TDS Avoiding dependence or addiction by switching drugs all the time? 2

[bluedom]

So I started a thread of the same name a while ago but it is closed so I can't update it. There I asked the question of what would happen if one switched drugs every day, i.e., tickle one psychoactive receptor system per day. I got responses back that offered suggestions for daily schedules to receptor systems lists. And I also received comments about polydrug addiction, narcomania, and that it generally was a bad idea. I'm here to report on my experiences in this regard over the last several months. Full disclosure: I'm currently on about 400mg modalfinil right now and I'm "high" (this wasn't my intent when I started writing).

Perhaps it was during the depths of fentanyl PAWS (see Background below) that I posted that original message about changing drugs every day to avoid dependence/addition (you can search for the identical thread title without the " 2" or my username; I recommend it since it's highly informative thanks to contributors). I had stopped using fentanyl and I was in some pain, so I had been abusing THC cookies. MM is legal in my state and they are sold at "pharmacies" here. I was eating 2-4 per day. Seriously. First thing I'd do after waking up is eat 2-4 sugary cookies. :/ Not because I needed that much for pain. But because I loved the psychedelic experiences I was having. It was one of my first times on THC. I've never really gotten high from smoking and I just don't like smoking in general and I previously have gotten high a couple of times, from using a vaporisor and eating cookies (I know what you're thinking , but it was too overwhelming overall. I had a ball for about two months and I was worried that I was becoming addicted. The classic signs were there. And I had been using for only a couple of months consecutively (previous use was years back). As I started to worry about whether I should worry:

Then something strange and "magical" happened. My tolerance had been going up significantly. 1 cookie was enough initially, but I now needed 4 to get about 25% of the "high" I had gotten earlier. I couldn't seem to easily stop. Yet for some reason, the notion of waking up in the morning and eating 4 cookies stopped appealing to me. I started to cut down! I cut down to 1/day to deal with the pain ("high" be damned) and then soon I was having 1/week which is where it is right now. I have 1-2 cookies every 1-2 weeks. I enjoy this a LOT more. Over time I've stopped for as long as a month, and I never miss it or feel a craving for it. And when I do take it after a long break, the vast majority of the psychedelic effects are back (though they only last for 1-2 days). So THC to me seems to have this self correcting mechanism like what I felt about MDMA or LSD, which is that I can't seem to get addicted to these due to such a massive development of tolerance in such a short time (one use) that it's pointless to keep playing the tolerance game. (I NEVER felt this way about alcohol; my tolerance initially did increase but I just drank more. And I've been dependent on opiates to know what a physical dependency is like.)

Aside from that, I take gabapentin a few days a month (again, extremely massive tolerance where it's essentially a waste of the drug to keep taking it but I run through my prescription, or at least half each time, anyway). Gabapentin is a wonder drug and I've found it be to immediately be great at staving off opiate WDs entirely (even massive ones you could potentially get from using fentanyl and oxymorphone for a year). I've always used it at a high dose (minimum 3g, increase y 1g every day until 6-10g after which point it is pointless).

So oxymorphone = 3-4 consecutive days/month, not 24/7! Gabapentin = 3 times/day for <= 1 consecutive week/month (yeah, because I do feel it is a wonder drug . THC = 3-5 separate days/month. The remaining days of the month are pretty random. There is not another drug that appears more than once over the last several months, but I've used the following in the last several months: benzodiazepenes = a few days 2 months ago; modalfinil = no more than 2 different days. I do get "high" from it @ 400-800mg; best description is that it sounds like what people who LOVE cocaine talk about but much better and lasts all day and I'm on it now!On that note I should say that I had been planning to "update" bluelight as I am doing; I'm 100% sure I didn't plan on having it go this long and I'm sure this is the effect of modalfinil. Besides just feeling very good (even with very very little sleep) I also feel this OCD-like tendency to provide all sorts of detail about everything so everything is as clear as it can be but this is just looking like a big rambling mess. Insight, even.

I feel neither addicted nor dependent on any particular substance (i.e., drug) currently but I have a addiction (in the past) to alcohol (my rule #1 about drugs: you can't have a current addiction to something you are NOT drinking/eating/smoking/ -- this doesn't mean I think I can drink alcohol again. Far from it. It means I don't crave alcohol consumption. Not a glass, not a drop. I have no desire to consume it.) I am interested in constantly being challenged and having my mind opened to trying new things and new experiences (my mind is so open that my brains could fall out . Is that the justification of a polydrug addict? Like I say, I've been humbled enough to not say "NEVER" but I'd say "it's possible, but unlikely." Is it the same?

One thing about my last addiction was that I was self aware of it constantly (even though I was in denial). I don't feel that way about any one substance, or about substances in general I'm not certain; it's hard to tease out thinking about it to be honest since how do you "imagine" polydrug, as opposed to monodrug, addiction? I'd say I'm more "addicted" to travelling, really hot and spicy food, ... I'm addicted to new experiences! Seriously; my tolerance for "experiences" is going up (or I'm getting old, or both and I need to have more, better new experiences than ever before (especially compared to when I liked the cardboard box the toy came in where every instant was a brand new experience almost). Drugs are one way to get there quickly. Heck, they even make old experiences seem new (no, I'm not about to do a world tour again, high). So am I sober for days at a time? Sure, but what that does prove? Would I be doing the same travelling and adventuring regardless of whether I'd be doing drugs? Absolutely. Do I still enjoy the same things as I used? Yep! But everything's better with the drugs! (I just wrote that to see if anyone is still reading this.

I jest. As someone who has gone through addiction, I assure you that I am well and seriously aware of the deep dark place you can end up. Having said that, at least we know my sense of (attempted) humour? is intact!

One of my basic premises, especially knowing what addiction is, is that everything is a drug and everything is addictive. This sounds pithy but think about the biology of living organisms and particularly humans: we're designed to survive long enough to at least propagate our genes once, and I believe almost every core of our being is naturally selected for this purpose (there is some drift). Eating, metabolising, excreting, having sex, are all geared to provide pleasure yes, even excreting with the singular goal of ensuring our survival so that our genes are propagated (or perhaps it's the bacterial metagenome that resides within us and we're just "ugly bags of mostly water" for their benefit, as Gould hypothesised). "Pleasure" is the neurochemical means by which these drives (necessary to propagate either our genomes) are exercised and while dopamine is key to this process, it is a complex one involving, indeed, every fibre of our being. This "every core/fibre of our being" involvement is due to evolution and natural selection. Pleasure, or rewards, may also be obtained by avoiding things we don't like, including pain (two sides of the same coin). What about all the other stuff in between what we like and we don't like (and even some of that)? Well, you are in possession of the greatest computer ever identified to help you "decide" what's good based on context. It all one complex dance.

