So many voices claiming ADHD is NOT developmental sound just like Big Tobacco to me, so many websites claiming it is genetic, so I sent this response to one:
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I understand that evidence based medicine is continually contaminated not by bad science but by divergence of opinion based on cultural views. 85 studies prove cows' milk is bad for humans, but half as many show it's good for us (paid for by the industry), so no one on television has to say its bad for you. Just like Big Tobacco.
Similarly if people really paid attention to the causes of ADHD, it would turn our Criminal Justice system on it's head, and people would see that it accomplishes exactly the opposite of what society would want it to do it they had the right facts and context, or perspective. But they are denied those narratives by a status quo of police departments and courts trying to justify their pay raises.
ADHD is developed mostly by any human child being deprived of the environment where they learn to develop and control their dopamine circuits. Without "knowing" how to use them, and without any cultural road-map save religion, they look for ways to use it, and often settle on complex and innappropriate pathways, re-using narratives from the culture that help them focus their attention, and momentarily achieve dopamine "pay-offs" at the back-end or during their addictive endeavors.
Two models currently discussed are of interest to me: the "Conditioned Attentional Avoidance Loop" (CAAL) response model, and the older genetic argument (which I believe fits, just not as a genetic argument), the "Reward Deficiency Syndrome" model. The CAAL response model does not take into account the emotional reasons a child clams up to defend themselves against action or emotion they find painful. When parents are not aware of their Reward System they cannot pass on the skill to their children, not because the children don't have it within them to develop the skill naturally, but because the parent or parents interupt the skill building process by not remaining emotionally calm and emotionally available. Humans need to learn pathways which have more to do with interaction with others, rather than tying it to specific activities or emotions.
I did not find out about my ADHD until I was 49, and had been watching television for several hours a day, and had suppressed the knowledge that I had form an aversion to reading most types of books, unless it was a topic I was somewhat obsessed with. I don't believe I am alone in this, and have even come to believe that the television networks count on a percentage of their viewers forming their voting decisions based solely on what they view on television (instead of through personal research). So, in effect, we allow corporations to buy elections through leveraging our most wretched and imbalanced individuals, those who are limited to taking in new information by television. I can't prove that last theory, but if you look at the brain studies during the past fifteen years, my other conclusions are not really non-traditional, just obscured by argument around the issue of personal responsibility. People with ADHD are prone to impulsive behavior, and as already discussed, tend to look in the wrong places for their dopamine. Instead of helping them gain perspective by exposing them to truthful narratives which would allow them to understand and respond more creatively, we only encourage abstinance, and tell people that drugs are bad, and people who do drugs are just making poor choices. From our ADHD population we get all of our Gambling addicts, pedophiles (extreme fantasy helps someone with ADHD focus), Hoarders (it's just too hard to concentrate on organizing things long enough and after a while people form defenses for that, and it morphs partially into something that looks different from simple laziness), alcoholics and drug addicts. Our prisons are filling up, and people are using that fact to justify private prisons, which stop any possitive development from occuring, and actually make the ADHD prisoner worse, not better. Its a condition brought on during childhood, and often people learn the "knack" by adulthood, so it's not neccessarily permanent, or at least people can get much better once they form the right perspectives and start to destroy the negative pathways through Cognitive Behavior Therapy and behavior modification, and skill building in organization and other areas which were put aside for lack of ability to focus on them earlier in life. People with ADHD are often underdeveloped socially, and have a hard time developing deep emotional bonds and so they marry assortatively, with others who have the same difficulty accessing their Reward System.
It's all about dopamine, and our ability to use it for focus, feelings of well-being, and as a social tool, since people who can access it can also tell when the person they're communicating with is accessing or expressing it.
It enables a larger amount of "working memory" and some of that is automatically filled with thoughts about the bonds we have to others. The Human Reward System is supposed to encourage strong maintenance of emotional bonds....Family Values depends on fostering an environment where children may learn this skill, the Family unit is supposed to be a test-tube for experiencing and developing this skill.
You might want to check your facts and stop bowing to the voices of intollerance who have chosen to teach people to see us as we are not.
Q: What do blacks and gays have in common with stoners?
A: Little White Lies about how they live their lives.
We need to protect and help our ADHD population, because the way we are doing things now, leads directly to more felons, more violence, greater recidivism, larger prisons, and a Fascist State where corporations have greater influence on our laws than the people, and cost our communities in buying power.
Teach people about their ADHD and we would probably Unleash America, adding 20% to the brain capacity. you already know those who are encouraged to channel their coping skills make excellent engineers (engineers with Asperger's).
The neccessary narratives are stripped from our televisions. I watched TV for 5 hours a day, until getting laid off, and cutting back on television channels to save money...one I was left with was Viewer Supported, and within six months of watching Democracy Now and Dr. Gabor Mate, I knew about my ADHD, how I got it, how to deal with it, so my new friends on The Left had the courtesy to clue-me-in, something corporate television never would have, even though their main product is a television viewership which they probably know is limited to watching their content for any new information in certain domains, like politics. Not saying only people with ADHD are the only ones watching television, just that we are the captive audience.
