Below is a collection of my articles and writings on the subject of addiction and supporting addicts. Each link takes the reader to the full article and there is a smaller summary of the key points below the link. The first link "Rat Park" is the basis for my insight which is a well known and often cited experiment on addiction. There is no suggestion on my part that such a study was valid or proved a conclusion etc.

Rat Park Study

Rat Park was a study into drug addiction conducted in the late 1970s (and published in 1981) by Canadian psychologist Bruce K. Alexander and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.

Alexander's hypothesis was that drugs do not cause addiction, and that the apparent addiction to opiate drugs commonly observed in laboratory rats exposed to them is attributable to their living conditions, and not to any addictive property of the drug itself.[1]

Decoupling Myth and Belief From Fact

The drug war we should understand from the perspective of the centralization of drugs in which the profits are taken by the criminal organizations and the regulations and laws are enforced by governments and not by the consumers. Addiction, its causes and solution, has remained a mystery to our society almost like a paradox. Its long been known the war on drugs cannot an does not work. But what could be a reasonable alternative, and how could it be brought about?

Very simply, different individuals and/or distraught families all over the world will hear of the concept of Silk Road, and learn of processes like this one involving kratom. Their family members will come home and receive the help they need. We will educate ourselves and not fear drugs or addiction because now we have a solution that allows us to face the reality of drugs and addiction.

A Proposal for PGP Encrypted Mail/Delivery Services

...it occurred to me, thinking about out-of-the-box methods, that if WE held the drugs then we could get the power back over our loved ones.

...if they could have a constant supply, of clean drugs, in a safe place, the user would likely taper themselves. They could try. And when they are like this and trying, the cost of providing drugs and care decreases dramatically to a level that is manageable by family and even the user themselves.

Then they can have food, sleep, and access to love. No more abuse, no more crime. No more control. No more disconnection.

The New Cycle

There is then proposed a new cycle, whereas the old method to deal with addiction was to want to change, detox, rehab, sobriety, now we have a more complex cycle:

1. Getting an Addict Home (An Addict Will Do Anything For Their Drug)-
   First the addict needs to be around family, friends, and other safe support in order to have a chance at succeeding.

2. Getting an Addict Clean-Getting an addict clean I think is not as difficult (or hopeless) as it seems, however this can be a complex and formulated process as well.

3. Keeping an Addict Clean-the mind that has a deficiency that causes it to seek opiates cannot keep itself whole on will power alone.

4. Healing an Addicts Brain/Lifestyle-When the brain learns it grows. The key, once and addict is clean and relatively stable, is to learn and grow. To change, to adapt.

5. Relapsing and Repeating (Like its No Big Deal!)-In this setting, relapsing will not cause the user to wander or veer far, they will be back for their cheapest most abundant source, and soon back in the arms of support. Rinse and repeat.

Fight or Flight: Core Beliefs and Addiction

When we confront an addict, or someone who’s brain doesn’t function correctly (brain injury), with reason and rationality, that is related to what is socially normal, but is not inline with their core beliefs, we cause them to initiate “fight or flight” programming (in other words when things get fucked up we get scared and fight or run).

This is normal with any of us. That we get insanely uncomfortable when some experience, something, or someone causes us to question our core beliefs.

Because this spurs such an emotional response, its also probably not a good approach to “help” someone.

Can One Change One's Own Core Beliefs?

It's a question to ask, especially if we under core beliefs to be our assumptions that we cannot fathom existing without. Something that when someone questions it evokes fight or flight in you. I'm not sure we can ever perfectly deduce our own core beliefs. And so further than that, if we CAN define our core beliefs (can we?), can we change them willfully?

Our "Implicate" Responsibility and Relationship to Addiction and Addicts

I have laid the grounds here, to suggest the propriety, or the collective, has a great responsibility and relationship to the individual brain.

Just a very long winded way of pointing out how much of an effect we truly might have on the mental health of another individual.

By yielding to their core beliefs, and somehow working around them, we might then be able to put ourselves in a better position to "help". Or, that is to say, its not at all necessarily true that an addict must "choose" to get better, but rather we can make implicate changes in our perspective and approach with fallen friends or family members, and have a great impact on what we otherwise usually refer to as their "chances" of success.

