fookisan
Guest
Watched a program that documented the progressive nature of addiction in very clear terms. The main character was a happily married family man. He was quiet, very intelligent, both spouses came from good families. He was a successful businessman who had married his college sweetheart and lived in a million dollar estate with his wife and kids. Sounds like an ideal life, yet it was not enough for him. He developed a boredom in his marriage and began to seek out new thrills experimenting with gay sex and frequenting the local gay bars. When this new found excitement wore off he started to practice sexual asphyxia with his gay partners. (Sexual asphyxia is when the practice of choking a person to unconsciousness is used to heighten one's orgasm.)
Eventually this became just more of the humdrum life that he was board with, so he increases the depth of the choking until it lead to a death of his gay partner. Instead of turning back from this experience of crossing the boundaries of sanity, he went even further. Now the only thrill that he was able to get from sex was when he would choke his partner to death. With dozens of gay men disappearing from the community an investigation eventually led to his door. When it looked like he was going to jail, he blew out his brains.
In the news recently it was also brought out how teens are experimenting with asphyxia (although not within a sexual way) to give them new highs. Antoher show documented teens going out for pleasure kills. One gang started out with robbing, then it lost its thrill and this lead to shooting for fun. Finally the only thrills to be found were when the victim was shot to death. When interviewed they just said they wanted to feel what it was like to do these things and keep going to higher levels of thrills for excitement.
All our addictions have pleasure aspects within them and we get rewards for participating in them in the form of euphoric experiences. Euphoric experience can be related to the spiritual as well. The definition of a religious mystic is one that partakes in an altered state of conciseness with God / god or the spiritual realm. As sensation addicts we find a mystical or religious experience in our addictive behavior. We like the sensation we get when we participate in our addiction and our addiction turns into our religion. Our addictions also give us this altered state of consciousness and feeling of euphoria. So, we can say that our drugs are our gods and our addiction is our religion. There is a reason to our madness - it is not just pure madness as most addicts think. (I go into this in more detail in an earlier post called "The 7 Benefits We derive From Our Addictions" if you want a copy write me.)
Addiction is progressive in nature. This is nothing new. It was known since ancient times. More recently it was repeated in the book: How to Want What You Have:
"People who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of sensual pleasure find that the more pleasure they get, the more they want. Small, ordinary pleasures soon lose their power to please and must be replaced with more intense or exotic ones. Heedless sensualists usually meet a bad end. They learn the hard way that their desires are relentless and insatiable."
All that is needed for the addict to find a new life is to take that first step in the opposite direction that they have been heading in.
For access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.
Eventually this became just more of the humdrum life that he was board with, so he increases the depth of the choking until it lead to a death of his gay partner. Instead of turning back from this experience of crossing the boundaries of sanity, he went even further. Now the only thrill that he was able to get from sex was when he would choke his partner to death. With dozens of gay men disappearing from the community an investigation eventually led to his door. When it looked like he was going to jail, he blew out his brains.
In the news recently it was also brought out how teens are experimenting with asphyxia (although not within a sexual way) to give them new highs. Antoher show documented teens going out for pleasure kills. One gang started out with robbing, then it lost its thrill and this lead to shooting for fun. Finally the only thrills to be found were when the victim was shot to death. When interviewed they just said they wanted to feel what it was like to do these things and keep going to higher levels of thrills for excitement.
All our addictions have pleasure aspects within them and we get rewards for participating in them in the form of euphoric experiences. Euphoric experience can be related to the spiritual as well. The definition of a religious mystic is one that partakes in an altered state of conciseness with God / god or the spiritual realm. As sensation addicts we find a mystical or religious experience in our addictive behavior. We like the sensation we get when we participate in our addiction and our addiction turns into our religion. Our addictions also give us this altered state of consciousness and feeling of euphoria. So, we can say that our drugs are our gods and our addiction is our religion. There is a reason to our madness - it is not just pure madness as most addicts think. (I go into this in more detail in an earlier post called "The 7 Benefits We derive From Our Addictions" if you want a copy write me.)
Addiction is progressive in nature. This is nothing new. It was known since ancient times. More recently it was repeated in the book: How to Want What You Have:
"People who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of sensual pleasure find that the more pleasure they get, the more they want. Small, ordinary pleasures soon lose their power to please and must be replaced with more intense or exotic ones. Heedless sensualists usually meet a bad end. They learn the hard way that their desires are relentless and insatiable."
All that is needed for the addict to find a new life is to take that first step in the opposite direction that they have been heading in.
For access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.
