A Living Magazine - Day 135 - John's Plastic Binge and Thoughts On Self Control

It was going to be a simple day. I packed up and took a picture of some graffiti I'd left on my favorite "closet" tree (where I hang things to keep them off the ground) a few days earlier. It will probably last longer than I will... 

I walked back downtown to Starbucks, using Meridian, past the poster I've seen all the way up and down the avenue...

Poor pup. She was lost right near the school across from which I sleep.

I certainly kept an eye out for her.

Ha! Looks like fun, huh? Not.

Walking past the library, I stopped over to get a couple shots...

Little kid: Look mama! On da groun, it's diamonds!

Mama: Na, honey, that's called grand theft auto.

This angle seams right to me.

Curve to the sky.

I got to Starbucks and began working immediately. After a few hours, I went to the golden restroom of the Sheraton, and when I returned to my table, there was a white guy about 50, bald, a bit rotund, sitting with a young lady, next to my table. I paid no attention to them, until I heard him yelling on his cell phone. He called three different people, and his face became redder as morning turned into afternoon. I won't go into details about the "conversations" he had, but I will tell you that he was being kicked out of the local mission, because he owed money for damages.

His card was declined for a coffee, and the young lady - a friend, and co-mission resident - didn't have enough to cover it for him. He got back on the phone and called a credit card company to transfer from that card to the one he was trying to use. He got in an argument with them about a recurring monthly charge for a porn site he'd joined and then quit. They never cancelled his membership and he was super-pissed.

His friend was continually shushing him as his voice kept creeping into the triple digit decibel range. I had a little money left on my card and offered to buy his coffee for him. Just then, the operator was able to transfer the money, and he thanked me, but said he should be all set now.

He told me he'd partied down on Meridian (when people say that in Indianapolis, they are referring to the section just north of 30th Street, past the Children's museum that I photographed a couple days before) the night before and had spent too much money. Now, he was complaining about how unfair the mission was being about not giving him a break.

I asked if they'd given him a break before. The young lady said, "Yeah, they have a couple times, right, John?" he looked down at the table and fingered his wallet.

I told him I used to be a personal financial counselor in my past life and wondered if he wanted a little advice. He didn't look up, but just nodded his head. 

I basically said that there is an order in which personal expenses can be handled to best to keep yourself from losing your ability to pay for very import things. They can be listed different ways, but basically the order was: shelter, food, water, heat, electricity, loans (and credit cards), savings, and finally, discretionary expenses (things you don't necessarily need to live, but want--like coffee, cigarettes, booze, eating out, movies, etc.). Nobody goes through life only spending money on the things they need. What we want is also a kind of need. As long as they can be moderated--which is the challenge - in comparison to the important needs - wants can be affordable.

Many people think that they must make more money in order to save and/or spend on the things they want. Yet, if done correctly (on a per person basis), eliminating some discretionary expenses can be even more effective than making more money. Why? Because, making more money (increasing hours at work, for example) takes more of your time and is something you must also pay taxes on. If you make $100 more per week at your job and are paid $10/hour, you have worked 10 hours more that week, and about $25 is going to go to the taxman--leaving you $75. If you eliminate one of your two $5.00 Starbucks daily coffees (saving $35 in a week), and one of your nights eating out (saving, maybe another $30), then drink three fewer beers (saving another $10 or so), you have saved/earned $75, and not had to spend the 10 extra hours of your week working, nor do you pay taxes on this savings, since it is post-tax money anyway.

I told him I was using examples from the "any man" on the street, but that the concept worked, and could be adjusted to fit cutting back on cable, or extra phone data plans, or by biking to work rather than driving, etc. The same system works for a fixed income, disability income, social security, etc. He nodded, and I think he understood. But, he said, "I could do that, but I just can't seem to help myself once I'm having a good time, like last night. I kept buying drinks for people..."

I told him I understood. I'd been there myself many times. All I could give him for advice in that way was what worked, and still works for me. It is a psychological game that one can play with one's tendency to overindulge. There are two rules: (1) delayed gratification of pleasure and (2) using the "Friend as a Bank" method.

