How many of us are self-medicating?

I sent an odd email to my father the other day. I was intoxicated when I sent it; actually I was high. I had been smoking weed for the past week almost daily and not entirely sure why I reached for my stash each night and proceeded to put myself into a stoned state. The experience was not always a good one. In fact, on some nights I descended into an extreme paranoia—even when there was nobody around to trigger it. The positive effects, I guess you could call them, were my racing thoughts and the hypo-mania my personality lends itself to while high. There were so many brilliant ideas shooting off like fireworks from my synapses, but translating these ideas into writing seemed increasingly difficult. To me, drugs have always been a way to make contact with another world, another dimension of myself.

The night I sent the email to my father I was researching the growing trend in self-medication. I rummaged through the top results on Google for “self-medicated” (it turns out this is also a movie) and “self-medication.” First I wanted to know the definition of self-medication so I turned to Wikipedia.

Self-medication is the use of drugs or self-soothing forms of behavior to treat a perceived or real malady. Self-medication is often referred to in the context of a person self-medicating, in order to alleviate their own distress or pain.

What originally drew me to the idea of self-medication was the broadness of the topic and the number of people (I knew) who seemed to self-medicate in one form or another. While “addiction” is a term usually reserved for a specific class of people enslaved by their substance of choice; “self-medication” sounded more ambiguous.

Surely, it doesn’t have to be ambiguous. There are plenty of people suffering from mental illnesses in which self-medication is a clinical fact. The correlation is so common that doctors have come to expect it in patients with depression, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and anxiety disorders.

These people have “real” maladies. But what about those of us who don’t? I’m pretty sure I don’t suffer from a real or perceived malady, and yet I self-medicate.

But my definition of "self-medication" is broad. For example, I drink coffee at least twice a day. This has become a sort of ritual, like a religious exercise. I have my coffee at a local Border’s. I always bring The New York Times with me; I find a comfortable chair in a spot where there are few distractions. Coffee is a powerful stimulant, but sometimes I think the ritual holds more sway over my body.

I’m also addicted to cigarettes, which I’ve tried to quit many times. My essay “The Divided Self” gives a psychological portrait of my struggle to quit smoking. I keep telling myself that my smoking is temporary, as if nicotine were a drug I’ve prescribed to myself to cope with reality for the time being.

And so we can expand “self-soothing forms of behavior” to include almost anything. My father has never taken illegal drugs and he rarely drinks more than a glass of wine. But he engages in many “self-soothing forms of behavior” from meditation to yoga to hiking.

What's the underlying malady my father self-medicates with his intensive yoga practice? Maybe it's stress, maybe over-activity or insomnia. I don't know, but it seems my father with his "healthy" practices and me with my "unhealthy" ones are attempting to treat some internal issue.

Does it sound like I'm validating my behaviors? I hope not. Self-medication is not always a bad thing, as I see it. But I'm curious about human behavior in general and why we medicate ourselves in the broadest sense of the term. After all, "self-medication" could simply be a metaphor for how we cope with reality.

The question posed in the title of this essay is not meant to be condescending. I seriously want to know, "How many of us are self-medicating?" Because I have a hunch that self-medication is pervasive, and I would like to know of how many people identify themselves in this way . . .

“Dysphoria” is a term sometimes associated with “self-medication.” The general idea is that we self-medicate to assuage, or lessen, the effects of an undesirable mood such as sadness or anxiety. I think this complicates the matter further. How many of us engage in behaviors to alter our mood? The American culture clings to the idea that shopping, eating, exercising, taking a pill, and (fill in the blank) will make us feel better. Because most of the time it's true; at least temporarily, like my cigarettes.

The growth of the pharmaceutical industry in the last two decades has led to many of us becoming connoisseurs of our own vague conditions, our own dysphorias. And this is especially true of teenagers and women between the ages of 18 and 44 in the United States. We take pills rather nonchalantly for every slight problem that arises. And you don’t need a prescription drug in order to self-medicate. The vast selection of over-the-counter drugs practically grants the consumer status as diagnostician.

But I digress.

The email I sent to my father was odd because I sought to convince him of the connection between my mother’s degenerative disease and her incessant painting with toxins and solvents. You see, there was a section of the Wikipedia definition that stood out from the rest—even as I was stoned, or perhaps because I was stoned.

