The world is filled with substances that remove pain, provide pleasure, alter mood, and modify our minds.  Everything from the food we eat to the drugs we take, all have effects, that we may or may not seek, on our mind, our psyche.  I think of this frequently, and I’m often confronted with the question of “When does too much of a good thing become a problem?”

It is an issue that I see brought forward all over the place in society.  Here are a few examples that I want to share -

1. The US military has been using antidepressants and sleeping pills to address problems with combat fatigue.  Most of the soldiers involved simply need some time out of the combat zone, to rest and work through some of the horrors they are being exposed to.  Instead, military shrinks just give the troops some pills and send them back into it.  Later, these troops are developing PTSD at alarming rates.  We see the price that is paid when pain is not worked through in an appropriate way.
2. I am aware of number of people in completely dysfunctional relationships that suffer from considerable anxiety and depression.  These maladies are not coming out of nowhere.  They are the psyche’s way of letting us know that the environment we’re in is a bad one, and that we need to change it or leave it.  Instead, the medical community give people in dysfunctional, sometimes outright abusive relationships, medication that removes the anxiety and depression, and with it any chance the person will fix the underlying problem.  By attempting to provide relief from a problem, the medications insure the problem will never be solved.
3. Benzodiazepines are widely used, and while it is known that they are wildly addictive, what that actually means is not as well understood.  Continued use of these medications result in rapid onset of physical dependence.  The user has to continue to consume the medication to prevent withdrawl.  This is why despite numerous studies pointing out that these meds stop being effective after 2-3 weeks at the most, users continue taking them, often swearing to their continued effectiveness.  What they are effective at is staving off withdrawl.  Long term use of these drugs has numerous negative effects on the body and mind.  So we’ve given people pills to help with anxiety, but the pills put the person in a place later that even if they’ve addressed the issue causing the anxiety, they have to continue to use the drug to prevent anxiety: the anxiety caused by withdrawl.
4. Depo-provera is a highly effective birth control medication.  It is also used to chemically castrate male sex offenders.  Given that it does this by depleting the reciept’s testosterone levels, it is no wonder this drug also wipes out the sex drives of the women who use it for birth control (testosterone is a large component in female sexual libido).  I believe this isn’t a concern for most people who prescribe depo-provera, even if they are aware of this issue.  Female sexual libido is, most of the time, considered something of little importance and the loss of it has no consequence, particular in minor females.  No one stops to consider the psychic cost to the women on this medication from having thier sexuality essentially stripped from them.  Some will find fault with this “side effect” (I would argue that perhaps it isn’t a side effect) when the females involved are adults, but have no issue with it for minors.  I can tell you volumes about adult women who have serious mental health issues that were either caused by the repression of thier sexuality as a minor, or that could have been reduced if they had access to thier sexuality as a minor.

I find it particularly ironic that these and other abuses of drugs go on all the time, legally and by design, and yet the focus for concern is on recreational drug use.  The insidious part of these destructive uses of legal drugs is that no one questions them because of thier legal status.

Tell me, what do you think?  What are some other examples that you would add?

The BDSM community has long identified a trend in society to brand certain kinks as ok and others as not, even though the deliniation is being made on a truly arbitrary basis.  I’m not talking about, “This is what I like to do, and those are things *I* don’t want to do.”  I’m talking about, “This is what I like to do, and therefore everyone should be ok with it.  Those are the things I do not like to do, and therfore no one should even be allowed to do those things, simply because I don’t like them.”  This isn’t how individuals express it, but these are the thoughts going on.  For example, I’ve met plenty of people into choking thier partners who don’t even consider themselves as kinky at all, and think that BDSM practitioners are bad people.  There are those that flog or cane that feel that needle play is wrong, people into intense 24×7 D/s who feel that incest role play is wrong, and it goes on and on.  A significant number of people in the community however do recognize the problem and do thier best to remove this sort of thinking from themselves and thier associates.  This is certainly a positive thing.

What puzzles me is that so few people are able to see the foolishness in this sort of thinking, and that even some that are able to see it in one context are unable to see it in another.  For example, I know a number of people that are quite upset over the restrictions placed on the trafficing of a specific mind altering substance.  The substance in particular is wine.  However, I also know that at least some of them see no problems in restrictions being placed on any number of the wide variety of mind altering substances currently being manufactured around the globe.  Isn’t this a my kink, your kink situation?  Or the legions who are concerned with various social networking site’s privacy features, but not concerned with government snooping into thier personal lives.  It is well established that information seized by the government is widely distributed into public, private and criminal markets (just ask the folks that had thier SSNs distributed after VA lost a laptop).  Again, my kink, your kink.  I just don’t get it.

You know, life it hard.  More so for some people than others, but that just means that those of us who have it easier should appreciate what we have all the more.  So it never ceases to amaze me that so many people, particularly those who have been given a really shit roll of the dice in life, won’t take an easy rode to security or success when it is put in front of them.  Some people just always have to do it the hard way…

     So, as we’ve definately established previously, I have a pretty strong sex drive.  I also have a significant need for emotional intimacy, which has also been stated in earlier blogs.  And I would imagine most folks, if they have read any significant number of my blogs thus far, understand that for me sex isn’t just a physical act, rather it is a melding of two people, a combination of physical and emotional intimacy within an atmosphere of mutual love and desire.