The first rule was something one can train one's self to appreciate. Putting one more minute ahead of the next drink, smoke, coffee on the first day, then five minutes, then twenty five minutes, on appropriate days afterward, etc., can make the pleasure of imbibing in something MORE pleasurable. In fact, after some success with this, it can be the delay itself that becomes a pleasurable reward. You spend less, get more pleasure from the things you like and probably also improve your health.

He looked understandable skeptical. "I...I don't know if I could do that..." He said, smiling. I told him I understood. I was utterly unable to regulate my need for pleasurable experiences when I was younger, but through the hardship of not having enough money, I discovered that, with age and maturity, I could channel my self control more easily. He was older than I, and so should be able to be even more successful in this regard (that may have been a bit of a stretch for me to claim, but that's all I could think of).

The second rule was more drastic, but easier to do. It is simply a matter of knowing your budget, and taking the maximum amount you are willing to spend on a potentially upcoming lost weekend (let's say), and then giving any excess funds in your wallet to a trusted friend for safekeeping. For instance, let's pretend that we can go back in time and start last night over again. I don't know how much you owed the mission today, but let's say it was $20. If you had $60 in your wallet, or on a card (that could be converted to cash for spending--ATM, cash back from a debit card, etc.), you would get that cash out, and give $20 to your friend here to hold on to for you, assuming you trust her? They looked at each other and nodded, joking a bit about how they weren't quite sure. Then, you take that remaining $40 and use rule number one to go out over the weekend, to spend it anyway you want. These amounts are just arbitrary. You would adjust them to fit your situation. 

He was still not overly convinced about my little game suggestion. And, I knew why. It took planning, careful thinking, and the WILL to follow through on it. More than suggesting that my system could work for him, I simply wanted him to realize that he himself could devise some kind of system that does work. Or, maybe not.

Weak-willed people, or those who suffer from habitual substance abuse, may blame the substances themselves. Yes, they may consider themselves physically or psychologically "addicted" (not a word I like), but if they were to truly reason out what is going on inside them, they might be able to see things from another angle. The friends had to leave and meet someone else along Monument Circle. We said our good-byes and they left.

I thought more about the situation with, for example, problems that people have with alcohol. And, I'd like to relate my views on that, combined with the way I have developed my own form of self control, not just with alcohol, but with hunger and other cravings... 

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THOUGHTS ON SELF CONTROL

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), which has legitimately helped many people, is actually - statistically - a systemic failure. Statistically, more people are able to quit using alcohol on their own (in the 80% range), than through the AA system (which has about a 5% success rate). Here is an interesting article which references to a Harvard study. 

Now, this is a touchy subject, and I'm not going to get into a debate about all of this. Objectively, there are many sources that dispute my position about AA's effectiveness. Nevertheless, I have seen AA fail, and have seen problem drinkers recover on their own. That AA has been codified and sanctified by the criminal justice system may account for most of why people consider it the best option for the treatment of habitual "alcoholics". 

But, then again, the criminal justice system (which offers lessened sentences for drunk drivers for AA attendance, or compells them to attend) is a woefully inadequate source for dispensing health advice--as has been seen with the so-called, "war on drugs", for example. 

What AA does provide is the social support to strengthen one's will, along with a philosophy that is so strict - being like a religion, and even using Christian ideals - that it replaces one's own need to think for him/herself. It does the intellectual heavy lifting. Many people need other human philosophies to manage their lives and their thinking. This is true medically, politically, scientifically, religiously, etc. It is what I often refer to--saying, "think for yourself" and "no one knows better than you do what is right for you". I offer only my opinion on the subject, below.

When a person complains that they are a slave to a substance and that IT has eliminated their self-control, they are making a huge and somewhat cowardly leap, if not a full blown excuse. In FACT, people who have been considered "alcoholics", DO possess an amazing amount of self control. 

They aren't continuously guzzling vodka (a relatively pure version of the substance they supposedly crave the most--ethyl alcohol) all day long. They would be dead within two hours from alcohol poisoning, if so. Instead, alcohol abusers plan the day around drinking. They know it costs money, so they must find ways of obtaining funds to buy it--that takes self control. They must not be seen socially drinking all the time, and find ways and places to drink privately--that takes self-control. They must maintain some semblance of social interaction in order to do both of the former behaviors (it may be a broken and pathetic kind of socialization, but it MUST be sustained in some way to get what they want)--that takes self control.

