Hiromi_X

Let me say this up front: don't read this blog if you want pretty stories. Or neat and tidy ones, or uplifting ones, or even dignified ones. I'm no ersatz starlet traipsing in and out of treatment centers. Recovery is both incredibly mundane and full of ugly humanity.

There was something about Blade Runner that I never understood until I picked up a copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? recently and leafed through it. Now all the animal-related questions make sense -- Leon being asked about the turtle being flipped on its back, Rachael being asked about the wasp on her arm and the killing jar. Replicants aren't capable of animal-empathy. They may say the right things, but their eyes say different. The Voight-Kampff machine exposes the ways that their bodies betray their attempts to "pass." Even if you've mastered the proper gestures, gait, body language, and speech, your body can betray you on a deeper level.

Same goes for us and our real-life Voight-Kampff machines. Consider the following reading I've been doing about the brain. This NY Times article is about a prune-sized area of the brain called the insula, which essentially combines rational thinking with feelings and emotion. The article was written after it was reported that people who experience lesions to this part of the brain were able to quit smoking instantaneously. Here's a quote from the article:

The human insula, with its souped-up anatomy, is also important for processing events that have yet to happen, Dr. Paulus said. “When you decide to go outside on a cold day, your body gets ready before you hit the cold air,” he said. “It starts pumping blood to where you need it and adjusts your metabolism. Your insula tells you what it will feel like before you step outside.”

The same goes for drug addicts. When an addict is confronted with sights, sounds, smells, situations or other stimuli associated with drug use, the insula is activated before using the drug. “If you give cocaine to an addict, you are affecting their brain’s reward system, but this is not what drives the person to keep using cocaine,” Dr. Paulus said. The craving is what gets people to use.

More on the brain chemistry of we addicts from this NY Times Sunday Magazine article:

Recent studies in both animals and humans have indicated that those with low levels of dopamine D2 receptors, which regulate the release of dopamine in the brain, are more likely to find the experience of taking drugs pleasurable. Some researchers, like Volkow, suggest that people with fewer D2 receptors experience a less intense reward signal, causing them to overindulge in order to feel satisfied.

and thees:

GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is the brain's major inhibitory transmitter, and its role, in essence, is to keep glutamate, the main excitatory transmitter, from overwhelming us. In the extreme, too much glutamate can cause a seizure and too much GABA can put us in a coma. Researchers are particularly interested in the brain's critical balance of GABA and glutamate — some hypothesize that addictive craving is the result of too much glutamate or too little GABA ... "What's been shown is that people with alcohol and cocaine problems have less GABA in their brains, and we do know that medications that increase GABA have shown some efficacy in treating addiction." ([Dr.] Vocci says that it isn't yet clear whether the absence of GABA is a cause of addiction or a result.)

So if you were to show me an ice cold shot of vodka, my insula would betray me, as would distinctive differences in dopamine receptors and GABA activity in my brain. My brain is distinctive for other reasons, too. I've included two links about brain changes associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): this one from a website, but if you are interested in medical journals, here's an article from the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. According to those articles, rape and eight years of psychological torment have rendered my medial prefrontal cortex smaller than normal and hyporesponsive; my amygdala hypersensitive; and my hippocampus diminished in volume, neuronal integrity, and functional integrity. In addition to brain changes, I have lower levels of cortisol and higher levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine, apparently. Having typed all that, I realize that the terror that I felt when the ex emailed me about joint taxes last week, the feeling that he was "going to get me" wasn't some figment separate from my tissue. So much for the mind-body dichotomy.

I used to believe that I was born broken. I believed I was raped and abused because in nature, that's the fate that befalls defective creatures -- if a newly-hatched chick has defects, the others will peck it to death. I don't believe that anymore. Or to be more honest, I'm maybe 90% sure that's not true. But I can't deny that my experiences have changed me so fundamentally that the changes are actually physical and measurable. I may not have been born broken, but I have been broken and warped.

Don't tell me I'm being harsh on myself -- there are things in me that are fundamentally wrong. Show a normal person ice cold vodka or vicodin, and they see liquid or white tablets. Show me, and my insula lights up, my pleasure centers go out of whack. What other twisted things make my brain light up, my pupils dilate? I spent a part of tonight gripped with intense self-loathing; that might not be abnormal, but how do you explain an almost overpowering urge to bite down on my own tongue so I can taste the blood? The inside of my head is not a pretty place. I don't look for pity or praise. What I need is an outlet. I feel that if I ride out the urges to drink and to self-harm, or if I give them concrete form external to me, I will purge them.

Some day, I will rule the world. I know it.

I've neglected this: 25peeps.com