Thank you,
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
My uncle says I'm re-arranging the world and making people fit into my manufactured inner world. I think I'm developing a vocabulary to deal with my problems in more basic ways than simply abstaining from something. I think I have a drive to understand how things work, how I work, and until I discovered my dopamine imbalance was part of the equation, I just couldn't deal with it, any of it. Again, probably higher on Mazlow's list of needs than food and shelter, humans need perspective.
And, again, I believe I have been denied perspective for a very long time. We live in fucking America, and to think the television producers do not have an understanding of the fact that many are captive to their television sets for dopamine and to feel normal, don't understand that they are abusing that relationship by crossing the line and allowing their viewers to have their political beliefs monkeyed with by the rich and powerful, defenseless people suffering the effects of a bad childhood. And, we are not protecting them, you are not protecting people like me.
I watch a television show called, "Naruto," its' a cartoon from Japan based on a Manga comic series. Its' been great practice for generating a dopaminergic state, through its' simple use of human narratives (family, friends, competition) as the story builds shared meaning, and as we are able to hold more of those meanings at once, when we do find a way to focus on the dopamine it spreads out real nicely and we're able to feel some love.
---------------------------------------------
I didn't have any cohesive framework for understanding all the moving parts - it was just too wild, too far flung. There was the pornographic tastes, difficulties that were not apparent, somehow I hid from myself the fact I had an aversion to reading most books (but I read all day on-line...just things about my work, topics I am obsessed with).
How does one speak to a family member about having, and trying to deal with, an aversion? ...Without sounding like a whiny child?
I guess that's part of my argument, is that in some ways we can be like whiny children, stuck in childish responses, more like dumb animals humping someones' leg, not to pro-create or have sex, but just to get to this experience of love we couldn't learn as children, and found other ways to get to as we grew up, like anger and hatred, and tears, which bring a tangential brush of dopamine, but not as good as it's supposed to be.
Different people will form different pathways, and so perhaps they are all natural responses, human responses, though highly inappropriate for their effect on others. We can tell by looking at the array of co-morbiddity issues that people are drawn to certain ones for certain reasons, just the same as someone driven to self-medicate is drawn to the drugs that work for them.
--------------------------------------------
Pornography and fantasy, it turns out, help someone focus their attention...makes sense if you understand they're suffering from a brain condition that's marked by a much lower level of dopamine activity. I don't even believe now that it's sex they're after at all, but instead is a human drive for dopamine exhibiting itself, which has up until now been wholly mis-represented on television, as they seek to modify behaviors in society, while at the same time denying true understanding of just how we are not wholly responsible for our actions sometimes... because we are human, and human children have this specific need to learn how to bond emotionally, to learn how to use their dopamine and use it responsibly. We are not giving parents the right tools. We are thinking they are stupid, when they are not, they have just programmed themselves to deal with their Human Reward System in some wrong ways and need help. Our response as a culture should be inclusive, and stop seeking to exclude them for failures. We are learning.
That is why you see so many people switching from cigarettes to the patch and gum, they are trying to get it right. They need the correct perspective, however, or it will fail. Too many people are being told to "patch it up," without being told all the facts.
Like the fact that we don't get addicted to the nicotine, but it's the MAOI's in other alkaloids, the "Ahhhh" part of smoking, that we're really hooked to. Not to say we don't also use nicotine to change our brain chemistry, but that's what smoking is, us changing our brain chemistry for a while. Just like sugar, but we often don't notice it...until you drop it completely, then you notice it a lot.
There will always be people addicted to tobacco, so it should be the safest, least harmful product, right? Swedish Snus doesn't cause cancer, and has the same effect as smoking a cigarette. The Swedish government got it's people to switch, and they now have the lowest rates of lung and pancreastic cancer in the EU...why can't our government do the same? Because everbody's talking points are about eliminating tobacco instead of admitting it can be made safer. They're just too weary of what Big Tobacco did to society. We can't tell the truth about this anymore, and it leaves a bunch of people out in the cold, unable to think of anything except nicotine replacement therapy, when instead they need to learn about how they've been coping with something, and that something needs to be looked at.
Criminalizing health concerns leads America to bankruptcy though, spiritually and economically. You don't get to create a situation where people get sick and then inprison them for the foreseeable consequences of that illness you caused (through failed social policies, like getting rid of Welfare and the violence it's created between children who's parents cannot be there in the morning or evening or are too stressed to bond with emotionally).
Just because the context for understanding and seeing the connections between things isn't taught on television, doesn't mean they don't exist. Am I just crazy, stuffing square pegs into round holes, am I just polishing an argument like a Modern PR man? Or, am I getting closer to expressing things better?
And, again, I believe I have been denied perspective for a very long time. We live in fucking America, and to think the television producers do not have an understanding of the fact that many are captive to their television sets for dopamine and to feel normal, don't understand that they are abusing that relationship by crossing the line and allowing their viewers to have their political beliefs monkeyed with by the rich and powerful, defenseless people suffering the effects of a bad childhood. And, we are not protecting them, you are not protecting people like me.
I watch a television show called, "Naruto," its' a cartoon from Japan based on a Manga comic series. Its' been great practice for generating a dopaminergic state, through its' simple use of human narratives (family, friends, competition) as the story builds shared meaning, and as we are able to hold more of those meanings at once, when we do find a way to focus on the dopamine it spreads out real nicely and we're able to feel some love.
