"Chemistry is destiny."
Many of us have by now had the experience of taking what seems like a perfectly legitimate substance only to find that it does enormous harm. We can say this of alcohol, nicotine, and dairy products. We can say this of Ambien, Ativan, and Zoloft. We can say this of sativa, indica and sativa-indica. Somewhere in the middle but not necessary exactly in the middle (although it could be so -- sativa-indica! savah!), there on the shelf above or below the counter, in between the NyQuil and the ECT treatment, there might be the correct invasive surgery for you. Chemistry is destiny. It does not matter how you change it, only that you have done so, and are doing so every moment of your life including right now this minute when you may be beginning to experience due to the length of this sentence and/or the lack of proper punctuation and signposts and continual use of and/or and that sort of thing including lists of course and the tetralemma perhaps a slight feeling of excitement soon morphs into a pile up of concern for the narrator maybe a sense of wanting to be reassured that the writer is not in fact mad leading then potentially to irritation and/or full-on annoyance followed by outrage as you realize that this speech act was designed to trick you into getting angry perhaps with me the person who just had fun at your expense. For a change!
"Calm down!" That's another one, isn't it? A speech trick designed to induce and/or amplify the mental state it claims to help. Sentences change chemistry; and neither you nor I invented the words, the grammar or the syntax. That run-on sentence got me a little elevated; writing it, and trying to trick you, and then hoping you would laugh, not be angry. But also learn something from the experience. For those who see time, space and ego a bit differently than others do devote a lot of time, space and ego to the business of feeling misunderstood. I mean, completely misunderstood, every day, for an entire year. That is a tough long sentence.
A lot of this stuff I think I am picking up from the excellent book Ego, co-authored I was delighted to discover by a member of Tangerine Dream.
You give up smoking to get well. You realize immediately that it is not the nicotine that is being sought but any object-to-find; for if there is an object-to-find then you have Control by the balls. You have shifted your mood and reality is still there but not as important as before. You suffer from chronic insomnia, which can be a hurdle when starting and maintaining a relationship, and a relationship-killer just on its todd. Sweeney Todd, I think, but I do not know how them cockney vultures get from that to odd, to on its own. I suppose an alone person perhaps is odd. Point being: the stone cold dead love bubble drones can be many, and so every attempt to discuss cause and effect breaks down under the load of over-determination.
From the web:
"Over-determination (Althusser)
Freud used this term to describe (among other things) the representation of the dream-thoughts in images privileged by their condensation of a number of thoughts in a single image (condensation/Verdichtung), or by the transference of psychic energy from a particularly potent thought to apparently trivial images (displacement/Verschiebung-Verstellung). Althusser uses the same term to describe the effects of the contradictions in each practice constituting the social formation on the social formation as a whole, and hence back on each practice and each contradiction, defining the pattern of dominance and subordination, antagonism and non-antagonism of the contradictions in the structure in dominance at any given historical moment.
More precisely, the over-determination of a contradiction is the reflection in it of its conditions of existence within the complex whole, that is, of the other contradictions in the complex whole, in other words its uneven development."
Uneven development, that also sounds salient. For when suffering from lack of sleep, and probably also on some horrid meds, one loses one's sense of what is salient. Salient things like, say, one's loved ones; or doing the dishes; same thing.
One of the side-effects of giving up smoking is... insomnia. So then you are irritable, very irritable, from nicotine withdrawal on a double dose of sleep deprivation. At this point, some people will probably leave. One way to get them back is to get well, which was the point of stopping smoking, so for a while you experiment with starting smoking again until you remember that the o.g. idea was to Stop. Now you take Ambien to help you sleep. Ambien does not help you sleep; it induces sleep; it does not maintain it. One is deprived of dreams (extremely dangerous to one's already fragile mental health) and still you never get more than a couple of hours until you up the dosage and begin to become paranoid, and have hallucinations. While awake on Ambien (which is bound to happen as it merely knocks you out like a feather-weight wannabe), once you wake up, if the pill is still in your system, and it IS, you are sort of sleep-walking. While in this state you may do and say things you do not remember or mean at all. Later, someone will tell you about these things, if you are lucky. If not, people just cut you dead or start looking at you funny.
You were not being intentional. But you did choose to take the Ambien. The Ambien that began to disappear you partly via massive amounts of temporary memory loss -- worse than ECT, is my guess, having taken one and seen the other. That lead you to do things that you did not intend. That other person did it.
Who on earth is going to swallow that? After a while, few do. Some will turn on you, brutally or so it may feel. You are now not only an illness but also an illness with side-effects that are worse than than the illness. And some folks are mad at you about that. Wow. How thin, the taught layer of civilization is, when you really get down to it.
