|
"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."----Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
What do Princess Diana, Michael Kennedy and his uncle, JFK, John Belushi, Elvis Presley, Nicole Brown Simpson, John Denver, Marilyn Monroe, John Candy, Libby Zion, and Judy Garland have in common? They all died from a common disease. Furthermore, what do these dead celebrities have in common with me? They were all hypoics, just as I am a hypoic. They died as a direct result of their common disease of Hypoism. Why is it, though, that I and two or three million hypoics are still alive and recovering, while 40 million other hypoics are dead or dying from this disease this very second? The list of famous people with lives cut short by this tragically misunderstood entity could take up an entire book.
From the list above, you can see that hypoics don't all die from overdosing on heroin or cirrhosis of the liver. They suffer and die in many different ways, and mostly because they don't know that they're hypoic and what being hypoic means, etiologically and therapeutically. Consequently, they get the wrong kind of help for their presumed "emotional" problems and addictions1. They die because we, as an entire society, are ignorant of the real disease of Hypoism, which causes all addictions.
I have coined the term "Hypoism" to mean a critically low (hypo) level of activity of a particular neurological system of the brain including low activity of multiple chemical neurotransmitters. The critically low activity of this neurological system is the force in each hypoic's brain which inexorably, and against their will, contributes to cause addictions of all kinds as well as other difficulties seemingly unrelated to addictions. A more detailed definition and explanation of Hypoism as a new scientific paradigm of addictions appears later in this chapter. This new disease entity is what this book is about.
These famous celebrities are dead but their families and offspring have a chance to recover from this deadly disease if they read this book and do as it suggests. The same holds true for the other 40-million+ hypoics who are still alive and have a chance to recover. By the end of this groundbreaking book, each and every reader will not only completely understand the reasons behind the sad and tragic termination of these celebrities' lives, but will also gain a deep perspective on their entire quality of life. Moreover, it will be a perspective arriving in a totally new way. I hope all the hypoics reading this book will discover what you are so that you can get the right kind of help. It's all right here in this little book. I complete the story of each celebrity's Hypoism in Chapter 4. entitled "All the Addictions." Enjoy!
My story is not unique. My story is not what this book is about. I don't think we need any more autobiographies by addicts. However, portions of my story do illustrate how I came to synthesize the ideas and invent the concepts of this new Hypoism paradigm; I will disclose these as we move along.
I'd say that I am just an ordinary run-of-the-mill drunk and drug addict, except that I am alive. The reasons for my being alive are not superstitious, but spring from the very nature of the ideas described and the precious new paradigm explained in this book. I use the principles presented in this book on a daily basis for my own recovery. The reasons suggesting why I am alive will be explained later. First, I have to tell the story of how I developed this concept and what the concept entails, because you won't understand it until I have painted the complete picture.
At age 43, I had attained everything I ever wanted despite having had problems with drugs and alcohol since college. I was a successful doctor specializing in the field of nephrology (kidney disease), had built a successful practice and business that consisted of a 21-station dialysis unit, was on the staff of seven hospitals, and was well respected in the medical community. I had recently remarried after finding the woman of my dreams, and we had a darling baby daughter. Eight years prior, I had found my way to Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), where I worked the program with the above goals in mind and had succeeded. Sober and drug-free, I attended meetings three times per week for eight years. I had a sponsor, a sponsee, and everything I had ever wanted - in the material realm, that is.
Why then, you may ask, did I find myself sitting in a jail cell going through heroin withdrawal just a few short years later? Suddenly, my medical license was gone, my practice was sold out from under me, and my family disowned me. Why, after eight years of being clean and sober, was I actively addicted to drugs again with my life in ruins? Why was it that the many treatment centers, detoxes, and rehabs that I had checked myself into, and stayed in for months at a time, were of no help? Why wasn't A.A. helping me this time? What had happened?