Unfortunately this process goes awry once in a while, and one of those is "addiction". Few seek out to become addicts and among those who have, fewer still would claim (1) that they were or are not under the thrall of an addiction AND (2) they knew/know what they were doing. I write below about own addiction to alcohol. I'd say I'm not addicted to alcohol because I don't/can't drink it. (I say "can't" in the sense of something I'm unable to do, not in any way implying I have a choice in that matter. That would be suicide and I can't kill myself. (See?))

--

Background: For the longest time in my life (before age 30), the only substances I had used that could be called a drug (pharmaceutical or otherwise) were ibuprofen (lots of times), MDMA (a few times), and LSD (once). I didn't use the latter two more than once a year or two. So I didn't drink (maybe 3 drops in like 30 years , smoke, or do anything else. A few years later I started drinking and within months I knew I was addicted. I was probably addicted both physically and mentally from very early on (though initially the physical WD is barely imperceptible) and didn't quite realise it and didn't really understand that I should've walked away from alcohol. (I had no problems stopping and starting then, it seemed a lot easier initially.) Within a matter of 2-3 years, I went from drinking one drink a week to several to daily to 24/7 to a point where I was drinking a liter of the 150 proof rum per day before I decided that I had enough enough and checked into detox and treatment and one year of daily AA (I was told in treatment during the first five minutes that what I needed was "90 in 90"). The rest as they say is history. Three years sober now. I'm extremely successful in every way you can imagine and extremely fortunate and I almost came to losing it all (or throwing it all away, which would I imply I had a choice, which I know I didn't, not after my addiction had even taken a moderate hold). Whew. Gives me the cold sweats when I think about it. I think this was a good, even great, experience for me since I felt there was nothing that could touch me until this happened. Alcohol brought me to my knees. It humbled me, and that was a good thing.

My first experiences with opiates actually started before that. I had an injury and was on oxycodone (the 5mg little white pills; 12 of them a day) for about 6 months. I enjoyed it immensely though it also always did provide pain relief. I had a good doctor and he tapered me off and then gently landed me on tramadol (which I enjoyed as much, if not more so, than the oxycodone, the very first few times I took it---never again have I experienced that!) and after a couple of months of tramadol, I just stopped and nothing, no WDs, no craving, nothing. It was actually a year after that that I started drinking.

More recently, ~1.5 years after I kicked alcohol, I was prescribed fentanyl patches (for pain due to another, more serious, spinal injury) for over a year and then I tapered off of it entirely over a period of 3-4 months (going from 50mcg/hr to 37.5 to 25 to 12.5 to 6.25 to zero). Gabapentin was a lifesaver here and again I barely felt any WD (I had a few months earlier gotten tired of my patches and tried to cold turkey and it felt like I was dying---my first experience with opiate WD). I still am prescribed oxymorphone (1-2 5mg pills/day) which I've been taking only once a month. I use it IN with a dropper and I finish a month's supply in 3-4 days. Then I stay opiate free for ~1 month. I always wonder what I'll do the next month. Slowly but inexorably I've indeed been reducing my dose (even if it is only by 2.5mg/month). I definitely will admit not wanting to give up my opiates prescription since who knows when it'll be since I'll get some more? I've avoided the temptation of seeking any opiates outside of a proper prescription from my regular pain doctor; I doubt I will at this point but I feel obtaining opiates illicitly would cross a red line for me so wish me luck that I never go there. I say this not because I'm thinking of doing so but to illustrate that I don't take anything for granted. I'm really happy to have kicked my opiate dependency.

 

[BabyGurl3171]

Congrats on bein sober, but I think you posted in the wrong forum. This is basic drugs Q&A's. And harm reduction...

 

[benzo bars]

Good read. Would you consider the poly drug abusing to be easier to shake the addiction? I think addiction can creep up on ANYONE and some people are more prone to use with an addictive personality

 

[bluedom]

Yep; I talk about the drugs I am taking on a monthly basis.

 

[effie]

Hi, thank you for the update! As BabyGurl said however we are a quick q&a forum (check the guidelines in my sig) so this doesn't really fit I am afraid - I would suggest posting that in your blog, or if there is an aspect you want to discuss perhaps posting in Other Drugs or The Dark Side.

While you may avoid physical dependency or a psychological addiction to a specific drug, I think the problem is becoming addicted to being under the influence of any drug.. it becomes hard to see our drug use objectively after a while and it can be easy to delude ourselves that we are not doing any harm. I am not saying that you necessarily are doing harm, but that your ability to detect it is likely to become distorted. Be careful

Closed, pm me with any queries

 

[effie]

Reopened and moved to TDS at the request of bluedom.

BDD > TDS

 

[bluedom]

benzo bars:

Thanks. Given the usage/abuse pattern I've had, I can definitely say that that is the case for me. One thing that I find naturally happening is that on a monthly basis I don't have a really fixed routine. Each month's use (for now) seems different from the next. Each month I start from the lowest dose and sometimes I go up and stop and sometimes I don't. My monthly environment changes along with cues like weather, etc. So there's little constancy during my use which I think has been a good thing.

Some of the comments from the previous thread with a similar title were extremely helpful and I've kept those comments at the forefront of my mind most of the time during and in between uses.

--

Besides the warnings about poly drug addiction proper, there was a comment that went something like "after a few rotations of your drug list you'll find your best hitter and keep hitting it." I've never forgotten that comment and so perhaps because of that, I've not reached the state of finding my best hitter, let alone keep hitting it. If anything, my tendency has been to spread out usage fairly evenly over the current three I use on any kind of a regular (monthly) schedule: oxymorphone, gabapentin/pregabalin, and THC . Among the three, if I were dead honest, I would have to say that if my dosage of oxymorphone was increased by 2x, 4x, 8x, ..., I would likely consume what I reasonably could initially in a given day, most likely stopping before I became a danger to myself . If I had kept going down the path of ever increasing opiates, I wouldn't be alive to write the above. I've very very slowly been reducing my opiate usage (soon to be at 1 5mg oxymorphone a day, which I'd love to keep indefinitely , and subsequently prescription, per month (of my own free will) and I believe partly as a result of both the slowly reduced intake and the relatively long periods between usage, I don't crave them. I'm not entirely free from opiates for the very reason that I've not been able to give up my prescription (I. But at some point, it has to become functionally pointless. The PITA of me getting a hand signed prescription every month needs to overcome the pleasure I get from opiates, and vice versa. :/

If using, misusing, and abusing led to addiction in any semblance of a clear way, life would be too simple. I am sure addiction creeps up, but I'd argue that our awareness of our addiction is what very very slowly creeps up (so I guess writing helps in this regard). Even though I intellectually knew I was addicted to alcohol after 3 months of usage, I was still in denial about it for another 2+ years.

In the case of addiction, "probably varies" I've found is a good answer for a lot of questions. If you were to ask addicts what comes first, physical dependence or psychological habituation or both simultaneously, you'd definitely hear variation based on the person's make up, the person's attitude (before, during, and after first and last use), their environment, and of course the substance being considered.

So in terms of poly drug addiction, is there any unique about it compared to other addictions other than that it is about muitiple drugs?

