Addiction

I’ve been engaging in learning more about myself from a neurological perspective. Focusing on something I haven’t spoken about much yet.

I believe that I have plenty of signs of attention disorder such that I tend to get hyperfocused on anything that brings me the most pleasure. My mom used to say I was like an absent minded professor.

Dopamine is the main brain chemical involved in addiction. It is the neurotransmitter that reinforces the pathways leading to habits and routines.

Chemical addictions from drugs are associated with spikes in dopamine levels.

So what does dopamine actually do in the brain? It links memories to motivations. It lights up the brains associations and signals of pleasure and it is the anticipation and expectation of pleasure.

It also trains the brain to pay attention to something, telling you that something is important and salient.

I don’t know to what extent my brain lacks dopamine or overcompensates by flooding itself with it. I suspect that through hard times my brain is wired to only motivate myself to avoid. But when the good times come? Well I was a total junkie.

I’ve always needed an element of predictability in my life so I know I can engage myself without fearing that dopamine crash. But at the same time.

My life is frequently a yoyo between seeking the pleasure of stimulation to fill the void and burning myself out through overstimulation.

The discourse around addiction is very similar to the discourse around neurodiversity. Many still see addiction as a disease but I don’t see it that way. It certainly can be problematic but ultimately it is exactly that which drives me.

It’s only ever a problem when I have to deal with loss and change. And it can be so very destructive. Like everything else it’s up to me to figure out how to deal with it in the best way.

At the moment I have so little in my life that satisfies my craving for joy and I’m surrounded by anxiety and fear. Things will get better if I can push myself to find new opportunities.

I’m shutting myself away from the hurt and have ditched Facebook for now so I can work on myself again and carve a new path in life.

I guess I’m relying on society becoming open once more which will make it so much easier for me to open up myself.

At some point soon I aim to fully document all the pain, sorrow, anger, heartache and torture that I’ve felt since the world abruptly lost its mind over the last 2 years of germ panic. Because I want nothing more than to finally draw a line under everything and begin to move on.

My next blog will probably be about my job as there are plenty of autistic anxieties that come with employment. But there’s a lot of positives coming from work at the moment.

Today is Holocaust Memorial day so I want to leave a quick quote here.

Thanks for reading and kind regards as always