Vomiting, sick, and miserable in my New York City jail cell, after being arrested for having written hundreds of prescriptions for myself, following the surrender of my medical license to the NY State Department of Health, I had no idea. I thought I had been doing so well in my recovery. I had no idea why I again had become addicted, first to prescription drugs and then to heroin copped on corners from street dealers in Brooklyn. The only thing I knew was that I needed to get high and nothing was able to stop me, not even my seemingly greatest asset, my very will to stop.
Two years later, after finally getting back into recovery, in an attempt to clarify in my own mind the true nature of addictions and to distinguish addicts like myself from jerks and schmucks, which addicts clearly are not, I decided, with a rage and passion that was hard to imagine, to write down what had been pent up inside me for a long time. The rage stemmed from my anger at the "addictionology" establishment for maintaining the biased, stigmatizing and ineffectual psychological model behind addictions (blame and change the victim) that allows, promotes, and ensures the routine ostracism and betrayal of addicts and the pain resulting from being treated like a dehumanized piece of garbage by people who previously loved and respected me and the omnipotent and omnipresent bureaucratic, regulatory, and treatment authorities guided by these addiction "experts." This damaging behavior automatically results from anyone believing the P/R paradigm of addictions promulgated by these experts.
Someone had to discover the actual and humane paradigm behind addictions to put an end to this barbaric and superstitious witch hunt. Because "addictionologists" certainly weren't going to do this, I figured it might as well be me and I decided to give it a shot. I eventually found that the true addiction paradigm flowed out of me with a passion that was impossible to contain. I wasn't at all surprised by what I found it to be, but was surprised that someone else hadn't discovered this simple idea long ago. I eventually discovered why that was. No one else was allowed to look at the things I was free to observe. As you will see, societal denial is that powerful! For some reason, I am not encumbered by that delusion.
As I began, I realized that I had to answer two questions:
1. What is the difference between addicts and non-addicts? In other words, if you take ten people and get them addicted to heroin with several daily injections for a couple of weeks, then stop, one or two of them will go to Brooklyn to cop dope and the rest will go home after the withdrawal is over. You can repeat this experiment a hundred times, and you will always get the same results. What makes those two people have to go to Brooklyn?
2. What could explain the commonness and similarities, if not the particular addiction, between addicts of all types? I have now been in A.A. for twenty years and have seen countless addicts of all kinds-alcohol, speed, heroin, food, sex, gambling, etc., as well as various combinations. What could possibly explain their incredible similarities in terms of lifestyle, general weirdness, relationship problems, attitudes, neediness, loneliness, and emotional and decision-making responses to situations, as well as their passion for life?
There had to be something behind this, something in the background. There had to be a common "disease," if you will, behind these similarities and their differences from non-addicts that just could not be explained by their merely being self-destructive assholes. Why weren't all assholes addicts? Psychology and psychiatry has always had answers to these questions after the fact, but never before the fact. What common disease or entity could possibly answer these questions before the fact? In other words, what could predict the facts in addition to explaining them after they had happened? The entity would have to determine as well as explain the major characteristics among all addicts of all types. These common characteristics include:
1. Addictions.
2a. General weirdness, common situational problems, difficulties, hassles, and intractable self-sufficiency (arrogance).
2b.Incredible creativity, enthusiasm, insight into (and empathy for) people, loyalty, generosity, LOVE, sincerity, sense of humor, and "stick-to-it-iveness."
Interestingly, the incredible similarities listed above all occur before any obvious addiction is evident, continue during active addictions, and remain after abstinence from the addiction(s) is accomplished. In other words, the entity, and its consequences on the life of the person, is independent of the presence or absence of active addictions. The entity would have to explain these characteristics of the affected individuals as well as the inexorability of addictions in certain people, while others have none. What is the connection between these two parts of the entity? In addition, there exists the question of whether or not the interactions between the two aspects of the entity in some way cause the very common occurrence of relapse among its victims. Obviously, the nature of relapse is quite important to me personally, because my relapse was so devastating and destructive to my life and family. Somehow, the very nature of the entity would have to dictate the difference between a full and complete recovery, as opposed to the simple abstinence from the addiction, which is merely an inadvertently superficial non-recovery, inevitably punctuated with relapses and other difficulties!