     Friendship can take on a number of forms, from the casual to the intense.  When friendships become deeper and more involved, people will often state that they will do anything for thier friends.  Now, I would counter that this statement is not true and should not be made so casually, given that there a number of things that people normally will NOT do for / with thier friends (sex being one of them), regardless of how deep thier friendship is.   There are also some behaviours that we won’t tolerate even in our friends.  The commonality is that friends will take care of one another when the costs involved (time, financial, emotional, physical, etc) are not great.  To allow for those sort of costs, a deeper relationship is called for.

     This deeper relationship should not neccesarily be called lovers, though that wouldn’t be completely innaccurate.  It is the point where you feel that another’s total well being IS your responability.  You are going to make sure that thier needs are met, one way or another.  In a healthy relationship of this sort, the other person (or persons) make sure that your needs are met as well.  At this level, there are still limits, but the costs people in this sort of relationship will tolerate are much higher.

     The term “cost” should not be treated lightly, or discarded as being matieralistic.  Cost can represent all sorts of things.  A friend of mine has a whose wife has severe OCD.  We might not like to verbalize it, but the fact is that sharing your life with someone who has severe OCD represents a cost. 

     Oh, and before I continue, let me state this: if you are going to try and say that my saying and feeling something like that is shallow, well fuck you.  I’ve gone through more than enough, and loved more than enough people that most other people felt were unlovable, and done enough things for people who needed help when everyone else would just let these people live in the gutter, I’ve been through, loved and helped enough that I can say this with authority and love, and you can take your meaningless existance and shove it up your ass.

     That out of the way, we encounter all sorts of costs in our relationships, and in some of our more involved relationships, the costs can be pretty significant.  Sometimes we take care of those we love financially.  Sometimes we tolerate thier drug habits or other self destructive behaviors.  Sometimes we live with the realities of being involved with someone who is seriously mentally ill, or physically handicapped.  Perhaps we even tolerate them lashing out at us.  Or maybe we support them even when they are not doing what they could to support themselves.  There can be considerable discussion on the merits of these behaviours, and to what degree they represent codependency or enabling behaviors.  That isn’t the question I’m trying to raise however.

     As I stated before, I have a serious need for the special combination of physical and emotional intimacy that I refer to as sex.  When I do not get it, I suffer.  As time goes on, I get worse and worse.  I can reach a point where I am unable to function.  Now, my friends will give me someone to talk to about my feelings regarding my lack, and this is helpful, but just as talking about being hungry doesn’t make you not hungry, it doesn’t address the central issue.  I don’t expect my friends to address the problem, as my well-being isn’t thier responsability.  However, what puzzles the fuck out of me is what happens with the people in my life that are more than friends.  Given my orientation, most of the people who I have deeper than a friendship with that are male are limited in thier options, though I have found most have been willing to excersise the options that they do have to see to my well being.  But the women in my life that I have a deep relationship with, with some of them I find confusion.  Most women that I end up with close to are definately my lovers, and they definately waste no time relieving me of my want, whenever they have the opportunity to do so.  But some, women that I wouldn’t exactly call a lover, but we are far to close to consider each other friends, there is where to confusion is.

     In these relationships, I see to my, I guess we’ll call them a companion, companion’s well being in whatever way I can.  It might be emotionally, perhaps to a degree beyond what any of thier friends are willing to.  Possibly financially or logistics help beyond which would be appropriate for a friendship.   And they look after my needs….or at least some of them.  They might cook for me, help me with my kids, help clean my home, and certainly listen to my rambling nonsence.  All of this is definately appreciated and important to me.  They will also tell me, emphatically, that my happiness is important to them.  However, when I need sex, when I need confirmation of my value as a man, when I need to feel desired, suddenly I’m asking the impossible.  What is this?  How am I so retarded that I don’t get this?  I’ve faced the real possibility of homelessness, and have endured serious emotional abuse, to see to the well being of some of these women.  They proclaim to love me, and will do some things to care for me.  They share thier deepest feelings with me.  But when it comes to adding physical intimacy to the mix and completing it, suddenly I’m asking for something that is out of the question.  I understand that there are difficulties involved at times, but why is it that in these relationships that I feel like the asshole for wanting one of my needs to be taken care of?  I’ll get to the point where I accept that I’m just so fundamentally undesirable that that the behavior of these women is appropriate, but then someone else, that I don’t even have a deep relationship with, with show me some physical affection and I’m back to being confused.  Part of me keeps thinking that the answer is just that I’m being a chump, but when they seem so earnest in thier love for me, I just don’t know.

     I’m having a really hard time of it just now, and I just don’t know how much more I can stand.  I feel completely worthless.  I take care of people who are willing to watch me go through agony while they have the abilty to make it stop but choose not to.  Yes, there are costs for them as well, for a variety of reasons, and I fully understand that.  But the relationships I have with these women are no free ride for me either.  I just don’t understand.

Another Myspace blog I wanted to bring down here.

This blows my mind.  I’m looking at tax related topics in Wikipedia (it is the reason for the season!), and find that the IRS estimates that about $300 billion in taxes goes uncollected each year!  No one likes paying taxes, but $300B translates into a consideable amount of public services, deficit reduction, what have you.