On Addiction and Lies

If there were clean and safe houses to use, cheap drugs, and abundant “money”, would addicts still steal and lie in a way that is so damaging we would still have to distance ourselves from them?

An addicts reference point for life is certainly off. It is difficult to put them back on since life is supposed to be subjective in some sense, this is what freedom to choose is. But when an addicts reference point is off we should understand lying as a symptom of the problem and not so much something that must be morally realized, dealt with, and shunned.

Kratom: Beating Heroin Addiction with a Natural Treatment Option:

In this writing I explore the use of Kratom as a supplement to recovery from opiate withdrawal and addiction. Kratom in itself is not a cure. It cannot instantly cause an addict to choose to never again use opiates. However it is a powerful crutch or option that most opiate addicts and their families are generally not aware of. With my recent experiences with the plant I feel like if there was more education on this natural choice, there could be more hope for those that are desperately trying to get their lives back into order, and for the families that would do anything to support their loved ones efforts to get back on track.

For those people, I suspect the education in this article will be a godsend.

Addiction and the Dissolution of Triggers

With my observations and experience in regard to addiction, I have come to believe that “triggers” as a single event or phenomenon are not as "real" as we believe them to be. Our society has a tendency to put too much emphasis (and the wrong emphasis) on time, past, present, future, and also on dualities. We often mistakenly divide complex phenomenon into two sides, seeing such processes as either black or white, and try to distinguish a solution by choosing one side or the other. Often, these problems, especially of the social or mental kind, are far more complex and we do ourselves and our loved ones a disfavor by not realizing the truth of this.

Triggers in regard to addiction might fall under into this trap.

Addiction and the Mental Accounting Barrier

There DOES seem to be a limitation that each addict will go through in order to fulfill their needs. I think we can consider this limitation to be very comparable and related to the mental accounting barrier and this barrier might be useful, if we can study and understand it in regard to getting clean and staying clean.

Addiction and Choice: External "Help"

I DO believe that for a certain psychological disorder, that is quite related to addiction and social order, there IS an "intellectual cure".

PTSD and its Relation to Beliefs in Causal Time

It seems, when we are faced with a situation that threatens our core beliefs, and yet we cannot fight or flee, or in other words when we have no response other than submission to what MUST been seen as dramatic and radical change, out of this comes what we call trauma.

And it is from trauma that we believe PTSD arises.

But the CURE for PTSD I think lies in alleviating a belief in causal time, that allows for the possibility of trauma to lead to PTSD in the first place.

On Unresolvable Memories

I suspect the basis of many psychological disorders stems from memories/trauma from past events that leave the individual unable to re-solve "this" (life). The mind needs to be able to explain or make a story of why things happen etc. When trauma happens in such way we are unable to re-solve it with our current core beliefs I this brings about disorder in the mind.

Addiction and the Distorted Perception and Use of Time

Addicts (of some level of severity perhaps) begin to 'distort' time, or treat time differently, or see it in a different way.

The relation to addiction is in regard to a misappropriation of time.

Optimizing our Perception and Use of 'Time'

The relevance and significance of observing how an addict in this state views and bends time is that we begin to understand, in such an extreme circumstance, how the brain can function in a way that time effectively works differently than in a brain that functions normally (normal as in the average person, unaffected by serious addiction).

Such an observation, which allows us to more properly relate to the affected mind, begins to show us that the brain CAN in fact function differently in its relation to the normally held concept and perception of time.

On Anxiety

By anxiety we are referring to a type of psychologically based discomfort in which the individual is always endeavoring to resolve but can never quite “do” the thing required to do so.

We have anxiety about the future in which we feel we must solve some problems in the present or in the future. There is also anxiety in the past, about events that happened which we might wish we could change or might have infused trauma into the individuals' psyche.

The mind gets stuck in a pattern, fueling its own disharmony, perpetually creating anxiety based on problems it's not actually facing in the present moment.

"Can I look at my anxiety without trying to fix it?"

"What happens to my level of anxiety when I observe it without trying to escape or change it?"