---------------------------------------------
I didn't have any cohesive framework for understanding all the moving parts - it was just too wild, too far flung. There was the pornographic tastes, difficulties that were not apparent, somehow I hid from myself the fact I had an aversion to reading most books (but I read all day on-line...just things about my work, topics I am obsessed with).
How does one speak to a family member about having, and trying to deal with, an aversion? ...Without sounding like a whiny child?
I guess that's part of my argument, is that in some ways we can be like whiny children, stuck in childish responses, more like dumb animals humping someones' leg, not to pro-create or have sex, but just to get to this experience of love we couldn't learn as children, and found other ways to get to as we grew up, like anger and hatred, and tears, which bring a tangential brush of dopamine, but not as good as it's supposed to be.
Different people will form different pathways, and so perhaps they are all natural responses, human responses, though highly inappropriate for their effect on others. We can tell by looking at the array of co-morbiddity issues that people are drawn to certain ones for certain reasons, just the same as someone driven to self-medicate is drawn to the drugs that work for them.
--------------------------------------------
Pornography and fantasy, it turns out, help someone focus their attention...makes sense if you understand they're suffering from a brain condition that's marked by a much lower level of dopamine activity. I don't even believe now that it's sex they're after at all, but instead is a human drive for dopamine exhibiting itself, which has up until now been wholly mis-represented on television, as they seek to modify behaviors in society, while at the same time denying true understanding of just how we are not wholly responsible for our actions sometimes... because we are human, and human children have this specific need to learn how to bond emotionally, to learn how to use their dopamine and use it responsibly. We are not giving parents the right tools. We are thinking they are stupid, when they are not, they have just programmed themselves to deal with their Human Reward System in some wrong ways and need help. Our response as a culture should be inclusive, and stop seeking to exclude them for failures. We are learning.
That is why you see so many people switching from cigarettes to the patch and gum, they are trying to get it right. They need the correct perspective, however, or it will fail. Too many people are being told to "patch it up," without being told all the facts.
Like the fact that we don't get addicted to the nicotine, but it's the MAOI's in other alkaloids, the "Ahhhh" part of smoking, that we're really hooked to. Not to say we don't also use nicotine to change our brain chemistry, but that's what smoking is, us changing our brain chemistry for a while. Just like sugar, but we often don't notice it...until you drop it completely, then you notice it a lot.
There will always be people addicted to tobacco, so it should be the safest, least harmful product, right? Swedish Snus doesn't cause cancer, and has the same effect as smoking a cigarette. The Swedish government got it's people to switch, and they now have the lowest rates of lung and pancreastic cancer in the EU...why can't our government do the same? Because everbody's talking points are about eliminating tobacco instead of admitting it can be made safer. They're just too weary of what Big Tobacco did to society. We can't tell the truth about this anymore, and it leaves a bunch of people out in the cold, unable to think of anything except nicotine replacement therapy, when instead they need to learn about how they've been coping with something, and that something needs to be looked at.
Criminalizing health concerns leads America to bankruptcy though, spiritually and economically. You don't get to create a situation where people get sick and then inprison them for the foreseeable consequences of that illness you caused (through failed social policies, like getting rid of Welfare and the violence it's created between children who's parents cannot be there in the morning or evening or are too stressed to bond with emotionally).
Just because the context for understanding and seeing the connections between things isn't taught on television, doesn't mean they don't exist. Am I just crazy, stuffing square pegs into round holes, am I just polishing an argument like a Modern PR man? Or, am I getting closer to expressing things better?
Sunday, August 19, 2012
How To Lose Weight Without Risk or Effort, and Create World Peace
Humans have been surviving and thriving on this planet a long time. We have developed social order, knowledge transfer and rule of law. But, we also have always had the rich and the poor, and how that relationship works or does not work is telling of a culture, for it's direct effect on the state-of-mind of it's weakest citizens children's health and spirit.
The main thing to learn is that whatever, "King," we seek to protect is actually the children of the coming generation. So protecting all children, and the environment, becomes the Over-arching Plan, okay?
There are certain beliefs that have to exist for the rich to wield power over the poor, and I don't simply mean "poor" in the economic sense, I have come to recognize that White Trash, like myself, can be poor in knowledge, through no fault of our own. Now, that's poor, if ever I heard a definition. In the past if you lived in a coal mining camp you often had to buy your food and housing from the Company, and you had to believe in direct consequence if anyone tried to strike or organize. How information was controlled then seems scary to us now, but in fact we also suffer under tremendous forces keeping us from seeing all the angles, keeping us from putting things into a greater context that includes all of the facts and what's really happening in the World. I would like to tell you that you can change your beliefs, and it will begin to change how you see the world, and this will make you lose weight faster than any diet you may have tried in the past. When we are done you will walk into the local 24/7 quick-store and not be able to find any food (deserts galore, just no food).
Let me just tell you now what I'm going to explain later. If you limit your intake of animal products to 5% or less of your total diet, you will drop to your natural weight and stabilize there, you will decrease the severity of any osteoporosis your might develop, and you will take yourself off the statistics for many kinds of cancer now associated with the Western Diet. But, abstinence is not enough, you have to re-structure the meanings in order for it to really take, otherwise it's just an open wound waiting to become re-infected.