Exposure To Organic Solvents

Chronic exposure to organic solvents in the work environment can produce a range of adverse neuropsychiatric effects. Occupational exposure to organic solvents can lead to alcoholism with higher numbers of painters for example suffering from alcoholism. It is possible that a small number of alcoholics are self medicating the toxic effects of organic solvents albeit with another toxic substance alcohol.

I wondered if my mother was self-medicating because, as an oil painter, she was exposed to many toxins. But my father sent me a curt reply: “No, your mother was not self-medicating.”

My mother never drank a sip of alcohol. But she did plenty of other things excessively, and obsessive-compulsively, creating for herself an abundance of self-soothing behaviors. Gradually her nervous system broke down until she lost her ability to draw a straight line on the canvas.

I’ve decided to put the pot away. I’m not smoking weed, or drinking, at the moment. Two roommates have just moved into my house and the new experience of living with other people has motivated me to go to sleep at a normal hour and avoid the temptation to self-medicate.

I still drink coffee twice a day and smoke a pack of cigarettes. But maybe those things are not considered “self-medication”.

ARTWORK BY LUI FERREYRA

Visit Escape into Life for more essays by the author

The Kindly Ones: The Anti-Hero is Us

The real danger for mankind is me, is you. And if you're not convinced of this, don't bother to read any further. You'll understand nothing and you'll get angry, with little profit for you or me.

The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell

As many of you know, my writings are preoccupied with the question of innocence. The question of innocence inevitably begs the question of guilt. As a perceptive reader, Mark Kerstetter noted in my post about Michael Jackson, "I do believe he desperately and tragically sought innocence. It's an inexhaustible theme: how is an adult innocent?"

When the reviews and appraisals of Michael Jackson's life flowed into cyberspace after his death, I thought for sure this man is a perfect example of my theme. A larger-than-life entertainer who strove for innocence and yet lived in dangerous proximity to its opposite.

Also, I've been researching the new culture of self-medication, and wanting to write an article on the topic. Can a culture consumed with self-medication really be so naive? Aren't we all just looking to cover up the pain somehow?

Strange is life when you open the mind to associations, parallels, and linkages . . . I went to Borders today to have my coffee and read the Times. This is not unusual for me; I go to Borders nearly every day. But today I did not read the Times. Instead, I wandered up and down the aisles, glancing at the latest hardcovers.

You haven't read any book reviews of mine because I haven't read many books lately--or at least finished them. The newspapers take up all my time and attention. As a writer, they do fairly well to fuel my inspiration. (Disclaimer: this is not exactly a book review--a book preview, rather)

In my article, "Is the Internet Killing Culture?" I discuss how I abruptly stopped reading "serious" literature. I read literature for nearly ten years, inside and outside of college, covering large swathes of French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Austrian, and Italian literature.

At the time, I read few contemporary novels, even fewer American contemporary authors. I read what excited me, what boggled my mind, what catapulted me into writing. The dearth of American literature in recent decades was not something I cared to scrape the bottom of--there were plenty of incredible and delicious novels written by French and Russian authors in the last two centuries.

Today I opened up a big book. Causally, capriciously, I opened up The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. Whether a novel is full of brilliance or entirely lacking the scaffolding to hold it together, I always stop to look at those monsters approaching the thousand page mark. Why? Because I am in awe of any author who can discipline their life to write such a long tale. The editorial process is maddening enough, let alone the dedication it takes to sustain a level of productivity for five to ten years.

So this book that I looked upon was large. By the cover I could see it was written in French and translated into English. A cursory examination of the side flap and back cover taught me that it had won France's most acclaimed literary prize, Prix Goncourt, the same prize Proust won for Vol. 2 of In Search of Lost Time in 1919.

But none of these things usually matter to me more than the first paragraph. When I read the first paragraph of a novel, I generally know enough to know if I want to read more of it. So I stood over the Goliath in the middle of Borders with people flooding into the store and breezing all around me. I began reading:

Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened. I am not your brother, you'll retort, and I don't want to know. And it certainly is true that this is a bleak story, but an edifying one too, a real morality play, I assure you. You might find it a bit long--a lot of things happened, after all--but perhaps you're not in too much of a hurry; with a little luck you'll have some time to spare. And also, this concerns you; you'll see that this concerns you. Don't think I am trying to convince you of anything; after all, your opinions are your own business. If after all these years I've made up my mind to write, it's to set the record straight for myself, not for you. For a long time we crawl on this earth like caterpillars, waiting for the splendid, diaphanous butterfly we bear within ourselves. And then times passes and the nymph stage never comes, we remain larvae--what do we do with such an appalling realization? Suicide, of course, is always an option. But to tell the truth suicide doesn't tempt me much.