Eventually the Ambien, after more than a year, is identified as yet another problem dressed up as a solution. The next move is up to you, really. Keep doing therapy (forgot to remember to do that, as one forgets that one has just taken the third Ambien of the night/day); make a decision. You must indeed experiment with drugs. On yourself. Cannabis then for a while but no good if you are trying to quit smoking and anyway lethargy will set in before tolerance is built up and smoking pot is as boring as being a teenager after a few weeks. All relationships are now under stress and you have not had more than two restful nights of sleep a year, for two years, while your dopamine-serotonin line buckles under the weight of your feelings and fears for your loved ones, who are bewildered, frightened (for you and of you) and just as confused as you. Soon will be.
Clearly, the answer is no meds. Let's say that does not work. The stress on the body can be so great that you are doing more harm than good. You are better off in a bar, or better still, a good restaurant. So, Zoloft it is then, and into battle like a good Western Soldier, marching to the Land of the SSRIs, crusading unto Hell. And this time, you have looked up the side-effects -- more lethargy in chunks of inertia the size of small planets, and anhedonia, a total inability to experience pleasure that can drive you, when it is continuous for weeks, into overdoing the self-medication. This may all turn out to be a total catastrophe, funnily enough, and not a problem or even a disaster. For if you are cyclothymic, Zoloft can drive you into Acute Hypo-Mania within weeks, while you are looking for a reduction of the other non-life threatening side-effects, and this unlike lethargy and anhedonia is a mental state from which you may never return. Or, if you get lucky, you identify the problem (easy by this point, after six years of struggling with the case: the problem is always the solution, right?), throw away the pills, endure moderate-to-intense immediate Zoloft withdrawal while alone for two days -- see earlier point -- while no one knows who you are anymore, least of all, you. You would not ordinarily quit Zoloft suddenly, for that is hard labor on the self and body; but in this case the alternative (it is just one dose too many that can push the mildly ill person into manic-depression for the remainder of their days) was unthinkable and insane.
In the end you find a different pill, not an SSRI, and a small dose does the trick. It is invasive surgery. You are agreeing to be changed. You do not recognize the old self. And you are glad to be rid of him. It really is Shutter Island. The Zoloft Experience can be terrifying: a total loss of self and a total lack of awareness of that. If you have been anywhere near this, or seen someone floundering about with no idea how bad things are, then you will know that this is much more scary than thinking about death. Total loss of ID. But still here and with no visible signs of being ill and therefore when acting mad, must be bad. That is the logic of those who do not know whereof we speak. And they will punish you for that, for ever. Usually these people are liberal leftists who forget all about their politics once anything abnormal occurs. They are under the command of Control, like so many so-called progressives, feminists and so on.
The hard block universe. As briefly discussed in yesterday's laptop dispatch. What if we are always like that but only recognize it when we differ too much from the agreed-upon social norm, the reality constructed socially via words and numbers mostly, but also through other forms of communication? This all requires rules, as the neuro-scientist pointed out on Monday's KALW show; so at that point -- at the precise point of con-tact -- you are responsible.
But are you? What if a lack of salience that is due to brain chemistry leads you not to notice what the rules are, or that there are any? Autism is a mild form of this. So in the end I could not agree with the duality of the scientist's gamble: we are almost totally unaware of who we are and why we do things, good bad and indifferent, but we are 100% responsible (this is his position) for our actions, for they are inter-subjective and we are bound thus by a social contract of rules.
Ah, but what about game theory, the cretion (so-called) paradox and the prisoner's dilemma: which was central to the development of Wittgenstein's thinking, as it comes out of the Vienna Circle... I think that last bit is right, not certain though, so beware mindful reader. Oooo that was too run-on. Anythesis, these approaches suggest that the bonobos will be eaten by the con-artists. The medicine men. The snake oil traders. What then?
What makes this all so interesting -- to me, at least, and that is who I am writing for now, but with a new existential buddy on my shoulder (acronym of art, no kidding), which is extremely interesting and very different... what makes this an experience one cannot recommend but if that is the way the world is? No complaints here. The cost-benefit analysis says if you do the job right, or at least make an effort, you win more than you lose, even though it does not look that way, to you. Or, some other people. They do not know what and/or whom they and you were dealing with.
And that can drive you absolutely bonkers.
Point being: the stone cold dead love bubble drones can be many, and so every attempt to discuss cause and effect breaks down under the load of over-determination. You suffer from chronic insomnia, which can be a hurdle when starting and maintaining a relationship, and a relationship-killer just on its todd. I suppose an alone person perhaps is odd. Sweeney Todd, I think, but I do not know how them cockney vultures get from that to odd, to on its own. You have shifted your mood and reality is still there but not as important as before. You realize immediately that it is not the nicotine that is being sought but any object-to-find; for if there is an object-to-find then you have Control by the balls. You give up smoking to get well.
You keep doing this until you no longer need to do it.
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Addendum: Sharon P. English writes: On your Tod - Tod Sloane= alone
Tod was an American Jockey in the Uk who fell from grace.
Sweeney Todd= Flying squad
Thanks Sharon.
from the knackers' yard...