Believe me, or believe every person who's quit cigarettes and gone back, every gambler who's stopped and gone back with a vengeance, or anybody who's lost pounds and gained them back...you have to have a plan, and you have to follow it through until you know it's complete. That plan should contain informing yourself, and behavioral changes: A TWO PRONGED APPROACH guaranteed to yield results.
In my case, because I'm so compatible with television and movies, chose to inform myself through Youtube and online documentaries. It lead me to Google brain studies, and I've read the Abstract of many now. I've been led to doctor's websites where they share non-traditional views, and also learned a great deal about traditional Psychology, and the decision making processes that have helped mold our standard of care, and have been working on ways to download my knowledge to the lay population.
The behavioral changes I used were switching to meat-less burgers and almond milk cheese, everything can be found in vegan form. I even began baking my own vegan cookies - that helped me a lot, cakes, candies, cookies, nothing makes me fat anymore. But I've been dealing with a couple sources of sadness lately so haven't been baking (but haven't changed my weight significantly since, and kind of feel better, so may leave it now). I don't eat the fake meat anymore, don't need it, just chew through bowlfuls of raw veggies instead, but when you're starting out, I highly recommend you get the richest versions of all the fake animal products. You will notice you can make better ice cream yourself, store bought's not there yet for vegan ice cream (except maybe those Tofutti ice cream sandwiches, but who can afford five bucks for those dinky little things?) Three bites, naw.
For thousands of years our species has had to resort to eating meat to survive, and we've developed a taste for it, but remember the Morlocks from The Time Machine, you can't expect to live off of flesh and not have problems with your supply chain. The USA is at a tipping point ecologically because of animal husbandry issues - they can't shovel it fast enough, so it keeps infecting our water supplies.
Many NGO's who feed the poor in the world do not include any animal products in their meals. They say it is strictly an economic decision, that for every slice of meat they can feed an additional 32 people.
War has been man's oldest get-rich-quick scheme, and it always relies on making you believe the other side is the enemy. Enemy is a control word, usually spoken before you're asked for your credit card number. But the number of people who get wealthy falls to but a few. And, the level of disinformation has to have a negative effect - witness the Sikh shooting spree committed by a White Supremacist.
Now think about this, if regular people didn't eat animal products how would ever talk us into a war? I am not saying that everyone would hold weighting over their meanings towards not allowing animals to be killed, but many would after learning the pain their species have born under our weight. And if a significant percentage of our population wouldn't stand for animal's being killed it would be a tough sell to put human lives in harms way.
The human species was built, or evolved, to eat a plant based diet, raw plants, and we need to protect the environment from worse decay, to protect our next generation's health and safety.
I encourage you to form your personal plan, but make it in accord with the master Plan, and inform yourself, and begin whatever behavioral changes you deem fit, and you will start losing weight.
It's been over a year. I only eat a bite or two of ice cream (but I hear Mother Cow's crying for their stolen calves each time I do, and it still makes me cry sometimes). To me, if I can't see the pain in my food, I'm not fit to eat it. Most of my vegetables being carted around the world carry their own pain, through the petroleum products stripped out of third-world countries with disastrous effects on the indigenous populations, just so i can eat strawberries in November.
Remember to eat from each of the Color Categories of Fruits and Vegetables:
The main thing to learn is that whatever, "King," we seek to protect is actually the children of the coming generation. So protecting all children, and the environment, becomes the Over-arching Plan, okay?
There are certain beliefs that have to exist for the rich to wield power over the poor, and I don't simply mean "poor" in the economic sense, I have come to recognize that White Trash, like myself, can be poor in knowledge, through no fault of our own. Now, that's poor, if ever I heard a definition. In the past if you lived in a coal mining camp you often had to buy your food and housing from the Company, and you had to believe in direct consequence if anyone tried to strike or organize. How information was controlled then seems scary to us now, but in fact we also suffer under tremendous forces keeping us from seeing all the angles, keeping us from putting things into a greater context that includes all of the facts and what's really happening in the World. I would like to tell you that you can change your beliefs, and it will begin to change how you see the world, and this will make you lose weight faster than any diet you may have tried in the past. When we are done you will walk into the local 24/7 quick-store and not be able to find any food (deserts galore, just no food).
Let me just tell you now what I'm going to explain later. If you limit your intake of animal products to 5% or less of your total diet, you will drop to your natural weight and stabilize there, you will decrease the severity of any osteoporosis your might develop, and you will take yourself off the statistics for many kinds of cancer now associated with the Western Diet. But, abstinence is not enough, you have to re-structure the meanings in order for it to really take, otherwise it's just an open wound waiting to become re-infected.
Believe me, or believe every person who's quit cigarettes and gone back, every gambler who's stopped and gone back with a vengeance, or anybody who's lost pounds and gained them back...you have to have a plan, and you have to follow it through until you know it's complete. That plan should contain informing yourself, and behavioral changes: A TWO PRONGED APPROACH guaranteed to yield results.
In my case, because I'm so compatible with television and movies, chose to inform myself through Youtube and online documentaries. It lead me to Google brain studies, and I've read the Abstract of many now. I've been led to doctor's websites where they share non-traditional views, and also learned a great deal about traditional Psychology, and the decision making processes that have helped mold our standard of care, and have been working on ways to download my knowledge to the lay population.