By "addictive personality" are you referring to someone who habituates easily to using and abusing drugs? Is there really an addictive personality or are you talking about someone with the propensity to become an addict due to overregular overuse.

Thanks! The modalfinil is good for my typing. :/

--

I was going to keep writing in the previous post but it was getting out of control! The reason I wrote what I did about evolution and so on is to illustrate that while addiction may seem to sometimes hit you suddenly in at least one and generally all possible ways, it probably was developing or had developed over time. The pathology itself may have been developing even before any specific use of what we call "addictive substances" (which may be anything for a given person). Genetic/biophysical/biochemical/cellular/neural/physiological "reward" pathways responsible for your basic drives and pleasures are being improperly reinforced which iteratively "feeds back on itself" as well as "feedbacks on itself." It's a continuum, as well as a conundrumm in part because it occurs over some arbitrary time period and progress against it is extremely slow and nonlinear and recovery appears to proceed in "fits and starts".

Prior to first use of the DOC, these pathways may look like what you'd see in any other normal user, or perhaps some combination of nature and nurture have already dealt you an unlucky blow in that there's a slightly higher propensity for your pathways to form complex self-sustaining feedback loops (which is what I call "addiction", albeit nonexlusively). Either way, sometimes prior to first use, and definitely from first use and beyond, these pathways start to manifest. "Hijacked" is more colourful but it is not as descriptive as "reinforced", which is what is happening with and during every use and periods in between. Reinforcement of your neural pathways is part of what enables us to learn. Reinforcement of pathways that lead to addiction can occur with positive (mostly initially during addiction) or negative (mostly toward the end) associations with your use and every thing in between (thus an addict can feel happy, sad and anything in between, but the inevitable consequence is that the addition pathways get reinforced greater with every use or nonuse. Equilibrium (or homeostasis, is what your body is constantly trying to achieve) between these associations is when the likelihood of particular neural pathway(s) being reinforced is equally likely regardless of whether a positive or negative association occurs when using.

All your pathways are a product of evolution to propagate your genome. You already had entered the addiction trap earlier via a complex interplay of nature and nurture. I'd argue this is when the trap door starts to slowly shut. The newly reinforced pathways, some of whom may directly have nothing to do with addiction but perhaps with the actions involved in smoking, reinforce some other pathways and don't reinforce yet other pathways some of which may feed back into the first such pathways resulting in a vicious, as opposed to a virtuous, cycle. Only the degree of viciousness varies, which is due to a combination of nature and nurture. Talking about complex pathways (which have biophysical/biochemical/cellular/neural/physiological components to them) with nonlinear feedback loops as creating a "vicious" cycle isn't saying anything more than saying that the pathways are self-reinforcing which are self-self-reinforcing and so on. Your ability to call these cycles "vicious" and "virtuous" separates you from other organisms.

In the meanwhile... your body/mind have gotten their act together and your mind starts to register negative associations and cues over positive ones with drug use partly because it is arriving at the belated conclusion that this drug use isn't likely to end well. You start a tug of war with yourself. Who do you think will win? It's the Chinese finger puzzle. The more you fight, the worse it gets. We cross the tipping point as we begin to start making and breaking our first promises. The news is just going to get increasingly worse but you don't know that yet. Anyone with a reasonable sense of survival may think that they may be addicted/hooked/trapped and so you make your first promise to yourself to cut back and/or stop as soon as possible, which is immediately broken as you use, even as you may say to yourself "just this once".


Is the trap reversible or stoppable? Probably, but arresting the addiction is the most likely best outcome. Otherwise it's like rolling a massive snowball back up the entire hill. It's a seeming paradox (but not really if you think in terms of feedback loops which create a proverbial "snowball effect") but every use results in the addiction taking hold in greater amounts. I'm not saying that every use adds to the addiction taking hold in about equal amounts and that the sum of addiction taking hold is increasing. If this were the case, a snowball wouldn't become bigger as it rolled downhill. The increased size of the snowball results in an increased surface area (bigger sphere) which can gather more snow in a nonlinear fashion leading to increased size... you get the idea! The surface area of a snowball (let's assume snowsphere) as well as its volume, are nonlinear functions of its radius, a single variable. Just imagine what's going on in your brain which involves zillions of atoms and molecules and neural connections. Boggles the mind, eh?

In short order, the snowball is HUGE and thundering along the mouintain. Do you think you can stop it? Push it back up? The slope it is rolling on seems to not only never seems to end but is getting steeper as the snowball weighs the surface and pushes down increasing the slope resulting in higher density, more rolling, increased slope, bigger size, .... It sends a shiver down your spine to consider that it's too late to start cutting back and even stopping may be beyond your abilities. Your body and health is getting weighted down by the addiction so you don't eat or sleep well (even if you are addicted to eating or sleeping) which results in your body getting even more weighted down. You try not to let these worries weigh you down further as you use more, reassuring yourself that this might be a phase that you'll roll out of. After many sleepless nights you finally drift off to sleep but wake up fully drenched in sweat from a nightmare where you're a giant snowball that falls off the slope and down from the edge of the earth into deep space and is melted away by the sun. You recall wondering how you're going to get your fix in outer space.

Still wet, you think you'd be better of if you indeed were the snowball that went off the cliff. You never thought you were the type of person to contempate suicide but doing so brings you an extremely brief exhilarating moment as you realise that that's a way you could be free from this monkey. You use to take your mind off of your worries but you barely can detect a semblance of any pleasure. Yet you feel you need to always use. When you use you're worried about your next use. When you're not using you're worried about your next use. Your "next use" has become all important. It feels like it's the only little source of pleasure you can get in these tough times, not self-realising it is the key reason for your tough times.

Your addiction is raging. No hope, utter darkness. You've lost everything you once held dear or you're about to. The final step is your life itself. You repeatedly dwell on this even as you continue to use without keeping track of times, places, money, usage, responsibilities. You feel the slightest pang of guilty for having these dark suicidal thoughts.

...

The it hits you. All the months and years and even decades of denial. All washed away in an instant. The instinct to survive no matter what is extremely powerful. Your survival and subsequent growth can feedback on itself resulting in a self-sustaining recovery.


You will not use. You cannot use. You think "it's not about ability; I can always get a fix from..." And then you stop dead in your tracks. You think that this is how it all began and any part of you that associates happy times and sad times with a small molecule compound. You're growing. You realise that all the happy and sad times were really buried deep within your self and was not because of a chemical substance.


...


Could you have predicted before you first used that you'd be where you are? How about the first time? Second? When did you realise you were addicted (meaning the earliest time you realised that people should stop talking about dragons and start talking about snowballs)? Are you familiar the term "butterfly effect"?

This is why addiction is a "disease". A "disease" is just abnormal health or pathology. A lot of good doctors get this, particularly neurobiologists who think of the mind/body as a complex nonlinear system. But most don't really see it in this sense. They see symptoms and are trained to be reasonably objective.