On Pleasure

If we can understand anxiety in such a way that we can use the mind to properly attend to the disorder it is born from we might being to understand anxiety's relationship to pleasure.

If we can learn not to immediately escape from our psychological anxiety, then what role should pleasure have?

What happens when one ceases to involuntarily seek pleasure and instead observes the DESIRE for pleasure as though it is itself a form of anxiety that is causing us to try to escape towards it?

An Introduction to Psychological Time

When we begin to understand anxiety as a movement, an escape towards pleasure, our understanding of time starts to change.

Re-defining Addiction and Breaking the Pattern

From Krishnamurti's perspective I think we can understand (severe) addiction to refer to a person who's desire for pleasure overrules their logical mind to some significant extent.

When one is caught in the pattern that defines addiction, the escape from anxiety to a pleasure that brings more anxiety, and propriety becomes clearly displeased, the addict might begin to want to break the pattern.

The only way to ACTIVELY break this pattern is to move towards observation of it.

Ending Psychological Time

The trick or the cure here to breaking the pattern lies in facing the anxiety without trying to change it or escape it.

On Meditation

When we understand our conditioning that traps us in a pattern of thinking and use of the mind, we can then break this pattern by proper observation of it. It is by this process of observation that meditation arises by the proper definition of it.

Meditation then is the process (which is not at all really a process) by which we observe the movement of thought, but without participating in the psychological conditioning that seems to arise from thought.

As anxiety inevitably arises from problems the psychological mind wishes to resolve, the mediator simply observes but without entertaining the naturally tenancy to resolve these problems and without ever trying to escape the anxiety.

The Ending of the Psychological “Self”

It is through meditation, which means giving thought its proper role, that we begin to understand the construct of the “self”.

As we begin to inquire into our conditioning we begin to give (psychological) time a different role. This inquiry allows us to step outside beliefs we don't otherwise know we have, and in doing so, we no longer give the same validity to psychological time.

The self is an extension of thought, married to the want to escape our anxiety and the escape to seek shelter in pleasure.

When the pattern is broken we are able to move beyond the paradigm of “self” and see from a wholistic perspective.

Caution in Regard to an Addict's Perspective on Choices, Causation, and Time

After reading about the insular cortex and meditating on my experiences with addicts and addiction I feel like its helpful to thinking about a certain difficulty that is probably not usually approached properly by external “help” (ie friends and family members wishing to talk the addict into making reasoned choices and responses).

The addict seems to have a difficulty reflecting on, and addressing, the disparity between the predicted outcomes and the actual outcomes.

I think this attitude is apparent and memorable for any family member that tried to set their loved one straight with a dose of reality, no matter how softly they tried to point out that poor choices led to predictable poor consequences, “Do you see where your choices led you? How about we make a different choice next time?”

A person afflicted with such a weakness of the mind is going to be very inclined to get emotional and we can expect a very accelerated movement towards their fight or flight mechanism.

On Compassion

I tend to agree with the general sentiments in this video and it causes me to want to understand compassion's role in healing:

The objective perspective and the addict's connection what it is significant here it seems.

Some sufferers might not have been exposed to such non-biased relations for a long time or perhaps even ever.

In this, compassion then means, to mirror truth.

Propriety's Relationship to the Objective/Impartial View

pro·pri·e·ty
p(r)əˈprīədē/
noun the state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals.

This could be explained by looking at the intelligent individual's understanding and relationship to propriety. The “intelligent” individual has some degree of confidence in their own judgment and decision making ability, and when they see their own decisions differing with propriety, QUICKLY find justification for their OWN conclusions.

Optimal Taboo

The purpose of this writing is to present an optimized structure of communication based on recent computer science developments and some connections between various (and seemingly otherwise unrelated) subjects.

Optimization in this sense can happen by "tabooing" words, phrases, concepts, and arguments, in such a way that there remains a relevant shared meaning in regard to the argument or solution presented, HOWEVER also in such a way that all party’s core beliefs are NOT encroached on in any manner.

The key is to retain to the significant points while dancing around participants core beliefs without raising any counter-points to them (it is yet to be shown whether or not this is always possible).