The behavioral changes I used were switching to meat-less burgers and almond milk cheese, everything can be found in vegan form. I even began baking my own vegan cookies - that helped me a lot, cakes, candies, cookies, nothing makes me fat anymore. But I've been dealing with a couple sources of sadness lately so haven't been baking (but haven't changed my weight significantly since, and kind of feel better, so may leave it now). I don't eat the fake meat anymore, don't need it, just chew through bowlfuls of raw veggies instead, but when you're starting out, I highly recommend you get the richest versions of all the fake animal products. You will notice you can make better ice cream yourself, store bought's not there yet for vegan ice cream (except maybe those Tofutti ice cream sandwiches, but who can afford five bucks for those dinky little things?) Three bites, naw.
For thousands of years our species has had to resort to eating meat to survive, and we've developed a taste for it, but remember the Morlocks from The Time Machine, you can't expect to live off of flesh and not have problems with your supply chain. The USA is at a tipping point ecologically because of animal husbandry issues - they can't shovel it fast enough, so it keeps infecting our water supplies.
Many NGO's who feed the poor in the world do not include any animal products in their meals. They say it is strictly an economic decision, that for every slice of meat they can feed an additional 32 people.
War has been man's oldest get-rich-quick scheme, and it always relies on making you believe the other side is the enemy. Enemy is a control word, usually spoken before you're asked for your credit card number. But the number of people who get wealthy falls to but a few. And, the level of disinformation has to have a negative effect - witness the Sikh shooting spree committed by a White Supremacist.
Now think about this, if regular people didn't eat animal products how would ever talk us into a war? I am not saying that everyone would hold weighting over their meanings towards not allowing animals to be killed, but many would after learning the pain their species have born under our weight. And if a significant percentage of our population wouldn't stand for animal's being killed it would be a tough sell to put human lives in harms way.
The human species was built, or evolved, to eat a plant based diet, raw plants, and we need to protect the environment from worse decay, to protect our next generation's health and safety.
I encourage you to form your personal plan, but make it in accord with the master Plan, and inform yourself, and begin whatever behavioral changes you deem fit, and you will start losing weight.
It's been over a year. I only eat a bite or two of ice cream (but I hear Mother Cow's crying for their stolen calves each time I do, and it still makes me cry sometimes). To me, if I can't see the pain in my food, I'm not fit to eat it. Most of my vegetables being carted around the world carry their own pain, through the petroleum products stripped out of third-world countries with disastrous effects on the indigenous populations, just so i can eat strawberries in November.
Remember to eat from each of the Color Categories of Fruits and Vegetables:
- White
- Yellow or Orange
- Red
- Green
- Blue or Purple
and also supplement your protein with beans, lentils, nuts, or tofu products (1/2 cup a day), and you will have no problems nutritionally.
It is amazing to me how my body has snapped back, like I'm a rubber band, and I've snapped back into my natural form...and all it took was pushing back against one of the most basic beliefs the rich wield over the poor. Once I formed my own lens to see the world, now I see food as just what's natural to our species, without the marketing hype.
There have been over 85 studies showing cow's milk has negative effects on humans. How do you think the people who did that first study felt later on, when it was countered by friends of the Milk industry? Do you think they believed it would take this long for their truth to reach the public? How do you think the public will feel once they put two and two together, and see this information was suppressed for fear and greed? That all depends on how well they keep control over the narratives, doesn't it?
And it is important that we understand the relationship people form with the content on their televisions, and how that relationship is abused by the Networks. It is important to understand that up to 17% of us have a brain condition which makes us more comfortable exercising our emotions against a wall of electronic hallucinations, and we never form a context for becoming "cautious news consumers." We may even share an "aversion" to reading many types of books, and become limited to taking in our new information by television. Ask yourself, "Do you only get your news from television?" In watching a News Story on network television, have you ever felt "prompted to do personal research?" (to understand different angles of a story). I don't think people like me are prompted to do personal research ever, because we're limited to the television (well, I'm starting to break out of that mold now). It may strike you as well that the narratives for true understanding are carefully filtered out of our mainstream television sets. To understand this I believe one must only understand three things:
1. The number one rule of journalism is:
"Never Disrespect The Product, in any basic way."
~ This in itself invalidates and disqualifies television as a viable news source, as they must filter-out anything that would be embarrassing to any of it's corporate sponsors, or any of it's free content providers, or news sources, on which it relies (like our police and government).
2. We, the television viewing audience, are the commodity being traded on television, not the advertised products. We, the audience, are who the sponsors pay for when they buy advertising time.
3. They read from lists of "talking points" from major industries, political party offices, our government, as they attempt to shore up support for any range of issues, including getting people to police each other in order to effect changes in behavior at a cultural level.
The "echo chamber" effect is well documented, and should be looked into.
They have to know some of us are stuck in front of our sets, or that kind of thing just wouldn't work as well as it does. look up Mean World Syndrome. They know we're here, and they're working diligently to keep us rooted in front of our television sets, while only spending as much as they have to. I am not saying the ADHD population are the only ones who watch television, just that we are the captive audience.