To me, the above worldview addresses a lot of seemingly paradoxical things about addiction. For example, why can't an addiction be cured? The reason is because the addiction feedback loop that is reinforced with every use (and sometimes even when not using) persists for an arbitrarily long time. Thus when you use again, even if there has been a gap of years or decades, the feedback loop is immediately reinforced and soon you're not only back on the same free fall. In some cases this loop could be so self-reinforcing that even without use the addiction pathology (or key componets of it) keeps going. This is why I suspect people find themselves sometimes not only on the same free fall but worse. "curing" the addiction would require the snowball to be rolled back uphill. Stopping it was a big enough task. Rolling it back up will be near impossible. It can happen if the addiction feedback loop is broken but that probably is more a function of chance than design.

So in the context of switching drugs all the time, I think our body is capable of handling new experiences without being addicted to "new experiences" (though this could happen when talking about "new experiences" in an English sense, but I'm really referring to feedback loops being reinforced, so it's by definition). This is generally because there's a decent enough warning system. Addiction primarily begins and ends with your reward pathways being involved since the reward stimulus is what is needed to override the warning system even as the warnings get more and more dire. (Something like: if it feels good it can't be bad kind of thing, at least initially.) The drug itself may be directly stimulating these pathways (as is the case with cocaine, opiates, etc.) or it might be incidental to it (alcohol?). In some cases a slight physical dependency is enough to get this addiction cycle going to create a massive psychological dependency (since the physical WD is uncomfortable and fear of WD continues to magnify the addiction).

In all cases, speaking for myself, the psychological addiction is only possible because of the associations that occur along with it. We all are wired to do things we like and we'd be doing it whether we were using or not (initially). So when we do positive things in association with drug use, then your reward system lights up. Addiction is in part the pathology of confusing an activity that results in your reward systems being tickled to simply your reward systems being tickled by a drug that you happened to be using at the same time (the combined work to override the warning about the drug). Conversely, many underlying pathologies may exist that have negative associations. But using a drug might help alleviate symptoms or avoid the negativity somehow, resulting again in your reward systems being lit up, leading to self medication which can become addiction.

 

[VanWeyden]

To be blunt, you are fooling yourself. Rotating drugs isn't a good idea. I did the same with THC, benzos and opiates. I didn't get physically addicted to any of them quite some time, but after a few months I slowly began to recognize that I needed a fix at least every other day, no matter what. When things started to get bad (not the drug use primarily, but other stuff in my life) I didn't care too much about cycling the drugs properly and a short while later I was addicted to all of them. I feel like in the end this is a lot harder on body and mind than sticking to one DOC because even if you avoid real physical dependence, you are always in a sub-withdrawal state. Ask yourself if you may be in denial again right now.

 

[bluedom]

In your situation, and others who've experienced polydrug addiction, were you addicted to one of the substances prior to the cycling?

The possibility that I am in denial, not just of an addiction but even considering it, is very real (that's the nature of it, right?). It's partly why I'm posting. The capacity of the human mind to fool itself is infinite. And I'm an extremely good rationaliser. I'm also very self-critical. (Hopefully the latter keeps winning over the former, which I believe should always be the goal and in my case was not achieveable with alcohol.)

How can I tell if I am in denial or not in any kind of a quantifiable sense? Well, there's the standard criteria for addiction (http://addictions.about.com/od/substancedependence/f/dsmsubdep.htm). Interestingly it says in there that the psychological criteria are worse than the physiological criteria. I am physiologically addicted to alcohol (and in fact, that may be the only addiction I have to it: once it "clicked" that one drink *always* led to two, I realised the only solution was stopping, and I've not looked back even though I've felt some psychological cravings initially my executive function worked fine after treatment and I wonder if it is possible to just be purely psychologically addicted to alcohol).

Out of the seven criteria, I may meet a maximum of two in the last year (meeting three in one year is consider a potential addiction) taking ALL substances into account. The criterion I definitely would meet is (5), meaning that other important activities are reduced to my use. This is a tautology to me, since there's always some other activity that is at least as important as using and by using I'm not doing that activity and thus reducing the time on the other activity. There is a bit of (4), but it depends on what "great deal" is. Again, I'm assuming that ANY time spent on obtaining and recovering may count since it is "recreational".

Aside from that, I think the first criterion, tolerance, is important even psychological addiction can lead to tolerance (in contrast to what the article says) as your brain gets used to a particular level of input. If I am developing tolerance, it is not manifest in my use thusfar and in fact my use contradicts tolerance. I've not increased a single prescription and in fact decreased the opiates. So of the three I use every month, I abused THC initially and within 2 months cut back by 90% without even seeking to (eating a cookie seems too much work to get the high most of time . With opiates it's more my executive functions in charge. I know I could get addicted to it and I've steadily cut back, even if slowly. You can see my previous posts where I've agonised about my fentanyl dose even though I was in severe pain and someone asked me why would I want to stop if the pain is being controlled and I talked about my alcoholism. Gabapentin has remained constant.

I owe you a debt of gratitude. I kept some of these criteria in the back of mind but never formally visited it. Thinking about that in light of my alcohol addiction and my usage currently is informative. Here's what I now think: I've picked particular substances and circumstances which have properties that make it unlikely I'll get addicted to them. One of the biggest issues I had dealing with my alcoholism was the ease of availability. Even though I realised early on alcohol was probably not good and I tried to stop, it'd be too easy to pick up another drink (I never realised how much alcohol was ingrained in our society until I started drinking). Thus I've decided to stick to things that are available by a prescription and it's a strict rule I have. Breaking that would be an indication of a problem. Along with that is a strict rule to not increase my prescribed dose on a monthly basis. Finally, and this applies even with the opiates, the development of tolerance is so rapid that it seems pointless to consume more and I really have to wait 2-3 weeks to feel another use is worthwhile. I really only get pleasure from the first use each month. Within 2-3 days the tolerance is so high that it seems no amount of the substance will be enough. In other words, I rapidly seem to reach a saturation point. A final point is that none of these substances really seem to interfere with my judgement directly which alcohol affects.

At the same time, I've encountered other substances I've only used once in the last year. I'd not cycle them. I'd not even remotely think of cycling alcohol even on a 100 year cycle. It is something I'd not be able to do.

I'd argue I've desired a "fix" every moment of my life to something, be it a drug, a new experience, anything that results in pleasure and avoids pain (this is why I wrote so much about evolution). The thing about that such a desire is that as I grow up around people who want the same things, the "executive" functions of my brain have enabled me to to trade off short term vs. medium term vs. long term pleasures and pains. To put it another way, the *prospect of a bigger long term reward* is more pleasurable than the *immediate but smaller the short term reward* and while not addicted I can make these judgement calls reasonably well to avoid addiction or any kind of destructive habituation. I have my passions and that's what I'd rather be doing than paying bills, etc. but I also recognise that the latter lets me do the former. (Something that went downhill after alcohol abuse.)

