you want to do. Maybe you want to move in with someone, or to change jobs, or end your relationship. I really am stuck in a geographic way.

However, that geographic portion is an excuse. I'm saying the problem is that I am not being given what I want by the universe. I am ignoring my role in this situation, and therefore ignoring what I can be doing in order to fix that issue.

I want to move, which means I need more money. This is something I might be able to control. It's tough to tell whether or not you can overcome mental health barriers without a lot of assistance.

It can also be difficult to identify which problems are true mental health issues, such as clinical depression, and which problems stem merely from what perhaps might be juvenile willfulness. But, is also frustration with lack of direction, lack of sense of hope, limited joys. It's tough to be upbeat in these situations.

My eating habits are also starting to slide.

It's fine. Setbacks and challenges. I normally would get frustrated and start giving up. However, that's not necessary. I just need to find a small thing I can control and try to change that.

Not getting high while working. Yeah, see, I say that and was an irritable mess. Okay. Goddamn I need to stop.

Now we have a new problem, which is larger. The smaller problem that is in my control relies on quitting substance use, which should technically be under my control, but I only think that when I'm high.

It's caught me in an endless loop. If I'm not high, I only want to get high. When I am high, I only want to quit.

This cycle repeats again and again with cannabis. This is why booze comes into the mix. This ride isn't terribly fun. Alcohol smooths out some of the rough edges. Then comes the greater fall. I haven't climbed high, nor sober, nor to a great height, but still, drinking leading to loss of this job would be damaging. I'm risking it and convinced I have it under control.

"Get rid of it all!" I hear people screaming. "Dump everything to make it hard on yourself! You can't stay sober with a loaded bong ready to go off at any time."

But, it's the only thing I have left! Without that addiction, I'm just being me all the time, and that's miserable. I can't pretend these words are good.

I sometimes hate myself because I don't measure up.