Addiction, Mental Health, Fitness, Sleep, and Spiritually Waking Up
Over 41 years I’ve been intermittently enchanted by several exogenous substances…
Sugar, coffee, alcohol, cannabis, and adderall.
(Psilocybin is distinct, I’ll get to that.)
In each case, my introduction felt utterly normal and justified — friends and culture validated me, and the consequent mental experiences were extremely pleasant.
Each was a “golden nugget” — eagerly woven into my life and identity. Each was an essential enhancer, offering an “optimal” reality relative to my wants and circumstances.
Or so I thought…
Cannabis
19 years old — I was visiting my friends in Long Island NY where they went to college. My first opportunity to smoke weed presented itself.
I took a puff and within minutes everything was wildly pleasant. My friend caught the surprised and euphoric look on my face, and said… “see, this is the shit rappers talk about”. Those words anointed me into a secret society. The rest of the night was full of intense laughs like I’ve never felt, food that’s never tasted so good, and hours of video games.
When I got back home I had to keep doing this. My true self, or what felt like my true self, was liberated. Life was glowing and my inhibitions were gone. I smoked almost daily for nearly a year. I was fixated on the upside and totally blind to the down… foggy memory, meandering motivations, and feeling off when I wasn’t high. And eventually, pretty consistent paranoia.
One night when I was high — I saw myself inside this pattern so clearly. I was repulsed by it. I wrote myself a note. You NEED to stop. I read it again the next morning, and I did.
Adderall
SMACK! In second grade I was at my desk doodling, when an old wrinkly hand slammed flat on my paper … then clutched and yanked it away. Startled, I realized all the other kids in class had already taken books out and started a lesson. Meanwhile I was drawing… oblivious — which provoked the ire of our teacher.
My chronic daydreaming and inner focus was terrible for a classroom environment, culminating in my mom taking me to a psychiatrist and starting a prescription of adderall. Almost as fast as I started, my mother took me off. It didn’t seem right to give her kid a stimulant for apparent attention problems. I made it through the rest of school just fine.
Two decades later I still felt the label of having attention problems, and I got myself a script for adderall. And — holy shit — I felt like unconquerable super man — being able to FLY through work for hours — with Übermensch concentration. Wow!
It took years to grasp the downside. Constant elevated heartrate. Being agitated and intense about stupid things. Trouble sleeping. And the fear of being without my medication for a day and relapsing into the old me — as if that was a bad thing.
One day something snapped… I hated these downsides. I had just started the most important job of my life — extremely intense — extremely cognitively demanding — and I wanted to do it without this stupid medicinal crutch. I stopped adderall — cold turkey. The next 10 years were the best of my career.
Why did I ever believe I needed it? Was the enhancement I felt just an illusion?
Alcohol
Groan. The bright Mexican sunlight feels hostile when you’ve had two hours of sleep and a nasty hangover. Yes the booze laden wedding was fun — spending time with 50 of my closest friends — but was the alcohol really necessary to have a good time?
I had my first drink in high school… and it quickly become a weekly ritual with my friends. So many laughs, so many late nights. For over a decade, life went on like this.
But what was this fun made of, exactly? Were we really spending time with each other? Or we were merely spending time with half of our brains disabled — relating to each other like broken lizards.
That morning in Mexico morning something snapped… I stopped drinking for two years straight. Since then I drink only a few times per year, one or two drinks max, mostly to bond with others. If I never drank again, I would be completely OK with that.
Sugar
I don’t just mean sweet stuff. I mean all carbohydrates. The human body is absolutely amazing in terms of energy. Like a hybrid car — using both fat and sugar (carbs) to power itself. Sugar is fast energy, whereas fat is slow burn. All the fat on our body is basically a huge gas tank. If we eat sugar and don’t actually need it, it becomes fat.
I’ve been running for about 15 years — distances ranging from 3 to 30 miles straight. I always thought I needed sugar to power my runs. Turns out this is not exactly true. Zach Bitter, the world record holder for 100 mile run time, barely has sugar in his diet, except when he is pushing himself to extremes. Similarly Phil Maffetone — world famous running coach — says the same.
What the hell? The modern diet is DOMINATED by sugar and carbohydrates. How can it be, that sugar is so nonessential to live well, in fact can be harmful in excess?
Last month I started a very low carbohydrate diet and wearing a continuous glucose monitor. My energy feels smooth, and I can feel my body starting to prefer fat as fuel, measured in terms of ketones and athletic performance.
Will I ever eat carbs in abundance again? Why did I ever crave them? Probably because I was consuming them so regularly — my body was habituated and always wanted more. I always assumed (was told all my life) they was essential. Turns out this isn’t exactly true.
Coffee
This is how I started this post.
Oh, my dear friend, coffee. A prized possession is my espresso machine. I order bags of raw coffee beans and roast them in my oven each month. This way I can blend different varieties to my liking, and use them while fresh.
The joy of coffee needs no introduction. Almost everyone gets it.
