This is a
bit of a sensitive topic in a highly verbose blog post. You don't have
to read it if you feel uncomfortable about addiction, but you might want to as
addiction has about as many flavors as fear does (just google "phobias"). I know that many people are going to say,
"Bullshit! You can only be addicted
to illicit substances!" or something like that, but you have to understand
that there is a thin line between dedication to what you enjoy and addiction
that chains you to your vice. For that I
have the optional playlist of mine that I titled Addiction Blog Post Mix.
For me,
it's a touchy subject: Dad tends to say that I am "addicted" to the
Internet. And that really rubs me the
wrong way, the same way that someone says, "I can't do that because I'm
disabled," or "I'm Autistic," or "She's retarded—stay
away from her!" To touch a
bit on this subject: GODDAMMIT! You are
a person,
not a problem! What do you like? What do you want to do in life? Do you want to travel? Meet people?
Do you have dreams of doing something you've always wanted to do? Well then, fuck the "being
disabled," because you've allowed it to define who you are; you've allowed
it to own you, instead of you owning it!
Much like Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider: the curse owned him for a while,
but once the Devil said, "You are no longer my pawn," or whatever,
Johnny went, "Fuck you, I'm not your pawn!
I own this shit, it doesn't own me!" Your disability is a part of you, but it
shouldn't define you. That's why I
say that I have Asperger's and a hearing impairment and depression and
ADD! I'll never ever say, "I'm an
Aspie girl who is deaf and depressed and ADD." Because that's not who and what I am; I am
the Jedi warrior I make myself to be. I
want to look in the mirror and see what I want to be, not the traits I know I
have that people don't like. Yes, I put
"Aspie" in my Twitter profile, but only because I'd run out of room
otherwise! It's easy shorthand!
Problem → Need to feel good → Use of desirable object
→ Feeling good
But here's a tricky twist: addiction is itself a problem,
especially if it interferes with your everyday life; so, in a sense, it turns
into a thick, gummy, nearly concrete, manipulative frosting layer on the cake
of problems and lies (PORTAL!) that you're dealing with. So, there comes a time when you have to just
sledgehammer that shit open in a giant epiphany moment of "What the fuck
am I doing to myself?!" For those
of you having substance or gambling abuse and are thinking that, I shall
include a list of numbers at the bottom that you can call for help.
For Big C,
it was alcohol. He got into the never-ending
party scene, he felt like he was in control of his forever yammering mind, he
felt good, he let it get in the way of his daily responsibilities, his credit
was ruined, he wasn't in the best of shape (besides round); essentially, he was
a living buffet for a horde of zombies.
(He calls this phase of life "Peter Hardwick," aka "Chad
Softwick," aka "Chris Fatwick," aka the fat drunk brother he
never really had but someone kept alluding to during the early days of the
biographical Wikipedia article about him.)
But on October 8, 2003, he was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,
with Jenny NOT-AN-EXPERT-ON-AUTISTIC-SPECTRUM-DISORDERS McCarthy as the
guest. At one point, at the end of the
interview, Stewart says, "Oh, by the way, Chris Hardwick works here
now." To which she responded with,
"Really? Cool!" Stewart shot back with, "Yeah. He gets our coffee." [audience laughter] "Fu.
Cking. BALLS!" Big C shares
next in the text. He was called out on
one of his favorite shows for being a loser, "and the worst part was, he
was right." That sent him
on a journey to sobriety and fitness, and 10+ years later, he's on top of the
world as the sober attractive-yet-out-of-my-league-in-more-ways-than-one COO of
Nerdist Industries, hosting a shit ton of shows like Talking Dead and
@midnight, as well as the Nerdist Podcast!
