The Wonders of Methamphetamine

After watching this, we should all wonder why anyone would try it:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244031/The-horror-Meth-Before-pictures-reveal-shocking-transformation-faces-users-hooked-deadly-drug.html?ICO=most_read_module

But, then again, we've all seen 'skid row drunks,' and we still continue to drink, right?

Controlling the Brain and Stress Shrinkage

Here's another example of how the 'mind' can manipulate the 'brain':

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18358930

This study reminds me an awful lot of Dr. Ramachandran's famous discovery for the treatment of 'phantom limbs':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb

In the 'mirror box,' the person suffering from phantom limb pain places his remaining limb in one part of the box that has a mirror, which make a mirror image of the limb in the other side which appears to be the phantom limb.  The sufferer can then look into the box and see the phantom limb, and his brain will tell him it is real and give him the sensation of its reality.

The treatment of depression using imagery of the brain appears to resemble this phenomenon.

What does this tell us?

If depression has a physiological component, and this component can be manipulated by thought, then mood is not only influenced by thought, but can also be changed by guided thought.  Does this mean that we can simply decide to change our moods at any time?  No.  This study does not suggest this at all.  But, it does bring up important questions about addiction.

The question is this: how much of our cravings and impulses, the ones that seem to run so deep, are attributable to the imagery we receive and the changes this imagery has on our brains?  Do we see the world as bleak and hopeless because we have created bleak and hopeless worlds around us?

I think we need to look at how we are influencing ourselves, and whether this influence is positive or not.    What does modern architecture do to us?  More importantly, what is the entertainment industry drumming into our heads in ways that we do not realize?

Sure, there are not accompanying photos of the brain to 'reinforce' the message as used in this study, but the study is showing a very short period of time where demonstrable changes were taking place.  The study opens the possibility that brain changes can be made, and accelerated using brain imagery, but this does not exclude slower processes without the confirmation.

Again, we are talking about the 'brain' as opposed to the 'mind.'  Perhaps, the mind may be able to function well on a certain plane which the brain suffers for it.

Here's another study:

http://news.yale.edu/2012/01/09/even-healthy-stress-causes-brain-shrink-yale-study-shows

This one concludes that stress 'shrinks' the brains of people who have 'healthy' minds.  Eventually, the damage done to the brain system then, in turn (like depression), affects the mind in a negative way.

So, we may think that our minds are dealing well with the stress, but in reality we are experiencing brain damage that will affect our minds later on when we exit the stress.  If we are bombarding our minds with negative images, could we be altering our brains in such a way that escaping the draw of these images becomes inescapable?

I suppose my real question is this: are we creating the modern escalation of addictions by flooding our minds with images that alter us and leave us vulnerable to addiction?  

It would seem that our modern world has expanded to a point we cannot tolerate according to our nature.  We are aware of far more than we ever have in any point in history.  We are intimately connected to the entire world, and see consequences in every act.  Are we overloading ourselves with concerns and cares which increase our worries and concerns, making them intolerable without some reliance on a Higher Power to keep this world of madness from exploding?

I have not even gotten into music and the forces of nature battling our sedentary lives...

Devolution and Depression

So, I've been talking about the brain and how evidence points towards the idea that thought affects the brain's structure and function.  Quite literally, addictions research suggests that the mind controls the brain, though there is obvious evidence that brain impairment can effect thought.

This is why I believe the brain is more of an 'antenna' than a thought-producer.  After all, damage to an antenna will effect the signal quality both sending and receiving.

We have a hard time with this idea because of materialism and how unproven theories about the brain have become 'fact' because no alternative theories are permitted under modern medical and scientific 'orthodoxy.'  At the same time, there are more troubling challenges to modern attitudes.

Let's take this study versus the 'Law of Natural Selection':

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2231924/Are-getting-stupid-Researchers-claim-longer-need-intelligence-survive.html?printingPage=true

This study makes sense, in that the more we 'rescue' people through medical and social means, the more genetic defects will prosper and be passed down into the 'gene pool.'  However, the assumption here is that advances will continue to occur... even while we are getting dumber.  The scientist even suggests, "...we may be able to magically correct any mutation that has occurred in all cells of any organism at any developmental stage."  Rubbish.