The "bold" lettering is mine. You can see now why this novel caught my attention. It was the voice of the narrator who instantly seduced me into wanting to know more about his particular troubles and woes, but even more than that I believe it was the narrator's self-knowledge that compelled me to pick up the book and bring it over to the small tables in the cafe where I set down my coffee and continued reading.

The title comes from the trilogy of ancient Greek tragedies, The Oresteia, written by Aeschylus. It refers to the Furies who were vengeful goddesses that tormented anyone who murdered a parent. In the story by Aeschylus, the Furies are transformed into merciful goddesses instead of spiteful ones by the goddess Athena. They are renamed the Eumenides or "The Kindly Ones"(1).

What this has to do with the book I have no idea. I am simply mesmerized by the complexity of the narrator's thoughts, his intelligence, and humanity. The voice of the narrator in fact recalls to me reading Proust, whose narrator seduced me much the same, although the temperaments of the narrators are probably nothing alike. But that too, I can't confirm yet . . .

How can one not identify with this?

Ask yourselves: You, yourselves, what do you think of, through the course of a day? Very few things, actually. Drawing up a systematic classification of your everyday thoughts would be easy: practical or mechanical thoughts, planning your actions and your time (example: setting the coffee to drip before brushing your teeth, but toasting the bread afterward, since it doesn't take as long); work preoccupations; financial anxieties; domestic problems; sexual fantasies. I'll spare you the details. At dinner, you contemplate the aging face of your wife, so much less exciting than your mistress, but a fine woman otherwise, what can you do, that's life, so you talk about the latest government scandal. Actually, you couldn't care less about the latest government scandal, but what else is there to talk about? Eliminate those kinds of thoughts, and you'll agree there's not much left.

This is a controversial novel. If I previously thought that Michael Jackson was the supreme archetype to my theme of innocence, then Littell has just upped the ante. In the clever guise of a memoir, the novel tells the story of a former SS officer who witnessed the massacres of the Holocaust. He also, we would assume, took part in these massacres; and gave the orders to carry them out.

To be sure, we are now on the opposite end of the spectrum regarding my theme. The narrator's innocence should not even be in question. Of course, he's guilty of his crimes. This point seems so obvious we shouldn't have to debate it. Then again, maybe innocence or guilt is not the point after all . . .

Once again, let us be clear: I am not trying to say I am not guilty of this or that. I'm guilty, you're not, fine. But you should be able to admit to yourselves that you might also have done what I did.

I'm not even finished with the first chapter when a troubling philosophical thought arises. If this narrator is the quintessential anti-hero--a Nazi--then how is it possible that I identify with him as a man?

He's neither psychotic, nor a sadist, but he's committed these crimes against humanity and I haven't. If not for his fundamental evil, what separates us?

A rare author elicits this kind of recognition in her audience. Literature has the power to bend reality with language. I believe Jonathan Littell has done just that.

Browse The Kindly Ones on Harper Collins Publishers

Buy the book on Amazon

Read more of my essays on Escape into Life

The Pursuit of Happiness

"Flag" (1954-55) by Jasper Johns

Tonight is July 3rd. In honor of our nation's birthday, I would like to share with you an essay that has meant a lot to me over the years. Written by John Perry Barlow, the former lyricist of the Grateful Dead, "The Pursuit of Emptiness" touches on our greatest strength and our greatest weakness as a nation.

Turning the famous and elusive utterance in The Declaration of Independence, "the pursuit of happiness" on its head, John Perry Barlow questions this unalienable right penned by Thomas Jefferson. For in Barlow's eyes, it makes little sense to "pursue" happiness in any form. He wisely quotes Chuang-Tzu, who says, "Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness."

And wholeheartedly I agree. In fact, right now I'm working on an article for this blog on the American culture of self-medication. Our impulse to self-medicate--not only with prescription drugs, but with food and exercise--seems closely related to the "pursuit of happiness" mentality.

