Behavioural Addictions

I am going to play Lava Button again. I am not allowed to press delete (though I undoubtedly will once or twice by reflex) and must simply write this blog without over-thinking it. I don’t want to always use this game for my writing because there are definite advantages to being considered and editing a piece of writing, but today I feel like I really want to write a new blog entry, yet I hate everything I write. Not having the option to delete it artificially alleviates me of responsibility and calms me a bit, even if I don’t like what I’ve just written.

It has been three weeks since I last wrote a blog entry. I am committing now to increase my blog-frequency to at least once per week.

I want to write this week about behavioural addiction. It is a really serious problem but I don’t think many people think about it or understand it. Whether it is an addiction to gambling, food, pornography, computers, cutting oneself, video games, the internet, shopping, sex or work- the effects, as I understand them, are twofold.

The first effect is that the individual finds it difficult to stop these behaviours even when there are clear negative side effects to this behaviour. The addicted mind fabricates all sorts reasons and justifications as to why the behaviour should continue and these become just convincing enough when the added incentive of a dopamine spike make indulging once again in the behaviour so alluring.

This looks like a sweet alien valley in space through which one might pilot a heavily-armed fluro spaceship. Pew pew.

The negative side effects can be devastating and wide-ranging. The addictive behaviour can take up huge amounts of time and energy, leaving the addicted individual unable to fulfil many of their other commitments; or finding it increasingly difficult and stressful to do so. This continued inability to do the things important to them can cause guilt, shame, further binges in the addictive behaviour and in other vices on top of this.

Shame *hurts*.

The second (arguably even more insidious) effect is that, in the rewiring of the brain to reinforce this addictive behaviour, other behaviours become less intrinsically fulfilling. Someone who is addicted to gambling, for example, gets a dopamine spike in their brains when they are gambling. They start to get a tolerance to this, meaning they need to gamble more and more often with higher and higher stakes to feel the same rush and excitement. Then, activities that could have been really fun in the past, like playing cards with friends with no kind of gambling attached, become dull and uninteresting in comparison.

The addicted person will *want* to enjoy just hanging out with their friends, but will be saddened to find that doing this is now really unfulfilling and they may not understand why.

Exactly.

I am finding this all kind of arduous to write because I’m avoiding speaking about my own addiction. Addiction is often mixed deeply with guilt and shame and this is the case for me. For this reason, I won’t go into the specifics here, but I have become aware, recently, that I had been indulging in certain behaviours compulsively and that I continue to do so despite the negative side effects on my productivity and my enjoyment of life.

I have identified the addiction after reading about it and reading about others’ experiences with behavioural addiction and I have cut out the behaviour. It has been one week so far.

I feel like perhaps this is part of the reason that I often write a big list of things I want to do and then never get around to doing them. I am legitimately interested in them and I really want to enjoy doing them, but when I have had the spare time to do so I haven’t been able to get into that state of ‘Flow’ (which I blogged about in my last post) because my enjoyment of low-adrenaline activities had been somewhat dampened or numbed by my over-indulgence of the addictive behaviours.

Yeah, well, that was an easy one.

But! Yes! As I continue to abstain from these addictive behaviours my brain will re-rewire itself. The effect the addiction has had on my free time will disappear. Without the addictive behaviours taking up my time and energy I will have more time for the things I am passionate about (composition, singing, writing). Also, the work I need to do to excel in these areas will actually excite me! Previously, I have had to force myself to learn what little I know so far about music theory. I would put off studying theory for longer and longer until the shame and guilt I felt about this would make me willing endure the boredom of reading a theory book. I was always just choosing the lesser of two evils. Reading a theory book will, if I understand what I have read about behavioural addiction correctly, become more exciting and interesting the longer I abstain from stimulating artificial excitement by indulging my addictions.

If the addiction was something like food, I imagine things would become a little trickier. How well would a recovering heroin addict do if they had to have just a little bit of heroin each day in order to survive? With food addiction, one can (obviously) not just cut out food completely, so there needs to be some other kind of management system in place. The website I have been reading suggest Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and I’m sure there are other methods that you will surely find if you have the need for help and the willingness to change.

There are better goddamn options than this.

OK. Thanks for reading this. I wasn’t in a very good mood today and had to force myself to write this, so it may come across as quite joyless, but I hope this gets people thinking about whether they have any addictions. If you do, I can just recommend reading about it and reading what others have experienced and how they have got over their addictions and how they have benefited from their abstinence.