Magic?  Seriously?  This is wishful thinking, unless you envision a time when you have an intelligent class or sub-species of intelligent people ruling over the 'dumb and dumber' crowd.

I agree that the human genome is going through 'devolution,' because that is what happens with fallen creation... it devolves.  Yet, we do have an overall increase in the body of knowledge that man possesses.  So, why the drop in intelligence?

My theory it that any theoretical drop in intelligence could only be proved through a visible drop in function.  Right now, we are beginning to see some signs of human intellectual deterioration.  If we look at addictions, mental illness (particularly depression and the amount of pharmacology devoted to maintaining human functionality), and the creation of permanent social stratification, we see a real problem.  Human society is not working.

But, neither are we.  We are not working our minds.  Sure, we go to school and learn lots of data.  We also receive massive amounts of information.

But we are not processing it.  It rushes over us, without time to digest.

So, the mind 'tunes out.'  This is where the real danger in the drop in intelligence lies.  We are not exercising our minds, and in turn we will begin to lose function over time.  Like muscles, thinking must be exercised or it becomes weakened.

The sign of this are the vast number of emotional problems that now stunt the development of the modern character.  We are not trained up to be people of good character.

Right now, our society values a pliable character.  Just as long as you are willing to agree to the common narrative, just about anything else is acceptable.

So, you can be a murderer... just don't be a racist.  You can advocate any kind of sexual exploit... just don't tell people not to have sex.   

Look at where popular outrage comes from in America: we spend so much time arguing about racism but store up killers with little concern.

Even now, we are not having any type of popular discussion of psychotropic medication and the vast number of people taking anti-depressants.  The statistics in the UK are astounding:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19967037

Depression is probably the #1 contributing factor to addiction: people become addicted when they feel depression and despair.  This is the real devolution of the human mind.  Despite all out luxury, we are more depressed than ever.  This could very well hasten the genetic process the other study suggests in under way.  It also says something about the wrong direction we are heading.

More on this tomorrow...

Materialism and Bad Science

I found this article to be absolutely fascinating:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rupert-sheldrake/why-bad-science-is-like-bad-religion_b_2200597.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

In a nutshell, Dr. Sheldrake argues that science has many more 'explanations' than it has provable facts, and most of these unproven facts rest on the assumption that materialism, which we have been discussing here as a contributing factor in the development of alcoholism and addiction, is an absolute truth.  Science cannot explain how genes really work, or even how your brain really operates.

Of course, science has a more difficult task than I do.  I am not interested in explanations as much as results: just because I can explain addiction does not mean I can treat it, and I only am interested in explanations so long as they lead to a treatment.  My interest is in treatment.  I want results, because I suffer for lack of them.

Religion is a type of 'experimental science.'  It is often proved by 'results,' though many people would call these results 'superstitions.'  I've read plenty of books about 'magical thinking' and how superstitions develop because the human mind draws associations between cause and effect that are not there.  The problem with the scientists who argue such points is that, by Dr. Sheldrake's analysis, science has its own superstitions.

That makes sense: the scientist and the shaman have the same 'hard wiring.'  Human beings have had the same demonstrable needs and desires since recorded history began.  The Papua New Guinea witch-doctor shares all the same attributes as the Oxford professor... only the assumptions change.

The only changes from human to human occur in illness.  The disease of addiction, for example, changes the brain.  Yet, no one can really argue that the brain changes occur before the onset of the disease... it is not causal.  What is changing the brain?  Scientists shrug.  Why?  Because the materialist model would argue that the brain has to change first to create the disease, but that would leave open the question as to how that change would be initiated.

If we can use our own thought processes to change the structure of the brain, then the question remains: how then can one say that all thought originates in the brain if the brain is, in fact, subjected to the influence of thoughts?  It is a Catch-22.  If the brain influences thoughts, and thoughts influences the brain, then which is the originating actor?

Science has already ruled: the brain, as the physical and material organ, must be the origin.  But, we are not bound by science's pronouncements, particularly when science cannot conclusively prove this theory and there is evidence (such as addictions research in neurology) which shine light on the obvious problem of origin.