The American people are after something, whether it's fame, recognition, love, wealth, sex, or satisfaction. What propels us is our insatiable demand for more. For awhile, this drive even kept our economy running.

The irony of happiness is this. Barlow quotes Swami Satchidananda:

If you run after things, nothing will come to you. Let things run after you. The sea never sends an invitation to the rivers. That's why they run to the sea. The sea is content. It doesn't want anything. That's the secret in life.

A magical and lovely idea . . . "Let things run after you." Happiness is not something you pursue; happiness is something that pursues you.

The fireworks go off in the neighborhoods surrounding my house and I'm glad to be alive. I'm glad to be pursued by happiness . . . keep it coming . . .

To Read John Perry Barlow's "The Pursuit of Emptiness" click here.

Vanity Fair says Michael lost his Youth

I happened to catch sight of a memorial article to Michael Jackson in Vanity Fair, "In Memoriam: Michael Jackson". The article celebrates Jackson's career and then pop-psychologizes him toward the end (no pun intended). Here's what it says:

He was different from all the other celebrities. He dressed different. He looked different. He even walked different. He did it backwards. And he aged backwards too, or at least he tried to. And that was the great tragedy of his life. His youth had been sacrificed to the music industry, spent in recording studios, and dealing with the trappings of fame. He would spend the rest of his life trying to recapture that innocence, receding into the William Randolph Hearst-like seclusion of Neverland Ranch, seeking for his own Rosebud. He surrounded himself with candy, toys, and other children, with whom he would never have normal relationships. Beginning in the early nineties, accusations of child molestation and troubling reports about his private life would overshadow even his own sublime music.

I was poking fun at Vanity Fair for reducing Michael Jackson's entire life to a psychological drama of lost youth. However, this sort of mythologizing is common when we are trying to understand a larger-than-life figure. There may be some truth to what Vanity Fair is saying here, but definitely not enough to put on a man's gravestone. "In Memoriam" means "in memory of" in Latin.

Why did I choose to pull this clipping of all the millions of other clippings of Michael Jackson floating around the Internet? Because it relates to my theme, the theme of this blog . . .

Was Michael innocent or guilty according to Vanity Fair's assumptions? Did he know better? Or was he pure-minded?

I'm guessing it was pretty murky for Michael if he was addicted to painkillers. But there is an innocence to him in the Jackson 5 that totally gets replaced by another image. "Off the Wall," "Thriller," and "Bad" demonstrate a sort of defiance, not innocence but lack of innocence.

Read my ode to the King of Pop here.

Narrative Photography: Central Illinois to Chicago and Back

Ever since I wrote an art review on David del Pilar Potes's photography, I've been very curious about the narrative aspects of photography. Potes's work inspired in me a vivid interest in the possibilities of storytelling through the digital medium. It was only by coincidence that I happened to purchase my first digital camera a day before I wrote the review.

What initially drew me to David's work, besides the remarkable photography, were the arrangements. In my interview with Potes, I asked him about his methodology and reasons for presenting photos in a linear format. He writes:

"The photos shown together help the dynamic in each group. Each photo I think helps the other photo. I've tried to maintain a rhythm in each gallery, a visual rhythm, trying to convey visual poetry almost."

"Each photo helps the other." This is what I'm interested in. I'm interested in the linear relationships between photos, how the progression of photos builds an emotional complexity, or simply carries an idea through.

I don't think I've achieved this yet with my latest set. But I'm experimenting and slowly learning the subtle art of narrative in photography.

These photos were taken over a period of a week or two, between my time spent in Normal, IL where I live, and Chicago, where I spent a short weekend for Father's Day. The two people in the restaurant are my father and sister. The man with the cat on the leash is my neighbor.

Opening Pandora's Box: Assisted Suicide

Last night, very very late (I think it was around 4 o'clock in the morning), I was just about to go to bed when I cracked open Pandora's box on Twitter.

I tweeted:
What is the current state of public opinion on assisted suicide for medical reasons?

And then I tweeted:
B/c I feel as though if I become sick and have cancer I should have the right to die.