Because it would be asinine to relapse on a conscious level, could the entity actually be working in an unconscious part of the brain causing recurrent relapses in the face of absent or inadvertently poor quality recovery? Would recovery actually have to consider this unconscious place? Yes, I thought so. This seemed clear, because I had observed for as long as I had been in A.A., that intelligence, personal understanding, will power, wanting, wishing, and trying never seemed to have any beneficial effects on addict's success in recovering. It certainly didn't for me. This too would have to be a characteristic of the entity. Specifically, what is the difference between recovery and non-recovery? The nature of the entity would have to determine this, as well as being predictive of relapse. I knew of no one having yet determined this, and as far as I could discern, no one had even attempted to make this distinction or define it.
I could see right there that this critical issue was my personal obstacle. It would have to be realized, in my search for the entity, in order for me to be able to survive and avoid future damaging relapses. My conclusions about my own relapse suggested that my previous recovery was obviously faulty in some way. My relapse had to do with the very nature of the entity and how this beast worked inside me. I was aware of many people in A.A. who seemed to be in what I considered "good" recovery. What was it about their recovery that somehow took all this into account, yet I had missed it? With my experiences and observations in A.A., there seemed to be many different ways to recover. Among these various methods of recovery, were there some essential recovery tenets while the others were not critically important? How do I differentiate the critical and essential recovery tenets from the insignificant ones? The nature of the entity would have to dictate these issues, not the other way around! I found that these questions and many more would have to be answered simply and categorically by the paradigm for which I was searching.
Clearly, the entity was not the addiction, nor was the addiction the entity, that is, "ALCOHOLISM" cannot be the disease. It must be part of the entity that causes addictions and so much more. The addiction is just the tip of the icecube. Now I could see why research over the past sixty years concerning "alcoholism" never did seem to make the right connections and answer all the questions about "alcoholics" and their families, relationships, genetics, associations, and hassles, etc. It had to be because they were not studying the real disease or entity behind the alcohol addiction, which they mistakenly called the disease of "alcoholism." Clearly, this is not the disease, but a consequence or manifestation of the disease.
Therefore, not only would the entity have to answer the above questions, but it would have to also explain the obvious familial nature of addictions. Twin studies have shown that identical twins, separated at birth and adopted, were infinitely more like each other and their biological parents, concerning addictions and most other traits, than they were their adopted families and their children. In fact, they were as much like their adopted family as randomly chosen subjects were. Additionally, which I would discover much later, it had to explain similar findings in the rat and mouse in-breeding experiments that produces pure strains of drug-specific addict animals who had never seen Harlem or a DYSFUNCTIONAL family. No psychological model could explain this. No other addiction model had yet put all this disparate stuff together. I felt that the model that could explain all this could explain what had happened to me.
Moreover, what is the common thread running through the nature of addictable items? What links all the different kinds of addictions to which victims of the entity get addicted? I call these items the "ADDICTORS." What is the common characteristic that addictors have, and can we predict other addictors that have this characteristic? Will and do all addictors fall simply and easily into this paradigm and can they be dealt with by the very same recovery process as alcohol and drug addiction? It certainly seemed that way with the successful appearance of so many 12 Step groups dealing with superficially different addictions. Do all addictions have something in common within the deeper makeup of the entity? This too would have to be taken into account.
Popping out of the woodwork, all of a sudden, were so many questions that had been floating around in my head but could never be addressed by the current theories about addictions and addicts. An enormously important question: why do children of addicts always seem to marry addicts or other children of addicts? You would think that if there were a CHOICE about it, they would never marry an addict in a million years. Yet it is the rule rather than the exception that children of addicts marry addicts or children of addicts (later in the book you will see why these are both the same thing). Not only must the real addiction paradigm answer that question, it must also explain why even adopted children from biological families full of addicts conform to the addiction paradigm. When they grow up, they marry addicts, or children of addicts, and become addicts themselves - even when their adopted families are clean of addictions!