I'm a workaholic for my science. I am a familyholic. Currently. Other times I've tend to immerse myself in other things deeply (music, hiking, mountain climbing, travelling) ignoring everything else. I have an "all or nothing" extremist tendency which has served me well in life. Right now I'm going crazy on bluelight (no, I'm not using modafinil today). So what makes these different from the substance use? You can say I've lived a life filled with behavioural "addictions" that are all largely positive. Are behavioural "addictions" different from small molecule addictions? I think this is a false dichotomy. They're the same. It's just that one is considered more positive and acceptable by society even in cases where health consequences can be severe. Currently it's actually my tendency to over "work" (without taking any drugs; science is my all consuming passion) that is probably responsible for more health problems in my life than anything else (pretty minor, most to do with age I think) though it has led to great successes. So doing *anything* that slows me down in a limited way can be positive. But then the worry is that the *anything* is itself going to lead to an addiction (it's what happened with alcohol for me).

In my current system, more than half the month is spent not using recreationally. Those periods where I'm not using now also seem novel to me.

I do think when you fall into a pattern of use, and especially if you use when you feel down to feel good, then you're walking a dangerous path. I now see the value of a delayed response to taking a drug. The cookies and gabapentin make this type of use unlikely. If I feel bad, and I take a cookie or some gabapentin, it takes 2 hours to start feeling it.

To be blunt, you are fooling yourself. Rotating drugs isn't a good idea. I did the same with THC, benzos and opiates. I didn't get physically addicted to any of them quite some time, but after a few months I slowly began to recognize that I needed a fix at least every other day, no matter what. When things started to get bad (not the drug use primarily, but other stuff in my life) I didn't care too much about cycling the drugs properly and a short while later I was addicted to all of them. I feel like in the end this is a lot harder on body and mind than sticking to one DOC because even if you avoid real physical dependence, you are always in a sub-withdrawal state. Ask yourself if you may be in denial again right now.

 

[Miss Kirsty]

My God bluedom your posts are fucking long!!!! You must be high as kite!!

 

[bluedom]

Interestingly enough, the modafinil wore off yesterday. I'm as sober as I can ever be. But yet the trend seems to have persisted (this has happened before even when not under the influence; certain topics get me going and I generally write more than I should).

So am I developing an addiction to writing long posts on bluelight? I'm enjoying it.

My "job", as it were, involves a massive amount of deep thinking which is not always possible on demand. So I go through these cycles. But everything I've written is helpful to my research, which is to understand model how life happens/works.

(I could've rambled on...

My God bluedom your posts are fucking long!!!! You must be high as kite!!

 

[Miss Kirsty]

Interestingly enough, the modafinil wore off yesterday. I'm as sober as I can ever be. But yet the trend seems to have persisted (this has happened before even when not under the influence; certain topics get me going and I generally write more than I should).

So am I developing an addiction to writing long posts on bluelight? I'm enjoying it.

My "job", as it were, involves a massive amount of deep thinking which is not always possible on demand. So I go through these cycles. But everything I've written is helpful to my research, which is to understand model how life happens/works.

(I could've rambled on...

I didnt mean anything negative...I shoulda put a smiley in...Ive been reading them, they are just hurting my eyes!!! Sorry bluedom, i didnt mean anything neg by it.. and !

 

[bluedom]

The below is all written completely sober. I'm not always high when I write. I just had one day of modafinil use (about 600mg total) that started on Mon and ended on Wed (I also do other things while I write here including playing with my daughters and thinking about science). I have no plans of using modafinil anytime soon.

--

It has been good thinking about this and clarifies a lot of things for me about substance use, misuse and abuse. I guess what I am getting at really is finding things that get you "high" (doesn't have to be a chemical BTW --- addiction is addiction) but also are constructive, healthy, and add to your life rather than detract from it. In other words, stuff you might engage in with a lot of passion and energy but where you pull back before an addiction can happen. For example, I don't have a problem with food. I'm on the thin side and I've never overeaten. Yet I do love good food and enjoy it immensely. It's just that after I take a certain amount I am sated and I stop (and the food actually isn't that enjoyable anymore). I enjoy many things in life to the fullest, very extremely, but a lot of them don't lead to addiction that is extremely harmful it seems though there is some toll on my health due to the extreme nature. This happens regardless of what I'm intensely passionate about --- I've climbed a lot of mountains and made it to about 22,000 ft on Everet and almost died many times; I travel a lot and experience life as people live it locally and that can be risky; I work intensely and that is my first love but it sometimes does take a toll on my health as I've gotten older and I've decided to slow down when I push myself hard in this regard (this is the reason I'm on bluelight a lot these days; it's a form of relaxation) .

The key quality is saturation or satedness. If one does something for a while in increasing intensity and reaches a saturation point and/or becomes sated, then it is not addiction and I feel you cannot become addicted to that (this depends on the make up of the individual).

There must be for every person a set of substances that they can take without the fear of being addicted to it. I right now feel that I could never be addicted to MDMA, psychedelics, and medibles/THC. When I take these substances I reach a point of satedness where I know doing more isn't going to do good and it doesn't feel good to do more. Repeated dosing of MDMA is truly a waste and feels horrible to me (I only tried it once and I never to do that again. The same thing happened with me medibles and gabapentin. I just don't feel anything after a few days and I just stop. This is the case even for opiates. After a break I can feel a really warm euphoric high on the first dosing but 2-3 dosings later the feeling is gone. But with opiates, there is an addictive quality about this still making me want to take it until the prescription is done but after that I just go on with my life.

So I guess the point is to do recreational drugs with low abuse potential that work for YOU (this varies from person to person --- I still don't understand how someone can get addicted to MDMA for example but I do agree one can get addicted to anything). For me I feel that THC and gabapentin have a very low abuse potential (as well as MDMA and psychedelics) due to the tolerance being a turn off. Once tolerance develops taking the drug is annoying to say the least. It's like eating food when you're full. This means that the reward pathways are working properly and haven't been hijacked (completely).

I'd love to keep a high prescription of opiates but at the same time I've been really disciplined about my taper (and this is the second time I've weaned myself off of opiates in a disciplined manner). Since I started the taper I've never gone up. I've dropped down, stayed there as long as I felt I needed to, and then dropped again. I took my sweet time doing this and I had every reason to even ask for an increase due to my pain but I switched to THC and that's been a huge blessing. THC is very good for my pain and I don't consume it in an addictive fashion anymore. This is what I'm talking about. Find things that will get you high but where once you get high you feel sated and don't want to do more and more and more.

