DIRTY WHITE BOY

As the Holidays quickly approach, many of us find ourselves sinking into what has variously been described as a void.....a deep, dark, sometimes all-consuming vacuum of despair. A vacuum into which any and all potential for appreciating the season's joyful sentiments, are sucked brutally from our hearts and from our souls. Sound a bit melodramatic? Well, perhaps.....but, not at all melodramatic to those of us who endure this torture year by year. The chemically dependent individuals in this unfortunate population notoriously experience even greater anxiety/depression than those without addiction problems. Because such a large percentage of these folks have undergone persistent alterations in their baseline brain chemistry, it can be argued that this group suffers an unenviable, statistical affiliation. This injurious relationship is what's called an inverse proportionality. Such a reverse correlation exists when the degree of joy experienced  by the non-affected population, is inversely proportional to the degree of depressed anxiety endured by the affected remainder. So, the happier they are, the more unhappy you become.....nothing happy or joyous about that type of association at all.

Realization of this sad correlation unfortunately does not imbue the distressed individual with any consistently proven and/or successful defence to overcome it. That being said, each of us can however, systematically test potential strategies and, by the tried and true elimination process of keeping the good and trashing the bad, build a multiplicity of countermeasures. Tactics which have proven successful to you. By gradually increasing your armament with this and other, perhaps better, perhaps equal to, perhaps less effective techniques, you can hone and polish these defensive mechanisms, using imaginative and creative embellishment. Over time, this will increase their effectiveness by compounding their potency, doing so continually as the years march ignominiously into oblivion. Now.....that's Melodramatic!

What are my particular strategies? Well, primarily I use Meditation as a sort of, "Panacea" against quite a variety of both physical and psychological malware. I lay quietly alone in silence, trying to achieve the virtually impossible esoterism of mental nothingness. Of course, focusing on "Nothingness" precludes all possibilities of achieving it, but as it works for me, that's my story.....and I'm sticking to it. Other ways in which I battle depression/anxiety include such simple but effective strategies as reading, writing, and /or.....yep, I'm gonna' say it......Fantasizing.....including sexual fantasy though not limited to it. It's amazing how fantasizing can eliminate such an incredible amount of mental malaise.....picture yourself as a Rock-Star, or a genius billionaire who just sold his brain-storm garage start-up corporation, and is presently on the cover of Forbes Magazine.....or an Actor who is currently shuffling through an enormous mound of movie scripts, each offering lead roles to the tune of 20+ millions of dollars.....I'll leave the more provocative, latter category to your abundantly creative imaginations.....it's one of those worm-cans which intuitively should be avoided whenever possible, especially within a forum screened and scrutinized for censorship.

You be the judge....you know yourself best.....since you're Addicts, well, that implies that you're also highly creative as well....not to mention resourceful, persistent, and deviously clever.....you know what you can do.....so get out and do it.....don't let the holidays rob your joy and/or peace of mind any longer......Frank.