im horrified at the amount of time i spend on dissensus. its actually quite distressing. its the only thing i worry about. i dont watch tv or eat junk food or need sugar. i can smoke cigs every day for months and then stop without getting the slightest craving. drinks never been an issue. i smoked an 8th os skunk yesterday but i'll have a week or two off now. i hate not having control. not being able to decide.
burruoghs is definitely the one here, he breaks it all down so precisely its utterly awe inspiring. the same ruse. over and over. press the pleasure button! again! again!
If you're still getting pleasure from dissensus, you're not an addict yet. Thank yr lucky stars!
Addicts don't feel pleasure, they can't, that's the problem. Their stimulus of choice is not a button pressed to get pleasure, but to stave off hideous physical and psychological agony. Until you've crossed that line, until your brain becomes dependent on the substance, you still feel pleasure from it, so you think--ha! I can beat this, I'm not an addict like all those losers. But once you've crossed that line, you're there, there's nothing you can do to go back. It's too late. You're just like all the other losers and there's nowhere to go but back to the same empty room over and over and over...
There's this weird misperception, I think it's in large part spread by the media, that addicts are just hedonists who are too selfish to stop using because it feels too good.
Wrong!
There is a huge element of self-centeredness to addiction, but it's mostly a symptom and not a direct cause. Addicts do not necessarily
want to do drugs (drink, eat, fuck, whatever), they
have to stay under the influence or they will get ill. Drug addicts rarely have sex, despite the media's obsession with linking the two, since they can't enjoy it anyway. Most addicts are anorgasmic. By the time you've become an addict, you are clinically considered quite literally incapable of experiencing pleasure. You have to relearn how to enjoy food, how to care about books, music, how to take care of yourself, how to focus on an entire movie, how to feel things against your skin without wincing, how to smell things without getting nauseous--everything. (When your pleasure comes back, it's applified by like a million, though. It almost feels like another kind of high to be clean. Strange.)
Addiction is being a prisoner in your own body; it's the ultimate submissive relationship.
I've heard of gambling addicts having serious "DT" like withdrawal syndrome--complete with vomiting and cold sweating, insomnia, panic attacks and tachycardia. This is because just like drug addicts they've been flooding their brains with dopamine and serotonin for long enough at high enough levels to become dependent on these high levels just to function. Take away the slot machine or whatever and they get sick just like a crack or heroin addict, until their brain rebalances itself chemically--which can take weeks to months to years.
End rant.