We need to learn to see the spin on television, or stop watching it. Seeing the spin involves knowing more than they are showing, and that means developing safe resources for your news and keeping up with them. You will start to form favorite stories, and sign up for petition lists that will also keep you informed, so don't worry about knowing everything about everything, but knowing several stories a month in-depth helps insulate you from the spin.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Short Definition of ADHD (my own definition)
"All-o-pathy," was the name of one kind of doctor a hundred years ago. It supposedly was all schools of thought in medicine which were being combined into one. However, they had a poor reputation for being focused on relieving a patient's symptoms, but not being completely focused on healing the patient.
Many have said this is still the case, where our current healthcare standard doesn't want you to die, but they don't exactly want you to get better either, they just want you to keep coming back (not my quote).
Also, our medical community have allowed the standard-of-care to be changed out of both fear of malpractice suits, and greed by increasing the number of billable procedures.
I'd like to take a step back and prove this point by illustrating briefly how this works in the case of pregnancy in America:
Most women in America have been led to believe they should have their baby in a hospital under the supervision of a doctor.
Women take a long time to give birth.
Doctors don't want to be stuck attending to one patient for that long.
Doctors don't want to be sued for malpractice because their insurance rates may go up.
Doctors are at risk of malpractice suit for things that happen in the birthing room when they are not in the room.
So, doctor's are in effect "pushed" into pushing their patients to deliver by Cesarean Sections both because they mitigate their risk, and because the extra procedures make them more money.
The most common drug used for effacement during C-Sections is linked to complications, but continues to be used.
The FDA has posted a warning against the drug's use during birth, but can not force the doctors to stop using it.
As a result the United States has a higher rate of infant mortality and complications than many other countries because the women are exposed to a higher number of procedures.
The current rate of C-Sections in the U.S. is 30%. Many doctors' practices are pushing them to go up to 80% C-Sections.
The world average is 7%, and the World Health Organization say it should not go over 15% nationally.
Similarly, our medical community came up with the name ADHD to represent a condition marked by lower dopamine activity in the brain: focusing on describing and treating it's symptoms rather than a focus on the underlying condition. As I've said ADHD is a brain condition marked by lower dopamine activity in the brain, and dopamine is now the only neuro-transmitter or chemical in our brains associated with the human ability to maintain focus and attention. Dopamine today is also known as the Human Reward System. When people can not access their Reward System they develop a kind of stress called "Reward Deficiency Syndrome," which is akin to a form of drug withdrawal symptom, even though it is experienced without any outside drug having been taken.
The human need for experiencing our dopamine Reward System is rooted in our genetic nature. In the absence of dopamine a kind of drug withdrawal is experienced, which is a very real source of stress. The person experiencing Reward Deficiency Syndrome actually is "driven" to alleviate the stress. The dopamine pathways they develop are often not ones natural to our species (though every attempt is really seeking the experience of Love, connection, and a real sense of calm.
What does it take to get it right? Parenting which fosters an environment that lends itself to natural expressions of dopamine. Namely for the parents to remain emotionally calm and emotionally available, and to allow the child to emotionally bond with them. The bonding process, and careful maintenance of those emotional connections, is the first place a child begins to subliminally learn the use and control of our Reward System. It is in this way that the Human Reward System encourages both the building and maintenance of family connections and a larger community. It really does allow re-framing of the term Family Values in the sense that a caricature of an atomic family of man, woman and child is not what fosters family values, but instead it is respect of the importance of teaching this one trick we can do with our brains which allows us to focus on long term plans and to become successful in our pursuits.
How can someone be treated, or healed from this condition? In my opinion, many of negative and even some of the moderate ways people deal with this condition are attempts to alter their brain chemistry, but little focus is given in our society on what the accepted ways of expressing it are, and instead overly much attention is given to the casting the health issue as a criminal one.
So, the proper means of treatment should be to teach the person the right ways to love, and helping them clean-up any negative pathways. This would get the person to a point where they can concentrate longer, and so then can start to learn the skills they may have avoided learning before (reading of books, organizational skills, impulse control, math etc). Also, a need to clean up their thinking process must be dealt with to encourage re-structuring the meanings they attach to things with reality and the cultural limits (CBT, Anger Management, Mood Logs).
Except in our culture a war on drugs and alcohol and tobacco was started about 75 years ago, seeking to cast drug users as people of poor character who simply want to get high. This in the face of the reality of their condition is ludicrous. These are people who grew up not knowing how to love, and not getting any instruction in school. And our television networks understand that many of their viewers are limited to taking in new information by television, but these companies do not want to educate their viewers as they rely on them, so they can be made to vote a certain way by framing the issues of the day in certain ways that do not account for recent facts or realities. We have been taught by our Criminal Justice System to think of these people as damaged or broken, when they are simply hampered by patterns formed during what should be called an abusive childhood.
Do we want to pat ourselves on the back for putting into prison, and refusing to help, anyone suffering from a bad childhood? Especially when it is known that these people are not as responsible as their peers? And, I don't mean they don't want to be responsible, but are incapable.
Self-Medication
Many of the ways people with ADHD self-medicate for their condition have become criminalized: gambling, drunkenness, drugs, hoarding, certain forms of fantasy (which can have devastating effects on others if acted out), but even the ones that aren't illegal can get you into trouble. Simply coming to rely on television as your only source of certain types of information can lead you to become a part of someone else's great scheme to damage our form of government. Watching television too much leads to a dysfunctional view of the world around us (research Mean World Syndrome and the Manufacturing of Consent), but the TV networks aren't about to let you know about those things, they rely on you to stay glued to your TV set. You end up voting based on what you see on TV instead of through personal research, and so miss the essential perspective of the candidates history and who they are loyal to, and even drop out any historical perspective.