For this purpose, David Bohm’s paper On Dialogue gives us a perfect instruction manual for how this might be achieved in practice.

Bohmian Dialogue and Group Therapy

Bohmian dialogue can be summed up as a process of communication without intent.

Addiction recovery meetings also have this kind of quality. These types of meetings are often helpful because they are predominately attended by addicts. There are many misconceptions about addicts and their behavior and the division between addicts and non-addicts that these misconceptions create would cease the possibility for Bohmian dialogue without great caution and attention to this division.

It's easy to see how Bohmian dialogue could be helpful for addicts, if they could sit in a group and begin to enter into content together that each of the participants could relate to. One problem with addiction is the sufferer often loses touch with friends and family. It's one of our basic needs to be able to relate to others, and this is one area of our life that begins to fade as we fall to addiction.

I believe that there is a direct correlation to our collective understanding of Bohmian dialogue protocols and our society's ability to properly address the complex problem of addiction. As we begin to understand and practice Bohmian dialogue we will be able to better understand and solve the difficult how to successfully recover ourselves and loved ones from deep social and psychological problems.

Proper Enabling

I haven't so much intended to define the division between proper and improper enabling here, but rather just to suggest that such a division exists, and we might not be seeing the division properly as a society.

A New Cycle
How to Get an Addict to Stop Lying to You
Enabling as a Cure
When Enabling Goes Too Far
Addiction, Support, and, Minimal Effort
Randomness and Helping Without Enabling
The Hard Stance is Blood-letting Exorcism

5 Mistakes We Make When Trying to Master Addiction

5 Mistakes We Make When Trying to Master Addiction

1. Telling Everyone
2. Trying to Quite Cold Turkey
3. Trying to Change Instincts Rather Than Preferences
4. Making a Date and Counting the Days
5. Religion Versus Science; Will Power Versus Chemistry
   Change Takes Time

Extending and Optimizing the Telephone Game

The general idea is to teach us how rumours are created and spread by miscommunication.

With the introduction of a private channel it is easy to see how we can render a broken node to be ineffective in altering the messages being sent. In another way we are simply introducing a more direct path for communication, and in regard to the telephone game we are simply creating a parallel circuit of communication which would be also comparable to a broadcast system in which all nodes might receive all messages.

The optimization of the telephone game, such that the initial message is nearly never misinterpreted, would obviously be to set up a parallel line of communication.

I wrote this note below to a friend, who made a strong decision to pick her life up...

I realized how she would be sharing the gum and smokes I brought her. I know her; it's obvious. On the phone to me she said, "I was giving it out, I'm sorry" and I'm like, "Come on girl, I knew you would, that's good and nice."

But I also felt a little bad. She got small gifts daily, and for so many people, especially the women, they simply suffer abuse, and then are left alone to pick themselves up. I feel bad that perhaps some girl might watch my friend getting all this nice stuff, and phone calls etc., and some other girl might just have to suffer with no home to go to even if she does make it.

I'll be dropping more gifts off with small notes for strangers in the future, if the staff find it acceptable. It's not so humble of me to write and say this, but it might inspire others and open our eyes to a world we otherwise want to overlook because of convenience.

Short Story: Supporting a Friend

Today was an incredibly significant day for her. She could have lost it all. I can't keep giving her a place to stay if she isn't fighting for her life back. She could be on the streets with no friends and family in an instant. The cell phone I got going for her would eventually run out and she would disappear into the streets.

Or, if she got all that done, which she did, she could go up town like she always does, get her fix, and come back, later tonight, late tonight, or perhaps tomorrow morning. Food and a warm place to stay. Conversation, love, communication. She can have a plan, and her stuff will still be here when she is back.

A few more days, but she doesn't know if she will keep herself together. However, she knows now, because of today, all she has to do is make 1 phone call for a few days, and then start making another to detox. She went to detox a month ago (you can only go once every 30 days), and made it through, but her treatment center arrangements fell through, and she's been struggling to stay stable for the last few weeks.

Once she is told to start calling detox, and she HAS bed lined up for treatment, she KNOWS she is home free. From now until then, she just needs to survive.