I think ne can easily tell which drugs are going to be addictive for you. Opiates are obviously here, as are substances like cocaine and methamphetamine. But none of these I've used like alcohol which I just could not control well from the outset. The closest thing to alcohol for me is actually cocaine (and even modafinil which feels like cocaine to me) but in general I'm such a hyperactive person that uppers don't do much for me (I won't say this when I'm taking it but after the crash I remain unimpressed). Even taking benzodiazepenes once in a while doesn't do anything for me (I don't abuse it and get "high" with it at all, and don't feel the need for repeated use or even refills of a single prescription once a year or so). Nonetheless, I'd argue that opiates, cocaine and other addictive stimultants (including modafinil), benzodaizepenes are capable of causing severe addiction in me and I shouldn't have them in my cycle at all. So I guess sooner or later, the little bit of oxymorphone I get per month will go away also. I just take it one month at a time and I don't have dependence or real craving for more than my prescribed dose.

Even though addiction is addiction and being addicted to one substance means that some of the key reward pathways have been hijacked and remain in your brain potentially forever (unless we find a way to reverse it), the key connection is the drug you're addicted to. Taking it is what reinforces the reward pathway, meaning there's a connection between the drug's action in the brain and the reward pathway in the brain. Now if you are about to be addicted to a new thing, then parts of that pathway will be probably be hooked up and create a new feedback connection with a new input. So if you're addicted, then the chances of you being addicted to something else is higher than if you didn't have that previous addiction. But nonetheless, the connection between the new substance and a new feedback loop needs to be made. If you're addicted, cutting the connection is what matters and this is why abstaining is offered as a solution to addiction. It works.

From my experience, I believe there are substances I can't be addicted to but still enjoy recreationally. One may ask, why use substances to get high, why not get high "naturally"? They're not exclusive. You can do both, even at the same time! If you do one at the expense of the other in a big way, then I agree that's a problem. But if it's not a problem, it's not a problem. Even the THC medible I take is MM. I never smoke it since I hate smoking though I am okay with vapourising but it is not discreet so I don't do that which is probably a good thing (I tried to get those electronic cigarettes to vaporise THC oil unsuccessfully .

--

I travel a lot and there's one place where I've gotten close to a cocaine dealer. I've used more than a line of cocaine only twice in my life (in the last 2 years) and used less than a line, maybe half, two more times about 15 years ago; the second time was a binge last time several months ago. This is limited to the place since once I returned back I am not using or seeking or craving it. I'm concerned about going back (I have to) in a few more months. I guess I know there will be triggers when I return and a temptation to meet up with the dealer. I'd like to think that the dealer and I are friends (and in a sense we are) but at the same time I'm not naive about what is happening. Actually to be frank, I'm not worried so much about the cocaine as much as I'm worried about the dealer's feelings and reactions when (1) I don't contact him at all or (2) I contact him and say I don't want to even talk about cocaine. I think (2) is not a workable option even though I will have my gabapentin and opiates (perhaps).

Hmm, I think I've answered my dilemma as I write the above. Basically I'm saying that the dealer is a HUGE trigger and it'd be easier to avoid it than to confront it. This brings up a whole another can of worms. With alcohol I stopped three years ago after three years of use (never drank before that) I had a set number of triggers that I actually confronted one by one and either I was very lucky and/or all the "hard work" of going to detox, treatment, AA for a year, working through the steps, all helped. I can say I've "conquered" each of the triggers that made me drink before. For example (the best one), I started alcohol abuse when flying. I'd drink until I was numbed since travelling is such a PITA and flying especially is such a chore (it has gotten worse, even though I fly first class).

Flying was my biggest trigger and I almost failed when I confronted it. So after I stopped drinking I didn't travel for a year or two, in part because I knew that flying was a dangerous thing to do in terms of my alcoholism. The first time I flew, after I stopped using alcohol, I had my wife with me so that was helpful and easy to not drink when she was there (she hated my alcoholism but she was extremely supportive and it felt great to sit in a plane with her and talk and love without any substances which I had been doing anyway for more than a year at home). THEN I had to fly alone and this was about 1.5 years since I stopped. I was okay walking in the airport, walking past the bars (how come there are so many places that serve alcohol at airports?), and then I went into the first class lounge and sat down. People were drinking wine which was freely available as was any hard drink!

The thought came across my head, that I should just drink for the next 2 weeks or so and then when I returned i could stop. It was REALLY tempting. But like I said, my executive function won over even though the constant thought was there. I just thought that all I need to do is stay sober until I get on the plane and it takes off and I can go to sleep. Then in the plane, again, first class means alcohol and champagne flows freely----as you're seated the people usually serve you a drink of water/juice + an alcoholic beverage. there were also a group of young vacationers who were partying hard near me, drinking their champagne. Again the cravings arose. Again my executive functions won over and I didn't drink and once the plane took off, I went to sleep, and when I woke up, all the cravings, etc. had gone. I no longer felt tempted to drink for the rest of the flight or any time after. That was my last trigger to conquer and I did it (it was also my first trigger when I started and definitely one of the strongest).

That happened only once. Since then I've flown many times and I've NEVER experienced craving for alcohol again. I still go to the lounges, see people drink, and I'm completely indifferent to it. Likewise for a happy hour/dinner I do once a week. (I'm the boss, technically, but I don't like to think of myself in that sense), I have to hang out with my mentees and many of them will drink and that was something I used to do with them and enjoyed but that's all gone now. I just drink soda pop or whatever and I don't feel any loss for not being able to drink alcohol. (In fact I'm happy I'm always on the ball no matter what.)

So part of my treatment for my prior addiction has involved conquering my triggers. I'm not sure if this is a good solution to everyone but in my case it is what has set me free. If you conquer your worst trigger then what is there to fear anymore? With alcohol being so prevalent in our society, this is a necessity I think. What else can you do? You can't avoid bars and flying and socialising just because you're an alcoholic. You have to confront and win.

But with the cocaine issue, I don't have to confront the dealer trigger directly. I can just never talk to him again in my life (which is a form of avoidance but it's also a form of confrontation since I will be there and tempted to call and I'll choose not to do so). But if I do confront it and win (meaning we just hang out as friends), I will be stronger for it (like the travel scenario). If I do confront it and lose (meaning I buy cocaine from him since that's what I did many times last time I was there, and he's a smooth guy and not naive either at least when it comes to pushing drugs), then my addiction pathway is reinforced. Anyways, this is an issue I don't have to worry about for a few more months but the modafinil made me think about it a lot. I cannot afford to lose to this trigger for sure.

If you're still reading, thank you. Please feel free to comment on anything and I'm really okay with any criticism. One of my goals in life is to strive for perfection. One can never be perfect I think but one cn always try their best to be all the time and keep improving as a result. (Addiction removes this drive BTW and makes you think you're okay where you are or even you start becoming less ambitious as it meses with your life. This is perhaps the most destructive nature of addiction. The drug becomes more important to you than your own life eventually.)

 

[bluedom]

I didn't think you meant anything negative at all---no worries. I was going say something about "My God bluedom" but I let it go. You were right about the first 2 posts---I was indeed high on modafinil and I think I really started focussing on bluelight and writing these long posts. Modafinil has the effect of making you focus a lot on whatever you're doing so my starting to read bluelight coincidentally ended up with me being on it until the modafinil wore off. I also felt the need to keep adding to what I wrote and so the edits made the posts longer.

