barttr

Many life circumstances are totally outside of my own control. I’ve been dealing with low-level panic attacks for some weeks now, which have become worse recently. There’s a very strong temptation to self-medicate with alcohol to push the problems away, even though I know that it won’t solve anything. On the other hand, I occasionally need relief and just bring peace and quiet back into my mind for a while although I’ve alerted my GP to the fact that something needs to change soon.

Many other (ex-)addicts are needing to deal with trauma issues, ADHD-difficulties which are perhaps still undiagnosed, abuse in many and varied forms and any number of developmental problems which they are unable to address on their own. Quite often the problem isn’t even recognised or understood, it took me almost 50 years to understand that a lot of the crap I’ve been taking was related to ADD/ADHD issues.

(Ex-)addicts too often need to deal with damaged self-esteem after having been knocked around for so many years for mostly incomprehensible reasons. The abuse of the drug of one’s choice is almost always a symptom of something else going on life, an inability to cope and a quiet, quick and temporarily efficient way of making the pain go away in a life that has become unbearable in some way.

Life sucks sometimes…

• I’ve been balancing on the edge of panic attacks for several days now, I’m glad I’ve developed the ability to more or less see what’s going on and act in a useful fashion.
• My writing class went well today, my short story was well received although I received the comment that I was a little too repetitive at certain points.
• I met Middle Daughter this morning who was on her way to school. It was lovely to talk with her, one-to-one for a moment, but she told me about how tired she was and how much pressure she’s under at the moment in the run-up to her final exams in May. I feel really sad for her, she’s seriously overwhelmed and needs some peace and quiet.

• Although it’s been cold today, it was lovely and warm in the sun behind the glass of the sliding doors to the garden. I spent an hour there reading and simply warming the old bones up.
• I spent a while this evening reading random pages in Wikipedia. I was amazed and learned a lot too :-)
• Had a good training today, even though I’ve been a bit off balance for a few days now.