It is first necessary to define the nature of the problem(s); what
it is about a person's life with which he/she is unsatisfied. What
is seen as needing change to improve the quality of life? My personal
list is as follows:
 |
Inability to establish and maintain satisfying long-term relationships. |
|
Tendency to use drugs to excess and for this compulsion to override my priorities and distort my behavior to the point that I don't recognize myself in some of what I do. |
|
Vocational and career endeavors unsatisfying and short-lived. |
|
Loss of appreciation of my body and loss of conscious contact with its signals combined with declining interest in exercise and physical activities. |
|
Sporadic creativity. |
This is in approximate order of occurrence. I will now discuss briefly what I know or suspect about each in attempt to discern the common origin and overall pattern of their development within the context of the 5-selves concept of a human being.
I remember having difficulty making friends as early as my sixth year. Violent belt whippings from my father had caused me to develop an involuntary reflex of shying away whenever an object came toward me. This ruined me for ball games and related sports which were the major source of camaraderie for young boys at that time. I did not understand how to behave toward others in the way that engendered strong friendship bonds. I always seemed to have been turned inward as if searching for something missing which I'm sure resulted in my appearing selfish. This carried through my life fairly consistently with my only ever having one or two close friends at any one time. My love relationships have failed to thrive after a time because, though I have been faithful and truly cared, I have had those same selfish and insecure appearing traits that have turned others away. What I am describing is, of course, the effects of a crippled personality. Since we know that the personality is the working combination of intellect and emotion and, since it appears that my intellectual development has always been above average, it would seem that emotional difficulties which have existed since early childhood are at the root of this part of the problem.
The addiction is much more difficult to understand. It seems to have roots and branches extending throughout my being. My first experiences, at mid-adolescence, were certainly motivated by curiosity. I can, however, remember that the feelings of warmth and well-being seemed to fill a void within. During young adulthood, I used alcohol and drugs both as symbols of my rebellion against the norms of a world that wouldn't provide me with the answers I sought and as a social anesthetic and lubricant due to my feelings of inadequacy toward the creation of a lifestyle interesting, satisfying, and enjoyable. The absence of love and friendship seemed to require drugs to make life interesting. If I had been more effective socially, I believe chemicals would have held less interest for me.
Worse yet, by the end of my college years, I had become locked into the intellectual mode to the exclusion of all else. Because of the high praise I had received for my intellectual accomplishments, I thought I knew everything. I decided to create a whole new philosophy around the value to mankind of using drugs and the utter incompetence of the establishment in failing to recognize this. Believing that I was destined to great things, I thought that it would be morally wrong to waste my talent on anything insignificant. So I decided to devote my life to the study of drugs; first going to medical school for the extra clout of an MD, then to pursue drug research. Two of the visionaries that I admired most and hoped, in some way, to emulate were then (and, in many ways, still are today) Dr. Alexander Shulgin who developed and studied some 200 hallucinogenic drugs, and also, Dr. Timothy Leary who promoted the social value of the use of LSD.
To further complicate the mental morass that was developing, I began my romance with amphetamine which, at the time, seemed like a gift from god in the way it improved my performance as I first became aware of the symptoms of narcolepsy in my life. All of these influences came together to form massive interlocking walls of justification, rationalization, denial, self-delusion, and defensiveness in my mind that defied all attempts at a simple solution once the negative effects started to manifest themselves. The idea of drugs was so tenaciously impacted in a multitude of areas within my mind that no single assault on any one front could dislodge the obstructions or derail the growing and self-propagating juggernaut of personal destruction that had been loosed upon my existence. By the time I realized that I was becoming that which I most loathed and feared, the process was out of control. No amount of thinking could explain why I lied, manipulated, denied, and made excuses when honesty and open mindedness were traits upon which I placed the highest value and were essential to the person I perceived myself to be.
In other words, intellectual curiosity brought me into contact with something (drugs) which acted like an insidious mental poison because it produced artificial "filler" feelings for the inner void that had resulted from the exclusion of my emotional self from early on. As the need and compulsion grew, the effects began to spread to my character, warping my spiritual growth and producing negative traits which I detested but denied because I could not live with myself if I accepted them. Like a fish on a hook, it seemed the harder I struggled against them, the more deeply they became embedded.
My employment problem has several facets. There seems to have been a long-range tendency not to complete things. I habitually put forth tremendous and often brilliant concerted effort to achieve a certain goal and then lose interest or sabotage the accomplishment overtly. The cause has become clear now and will be discussed at length in a later part of this book. Other contributing factors include:
|
Inability to use creative thinking ability to find something that I both enjoy and excel at, and that provides a comfortable income with continuity into the future. |
|
Personality problems mentioned above creating difficulties in "fitting in" in the work place. |
|
Negative character traits resulting from drug use - poor attendance, low drive, dishonesty, and defensiveness. |
In short, emotional and spiritual dysfunction from early programming and from later chemical effects stand between me and a satisfying career. Criminal history resulting from drug abuse has also become a significant factor in recent years.
The loss of awareness of my physical being from my perceptual reality and the loss of its integration into my lifestyle seems clearly a peripheral effect of the above-mentioned intellectual fixation and the pervasive "chemical thinking" growing out of my obsession with drugs. My former great enjoyment of outdoor and athletic activities seems to have faded along with the drive to nurture and protect my body and health. I am appalled by some of the things that I have allowed to occur such as the advanced damage and deteriorated state of my teeth that existed before I started taking corrective measures.
The pattern has finally emerged into awareness behind the perplexing periodicity of my creativity, especially with respect to my problem-solving skills. I can now see that this has been a direct result of chemical suppression of the "right-brain" centers of nonlinear perception. All of my greatest creative insights, the expression of my artistic abilities, and even my progress in straightening out my life have occurred during the times when I was free from amphetamine and its after effects. This faculty is a part of me which I cherish and, now that it is clear that even the small doses that I received for my sleep disorder significantly paralyze my creative awareness, I know that I have no choice but to give up this drug permanently. This single insight has allowed me to break the stranglehold of the self-deception that has promoted my use of this drug even in the face of the misery that resulted for myself and for my family. I sent a letter to my neurologist four months ago admitting my addiction and voluntarily discontinuing all future amphetamine therapy as the first step in the liberation of my spirit from bondage. This is no paltry accomplishment -- an addict giving up a lifetime supply of his drug of choice.
In summary, it seems clear that the vast majority of my difficulties stem directly of indirectly from early life events which disabled the emotional side of my personality. This under nurtured and stunted faculty prevented normal social growth and laid me wide open to the "chemical crutch." This, in turn, compounded the problem by assuring that growth could virtually never occur in that area, since the crutch alleviated the need to exercise and nurture of the part of me necessary for that growth to occur. Trying to get by with a crippled personality warped my character propagating effects throughout. My difficulties relating to others worsened as a result.
Chemical addiction became the weapon that a desperately not-OK part of me used for the sabotage of my career objectives. Contaminations in thinking resulting from relying totally upon intellect distorted my world-view and deranged my behavior. I began to "center" in my head and split-off from my physical being coming to see it mostly in terms of a bag of biochemical reactions to be manipulated. The drug amphetamine itself is known to facilitate focusing for linear thinking and repetitive behavioral tasks but also seems to simultaneously suppress the creative nonlinear thought processes required for problem-solving. This effectively locked the door and threw away the key.
Top of Page