Working backwards from these assumptions, instead of focusing on the outcome--drinking, perhaps another way to think about all of this is to examine the methods used to obtain that outcome--they, being based around self control.

It is a well-known (but problematic) meme in society that "alcoholism runs in the family". A person will say, "My grandfather died from liver disease, my father died from driving drunk into a tree, and I am buying a fifth of scotch a day, because of my genetic predisposition for alcohol". 

It may or may not be true that having an unhealthy affinity for booze is genetic. I don't know--studies are mixed on this, and have often been heavily biased toward the AA "solution". What I do know is that unhappiness with one's self, life position, lack of philosophical belief system, etc., has played a part in my own former abuse of substances. I found that experimenting with how I controlled my need to escape from this unhappiness was the key to moderating my use of the substances that I thought were allowing this escape. There has been heavy use of alcohol in my family, I think, for the same reason--unhappiness.

By far, I am the most socially unconventional person on either side of my family (mother's and father's sides). Most (if not all) of the other members of my family would be considered by society to be responsible, successful examples of how to function and contribute to said society in obvious and (I think) very positive ways. 

Are they all happy people? Not by a long shot! Many are on SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and/or other similar "antidepressives" and "antianxiety" medications. The general social acceptance is that people are not physically complete enough to handle the stress of modern human life. There is very little discussion about whether modern human life is complete enough to serve the needs of people who are essentially and physically just fine. People who rely on pharmaceuticals might be called "the worried well". 

Are they satisfied with how they live now that they are taking these medications? It isn't for me to say or judge--so I don't do either. I have seen their pain and struggles though--despite their daily use of these, as they have witnessed my pain and struggles--despite my non-use. Frankly, I think these are the same kinds of problems. 

I refuse to screw around with the serotonin in my brain, because I know how profoundly uninformed medical research really is, and also how profit-driven drug companies are--giving incentives to doctors who prescribe their drugs. The healthcare industry in the US is a conglomeration of the highest earning companies on earth--beating out energy and retail by nearly an entire magnitude. This is shoved back into the subconsciousness of those who do not question WHY they are doing things. They are perfectly happy (or artificially made so, through being medicated) by relying on "experts" to tell them that as long as they buy the prescriptions and use the medical services in vogue at any time, they will be just fine. And, there are plenty of legal options in existence when mental treatment turns into a train wreck. Supposedly.

For me though, to strive for the "American Dream", caused an inordinate amount of suffering, psychologically and physiologically (with the stress of my feelings of hypocrisy about living a life that I felt was unhealthy for me and was contributing to the general decline of happiness in the world, becoming manifested as a heart attack that nearly killed me in 2006). I have a strong mind, and it overwhelms my body. Only in the last five years or so, have I fully realized that ALL (or practically all) of my physical issues are psychosomatic (caused by my mind).

I have never met a person who has such a strong ability (positively conscious and negatively unconscious) to control the function of their body with their mind. There are millions of people, I'm sure who do this. But, I just don't personally know anyone else. And, so the people I do know - for the most part, with exceptions, of course - have trouble relating to my choices--up and down the spectrum. They are patient, and interested, but not overly empathetic. Still, I believe that, due to this lack of others' understanding of my choices and decisions, I have learned to rely exclusively on my own mental abilities to turn the technique I used to want to destroy myself with, into a way of preserving myself--as long as I believe that I am doing is what I think I am meant to do. And, that is still a constant and nagging "if". Yet, it is one that is slowly being chipped away at and sculpted into a solid kind of certainty--despite whether others understand or approve.

When I speak of self control, perhaps now you will know better from what kind of standpoint I am coming. When I offer my ideas to you, they are not meant to be adopted. They are only meant to be considered, in the hope that something in them will trigger your own answers for yourself, based upon your own individual experience and already-established belief system.

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I finished work for the day and returned to my river camp spot. the routine of setting up the tent was automatic at this point. I thought more as I drifted off to sleep, again having a night of very vivid and sometimes bizarre dreams.