Giving Up II

Giving up addictive drugs is not easy. The more a moving train accelerates, the more difficult it is to get off. Ratcheting up the difficulty by taking more of the addictive substance into your body will create more need.

Need is the mother of desire. Study a bit of Buddahism and you soon learn that desire is the source of all suffering. For the addict, this appears all too evident.

It follows that to reduce your "need" you need to reduce your intake. The same applies to smoking cigarettes, possibly one of the hardest habit of all to give up.

Joe smoked tobacco for twenty years and tried to give up on numerous occassions. He hated smoking it, but somethng made it impossible to stop, until his health started failing. Then he smoked his last cig and has not touched tobacco since 1998. We asked Joe what his secret was, was it nicotine patches? No.

Joe said that it was the numerous times that he had rehearsed giving up, each time he said to himself, hey - its okay - you are going to start again in two weeks - and with that he was able to cut out the fags for two weeks. Each time he restarted, he did so with an intention of repeating this promise to himself in a few days. And he did. After a few months of starting and stopping, Joe felt it was easy to just stop forever.

The same principle is at work as used by nicotine patches, reduce the amount of the narcotic in the system, until the body becomes used to not having it present.

The same principle should not be applied to depressant drugs, like herion or alcohol. With these a strict reigime of drying the drug from the body is necessary and then staying clear of the addictive substance for ever. One small drink can lead the alcoholic back to full fledged addiction.

Why? Drugs that tend to stimulate like nicotine or THC give the user an inflated idea about themselves, whilst they are under the effect of the drug. When they come down, the need is created in a state of relative weakness.

Conversely with drugs that depress, the weak state is when under the influence. Therefore it follows that to break the habit, maintain the stronger state.

Giving Up

This journal is aimed at helping people understand issues that lead to false arrest, or what to do when arrested. Guilty or not, you can harm your cause by not having a lawyer present during police interviews.

Another problem that can make you vulnerable is drug addiction. The trouble is with most drug abuse is that it is difficult to stop. How to get off herion is famously documented in the film Trainspotting... hellish delusions and rabid torture seems on the path, lots of unpleasant feelings, cold sweats, and so forth.

But what about stopping the use of more common drugs, like alcohol or marijuana? How do you stop taking these?

We all know someone that had to stop drinking, and some of us know someone trying to knock off smoking dope. Both drugs can be taken for many years with few apparent side effects. Neither is easy to stop.

After drinking for a few years, Person A had to adjust to a social life without alcohol. After a lifetime puffing at the end of a joint, Person B was faced with the choice - do I continue to do this, or can I take control?

Person A stopped drinking entirely and took control. We asked Person A how hard it was "at first". The ex-alcoholic knows that there is a fine line between one glass of wine and not being able to say no to a second glass of wine. And so do their friends. This exerts a certain social agreement which must be faced much like the consequences of plastic surgery. Pretty soon you will be offered a drink in public and cross the line by accepting it.

Person B stopped and started and stopped and started and then finally stopped.

Said life was better, with more meaning and colour. Started to go the gym and got healthy. Giving up led to a happier person.

Persons C and D are both habitual marijuana users. Although they are not Rastafarian, it seems like a genuine religion. Getting together in their secret huddle, lighting up and so forth are the attendant rituals.

One of the hidden problems of making drugs illegal is that you must stop doing something which is already hidden from others. Drug taking becomes a lonely affair.

A mother and son both smoke dope, but neither do so in the other's presence. There is a "secret code" world at work here, and it forms part of the addiction. It is something done privately, without witnesses, therefore there is no social outcome to face if a recovered addict "lights up".

Enough is truly, enough.

BBC.co.uk

If you become aware of the lies published about various foods and drugs by authority it could easily become a lifetime obsession and it does for many hyperconsumers.

Humans learn by example and repetition. Learn a phrase, What did you do? It is the same with any human behaviour and the older the behaviour, the more ingrained and welded to the self it becomes.

It seems logical enough that we are products of our parents, their example and tendancies. We lose that faith suddenly with the sudden realisation that life presents choices, not conclusions.

It goes without saying that repeated exposures to any addiction stokes fires which may be better excited by constructive activity. The earlier the repeated exposures are clustered, the larger part of the sum of experience it occupies.

It figures an unsurmountable barrier exists between our self revelation and our original sources of fear.

News that cannibis use from a young age could induce habits that are hard to break or are turned to in times of stress is half of the picture. Why the children are fed drugs is a major clue to the other side of what went wrong here.

Abuse crimes against minors create over stressed lives as adulthood surges into focus and post stress trauma becomes the all-consuming purpose of life.