As for me,
I will
admit (wincingly) that I have an addictive personality thanks my half-Vulcan
father's side. And it is a little
easy for me to get hooked on things that allows me to feel good (which I will
not dive too far into because it's a little uncomfortable for me to talk about)
but now I know better. I've done a paper
on drunk driving and I learned that alcohol can magnify the effects of
antidepressants. And with that in mind, along
with my being prescribed with antidepressants and that looming genetic
predisposition hanging over my head, I make sure to never really hit the point
of "durrunk," (I never want to be Dalek-hugging drunk, but I'm such a
lightweight that I'm sure that I'll pass out before then.) because I don't want
to fuck myself over. Which I'm actually
making into a rule for myself right here and right now: never ever create a tolerance for
alcohol that's above 24-oz of something. I actually don't even drink
socially; I'm not
anywhere close to being social drinker, as I am pretty much a lightweight in
terms of alcohol tolerance and terms of how much out of shape I really am;
so Musikfest is really only the time I would have 24-oz. of alcoholic something
and just drunk dial my sister and go "I'm drinking lots of water," 3
times in the conversation (true story).
But on the
flip side, I was actually typing this post up at home instead of surfing the
webs at the library on a Saturday because Monday-Friday this past week (the
week of March 9th, 2014, when I posted my review of the premiere of Cosmos
ASTO), I was there, getting some semblance of Internet access. Every single day, during that time period. And it got to the point of "I need to
not go there! I need to take a
break!" The reasoning behind it is
that I felt that it started to really tug at whatever part of me that many
Christians call my soul, the siren call of the Internet was really sounding
itself until closing time passes. So, I
needed to #SEPARATE myself from the library on a day that it's actually open so
that I don't wind up going over that edge of self-destructive library-internet
addiction spiral of DOOOOOOM!!!!!
It's an
interesting idea to talk about and I really do think that everyone shouldn't have
a vice. I remember having on my old
blog, a very explanatory blog post about the whole Straight Edge movement (It's
a movement,
Mom! It's not a club confined to my
college, but a movement that was all over the country!) being positive
about "not drinking, not doing
drugs, beware of the asshole hardliners!" and to be honest, I would never
have been able to be truly straight edge.
Jonah Ray was, but I really wasn't because I got lost in the Internet
that was Second Life, Twitter, Facebook, MMO games, etc. And I can't just let myself get to that point
again, because it created this black hole that swallowed the path I was on to
"apparel design and merchandising" in my Family and Consumer Science
major. But perhaps I didn't want it;
perhaps, super-subconsciously I wanted to do pure art, or something else that
would satisfy what kind of future I would want, and I, instead, went,
"I'll go into fashion!" to people to get them to stop saying,
"You'll starve as an artist," and, "You'll never have a real
future," to me, and then I set up some red-matter dynamite on that career
path I was on, pushed down on the plunger of the detonator box and created this
void that I could not cross that I'm sure four-dimensional me would be able to
cross somehow in a way that I would not understand.
But yeah,
if you need me to shout at you to give up your vice for fuck's sake, here: DRUGS/ALCOHOL/INTERNET/(INSERT
VICE HERE!) IS NOT THE SOLUTION FOR YOUR PROBLEMS! PLEASE GO GET HELP! BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!! YOU CAN DO BETTER BECAUSE YOU ARE WORTH MORE
THAN (INSERT VICE HERE)!
Just Because the Phone's Right There: Some Helpful Non-Finger Digits
Here are some numbers you can call:
Alcohol Anonymous
(AA): Okay, AA is good for people who need structure for getting back
onto the "right" path, but it's not for everybody. Big C admitted this in Nerdist Way and on one of his podcast episodes (the number
of which I don't really don't remember) that it's just not the program he
needed, he just did his own thing because AA never really resonated well with
him. He still got sober, stayed sober,
and is doing well.
Website: http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org
Narcotics
Anonymous (NA): Spin-off of AA that helps deal with drugs and substance
abuse.
Website: http://www.na.org
IntheRooms.com:
This is a social network for those in recovery.
It's a thing that Big C discovered that he hasn't used, but it does
allow you to connect with similar folks at varying stages of recovery with at
any level of privacy that you would prefer.
Website
URL: http://www.intherooms.com
A Confession
Another
confession: Most cigarettes are flavored with ambergris. That's whale vomit. Think about THAT the next time you light one
up, readers!
ENJOY YOUR
SOBER TACQUITOS! Unless it's
tiramisu. Or cheese fondue. Or you're in Colorado.
No comments:
Post a Comment