Christians believe that there is more to the person than just an animated corpse: we are Body, Spirit, and Soul.  This spiritual aspect of man rest with and in the body, but is not material.  Therefore, the best analogy I can give for the brain is that it is like an 'antenna' between the body and soul.  Damage to it effects the signals going back and forth, thus a head injury can affect our perceptions, yet the loss of brain matter does not mean that thoughts and memories are utterly erased.  We have seen stroke and brain injury victims, who lose a lot of gray matter, regain not only functions but memories as well.

Those of us in the world of recovery are looking for treatments rather than explanations.  I don't believe that science is bad... I think that it is rather good.  But, having all the scientific information possible and being totally miserable is not for me.  I got into my spiritual journey wanting to find happiness.  I believe I am on that road, and I don't think that science has done all that much about happiness.

Mind you, science has presented some wonderful solutions to human misery, from disease to starvation... our world is much easier to survive in thanks to science.  But, people are still miserable, and I don't think that materialism has helped at all.  In fact, I believe that materialism is a major culprit in modern misery.

There is much more to say, but I will save it for later.

What is making us crazy?

So, why are we going mad?  There are a few theories.

First, I think that, from a 12 Step perspective, the heart of our modern madness lies in the elimination of God from the modern mind.  In the West, God has been driven out of philosophy and the social sciences as far back as the French Revolution.  The 18th century started this gradual path, in part because of the sheer madness of Western Christianity from the time of the Schism in 1054 until the insanity of the Reformation (the Reformation was undoubtedly a time of madness, and even the most committed Protestant will agree that most of what came out of it he rejects, since no one person could follow all the various streams of Protestant thought at once).

The frustration of so many conflicting theological paths led men to seen 'alternatives' to the unity that Christianity in the West once offered.  Nationalism, Masonry, and eventually Science came to be seen as common ground.  Now, it is Money.  Each stage represented a more and more materialistic approach, since the assumption is that it is easier to come to agreement over physical, visible things than it is to come to agreement over invisible, sublime things.

Yet, materialism is failing miserably.  It does not feed the deeper yearnings of man for something profound, nor does it offer reliable salvation.  Right now, the American people are in turmoil because they are clamoring for 'salvation' from Money through government and business.  God is an 'option' and more like a distraction on Sundays... perhaps a quick 'fix' of something vaguely spiritual just to take the edge off of our deeper desires that never seem to get met.

The second source of madness is availability of distractions.  Rather than having the pain of our madness drive us to real change and a return to sanity, we now have millions of distractions... literally at our fingertips.  Here's an example:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2241326/It-s-probably-better-talk-How-checking-phones-60-times-day-driving-away-friends.html?printingPage=true

Now, I'm a bit old and the idea of getting more than a few texts in a week seems overwhelming, but I have camped a keyboard waiting for an email more than once.  There is a sense of immediacy in this age which often destroys our ability to prioritize and focus.  We are losing the ability to be patient, because there is so little need to be patient in the microwave era.

We wait for nothing.  And so, we lose the ability to be patient.  Life takes on a maddening pace that overwhelms while it exhilarates.  The only consolation is the arrival of our desired object, be it the consoling text of a friend, a new jacket, or sexual climax.

In fact, we are clamoring for things even while getting what we want.  The point of the article about cell phones is that people are interrupting the gratification of relationships with more more relationships than a single moment can hold.  What is thrilling at first, however, soon becomes exhausting.  Suddenly, we are juggling too much.  We become exhausted with all these people are their various needs and demands.

We retreat into loneliness.

This solitude is not really a recuperative one.  It is more like a defeated retreat, where we leave the scene without what we really want: a sense of being valued.  We want to feel desired, but no one else can hold still long enough to value us (likewise, we are not holding still either... and we know it).  Because no one values, we feel that we are not valued, and so we fall for the next available 'coping' skill... self-arousal.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/sex-addiction-the-truth-about-a-modern-phenomenon-8373873.html

This leads to our third contributing factor: we are also now in a time where people are physically isolating from one another.  Internet porn, as well as prostitution and promiscuity, require the ability to isolate and be alone.  If it acceptable for a young lady or man to roam the streets by his or herself, then you are setting the stage for the 'sins of darkness.'