But, people self-medicate, and usually do not understand why they must, but know what works, and are driven to repeat it (until they learn perspective of the chemical component and until they learn what they really need and how to get it). Drug laws do not work as a deterant to someone with ADHD, they are guided by their nature and will disregard most attempts by the outside to modify their behavior, unless they are offered a reasonable substitute.
We see hundreds of thousands of American's who have attempted to resolve the co-morbid conditions such as drug addiction and alcoholism or even addictions to pornography without first understanding what it is they will fill that void with. Many are lucky enough to find God or religion, and in prayer/worship/meditation they are able to express dopamine in a way more natural to our species and that really does have the power to alter their previous behavior patterns.
In one way of looking at this, everything they try is simply trying to get a bit more dopamine into their lives, but not understanding what it's about, and so get-it-wrong in very basic ways. Relationships with people where you take drugs together instead of finding ways to bond emotionally are one example of getting relationships wrong in a very basic way.
But it should never be forgotten that these people are "experiencing life with the volume turned down," they are enjoying life much less than their peers, and every attempt or pathway they develop to their dopamine should also be seen as an attempt to experience what others take for granted in their daily lives. They may be getting it wrong, but they are trying, and need help, not incarceration, or to be fired.
Finally my Short Definition...
People with ADHD are children who grew up not "knowing" how to love.
And, it causes them great stress, which creates a drive to find behaviors that contribute to their dopamine landscape. It also makes it almost impossible to focus and concentrate on anything they are not obsessed with. It makes everything else enormously difficult.
Then they end up looking for love in all the wrong places, and hiding their own failures from others and themselves.
And, it causes them great stress, which creates a drive to find behaviors that contribute to their dopamine landscape. It also makes it almost impossible to focus and concentrate on anything they are not obsessed with. It makes everything else enormously difficult.
Then they end up looking for love in all the wrong places, and hiding their own failures from others and themselves.
--- -- ---
But it's not their fault, no matter how strong the societal messages are to avoid certain behaviors. It all started before they were capable of being aware, and before they were developmentally capable of dealing with the stress.
They are being blocked from learning their true condition by our Popular Media and the voices of intolerance who seek to continue framing them as bad people who should be excluded.
Remember the words of the American-deposed President of Haiti, "Exclusion is the problem. Inclusion is the answer."
Thank you,
Fish Aware of Water Here (ADHD Rant)
Comment I left someplace:
Sorry, most people just do not get that ADHD is a brain condition related to expression of dopamine. This is fish aware of water talking, so listen, please. When a child is not given adults to bond with emotionally, who remain emotionally calm and emotionally available, that child does not get the knack of using their dopamine. Plain and simple, we grow up with no instructions to follow, but an inate need to experience dopamine, but no context of which pathways are natural to our species (relationships for one, that’s where we learn the knack, or are supposed to, prayer for two, it’s the poor-man’s tool-box for creating dopamine pathways, and includes a social aspect which supposedly re-inforces the framework for re-experiencing it over and over).
Again, let’s frame this correctly, scientists now say that dopamine alone is associated with our species ability to focus and pay attention for very long, and that it’s a self-reinforcing process (a programmer focused on a problem creates their own dopamine at those places activated in the brain).
So, in the absence of successfully maintained emotionally-bonded relationships, humans experience a sort of withdrawal, and are driven to self-medicate. Self-medicating for dopamine can look like watching five hours of television a day. And people who watch television like that, and I did for 49 years, also tend to vote according to what we see between the lines of paid political advertisements, instead of through personal research, for our perhaps shared learning disability of having developed an “aversion” to reading most types of books. I have ADHD, and have only found it out since being exposed to the narratives of Dr. Gabor Mate, through Democracy Now (www.democracynow.org) and their daily news show that only runs on viewer-supported satellite TV channels (which I was stuck with after being laid-off, so just by chance). Anyway, you’ll find the narratives for really understanding oneself, if you have ADHD, are curiously absent from corporate television, almost like they know who’s effected by their political ads, and aren’t giving them up, no way.
So, this isn’t academic for me, and I have through much focus developed a real grip on the dopamine experience, and can through a short meditation, get myself into a “dopaminergic state” but it’s short-lived. And, it’s more pronounced since my marriage and job fell away, but I’m more hopeful now, and for more realistic reason, than ever in my life.
Dopamine is the one thing that makes everything else easier, and even just the memory of it is enough sometimes, if it’s a powerful enough experience you’ve had recently. My rabbit has taught me more about my dopamine, and my ADHD, than all the counselling I’ve ever had. It’s the experience I used to associate with certain moments at Church, before I stopped going.
Again, let’s frame this correctly, scientists now say that dopamine alone is associated with our species ability to focus and pay attention for very long, and that it’s a self-reinforcing process (a programmer focused on a problem creates their own dopamine at those places activated in the brain).
