Addiction

I'm not surprised that a post on critical thinking inspires an occasional joke.  We don't take it seriously because, for some, there's no reason we should.  Most of us get along letting someone else do our critical thinking for us ... and that seems fine.

For myself, I can't stop.  I'm in so deep now, it's a drug I can't put down ... literally a collection of drugs, produced right here in my own body, free.  And as we know, addiction is a disease that affects both the brain and behaviour.  When we're addicted to drugs, we can't resist the urge to use them, no matter harmful they can be to our responsibilities, our family and friends, and ourselves.  Worse, the drug I'm addicted to is legal.  I can get it any time I want, I can get so high on it I forget where I am or what I should be doing ... and removing my access to this drug is, in fact, life threatening.  So the gentle reader can imagine how seriously I take this problem.

See, we take a drug because we like the way it makes us feel.  Oh, sure, at the beginning critical thinking was too strong for me; overwhelming, no question about it.  But like any drug, we develop a kind of resistance to the drug; we can take stronger and stronger hits of it.  Eventually, just a little bit isn't enough to make us feel high ... we just want more.  And while we think we're in control of the drug, eventually it becomes evident that we're not.  No, after awhile, the drug controls us.  That's what happens.

Before we know it, the damage it's done to our brains is irreversible.  We just don't think like other people any more.  Those things other people think are funny ... nope, not funny.  And the good ideas other people think they have; the arguments they make; the sense that they're, you know, actually aware of the whole picture ... for someone like me, they just seem, I don't know, like their consciousnesses haven't been expanded enough.  I look at the universe as this amazing, metaphysical structure ... honestly, to someone who hasn't taken the drugs I've taken, it's impossible to explain it.

For those people not on the drug, I don't expect them to understand.  Critical thinking is something you have to do.  You can't just pretend.  Entry level drugs are just, well, not the same.  In fact it gets kind of hard to explain what's going on in my head.  So I can see why I sound like a crazy person ... and why people around me want me to get some kind of help.  They see me as a loved one struggling with addiction.  They see my obsession with deconstructing things, sensemaking, semantics ... hell, thinking ... as a problem.  I tell them I need these drugs to make me feel good, to ease my stress, to investigate reality ... but they call it a habit.  They urge me to quit; some make fun of me, treating me like I'm delusional.  Granted, my judgement is being altered.  I don't "decision-make" like other people.  My memory doesn't function "normally."  And my ability to learn ... what can I say?  It causes other people not to trust me.

What choice do I have?  I feel a constant need to use this drug multiple times a day.  Most often, I take way more of the drug than I mean to take, resulting in these rabbit-hole sequences that go on for hours and hours.  And because the drug is free, I always have it with me.  I take the drugs at work, I take them when my family's around me, sometimes they make me lash out at friends and people on social media ... and that results in me spending way more time alone than what's normal.  Sometimes, I don't take care of myself; I don't bathe, I don't think to eat, I forget to take my blood pressure pills, I don't care what I look like.  And I feel sick whenever I try to quit.  I spend virtually all of my time critically thinking, finding ways to critically think, and recovering from having spent too much time doing it.

I don't want help.  That's probably the worst.  All this time thinking makes me actually hate people, actually resenting them for telling me not to think.  In the end, I know, I'm going to do this until it kills me.  And I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with that.