It helps to keep a journal about it and talk to close friends about it to get their support.

You can find some information about behavioural addiction here: http://addictions.about.com/od/howaddictionhappens/f/behavioraladd.htm

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist. This is all just what makes sense to me. A lot of it is backed up by scientific articles I’ve read, but within that even a lot of those are controversial. There is controversy of whether or not over-eating can ever be legitimately called an addiction. I think that it can, you may think otherwise. That is fine, I only hope that the way you see things empowers you, builds you up and has you enjoy life, loving yourself and others.

Also Disclaimer: Not all my blog entries will be so dry. Peace out dudes.

Blog Entry 2: Electric Blogaloo (aka Happiness)

Daaaaaangerous grounds here: an entry discussing Happiness. Boy, do people feel strongly about the subject. In pursuing it, do we let it slip past us? John Stuart Mill said:

            “But I now thought that this end [one's happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[....] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[....] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so."

Quite a foreboding little quote there, John.

Soren Kierkegaard said:

            “Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.”

I came across both these quotes on the wikipedia page called ‘The Paradox of Hedonism’. So, it is with the wisdom of these men in mind, that I approach this subject with some trepidation. Clearly, I am fond of happiness and I want plenty of it in my life; I’m not going to try to lie about that, as if that would somehow outwit this little paradox.

But, I do take heed of the points made about the pursuit of happiness. Happiness as an ultimate goal is a little boring anyway. It’s good to want happiness and to think about what that means, but it’s also really good to have some kind of higher purpose in life than simply “pleasure”. By “higher purpose” we need not try to search for the most noble of pursuits, all we really need is an interest, any interest will do. It is my intuition that rather than try to chose a purpose, it would be better to examine our lives and see what we are already interested in and skilled at.

Basically, examine what you are most interested in and skilled at and then seek ever-greater challenges and results in that field. I believe this is the kind of purposeful living that attracts happiness. In psychology, this kind of completely focused motivation is called ‘Flow’ and it’s a concept I find really intriguing.

Stolen from Wikipedia, cool?

‘Flow’ seems to have the same elusive properties that happiness does, as one cannot force a state of Flow, it just happens when we immerse ourselves in tasks that are intrinsically worthwhile.

Almost directly contrary to everything I’ve just said, I have been pursuing and creating more happiness for my life lately. Not by obsessing over the idea of being happy or making that my ultimate goal, but in my declaration that I will have an extraordinary life and will achieve extraordinary results. I find that simply declaring something is a really good first step to realising that thing; my life is following the suit of my declaration.

Let’s be clear, however; I am not a wizard! There was no magic moment where I clicked my fingers and all the puzzle pieces arranged themselves, but I have started a dialogue and I am keeping it alive. There are ups and downs of course, but they don’t mean anything. The downs don’t mean failure, which I guess means that the ups don’t mean success- the success lies in my continued *commitment* to this extraordinary life (and to documenting it with this blog). That I will not give up is the real success.

So then! Let’s step away from this theorising and back into my actual life. Like I just said, the elusive nature of happiness has not stopped me from pursuing and capturing happiness and dressing it up in a little harlequin outfit and commanding it to DANCE! DANCE for my amusement!

I tried to find a good picture to put here. I am sorry.

 But there are side effects to happiness. At its extreme, happiness takes the form of a mania and the typical symptoms are low attention span, compulsiveness, racing thoughts, delusions of grandeur and over-indulgence. Last night I definitely over-indulged (there! My actual life, I promised we’d get there) and decided to drink a large amount of special reserve ginger wine because it was damn delicious and the effects were really pleasant.

I know that drinking too much is not ideal, but that’s where the delusions of grandeur come into the mix as my brain starts having these silly little thoughts like “drinking too much is usually a bad idea- but, man, you’re *special*! Let’s kick this night up a notch and show these mere mortals how a Chris Butler parties!”

Like an excited girl.

 I ended up being so damn content and relaxed that I totally ignored that my bedroom was full of cool and interesting people and I just went to sleep, declaring to protestors that I was embarking on a spiritual experiment to show that anxiety is worthless and even if I do nothing right now everything will be OK.

The upshot of all this is that I drank too much and missed half of the damn party! That’s not ideal to me. I would have liked to have learnt about and connected more with my guests, but that damn pest Happiness got in the way.

Happiness is a shifting, elusive, dangerous, magical creature and we all have unique and complicated relationships with it.

