As I read through threads filed under "The Dark Side," it is striking, the degree to which human beings -- drug users in particular, since we become so wrapped up in how we feel at any given moment -- manufacture agony for themselves, and expect to be regarded as suffering saints because of that agony.
I have a history of disordered eating and drug abuse, so my main example of this tendency is: me. I can be one melodramatic, woe-is-me, whining little bitch some of the time. Drugs aggravate this tendency immensely. Be the substances in question uppers or downers, legal or illegal, the common thread which ties all my drug use together is that of manufactured drama. I feel bad for an instant, so I take something. Or I feel good, but have an instant of wanting to feel better, so I take something (and end up feeling much, much worse).
An eating disorder is nothing if not manufactured drama. It injects a feeling of epic struggle into otherwise mundane activities. Rather than changing habits and activities so they are actually meaningful, an eating disorder -- or drug abuse -- or wallowing in depression -- allows a person to become absorbed in self-imposed misery and therefore stave off boredom.
Example: I spent yesterday smoking, napping, and eating. And the day before. Today, I am ten dollars poorer, and have nothing to show for those lost days, aside from feeling like I've been inflated to twice my ordinary size owing to the gigantic blobs of food slowly working their way through my digestive system.
The emotional pendulum of drugged living, like the feeble wallowing of depression, is all sound and fury, ultimately signifying nothing that will last beyond any given moment. The cure to depression is action. "But it's hard to act when you're depressed!" Damn straight -- I felt worthless and bloated this morning, felt like doing nothing at all. But I still forced myself to get onto the treadmill, and mere minutes into the workout I was feeling better, and now, about fifty minutes into it (I have my laptop rigged up onto my treadmill), I feel fucking amazing.
"But that's an illusion as much as a drugged feeling is! All you're doing is enjoying an endorphin high!" Absolutely true. And so what? People in a state of depression or anxiety tend -- or at least I tend -- to make that state out to be some kind of natural baseline. I think there is also a self-aggrandizing tendency to make sufferers of depression, anxiety, eating disorder, whatever out to be more intelligent, more noble, more perceptive, whatever, when in reality depression is just as much an illusion as an opiate or endorphin or any other kind of high. I prefer pleasant illusions to unpleasant ones. I'd prefer the truth over either set of illusions, but one thing drugs have been good for is revealing just how shaky any given set of assumptions is.
I have a history of disordered eating and drug abuse, so my main example of this tendency is: me. I can be one melodramatic, woe-is-me, whining little bitch some of the time. Drugs aggravate this tendency immensely. Be the substances in question uppers or downers, legal or illegal, the common thread which ties all my drug use together is that of manufactured drama. I feel bad for an instant, so I take something. Or I feel good, but have an instant of wanting to feel better, so I take something (and end up feeling much, much worse).
An eating disorder is nothing if not manufactured drama. It injects a feeling of epic struggle into otherwise mundane activities. Rather than changing habits and activities so they are actually meaningful, an eating disorder -- or drug abuse -- or wallowing in depression -- allows a person to become absorbed in self-imposed misery and therefore stave off boredom.
Example: I spent yesterday smoking, napping, and eating. And the day before. Today, I am ten dollars poorer, and have nothing to show for those lost days, aside from feeling like I've been inflated to twice my ordinary size owing to the gigantic blobs of food slowly working their way through my digestive system.
The emotional pendulum of drugged living, like the feeble wallowing of depression, is all sound and fury, ultimately signifying nothing that will last beyond any given moment. The cure to depression is action. "But it's hard to act when you're depressed!" Damn straight -- I felt worthless and bloated this morning, felt like doing nothing at all. But I still forced myself to get onto the treadmill, and mere minutes into the workout I was feeling better, and now, about fifty minutes into it (I have my laptop rigged up onto my treadmill), I feel fucking amazing.
"But that's an illusion as much as a drugged feeling is! All you're doing is enjoying an endorphin high!" Absolutely true. And so what? People in a state of depression or anxiety tend -- or at least I tend -- to make that state out to be some kind of natural baseline. I think there is also a self-aggrandizing tendency to make sufferers of depression, anxiety, eating disorder, whatever out to be more intelligent, more noble, more perceptive, whatever, when in reality depression is just as much an illusion as an opiate or endorphin or any other kind of high. I prefer pleasant illusions to unpleasant ones. I'd prefer the truth over either set of illusions, but one thing drugs have been good for is revealing just how shaky any given set of assumptions is.