But the last posts were done completely sober after I had had a good night's sleep. Even though I'm not on modafinil I feel like reading bluelight a lot and writing long posts still. I have no regrets but it is something I can't do all the time.

I've come across your posts here and there and forgive me for being presumtive but I think you're an extremely compassionate person (i.e., for example you giving $200 to a complete stranger and so whatever you say is taken constructively. No need to apologise at all... in fact, I thank you for making me think about why the posts are so long.

Interestingly (to me) when I first started using computers (before 1990) and did email, it would be extremely long messages/posts. I then trained myself to cut it down a bit and be more terse. But all that discipline went away when I took the modafinil and I felt like I was back in the early days when I wrote long emails without a care (somehow I feel that people's attention span was a lot better; cf. Pink Floyd's music). I felt good and happy and all that writing has definitely helped me in terms of introspection. This includes posts like yours which also provoke me to think about something I'd not think about otherwise. So thanks again. and

I didnt mean anything negative...I shoulda put a smiley in...Ive been reading them, they are just hurting my eyes!!! Sorry bluedom, i didnt mean anything neg by it.. and !

 

[bluedom]

Yep, I agree entirely. The reason I write, post, and read, and introspect is to maximise my chances of staying clean and avoiding addiction. Arguably, being on a fentanyl patch for a year (also behind me now) may not be considered being "clean" but my definition of "clean" is to stay within a prescription's limit (I do give myself the entire month to dose in a manner that I feel is optimal in all respects) without doctor shopping, etc.

As I wrote, I believe I started thinking about this "change drugs everyday" idea since I was getting really annoyed with the fentanyl patches and opiates in general. I had already experienced misery after experiencing only two hours of WD (not two hours from last use, more like 50, but it was the patch). So I was now getting anxious every time it was getting closer to another refill date. Most of the time it would go smoothly but once in a while I'd have my cage rattled. For example, I'd be travelling and I'd arrive at the desination and look frantically to make sure I still had my patches. I tapered off of fentanyl but being on potent opiates for a year means that PAWS or other things could be at play once in a while. I moved to THC (and player with plan) to transition off of the opiate dependency and while I did abuse it, it seems to be something that doesn't cause my reward pathways to be improperly reinforced for long periods resulting in addiction.

As an alcohol addict, I can't claim to see my drug use objectively (and it never will be 100% objective). I have found a useful metric I think that works for me. That metric is determining whether I'm improving or getting worse or in a holding pattern.
Perhaps I'm improving more slowly than I could but the drugs I take don't influence my neocortext and make me a stupid person (like alcohol does).

While you may avoid physical dependency or a psychological addiction to a specific drug, I think the problem is becoming addicted to being under the influence of any drug.. it becomes hard to see our drug use objectively after a while and it can be easy to delude ourselves that we are not doing any harm. I am not saying that you necessarily are doing harm, but that your ability to detect it is likely to become distorted. Be careful

Closed, pm me with any queries

 

[harlans]

In my experience trading one thing for another works for about a day. benzos were staving off my alcohol cravings (i'm waaaaay an alcoholic) and i thought it was ok because they've never worked That well for me and I've never had any real affinity for pills. Well, within a week, getting home to my dose was all i thought about at work. I'd make sure my stomach was empty for quicker absorption. so, back to substance abstinence... i hope

really, do i always have to be so morose? well, it is my natural state, BUT I am alive. Not drinking booze ensures I'm going to be okay. And, clearly, my little substitution stint gave me a new confirmation that that's not going to work.

No booze=getting up and going to work. Holding a job and keeping my apartment. Having med insurance to have access to my anti-depressants. And knowing I can be a responsible pet owner. These are all good things

 

[bluedom]

So in the throes of my alcohol addiction, I did exactly the below. I ordered benzodiazapenes online and developed a dependence to them. I actually stopped that and restarted my alcohol use again until I hit a bottom. So I agree a substance for another as part of an addiction can't work.

I then went on opiates (out of necessity, no way out of this) for spinal injury two years after I stopped drinking. I was dependent on, but not addicted to, opiates. I then moved off of opiates (almost) and then on to THC and gabapentin. I am not now dependent or addicted on anything. All this was done as an exercise to remove my dependence on opiates without craving.

So I guess I would say as long as I don't drink alcohol ever, and as long as I don't become addicted to a new substance, I should be fine. I guess after several months of use, my prescription has only been reduced for opiates and THC. Yesterday I had a great time with taking 2ml of hash oil in a capsule. I had developed such a tolerance to this hash oil, that within two months, I could take 10ml and not feel anything. I then stopped taking it for several months and I just took it again. It's a great feeling but I know if I take 2ml today it won't be the same at all. So I just wait... it's not like alcohol to me. And I tried to make it like alcohol (kind of stupid I know) but it did NOT WORK LIKE THAT. No matter what now, within 1-2 days of taking THC, I cannot even take double the amount and come close to 10% of the original experience. So it becomes automatically pointless. I won't ever say "never" when it comes to addiction after what happened with me and alcohol, but I will say that I see THC as a substance I am extremely unlikely to be addicted to, along with food, MDMA, the classic psychedelics, etc. Any drug where tolerance is rapid seems to be nonaddictable to me and my body makeup and personality.

In my experience trading one thing for another works for about a day. benzos were staving off my alcohol cravings (i'm waaaaay an alcoholic) and i thought it was ok because they've never worked That well for me and I've never had any real affinity for pills. Well, within a week, getting home to my dose was all i thought about at work. I'd make sure my stomach was empty for quicker absorption. so, back to substance abstinence... i hope

really, do i always have to be so morose? well, it is my natural state, BUT I am alive. Not drinking booze ensures I'm going to be okay. And, clearly, my little substitution stint gave me a new confirmation that that's not going to work.

No booze=getting up and going to work. Holding a job and keeping my apartment. Having med insurance to have access to my anti-depressants. And knowing I can be a responsible pet owner. These are all good things

 

[bluedom]

I thought I'd provide an end of the year update on this: I can say that as people warned, the use got to a point where it did go out of control though not in the way I expected. I was able to regain control back pretty rapidly however. By the time I had made the post, as you may guessed, I was already losing control if not lost it altogether. I took me until July/Aug to realise I was back in the trap again and had to get out and I did. The drugs that got me the most were actually THC and DXM. Both these drugs I felt I *never* could become addicted toward but I definitely was abusing it too often. I also did daily abuse for only about 3-6 months before I pulled back. Rather than the effect of any particular drug, it was the mindset that was scary. I was looking to get completely whacked out of my mind *everyday* the same way I wanted to get blitzed every single day with alcohol several years back. I ordered RCs from the Internet and was beginning to experiment with that when I had a long (96 hour) trip that made me swear off psychelics for the forseeable future. Once I made this decision, it was easy enough to turn my life around.

