I mean, from a semantic perspective. In reality it is, like most things, a continuum. I ask because I'm at home getting high by myself and I was thinking about how, until recently, I hadn't done this for over six years. I only use on weekends, and that's been the case for a decade -- I don't even drink coffee during the week. Any time I've felt I needed to stop doing drugs I've been able to, and it was never a struggle against temptation. I've never had even as long as a week of consistent daily use. But I love drugs, to an abnormal extent. They are part of my personality. They led me to the career I have now. I've done far more drugs than most people can name. I've even posted thousands of messages to a forum dedicated to the subject! In my last relationship (the six years), I stopped using for the sake of my partner and it was devastating. I missed it desperately and it took years to get over that. I thought drugs were behind me, that my interest had waned, but then my relationship ended and, uh oh... what else did I have? It became clear that the yearning was just on hiatus.
I was abstinent (I won't use a slur like "sober") for so long, but it didn't make me happier. To the extend that it can be quantified, I would have to say the opposite. That's the problem, what mainstream media and normal people are missing when they think about drug addiction. People who use like us (by "us" I am generalizing to the median Bluelighter and, like, within a standard deviation of him) are not super happy people who got taken down by drugs. They are fucked-up people who found something that also led to bad feelings but that, in a sinusoidal fashion, seemed to give good feelings of equivalent strength. The grand thing about memories is, outside of the truly traumatic, they tend to hold on to the good a little tighter, and man do drugs know how to inscribe themselves on the neuronal slate. If life is great, this is not going to stand out enough to derail your life path. If not, well, as they say, "like a sore thumb".
The issue isn't so much that drugs are addictive in a general sense as that psychoactive drugs change how one perceives the world and that the more one is on the left tail of the bell curve of any number of psychological parameters, the more that change in perception is likely to be experienced as a positive rather than a negative change, and the greater the magnitude of the proportion of positivity to negativity. An example of "reversion to the mean" (a concept natural enough to have originated in genetics). That's not to say that only troubled souls can enjoy drugs; on the contrary, I think most folks have a good time if they're not at the point where it's become their Big Problem. But, given the downsides, it's just not enough of a jump up for most.
What do you feel defines a drug addict? Do you think the person I've described is a drug addict?
Regardless of the answer, I can unequivocally say: I'm a dope fiend.
I was abstinent (I won't use a slur like "sober") for so long, but it didn't make me happier. To the extend that it can be quantified, I would have to say the opposite. That's the problem, what mainstream media and normal people are missing when they think about drug addiction. People who use like us (by "us" I am generalizing to the median Bluelighter and, like, within a standard deviation of him) are not super happy people who got taken down by drugs. They are fucked-up people who found something that also led to bad feelings but that, in a sinusoidal fashion, seemed to give good feelings of equivalent strength. The grand thing about memories is, outside of the truly traumatic, they tend to hold on to the good a little tighter, and man do drugs know how to inscribe themselves on the neuronal slate. If life is great, this is not going to stand out enough to derail your life path. If not, well, as they say, "like a sore thumb".
The issue isn't so much that drugs are addictive in a general sense as that psychoactive drugs change how one perceives the world and that the more one is on the left tail of the bell curve of any number of psychological parameters, the more that change in perception is likely to be experienced as a positive rather than a negative change, and the greater the magnitude of the proportion of positivity to negativity. An example of "reversion to the mean" (a concept natural enough to have originated in genetics). That's not to say that only troubled souls can enjoy drugs; on the contrary, I think most folks have a good time if they're not at the point where it's become their Big Problem. But, given the downsides, it's just not enough of a jump up for most.
What do you feel defines a drug addict? Do you think the person I've described is a drug addict?
Regardless of the answer, I can unequivocally say: I'm a dope fiend.
