Addictions

2nd July 2019

 I was in a race to see if I would die from the outside in or the inside out.

Laurie Halse Anderson

I recall my first high of weed back in high school, my mind split into two and a new world seemed to open up and as soon as I tried to enter that world I was shut out.

This was a merely three seconds blissful glimpse into an unknown world.

I spent the next half an hour nagging my friends with awkward questions like "so guys am I high?"

Little did we know that many years later we would all be struggling to stop.

I can recount varying tales of different substance abuse but that would make me overindulgent, nevertheless, I will discuss marijuana in a different context and writing.

With every intake of a drug, tolerance builds.

With every tolerance increase, intake amount builds.

With every intake increase, the reward builds.

With every reward increase, dependency builds.

With dependency increase, addiction builds.

Eventually, you reach a plateau where intake increase doesn't offer a higher reward so you have to get a stronger drug for you to experience a higher reward.

That's how you move from:

Beer to hard liquor.

Weed to heroine and cocaine.

Normal porn to bizarre and BDSM.

For example, driving 100km/hr for a second or third time wouldn't give you as much adrenaline rush as it did the first time.

One must level up to 150 km/hr to gain as much adrenaline rush and the next day one must level up again and again.

Question is, how do you attain more adrenaline rush when you've already reached the cars speed limit?

Answer is, Level up:

Abandon the saloon car for a racing one.

Abandon the racing car for a supersonic jet.

Abandon the supersonic jet for....by this time you are either dead or really hooked.

If the last to know he’s an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself.

Philip K. Dick

People don't wake up and consciously decide to become addicts.

Addiction oftenly starts as an innocent curiosity and unchecked fun that gets prolonged into a habit.

More oftenly though, it starts as a way of seeking relief from certain psychological burdens and eventually dependence on the relief overrides the purpose for seeking the relief in the first place.

The most disturbing thing is how much we repeat destructive patterns even after seeing the fates of substance abusers before us.

You would think that after all the addicts we've met, 

We would have learned from the sadness and dullness they portray,

Maybe even tried to change our fates but until then, we will keep taking liquor made from paint.

Victor Mafusa

Not every suicide is by rope.