Jabberwocky
Frumious Bandersnatch
- Joined
- Nov 3, 1999
- Messages
- 84,998
Agreed, wicked first post!
The current research into neuroplasticity suggests that we continue to develop cognitively throughout our entire lives. The brain is quite the organ! We can even learn to condition our limbic systems' fight/flight/freeze/fuck response to an incredible degree, which says a lot about how pliable and conditional our wiring is.
Really, it's a fallacy to think of our brains as "hard wired" for anything. A more accurate description would be "wet-wired," a system of neural connections that is contending dying off and being regrown in response to environmental stimuli, one that can be conditioned to meet the needs of coping with any environment (and the environment will largely determine the type of coping strategies used - think of the rat park experiments: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/). But this isn't determinism either, because to some degree, even in the worst of prisons, we are able to utilize some degree of agency and self control to manage even the harshest environments (see the link to the paper on self-control and post-humanism below).
What I take away from this is two things: the causes and conditions of our lives play an extremely significant role in shaping who we are and how we see the world AND that we also ultimately reap what we so, not just materially but in terms of how we see the world too. I'm not suggesting anyone become a Polyanna; to me denying the suffering of life is a life not being lived to its fullest. Discomfort is simply the flip side to comfort, pleasure to pain, pleasant to unpleasant.
That all being said, living with anhedonia is an incredibly, incredibly difficult place to be, because you're stuck living in a place of pain, unpleasantness and discomfort. I imagine it would be hard to feel good about life without being able to experience its if momentary joys (in fact, I know this to be true).
Here is a really interesting article on the nature of self control and how an appropriate discussion of it in the science surrounding addiction has been sorely lacking you might find interesting (particularly the section right before the conclusion): http://www.ijdp.org/article/S0955-3959(13)00010-8/fulltext
Coming to terms with the fact I love drugs and how they enhance (and have the potential to destroy) my life was probably the most significant developmental insight I have gained over my career as a junkie. I no longer find the insight into the meaninglessness of it all, which I fully agree with (it's just a slightly darker way of looking at everything as transient, which - as a secular lay person - is in my experience the only way to understand absolute reality), to not at all be mutually exclusive with the insight into the beauty that is the very transience of our experience.
Clearly you are an incredibly intelligent individual. Sometimes I feel like anhedonia can be the flip side to being smart enough to thing for one's self and see through the bullshit and alienation of what tends to color so much of everyday modern life.
Perhaps you simply have yet to learn how to live life in ways that allow you experience joy along side with your sorrow, regardless of degree or your genetic endowment. Perhaps this is also why you enjoy and/or are so drawn to substance use, because it helps to facilitate some degree of joy - however fake meaningless it might feel, it could very well become a bridge to discovering ways to connect with life that are not so dark.
Do you have much experience with enthogens or empathogens like mescaline, LSD, mushrooms, MXE or MDMA OP?
The thing is, I don't get the sense that you are hopeless in terms of your perspective (although IMHO hope is overrated). Just that you're more real, or perhaps more in touch with the darker side of experience, than most outwardly are.
It would be great to see more of your stuff in The Dark Side or Mental Health forums (or Sober Living of course, although it seems like you'd feel more at home in the two former communities than SL). This is like the perfect material for discussion there, where you'll find more than one person who can relate to your experiences of anhedonia.
tl;dr IME we neither have free will nor or slaves to our biology. What we are lays somewhere in-between. Here are some links you might find interesting regarding neuroplasticity, conditioning and self-control:
The current research into neuroplasticity suggests that we continue to develop cognitively throughout our entire lives. The brain is quite the organ! We can even learn to condition our limbic systems' fight/flight/freeze/fuck response to an incredible degree, which says a lot about how pliable and conditional our wiring is.
Really, it's a fallacy to think of our brains as "hard wired" for anything. A more accurate description would be "wet-wired," a system of neural connections that is contending dying off and being regrown in response to environmental stimuli, one that can be conditioned to meet the needs of coping with any environment (and the environment will largely determine the type of coping strategies used - think of the rat park experiments: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/). But this isn't determinism either, because to some degree, even in the worst of prisons, we are able to utilize some degree of agency and self control to manage even the harshest environments (see the link to the paper on self-control and post-humanism below).
What I take away from this is two things: the causes and conditions of our lives play an extremely significant role in shaping who we are and how we see the world AND that we also ultimately reap what we so, not just materially but in terms of how we see the world too. I'm not suggesting anyone become a Polyanna; to me denying the suffering of life is a life not being lived to its fullest. Discomfort is simply the flip side to comfort, pleasure to pain, pleasant to unpleasant.
That all being said, living with anhedonia is an incredibly, incredibly difficult place to be, because you're stuck living in a place of pain, unpleasantness and discomfort. I imagine it would be hard to feel good about life without being able to experience its if momentary joys (in fact, I know this to be true).
Here is a really interesting article on the nature of self control and how an appropriate discussion of it in the science surrounding addiction has been sorely lacking you might find interesting (particularly the section right before the conclusion): http://www.ijdp.org/article/S0955-3959(13)00010-8/fulltext
Coming to terms with the fact I love drugs and how they enhance (and have the potential to destroy) my life was probably the most significant developmental insight I have gained over my career as a junkie. I no longer find the insight into the meaninglessness of it all, which I fully agree with (it's just a slightly darker way of looking at everything as transient, which - as a secular lay person - is in my experience the only way to understand absolute reality), to not at all be mutually exclusive with the insight into the beauty that is the very transience of our experience.
Clearly you are an incredibly intelligent individual. Sometimes I feel like anhedonia can be the flip side to being smart enough to thing for one's self and see through the bullshit and alienation of what tends to color so much of everyday modern life.
Perhaps you simply have yet to learn how to live life in ways that allow you experience joy along side with your sorrow, regardless of degree or your genetic endowment. Perhaps this is also why you enjoy and/or are so drawn to substance use, because it helps to facilitate some degree of joy - however fake meaningless it might feel, it could very well become a bridge to discovering ways to connect with life that are not so dark.
Do you have much experience with enthogens or empathogens like mescaline, LSD, mushrooms, MXE or MDMA OP?
The thing is, I don't get the sense that you are hopeless in terms of your perspective (although IMHO hope is overrated). Just that you're more real, or perhaps more in touch with the darker side of experience, than most outwardly are.
It would be great to see more of your stuff in The Dark Side or Mental Health forums (or Sober Living of course, although it seems like you'd feel more at home in the two former communities than SL). This is like the perfect material for discussion there, where you'll find more than one person who can relate to your experiences of anhedonia.
tl;dr IME we neither have free will nor or slaves to our biology. What we are lays somewhere in-between. Here are some links you might find interesting regarding neuroplasticity, conditioning and self-control:
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