On or about: 04-02-08  10:32, Ardith Hinton did engage James Bradley
regarding, but not limited to: Senior Moments...  2.

RE: Addiction
 AH> Hmm.  I've just found a new book... IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY
 AH> GHOSTS,  by Gabor Mate... which may cast some light on the subject.  
 AH> I'll probably have more to say once I've read it.  
 AH> Meanwhile, a member of Dallas's family comes to mind. We've 
 AH> heard widely varying reports about how much & how often 
 AH> this man drank and neither of us knew him personally.  All 
 AH> our informants agree, however, that he'd been a pianist 
 AH> before receiving a WWI shrapnel wound which caused him 
 AH> great pain & immobilized one of his elbows.  Maybe he was 
 AH> self-medicating with alcohol.  If so, I can understand why. 
 AH> Aside from the constant physical pain I think he must have 
 AH> found it emotionally devastating to be unable to play the 
 AH> piano ever again.
 
And how I sympathize with that! As an aftermath of my practice session, I
did up my alcohol intake, after the A.S.A. mass dosing wasn't cutting it.
Now, that meant I finished six beer in three days, and a bottle carried me
through the remainder of the week. (I'm out of practice. ;-) Being a
central nervous system depressant, I knew it would tame the sciatic, and at
least allow me to relax a little. I was equally aware, that my sleep would
not be deep while my liver takes a second pass at the poison, so I tried to
intersperse alcohol free windows, keeping my electrolyte and water intake
up.

Now, if Dallas' relative had physical or mental pain, alcohol can dim the
first, and delay dealing with the second. When the alcohol buzz starts to
wain, that nerve starts to wake up, and he has to deal with the emotions
the booze buried. The quick answer is to get drunk again.

I doubt I haven't mentioned the SAILL program dad and I attended.
(Substance Abuse In Later Life) What an education! I mentioned it in a
conversation to my Aunt once-removed, where she interjected, "...And
I'm addicted to food." It really stoped my thought, but she was likely
right on the money. I guess we would die without endorphins, and there
might be medical situations where we could die without opiates, but I was
forced to stretch my concept to include food addiction. Like abusing air,
or going into toxic shock from drinking too much water, I'm still testing
my logic of the concept. It truly is the first abuse one is likely to deal
with, typically after Halloween.


 AH> Well... many people regard addiction as either a
 AH> disease or a choice. I suspect your intuition is advising 
 AH> you to keep digging below the surface.  :-)
 
Still shovelling. (...As I hoard more hardwood flooring. Close to 900^2'
testing the springs on the s*c*hort bus as I type! ;-)

 
 JB>  I watched a show where a medical examiner volunteered,
 JB>  that if a person studies the body parts that can be
 JB>  affected by alcoholism, you end up learning anatomy
 JB>  completely.


 AH> Yes, but... pardon me!  There's my NT seeing both sides of
 AH> the  story. I reckon this guy was examining bodies.  In my 
 AH> experience the medical literature doesn't usually pay much 
 AH> attention to what's going on in people's minds.  I also saw 

I think the doctors - as a whole - are much more admissive. True,
"emotions" is likely not found too many times in the text books,
however.

The first time I heard, "Mind - body - spirit - emotions" I was
lax at the first three words, then, "Emotions? Vas ist das,
'Emotions'?" 


 AH> a comment in one of the recovery echoes where the writer
 AH> thanked God for the addictions which had enabled him to 
 AH> survive to a point where he no longer needed them.  In some 

I guess, if a patient needs a shot to make it to the OR, and (s)he is days
away... (I'm working on the scenario.)


 AH> cases conventional medicine may not offer much of an
 AH> alternative. And while alcohol can wreak havoc, 
 AH> pharmaceutical drugs can do the same....  :-/
 
...A ton and a half of hardwood doesn't? 

 
 AH> Strokes may affect any part of the brain.  Aphasia is a
 AH> loss of  one's ability to use or understand words... often as a 

Thanks for the distinction.

 AH> result of a stroke.  I've heard that overindulgence in
 AH> alcohol kills off brain cells too, however, and I imagine 
 AH> it tends to accelerate the problems with word retrieval 
 AH> which come with age.  My point was that a lot of people 
 AH> don't seem to realize the inability to *generate* language 
 AH> doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of comprehension.  But 
 AH> I think your point is also valid.  BTW, the symptoms of a 
 AH> nutritional deficiency may resemble those of dementia... 
 AH> and alcohol may be a contributing factor either directly or 
 AH> indirectly (e.g. if the drinker forgets to take medications 
 AH> or to eat properly).
 
The oddity - to me - with dads first diagnosis, was beer is seething with B
vitamins, but it shields the B12 receptors. Therefor: Psychosis...

 
 JB>  you're just not strong in the name-face association

 AH> Right.  If I have a class list in front of me & I can
 AH> narrow down  the possibilities by noticing who's holding a saxophone, 
 AH> for example, I can learn to associate names with faces 
 AH> quite easily.  In other classes consisting of thirty- six 
 AH> students, several of whom have the same first name & all of 
 AH> whom are holding the same textbook, I'm doing well if I can 
 AH> manage it before Christmas... (sigh).
 
Like me, learning about a grammatical nuance, or the latest rule to when
"I" before "E" except when it follows a chicken
crossing the road.... The next frog I find, that rule might as well not
have been uttered to me. My blood flow to that quadrant was never strong,
and despite how much I encourage it, it barely surpasses a trickle. EG: I'm
pretty sure "Vas ist das" is a little wrong, as you corrected it
once, but I haven't the foggiest how.

 
 JB>  VERY characteristically, he shot back, "No, not really."
 JB>  with VERY typically, astute diction.

 AH> ... and you realized his *personality* was intact?  I had

There was obvious trouble, and he had been doing things detrimental to his
health for some time, like walking into a river in October, but the glimmer
of his formal self was more than endearing.


 AH> some of  the best conversations with my father during the last two
 AH> years of his life while he was in extended care.  Dallas & 
 AH> I still haven't found the sunglasses he asked me to bring 
 AH> from home, although he was quite convinced he knew exactly 
 AH> where he had left them.  But he was still the same person.  
 AH> He just didn't have the veneer of civilization(?) which 
 AH> tends to act as a barrier between people.  Another example 
 AH> of a more concrete variety... our friend who was 90+ 
 AH> decided he no longer wanted to wear the (IMHO obviously 
 AH> fake) toupee he'd been wearing for the past 40 or 50 years. 
 AH> Various family members were beside themselves because it 
 AH> wasn't cheap to buy or to maintain this thing, because his 
 AH> appearance wasn't what they were used to, etc.  I 
 AH> considered ditching the toupee an improvement.  He'd always 
 AH> reminded me of a benevolent but mischievous elf, and now he 
 AH> really looked the part.  :-))

That rug was a choice the socially preoccupied self chose, but the
unencumbered didn't see a need for. The change indicated something was
going against his former self.

My BILs' mom asked, "You've gotten so grey in your whiskers. Don't you
think about colouring it?" My argument was that I earned every grey
there. Now, if I start using black shoe polish on my beard, I would expect
red flags.



... James

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20

--- Maximus 3.01