Does all this happen by chance and poor upbringing? Or, as I always suspected, was there some place in the brain where this goofy entity caused all this through some kind of chemistry, almost like magnetism and as definite as the law of gravity? Were all these people inveterate assholes? Is all this conscious choice? Alternatively, as it always seemed to everyone personally involved with addictions and addicts, was there no choice about it? The model would have to answer all these questions as well as predict their future occurrences with people who have this new disease entity, whatever it might turn out to be. It would also have to explain why current methods of addiction therapy, treatment, and prevention have such an abysmal track record. Any paradigm of addictions would have to answer all these questions and explain all these occurrences, not just some of them with one answer and others with another answer.
To explain all these occurrences, the part of the brain causing all these confusing yet fascinating characteristics would have to be identified and its PHYSIOLOGY determined. There clearly was an immense and powerful pattern among addictions, addicts, their families and biological offspring that wasn't at all answered by the present addiction paradigm2.
The patterns within the new entity were all clear. It was just up to someone to put them all together into one simple concept. This is not unlike all other medical concepts and paradigms that have, through the years, cleared up so many other mysteries of life. The solution to this particular medical mystery concerning addictions would eventually have to seal the coffin on the old paradigm with silver nails, because it had been around so long and was so firmly entrenched. The paradigm I am about to present advances this one simple concept, leaving out not a single question or occurrence in this currently disjointed world of addictions.
Two years later, I was in the backyard of my rented house (having been removed from my own house by a divorce lawyer and judge) conversing with a new found A.A. friend and barbecuing steaks. I was listening to him tell me what it was like for him when he drank. He was so crystal clear that it stands out in my mind today, six years later. I knew what it felt like for me to get high. I had heard it described a million times over the years. However, when he described this ordinary sensation, I heard it in a totally new way. "When I drink, it's like I'm alive for the first time in my life. It's like I'm taking in what I've always been missing. It makes me whole. I've always been a mess, always uptight, scared, and angry. I always feel alone and left out, never fitting in. I've always felt like I was from another planet, but when I drink, I feel like I belong, like I'm loved, like I'm where I'm supposed to be." Damn, that's exactly how I felt when I did speed and opiates. I felt as if this drug was finally completing me. I knew right then what the biology of addiction was all about. We addicts were missing those chemicals (endogenous mood-altering chemicals) in our brains, which non-addicts had in plentiful supply. We were deficient in "drugs" while non-addicts had all the drugs they would ever need right in their own brains. Of course, we weren't actually deficient in the drugs, we were deficient in the activity of the system that these drugs were activating when they got into our impoverished brains through the bloodstream. The drugs were acting as substitute neurotransmitters and were raising the activity of the neurological system in which we were deficient.
I went on a search for that system and found it immediately. Neurobiologists had been doing work in this area for several years. They had already discovered and identified what are called RECEPTORS for all of the addictive drugs and the cells in the nervous system upon which these receptors were located. They had also identified the normal neurotransmitters that activate these same receptors. I had heard a bit about these neurotransmitters, their receptors, re-uptake mechanisms, etc. in my random medical readings, but never took them seriously because they had nothing to do with sick kidneys. These chemicals were known as DOPAMINE, serotonin, ENDORPHINS, and others, and were concentrated in the limbic system of our brains. But what could they have to do with me?
I was an addict, and addicts were psychos, right? The current paradigm concerning addicts concluded that we were psychopaths - morally defective, character defective, antisocial, arrogant, selfish misfits who had severe "emotional" problems dating back to childhood toilet training, dysfunctional parenting, learned helplessness, and learned addictions as a cop-out to feeling the normal everyday pains of being alive, which everyone else seemed to be dealing with without having to resort to drugs! The current paradigm says, "Grow up, you asshole, and if you don't, we will take everything away from you and stick you in jail where people like you belong!" Jeez, I surely didn't see myself like that. However, the world, reflecting the present psychological paradigm of addictions, certainly did. Suddenly I realized that my first eight years of recovery were pursued under that old paradigm. I was beginning to think those ideas had something to do with my relapse and present mess.