Sitting in a room by yourself with a computer is a dangerous thing for someone who is lonely.

The idea of every child having his own room is a revolutionary.  In most of human history, families shared every space in the home.  You had to really work at finding a 'private place' to be alone.  The default position was communal.  Now, our default position is privacy, yet humans have not changed in their need for community.  We are busy trying to 'construct communities' because TV and internet have come to replace that communal sense, but in an incomplete way.  Problems around us don't get met because we are too busy watching video streams of other peoples' crises.

This isolation leaves us desperate for some sense of fellowship and value.  Porn and promiscuity are easy fixes in the Age of Isolation.  But, the despair they leave behind only makes the problem spin out of control.

The solution?  I'm not sure we've really hit bottom yet.  Some part of me thinks that the lights will really have to go out for the long haul before we will wake up to what we are doing to ourselves.

Perhaps I sound like a crank, but I don't see the way things are going as the right direction.

"Doing insane things for the sake of doing insane things"

As usual, Ioan gets what I'm trying to say and says it better than I do! 

http://orthodoxyandrecovery.blogspot.com/2012/11/locked-up-for-crazy.html?showComment=1354255662121#c50488648734724432

Biological insanity, be it schizophrenia or psychosis or some other psychiatric disorder, is not intentional.  The afflicted person is not 'immoral' because he does not choose to break with reality.  I think the civil law here in the US has this approach, when it rules that 'legal insanity' is the inability to discern right from wrong.

I think that this is half-right: the psychiatric patient is most often trying to do the right thing, but with the wrong information.  He tries to be moral, but just does not have the ability to make good decisions because of the impairment he experiences.  He is not making 'stupid' decisions in the sense of being carefree or, as Ioan points out, intentionally stupid.

There is another kind of insanity, a moral insanity.  This is "doing insane things for the sake of doing insane things."  This insanity is intentional, done with full knowledge of what is true, and thus moral.

Morality is the description of behavior that is according to nature, thus according to what is right and good.  Immorality is not a random act, but an intention to rebel against the natural order.  When we know what is good but refuse to act accordingly, we are departing into moral insanity.

The addict often starts off in the arena of moral insanity.  He will drink or use knowing that what he is doing is perhaps against morality, but his pride (driven by pain and fear) tells him he is entitled to act out in an immoral manner.

However, once the disease sets in and his intellect is sufficiently distorted, he enters into a type of biological insanity where his free will is impaired by a disease which he has no control of.  Addiction has one foot in each type of insanity.  One is treatable through a therapeutic and rational process, but the other is not.  Biological insanity cannot be counselled, but moral insanity can.

The difficulty is being able to discern when the addict is acting out of either type of insanity.  Does he have a choice not to drink or use?  This is a tricky question: on the one hand, his moral insanity is treatable and so he does have a choice, yet his biological insanity compels him to use beyond his ability to control.  The addict must learn to take responsibility for his intentional insanity, and leave the treatment of his biological insanity to the care of God.  This is what the 12 Steps does.

However, there are many people who do "insane things for the sake of doing insane things."  They are purposefully immoral.  They have no biological impairment, and so they are truly insane.  The person with biological insanity, if he can be properly treated, willingly embraces sanity in the same proportion as the general public (with perhaps a higher level of compassion and virtue on account of his experience of suffering with his disease).  But, those who are purposefully immoral have a curable problem which only needs willingness.

My greatest concern for our modern world is that we are working overtime to redefine good in such a way that makes addictions recovery and true morality an impossibility.  Our cultures stokes the fires of personal irresponsibility and self-indulgence even when it talks about altruistic notions of community and charity.

We arrest and fine people for destroying unborn turtles in their eggs because it is killing an endangered species, but say that abortion does not kill a human being.  But, then again, we send people to prison for murder should they cause a woman to miscarry even in her first trimester, when it is perfectly legal for her to abort the child.

Why such a conflicted logic?  Because we have become imprisoned by our desires for things, and are willing to abandon reason and logic for the sake of our goals: avoiding the consequences of voluntary, unprotected sex.