Unprepared for the deluge of comments on this topic, I shut my computer and went out to the garage to have a cigarette (yes, I'm still smoking). Why was I awake so late? I got back from the bars around 2 am and found myself in a pensive mood. So I began writing. What I wrote down is of no importance, but the realization I had afterward is. I realized that I want the freedom to choose assisted suicide for medical reasons if I ever become terribly sick. This was an entirely personal realization; meaning, the thought was not inspired by anything but my own desire to have this right for myself.

I hadn't heard much of anything about assisted suicide in the news lately, and I began to seriously wonder what the current state of public opinion on the issue was. I wanted to know, "What do people believe?" Because in that moment, I knew deeply what I believed and how I felt.

I'm still exploring the possibilities of Twitter. The ability to tap into a vast and variegated live audience from different locations around the world, and at any hour of the day or night, is a phenomenon that draws my curiosity.

So what did people have to say on this topic? Well, I received a flurry of mixed opinions, but the majority of them leaned toward the individual's freedom to assisted suicide for medical reasons.

I was only interested in one question: "What do you think about assisted suicide for medical reasons?" In my rudimentary approach to sampling public opinion, I seemed to overlook the millions of other questions that went along with my original one; the what-ifs . . .

What if the person is not terminally ill?

What if the person has Alzheimer's and can't decide for themselves?

What if the person is "pressured" into assisted suicide?

While I understood that an abundance of hypothetical situations are enmeshed in the topic itself, I was still looking for some straight answers. These were some of the responses I got:

@salwaansart I agree with assisted suicide for medical reasons.

@dijeratic Depends where you are - some states do allow for it, all states should, in my opinion.

@JamesHancox Still mixed I think. Personally, I support a persons right to choose. Needs to be VERY carefully monitored though.

@buffysquirrel i don't think any of us needs a right to die; dying is going to happen whether we like it or not

@PaulMathers I am inclined to agree although I like to think I would not take that path personally. But as a right I'm inclined to agree

@DavidMunn Yeah, I'm in favor of euthanasia as long as the individual is making the decision without pressure.

@JackAwful You're knocking on an open door here. I was a nurse for 10 years. Kevorkian was a brave man and only the suffering know.

@crazygibbonsorry 140 characters. If someone is in a fit mental to decide state that's fine. Becomes difficult if they aren't.

@desireekoh13 Your responsibility to make decision when in right state of mind, so no one has to be responsible for making it for you.

@NightShiftNurse assisted suicide should be legal. I have seen too many patients suffer.

@StirringTrouble How you can call yourself innocent and promote assisted murder? I'm sorry, but you're off my list.

That last one really caught me off guard. I replied, "I promote the freedom; not murder."

Just as a side note, I call my blog The Blog of Innocence because I cultivate a wonder, an innocence, about the world in my writings. Because, to me, each new experience is a new reality. I feel as though I will always be innocent to life. This naivete is actually something I practice as I attempt to learn more about myself and more about others.

The interesting thing about assisted suicide for medical reasons is how diverse laws are from country to country, and within countries as well. I would like the law in Illinois to reflect my right to die for medical reasons.

I have Hepatitis C, which means there is a 50% chance I will develop liver cancer. In addition, I smoke and smoking is proven to cause lung cancer. Compound these possibilities with my already abused system from years of drug abuse.

And so, these are my concerns. What if I get sick? What if I develop cancer? Can I choose to die?

What baffles me is that people feel they can tell me I don't have that right. But this should be my decision.

My mother died of a degenerative disease. I watched her slowly lose all of her motor abilities, all of her facial expression, her balance, her ability to walk, her ability to speak.

Around forty-five years old, my mother was diagnosed with multi-system atrophy, a variant of Parkinson's. She went strong until everything was taken away from her. Her last three years on earth, she couldn't talk, couldn't walk, couldn't use the restroom by herself.

She never told me she wanted to die. But then again, she couldn't speak. How would I know? It became increasingly difficult to know her thoughts about her situation.

She was completely lucid until her death. Only in the last month, when she was unable to even eat enough food to stay alive, did she show signs of confusion.

The doctors never called my mother's illness "terminal". They called it "degenerative".

I watched my mother suffer. I saw what she had to go through for five agonizing years. And I wonder if such a thing were ever to happen to me, would I want to continue to live?

For more essays by the author, visit Escape into Life.

PHOTO ART BY MARIANNE ENGEL (via BOOOOOOM!)