Perhaps I will let Happiness do its own damn thing and I won’t so much *pursue* it, as smugly benefit from it when it swoops into my life as a result of all the action and adventure I stir up; actually staying awake and having an awesome time for example.

In other news I am pleased to report that I ran through the bush to the turbine, took a charming new friend to see the Hylozoic Series at the City Gallery (which you *must* MUST see before they pack it up on June 3^rd)

and I’ve just started reading a really great book about thinking. Life is ticking along nicely. Thanks for stopping by.

Lava Button

Hello!

I’m going to play a little bit of the ol’ “The Delete Key is Lava” Game. It’s a good game and it suits my purpose of writing something, ‘cos when you play, you write something.

So, what was it I wanted to write again?

Ah yes, Living an Extraordinary Life.

Basically, I feel like making progress in my life, having a quantum leap forward in my productivity, confidence, fulfilment, happiness and connectedness. I want this. So, I am putting this in motion. This, apparently, then- is my manifesto.

The Manifesto of my Extraordinary Life.

I am making my goals and my journey public in the writing of this, because things feel more tangible to me when others are engaged; a personal triumph is much more transformative when it is shared.

I still find it challenging to be honest like this. Writing is a vulnerable art. In music, one can use the standard 4/4, major scale, I IV V, verse-chorus-verse template as a starting point and add weirdness and little flairs here and there and say “now how does that sound?” and lo and behold it sounds like something, and you can show people and see what they think, but the whole act of expression has been filtered through music theory and whatnot and it just isn’t as straightforward as using language directly to *tell people how you feel*.

That may have been stalling, but the rules of The Game state that it stays even if it is tangential to the actual Manifesto. What I was getting at is that honesty is still a challenge for me, and as such, I will not always be honest when I am writing this. HOWEVER, it is my *commitment* that I be honest. I just understand that commitments are rarely, if ever, met to a standard of perfection.

So, I suppose the first order of business in this Manifesto is my ongoing relationship with Honesty. It makes sense for this to be the first item as I am able to work on this quality in the very writing of the Manifesto by paying attention to the truth-value of what I write.

Put simply, I am challenged and excited by truth and honesty and in the keeping of this blog/manifesto/I’m-not-really-sure I will document the progress I make in being honest in my life.

Right, without any further ado, the next item on this list is productivity!

This is also fitting to be a higher-up item on my list because productivity is a damn important aspect of keeping this thing up and running. I am committed to keeping this Blogifesto regularly updated and I am committed to having substantial progress to report on between entries!

I don’t know exactly what to type next but even now I feel the urgency of productivity and am typing before I know exactly what to say! Acting *before* you are ready is, I think, a really important part of getting anything done, ever. If one waits until the moment is perfect, the thing is lost and never done.

In an ideal, abstract, hypothetical version of this blog, I would have plenty of practice in blog-keeping *before* I start the blog, so that I know it will be good. But, in reality, keeping this blog is, itself, the best practice. So, I apologise if this sucks at first. I will get better at this and I suspect I will re-haul things once I reach a certain standard. Then I will give myself a clean slate of sorts so as to entice new readers, starting them with my A-game, rather than having them wade through these earlier, crappier entries.

I digress! Such self-deprecation is not my style! Productivity is another aspect of my journey that I shall document in this here blog-type-thing. Let’s just call a spade a spade, this is a blog. Now we can move on.

Most other things fall neatly under the umbrellas of honesty and productivity, but specificity is not out of place in a life-document, so to name a few other points of interest I will be documenting my progress in:

Writing – This; Plays; Essays.

Composing – I have some compositions that I wish to develop and teach to a band and perform for you.

Singing – I will be singing in this band; and also The Hot Cakes; and also whatever else I can sink my larynx into.

Health! – There is an exclamation mark here because this is another big one. When one wishes to make progress in what they are doing (which is what this whole thing is all about) one should start with a base of good health. Exercise and nutrition gives you what you need to think clearly and access the energy required to Achieve Tasks! I am going to study Health and share what I find out and what I get.

Y’know, I’m going to take a lesson from Productivity here and wrap things up. In conclusion, please join me, if you are so inclined, on my journey. I will attempt to make it entertaining and relatable and relevant for others, exploring the more universal and philosophical ideas that bubble up from the results I set out to achieve.

            (One option you have if you do not feel engaged is to tell me why and I will see if I can make this more conversational or engaging or whatever it is that would make a difference.)

For now, Sayonara. Also, I totally cheated and pressed the delete key a bunch of times, instinctively. But I decided to just get on with it.

Cool, man.