What led me regain control was stopping playing the game with typical opiods (which I need to take for chronic pain). Rather than stopping and starting each month, I switched to suboxone. The moment I switched, a lot of the cravings (for DXM and THC, as well as for other opiods of course) went away. Right now I'm on suboxone and still use drugs that have been historically mild for me (gabapentin/lyrica, tramadol) and don't have a problem with control (aside from being physically dependent on suboxone).

 

[herbavore]

I've read through your posts several times and they have given me much to think about. I am interested in addiction, poly-drug addiction and the desire and need to alter consciousness since each and all of these have impacted my own life so deeply. I have refrained from responding to your pots previously as it was simply too emotionally difficult for me. These are the kind of discussions I used to have with my son. As you are probably aware he died of a drug overdose which was in effect like being in the middle of a passionate and fascinating, if painful, discussion when suddenly the person you are speaking with simply stands up mid sentence and walks out of the room, slamming the door behind him. I feel like I have remained locked in that room from that instant to now; but instead of a conversation that involved questions and answers, challenges, denials, refutations, mutual explorations and a host of other rich complexities, I am left sitting in confusion with nothing but my own questions. That is certainly one of the sources of my own "addiction" to Bluelight. I need to continue this conversation for my own mind and yet continuing it without my son/friend/teacher/student/fellow adventurer in this messy thing we call a lifetime is one of the most painful aspects of his death. Anyway, your posts have inspired me to try.

I think that what you have said about delving into any experience with obsessive passion is not something that everyone experiences. I don't believe that it is the only thing that predisposes someone to addiction but it is certainly one of them. My son was a very obsessive person (I generally try to avoid pathologizing everything about a person's nature but he was diagnosed with OCD). As he once said to me, "I can turn anything into an addiction." He also claimed that boredom was his main trigger. I have thought long and hard about this as boredom is almost completely alien to me--I have almost never experienced it even as a child. My son and I had very similar natures in many ways, but this was not one of them. I used to feel that he was incapable of simply resting in an experience, whereas for me this is enough at any given moment. His reasoning seemed to be that if something was pleasurable then more would be more pleasurable. I have often thought that the reason I escape addiction is that my mind does not seem to need to make that next leap. I don't say this with any sense of superiority at all. Maybe I would be a better artist if I had that kind of mind. I try to step outside of judgement when I think of the all the intersecting and diverging continua that we humans find ourselves playing out. Do you feel like this plays into your desire to alter your consciousness?

I come from a family where addiction is common and yet seemingly arbitrary which has pushed me towards the medical model of addiction as disease; yet that is a model that has never seemed quite right to me either. It feels too simplistic in light of the fact that two of the people that I was closest to that did suffer from addiction (my brother and my son) could both describe in graphic and horrifying detail the extent of profound inner self-doubt and the ensuing self-loathing that was their natural state as far back as they can remember. Yet both of these people had the advantages of loving families as well as meeting or exceeding all of their particular culture's superficial values pertaining to worth. This is my biggest question. Where does this come from? The desire to alter consciousness for a deepening of experience, for the transformative potential, for spiritual exploration etc. is not without danger but as far as I can tell, the desire to alter consciousness to mask pain or even more insidious to numb negative feelings is pure folly that can have no good outcome whatsoever. How does that resonate with your experience?

My last question is this: have you ever practiced any form of meditation? My son was introduced to meditation from a person that had been in active heroin addiction for over twenty five years. As he put it, "You are just trying to calm the chatter that is your mind. You are looking for ways to do that and those ways are not sustainable which means they are not really working." My son saw this as his way out though he also saw the discipline required as something contrary to his nature. Again the question arises for me: is this because resting in the moment feels difficult? Obsessive focus is, in a way, being in the moment. But that state of being is in motion, always zooming ahead as one delves deeper and deeper into the experience. There is great reward in this not only for the individual mind but for the benefit of the rest of us! My son was a scientist by nature and I think that his inability to "rest", as I am calling it, gave him the gifts this predisposition has to offer.

This has been a bit of a ramble on my part. As I said in the beginning, it is a conversation that feels endless to me and very unfinished on an emotional level. I am very interested in your thoughts and the introspection you bring to the table. We are all capable of amazing feats of rationalization and denial and as you say addiction is not at all confined to substances. The nature of this beast is probably no less individual and complex as the host lives it plays out in and like anything it is neither good nor bad but something to be explored and learned from and massaged into the harmonious state we are all striving to feel.

Thanks for opening the door a crack for me.

 

[bluedom]

herbavore, I've read a lot of your posts as well and thanks for engaging me. Like you, and perhaps your son before, I am on quest for something, some kind of an answer. Aren't we all? I can most definitely relate to the description of your son (sorry about his loss, it must be very painful) in so far as it relates to my addiction to chemical substances. I tend to apply the same logic that I've used throughout my life: just because more of something is good, even more must be better. It surprisingly works well in many walks of life and it worked well as long as I didn't dabble with chemicals. I'm a workaholic for example and an overachiever. I started with chemical substances late in my life (at 33; now I'm 40) and the logic of "even more is even better" hasn't worked out well at all. Yet at the same time I feel *compelled* to be that way. It's as Father Martin one said, we are addicts not because we take a lot of drugs, but the *way* we take drugs. I think that is the disease at work.

You've asked a couple of great questions and you're hitting the nail right on the head as far as my own journey is concerned. When I started using psychedelics heavily this year, I rationalised it as my addiction to altering consciousness and felt it was okay, at least better than my addiction to alcohol. But I learnt painfully that all addictions eventually end up taking a toll on you even though my addictionologist doctor has said "there are good addictions." (He does accunpuncture on me and I feel that has helped my well being.)

I started dabbling into meditation and hypnosis this year. I've started a couple of threads about tripping without the aid of drugs. I've become convinced that this is the resolution of the path I'm on. If one is addicted to tripping or altered states of consciousnesses, and if addiction to chemical substances is bad, then it follows (to me at least) that achieving altered states without the aid of chemical substances would be highly desirable. This is easier than done; I can put myself into trance states here and there, and it's easier with some drugs but there's a danger there as you point out. It seems like I have a long way to go though every day I am coming to terms that this is what I really desire. Like everything, I wish I could get there sooner than slower and I can relate your son not being able to stand still in one place. I'm envious of your ability to do so. I'm a scientist by profession and this inability to rest has served me well (in my field, my group and I are world leaders and we've embarked on a project to screen all drugs against all protein structures in one go). But this does predispose me I believe to trying things out in an addictive fashion. I'm never satisfied.

Yet I will say that I am satisfied at being able to admit that I'm never satisfied; there's a meta contentment I've been able to achieve with my overall worldview that I'm happy about. I guess that's what you mean by massaging everything into a harmonious state...

For now, on a day to day basis, I've settled into a pattern of using the most benign drugs I can to alter my conscious states. I now have a good understanding of which drugs are benign and which ones aren't and as long as I stick to the ones I know, I feel quite secure it won't spiral into anything bad. For now at least it seems to be working for me..