Alas, I’ve been trying to get better sleep for many years. It hasn’t quite been insomnia, but there are nights when I get only 5–6 hours, and it takes many days to recover. I’ve tried everything, reducing caffeine way down, eating different foods, meditating, breathing exercises, etc etc.
All along I’ve been ignoring a very likely culprit: Caffeine. Not reducing it, but eliminating it entirely.
Suddenly I find myself reminiscing about past substances. Why the hell did I ever start drinking coffee? Is it essential? Adderall is a close relative — being a powerful stimulant. Adderall (apparently) gave me the joy of confidence, focus, albeit at a cost. Yet when I stopped, this confidence and focus seemed imaginary and superfluous. I felt better.
Is coffee similar? I’m about to find out.
Addiction In General
Golly, the human mind is as vulnerable as it is miraculous.
Early in life we take this for granted. All we know is we are conscious and we feel things. We do things impulsively based on how our feelings respond to stimuli. Over years we develop habits around activities and feelings. Eventually we stop questioning habits. Unless something rattles us to reflect.
Consider the tragedy of the opiate addict.
I feel lucky, to have been scared straight about the harm and radical nature of heroin. I once witnessed this in real life — I was walking outside below freezing one night, and a man’s hands were purple from being so cold. He was sitting on the sidewalk with a lifeless look on his face. When handed a fresh pair of gloves, he simply held the gloves in his purple hands rather than put them on. He was so lost deep inside mind. It was sad and frightening. He was caught in the cycle of opiate addiction, with a 20% chance of ever escaping. His body depended upon it. All his motivations in life were devoted to his next fix.
What if my deck were shuffled differently? What if my friends were trying heroin rather than weed? Where would that road have led?
Avoiding addiction is not a matter of pure willpower. The human brain is vulnerable — no matter who you are. Whatever our brains are introduced to is a matter of luck. None of us chooses our environment and how it shapes our choices, particularly in our early years.
Coming back to alcohol, cannabis, adderall, sugar, and coffee — clearly none of these things are comparatively as fatal. But they are equally as powerful in the sense that we habituate around them unquestionably.
I’m not suggesting these things are bad and should be avoided.
I am merely astonished, in hindsight, at how powerful these forces were welcomed into my life. This often impacts our lives for decades — irrevocably.
I wouldn’t erase all these experiences from my life — after all — they made me who I am. If I could change anything though, it would be to deeply appreciate the nature of addiction prior to trying any of them, so that I might use any of them more cautiously. Though I’m not sure it’s possible to understand addiction without experiencing it. A paradox…
Health and Fitness Goals
I am 41 years old. Before my health drops off precipitously as a consequence of age, I want to run 100 miles straight. And I also want to get good night sleep on a regular basis.
If I have learned anything in the past 10 years, it is that the body-mind relationship is profound. Our body IS our mind. And not merely our brain, but how the brain is working in concert with everything we do with our bodies. Nutrition, fitness, sleep.
It is fun and satisfying for this to be an important part of my life. To take care of, and push myself.
It also motivates this deeper reflection about addiction, mental health, and human nature, not merely for me, but everyone.
Spiritually Waking Up
Indeed, it all seems related…
I am happy to have been exploring the mother of all questions these past few years:
Who Am I?
Which is less about the answer, and more what the answer is NOT.
When considering exogenous substances upon our minds, and how they alter reality — is that really who we are? Or — is it an imposter we have habituated around? Have we forgotten our unadulterated self? Can we find it again?
The only way to know our purest self is to subtract everything that influences us. Not merely substances, but activities, routines, distractions, thoughts, emotions, phenomenon.
In this light, one can begin to understand the motivation of a meditation retreat for days, weeks, months…
Anyways… as much as stopping coffee is about better sleep, it is also trying to know who I am without it. Yesterday rather than seeing coffee as a tool, I saw it as something that has been deeply influencing my mind and persona for almost 30 years. I will never unsee this. Who am I without it?
We shall soon see.
P.S. — Psilocybin
Psilocybin — a serotonergic psychedelic — is incomparable to any substance I’ve experienced. It is nontoxic and nonaddictive. And while it is possible to have disturbing experiences with psychedelics, I have only used low doses — spaced apart by weeks — and never come close to a disturbing experience.
I also first tried them when I was 39 years old — wise to the traps, delusions, and naive motivations surrounding addiction. I also researched them for nearly two years prior, and meditated and journaled extensively about my intentions.
Psilocybin, in my experience, made me MORE aware of my unadulterated self, not less.
My experience was best captured in this short journal, here.
My hypothesis, which is inspired by leading science, is because they soften our default mode network, aka perception box. That is to say, all of the hardened assumptions and beliefs we thoughtlessly interpret the world through — are temporarily dissolved. This gives us a window into naked consciousness — minus biases.
This softening is not exclusive to psychedelics. Mindfulness practice, for instance, seems to show the same.
See: The science behind perception.
Originally published at https://anti-rebel.org on April 1, 2024.