Abortion is just one example of many.  So, how is it that we can teach the addict about morality when his own world is so distorted by immorality?  We celebrate "doing insane things for the sake of doing insane things."  Just look at the celebrity culture!  Turn on your TV and watch what is going on.

The world is "doing insane things for the sake of doing insane things."  We revel in our lawlessness, yet we wonder why we need to medicate ourselves.

Locked Up for Crazy

My friend Red once posted this: "They don't lock you up for being crazy, they lock you up for acting crazy."

When I read it, I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair.  It is true: there are plenty of people who are crazy who don't get locked up.  So, why am I posting this?

Well, previously I posted on marijuana and mental illness (http://orthodoxyandrecovery.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-schizophrenic-epidemic-and.html), and didn't quite finish my thought.  One of the links I put up had to do with the stigma of mental illness and how we, as a society react to it.  So, why do we assign a stigma to mental illness?

There are a number of reasons: first, people with mental illness have impaired judgement.  They make bad decisions, and so there's always a risk factor to themselves and others.  Someone who is 'high' gets the same stigma.

But, second and perhaps more important, is that we value, as a society, human life because it is intelligent.  We place a high value on intelligence.  That's why we emphasize education in the secular world and the study of Scriptures in religious traditions.

Because people with mental illness don't process information the way an 'intelligent' person does, we assume that the mentally ill are 'stupid' and therefore 'less-than.'

There is a third reason, a bit less influential, and that is that the mentally ill suffer for their disease, and suffering makes human life far less valuable in the secular world.  Think about it: there are many people who justify euthanasia because it 'ends suffering.'  They would never think of killing a healthy person.  Others will justify killing a child in the womb because it would be 'unwanted' and thus subjected to a life of suffering from deprivation.

I'm going to focus on the second one (in part because I am sick right now and don't want to think much about suffering) because I think that we have a hard time reconciling the intelligence of the mentally ill with their behavior.

We lock people up for 'acting crazy.'

But, acting crazy is not the same as acting stupid.  A person who makes bad decisions again and again is not mentally ill, and the reverse holds true.

It is undeniable that addiction is a type of mental illness.  As with all mental illness, it is complex and not entirely understood, though I think we can say that it is far less 'organic' than schizophrenia or psychosis.

We often look at addictive behavior as stupid.  Some of it certainly is.  But, it is not come by through stupidity or low IQ.  It comes through a broken mind.

But, just so that you can see where I'm coming from on this, I will take the opposite tack and say that intelligence does not always produce the most rational decisions either.

Now I know you are scratching your head, because we assume that intelligence governs one's ability to make good decisions.  Well, that is true when it comes to attaining facts.  But, there is another axis to decision-making: morality.

Education does not make someone moral.  Morality and the ability to care about others cannot be taught, nor does a PhD make anyone more or less likely to be moral.  Education gives information, and that's about it.

The mentally ill do not necessarily lose their morality because of their disease.  While they may have gross misconceptions about the people around them, the truth is that they are far less violent than, let's say, their 'chronically normal' peers.  Even mental illness does not entirely rob a person of his will and his reason.

The real problem of addiction and mental illness, at a social level, has to do with self-care.  In both cases, people with mental illness and addictions invariably become a drain on public systems.  This can be the family at first, but eventually the state will get involved in having to pay for treatment either of the disorder or something caused by the disorder.

People must be held accountable for their own self-care, and it is only through this approach that we can really engage those who are sick and have a fair standard: if you can care for yourself by your own rules, then do what you want... but if you can't care for yourself, then those who care for you will make the rules.

This is how we deal with childhood, right?  Children are 'wards' of their parents until they can 'self-care.'

Rather than arguing endlessly over law and programs, we first need to set a standard of self-care.  That's what being crazy really is: you are not caring for yourself.  After all, if you are crazy but can care for yourself, we just call you eccentric.  people have a right to be eccentric, but they do not have a right to be a burden without making any attempt to help themselves.

To refuse to help yourself makes you a candidate for an asylum rather than a hospital (http://orthodoxyandrecovery.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-church-is-hospital-not-asylum.html).

I think we need to clarify what it means to make good decisions and what it really means to be crazy.

Thanks to Red and Christina for all the input.