And at the end of a particularly difficult day when everything went appaulingly wrong, hands up those who never reach for any remedy? It is usually a form of alcohol. But then most of us spin back into control as that is what we learned when we were very young and distressed, our mothers comforted us. If we had a twin, we were lucky enough to face a direct reflection or alternative example of how it could be. We can read "When good twins go bad" ... as a tendency toward amplification that is a logical psychological feature of twinhood, falling into dangerous territory.

Early use of drugs may result from peer pressure, family, or it may be part of a sinister relationship with an older party. It is concommitant with the early use of drugs that other factors are taking place.

This does not say that can not have the odd glass of wine or spliff without ruining their children's chances. It is to understand the importance of encouraging the child with an inclusive love, a family goal and bonds of trust.

A lack of love in the home is as intrumental to the bastard selling your child drugs, as the money which your child stole from you to pay.

Of course children should not be encouraged to do drugs, alcohol or tobacco. Neither should they be encouraged to eat unhealthy food, take unneccessary risks that may result in bodily damage or injury, allow too much stress in their lives, suffer from violence or abuse, or lose a parent. All will increase the risk of drinking and drug abuse later in life.

All can result in bad gambits in life. That is the real problem. It comes down to a strategy.

Saying that early Marijuana use or exposures result in later drug abuse is a bit like saying the consumption of chocolate as a child can lead to its abuse later. Of course it does.

Response - ability

Voluntary admission of guilt is not a protection but is likely to make one a pawn to a larger investigation. We know that from a multitude of cop shows. Our ethics are formed by such examples. "He is a grass, so he gets it when he is put inside" is the logic that keeps the informer out of prison.

In efforts to reform the child we observe a gradual process of developing responsibility. The trick is to develop a response that is ethical. Responsibility is the fact of responding "properly" but not just with the awareness that others will judge you, but because you want, of your own free will, to enact a response that you understand as appropriate.

I question the values of a system that only punishes miscreants, and then sends them to a place of no responsibility. It is not the law that is at fault, but a need for revenge, a blood lust that defeats humans from evolving an ethical sense.

Crime and Personality

The age old debate contines. Are people born bad or do they become bad? Are criminals different from "normal" people? Or are we faced with choices that we may not respect and therefore can not respond to?

In a fictitious perfect world, we, as functional beings in a fair society can be seen to clearly be "right" or "wrong". In a simplistic sense, "right deeds" could be lauded and "wrong" can be punished.

If our perceptions are skewed we may not see actions others consider as "right" as acceptable or correct. We may think, now wait a goddam minute, that is not right. But what power or authority should we seek to augment our authority?

A basic tenet of law is that people should not hurt each other. An artificial shield protects us from the acts of others.

Can this aura of authority stop the blade slipping in between the ribs of the blameless? Obviously it can not. It makes an attempt the imbalance between strong and weak by putting heads on pikes and thus inducing a balance of fear. If you commit the crime, you do the time.

The symbol of justice is the scales. Balance. But putting the wrong and strong behind bars is not reflective of balance. It is a deliberate social distortion.

So where does crime originate? If convictions of young are likened to ambulances at the bottom of the cliff, where is the hospital and how should it intervene.

A recent visit to the police station with a young offender - to return stolen property was greeted with some surprise by the officer. Returning stolen goods voluntarily just does not happen. The officer pointed out that if the minor was 14 a charge would be laid.

This was a child who had been abused heavily as a toddler and now suffers from a personality distortion that prevents a knowledge of right vs wrong. Years of careful training and non-violent conditioning has taught this child the value of admitting to fault. But when the child comes of age as a criminal, he can not longer afford to seek amnesty for his errors.

Power to Search

We all know that there are laws that limit Police powers. Popular media, cop shows and the like have educated us all that they need a "warrent" to search your private property. And society has turned toward a paranoia that pits the law against unnamed threats to our safety and alongside many American cop shows that exhibit a kind of social pornography by showing us how cops shoot first and ask questions later, how cops will bust down doors and fire from helicopters. Our fears of unnamed threats are used against us.

Here (in New Zealand) we face an increasingly controlled society, but one that remains more free than its parent models (primarily the US and UK). The Police have succeeded in reducing road fatalities by more vigilant policing, and busting of drink drivers is achieved with highly intrusive methods, breath testing every driver at checkpoints with electronic sniffers. The public reluctantly accept there is no escape and so accept the intrusion as a sort of necessary evil.

Not so necessary as the intrusive pocket searches conducted every day, illegally, on the streets. If a police officer asks to search you, it pays to know your rights. So what are they? You have the right to not be illegally searched, unless there is just cause. If you look like a hippy, that does not give the police the right to search you for drugs. If you look like a muslim, the police can not search you for hidden bombs or weapons.

Is this right or should we accept intrusion into our lives if it prevents crime?

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