It now seemed clear to me that there had to be some neurological organ or system holding the answers to my initial two questions. This system also had to reveal where the addiction entity itself resided. I hypothetically named it, "The Feel O.K. System," (FOKS for short), because addicts don't feel O. K. and thus, their deficiencies, whatever they were, had to be located there. What I was eventually to discover would blast me out of my shoes. I won't oppress you with the details right now, but I found that although many scientists were already studying and working hard in this area, they didn't yet seem to fully comprehend the critical importance of their work in the field of addictions; the implications.
I began poring through the vast and nebulous literature about the limbic system, a group of subcortical neurologic structures that focus on emotions and instincts, its evolution, comparative biology, functional attributes, its connections to the rest of the brain, its physiology, and the many medical diseases stemming from disorders in this area. Besides the incredible material I was learning about this area of the brain, there was one critically important quality about the limbic system that grabbed me. Joseph LeDoux had concluded after 25 years of research in this area that, for the most part, the processes occurring in this part of the brain were unconscious. Only the net results of what went on there ever reached the cortical or conscious, thinking part of the brain. In other words, the functional usefulness to humans of this part of the brain was occurring outside of our awareness. It made us think, feel, and act in the absence of conscious awareness! Moreover, all those neurotransmitters involved with addictive drugs and other addictors were concentrated there as well. The instinctive drives and needs were plugged into this system and concentrated there, too.
It then became obvious to me that the FOKS had to reside there as well. As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself, but I found that what I had postulated did exist. This area of the brain had all the potential attributes necessary to explain the quirkiness of addictions and the problems that plagued addicts. In particular, it explained the "against ones' will" part of my definition of addictions and suggested why "talk" therapy and PSYCHOTHERAPY had absolutely no success in helping people with addictions. The FOKS is just not listening. LeDoux puts it this way: "Emotions are things that happen to us rather than things we will to occur. We have little direct control over our emotional reactions. While conscious control over emotions is weak, emotions can flood consciousness. This is so because the wiring of the brain at this point in our evolutionary history is such that connections from the emotional systems to the cognitive systems are stronger than the connections from the cognitive systems to the emotional systems." In my opinion, the hypoic FOKS magnifies this phenomenon and it clearly overwhelms the hypoic's CORTEX. I put a bookmark here and continued my general investigation of addictions.
I felt I was going in the right direction and would only have to put the concept together in a tight little package by either finding the missing biology and genetics of neurotransmitter system deficiencies or wait for them to appear in the neurobiology literature. Believe it or not, that's exactly what began to happen. First with Kenneth Blum's work (see bibliography), on the A1 allele of the Dopamine D2 RECEPTOR, which he calls, "The Reward Deficiency Syndrome," then with several other potential alleles of genes programming decreased neurotransmitter system functions. As a matter of fact, between 1990 and today, many more genes which program for deficient neurotransmitter function in the limbic system have been discovered as well as up to 200 candidate genes potentially involved in this exciting area of addiction research. Additionally, many types of addictions (self-mutilation for instance) and other "diseases" associated with addictive behavior have been associated with low activity of these same neurotransmitters. This neurobiology and neurophysiology coupled with the exciting conclusions based on LeDoux's and others' work on the functional characteristics of the Limbic system is what I have synthesized into the first realistic entity that answers all the above questions that must be addressed.
What follows is the story of the development of a new paradigm I call HYPOism, which sounds like hypodermic but actually means low in activity, like hypothyroidism (the low activity of the thyroid gland). It is the "low-ness" in activity of multiple chemical neurotransmitters (e.g. dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, etc.) and low activity of the neurological system, the FOKS, which includes the reward system and many other parts of the limbic system located deep in the brain of all people, and all mammals for that matter. Instead of calling the entity, Hypomultipleneurotransmittersandfeelo.k.systemactivity-ism,
I shortened it to HYPOISM. The ism retains historical continuity with the old concept, alcoholism. (this chapter continues in the book)
|
|