So, in the absence of successfully maintained emotionally-bonded relationships, humans experience a sort of withdrawal, and are driven to self-medicate. Self-medicating for dopamine can look like watching five hours of television a day. And people who watch television like that, and I did for 49 years, also tend to vote according to what we see between the lines of paid political advertisements, instead of through personal research, for our perhaps shared learning disability of having developed an “aversion” to reading most types of books. I have ADHD, and have only found it out since being exposed to the narratives of Dr. Gabor Mate, through Democracy Now (www.democracynow.org) and their daily news show that only runs on viewer-supported satellite TV channels (which I was stuck with after being laid-off, so just by chance). Anyway, you’ll find the narratives for really understanding oneself, if you have ADHD, are curiously absent from corporate television, almost like they know who’s effected by their political ads, and aren’t giving them up, no way.
So, this isn’t academic for me, and I have through much focus developed a real grip on the dopamine experience, and can through a short meditation, get myself into a “dopaminergic state” but it’s short-lived. And, it’s more pronounced since my marriage and job fell away, but I’m more hopeful now, and for more realistic reason, than ever in my life.
Dopamine is the one thing that makes everything else easier, and even just the memory of it is enough sometimes, if it’s a powerful enough experience you’ve had recently. My rabbit has taught me more about my dopamine, and my ADHD, than all the counselling I’ve ever had. It’s the experience I used to associate with certain moments at Church, before I stopped going.
ADHD is all about not learning the knack, and then forming pathways which are not considered natural to our species, and have in some cases become criminalized. But for thousands of years we as a species have had these hiccup children, and we haven’t known how to help them. Get them to experience their reward system, in relationships or Zen Mudita, or Church…enough to also learn control and responsible use of it (not attached to specific activities, or emotions).
When you are experiencing dopamine you connect more easily to people, just plain conversation contains jewels of dopamine as you encounter human narratives that intersect…it’s the meanings that propagate the dopamine, as your mind retrieves emotional memory from another place than the data.
ADHD is when a child grows up not knowing how to love, and it creates stress they are not aware of. Then they develop aversions, and patterns of behavior to cover up the negative effects of not being able to concentrate, and having to many things pushed to the back-burner than a person can deal with.
From our society’s ADHD community, we derive ALL of our Pedophiles, Gambling Addicts, Alcoholics, Drug Addicts, HOARDERS, and people with other paraphilias. In my humble opinion, these are all natural, and should not be criminalized, but instead dealt with as the health issue they represent. These people are not ADHD 24/7, and with the right learning they can stop their addictions and replace them with more natural expressions, so please give them your inclusion, not the current exclusion, as we are rounded up and stuffed into private prisons where absolutely no emotional progress can be made. Our drug laws are human rights abuses. Sorry, it should be a simpler thing to tell if someone in front of you is able to experience their human reward system or not, and I think most people can tell subliminally, but they recoil, somewhat, instead of being urged to help.
Parents of children who they find are using drugs should thank god for such a clear indication of what is going on internally for their child, and such a clear outline of how to help them. Heroin and cutting indicate pain that needs to be dealt with. Meth and marijuana have very different actions, but are both used to augment or temporarily replace the need for the human reward system – get them to excercise their dopamine, take them to church, meditation or yoga classes, or going to the beach and getting out in the water, and physical activity helps.
And push back when you hear false narratives, like drug addicts just want to get high. Just so drops out the experience part. I know it’s very hard for people who are normal to acknowledge this, but without dopamine everything, that you’re not obsessed with, becomes enormously difficult. Remember, in the famous and wise words of the American-deposed President of Haiti, “Exclusion is the problem. Inclusion is the answer.” Treat the 17% of Americans with ADHD, and you lose the corporate swing-vote, but probably open a hundred thousand new businesses.
People with ADHD form coping skills, like it’s what gave me my 135 IQ, and my enhanced memory. Just saying, we’re not all bad.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
America Unleashed
"It is only in the presence of compassion that an addict can hear the truth." Dr. Gabor Mate
It is my belief that up to thirty percent of our country suffers from ADHD. I believe when we hear about schools being drop-out factories, the underlying problem is untreated Adult ADHD in the community being passed onto the next generation.
I believe the current media cultivates this environment for the purposes of promoting an ultra-right wing political agenda.
I believe if we could correct this we would unleash easily another twenty percent of America's brain potential, effectively unleashing America.
This blog is intended as a guide to the new common sense, and a self-treatment guide as well. It is hoped that you will quickly become more sensitive to your connections to the world, and will as a result be able to get yourself "high" whenever you want, allowing you to better focus on your tasks and start setting and achieving goals, be they reading a book you really don't want to read, or learning about something you've put off because it was thought to be too much work. All of this through the, "expression of domamine," (loosely termed).
I used to think this had to involve big pharma, but this morning I was given a gift, like the final piece of a "logic cube" I was building inside my head clicked into place, and I was able to see it, the answer, and an up-swelling of emotion overcame me as I was stroking my cat. I call it the expression of domamine, but I use that term loosely because I actually refer to a more complex pattern of thoughts and meanings, and close attention to the resulting emotions, that results in a cascade of neurotransmitters, and the expression of dopamine and other compounds in the brain.
Many of us have had this experience. We are taught that we have to be in front of pulpit, or falling in love, or in direct and intimate contact with another person to experience it, but it is simply the expression of certain chemicals in the brain, and learning to make them, and sustain them, may be the key, the way out for us...to finally have the calm that the straights have, so to speak.
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