10-17-13 (and smoking)

I have been having such a rough time.  I finally went out and bought a pack of cigarettes yesterday While I do not want to be a smoker, I also don’t want to be so dysfunctional and unable to cope with my life!  I need to be able to pull myself back together – so I can get strong again!  Can I manage just smoking occasionally?  I want to believe that is possible!  It’s is unreal though how much better I seem to function with a little bit of nicotine.  Well, we shall see…

And the US Government is finally back I business.  What a fiasco!  I really do like Obama, but I sure as hell don’t envy him.

I am wondering what the deal is with electronic cigarettes (they sound a bit “iffy” actually).  I don’t want to ruin my lungs, but the nicotine sure seems to keep me on a better functioning level.  And was I really doing ok after quitting for a year and a half?  I do remember that I was depressed a lot, lying on the couch too much of the time; I was kind of a mess.  Did that just have to do with my situation or did nicotine play into that somehow?  I really don’t know.  I am feeling really conflicted about this.  I don’t like the way I have been, but I don’t want to be an addict again.  Unfortunately I think this is a “have your cake and eat it too” situation.  I hate smoking but I hate not smoking too.  Not good.

I wonder if because I started smoking so young that my brain chemistry is just permanently wired for Nicotine.  It’s hard for me to believe that when I was 15 yrs old I was already smoking and drinking and doing drugs.  And my son is nearly 14; I cannot fathom it.  God willing my son won’t do what I did.  I wasted a lot of life being stupid.  Daring life to kill me.  Why?  And so many in my generation did the same; some did not survive.  What was wrong to cause such behavior in so many of us?  And is it different now?

I think we are smarter than our parents were, because of what we experienced.  We learned what happens and so hopefully our children can learn that from us.  What not to do.  Our own parents were ignorant about many things; they were just not equipped to deal with what things were like at that time.  They seemed so distant and different from our reality.  And perhaps that is different now.  We can talk to our kids, make them understand our humanity, that we are not just “authority” (something we chose to rebel against).  It seems to me that children were not always given the same regard as they are now.  It was a different world.  And it seems to me that there are not as many big differences between us and our kids, as with us and our parents.  But when kids rebelled in the 1960s – in what was basically a revolution of sorts – perhaps that was a catalyst for change.  For those that came after.  And here we are in a whole new millennium.  And things are very changed from how it was for my generation growing up.

And I’ve realized something lately, relating to smoking.

When I was a kid I struggled often with this feeling of being unable to “switch on” and connect; feeling like a space case, like I was only half-alive.  Well, smoking banishes that feeling.  So do ADD drugs, but nicotine I think even more so.  And this was also the draw for cocaine, in the pastTo be able to really feel alive and wake.  Not smoking leaves me feeling dull and foggy, lethargic and groggy, and frustrated at not being able to climb out of the muck.  Like I felt back before the days of ADD meds.

So in this sense, yes there is definitely something to the reality of ADD, although I still resist the idea that it is a disease.  I agree with Dr. Mate’s perception that conditions create this lack of brain development.  It isn’t all about living as a square peg in a round hole, although perhaps that is part of what does bring it on in the first place.  In any event, there is “damage” that I cannot deny.  And my brain chemistry is used to nicotine from an early age.  Not that I don’t believe that can change, but it does explain my difficulties.  And neither nicotine nor my ADD meds are totally sufficient.  I will always have my particular challenges; perhaps I would no matter how the world might be.

But maybe there is some kind of evolutionary improvement here and it’s just that it isn’t all the way there yet; not DONE yet.  I know I don’t have sufficient resilience, I am not strong enough, I am too vulnerable to certain things.  Maybe I’d do better in a different kind of world, one I have always been able to envision.  But there are so many things to consider; my parents would be different at a different point in time, circumstances would be different, and how might that have changed me?  To try to figure it all out is of course worthless anyway, everything is relative.  But if I need to satisfy my questioning why smoking is such as it is for me, then perhaps ADD is large factor.

Perhaps I spend too much time and energy always wanting to know WHY about things.  Because often why does not matter.  Only what IS matters, and then only in terms of wanting to change it.  But I suppose knowing why can be useful in trying to change somethingWHY is only meaningless when nothing can be changed, I guess.  And I cannot do anything about who my parents were and how the world was at the time I came into it.  The past cannot be changed.  But, does understanding it help to change the present?

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