Notes from the Other Side

April 25, 1991: paranoia

What am I afraid of?

That my thinking is deluded by drugs.
That I'm overlooking obvious everyday truths.

I try to brush these feelings aside, but that doesn't work. By directly assaulting them (i.e. writing them down) I may well begin the process by which I liberate myself from these feelings. This will result in seet intoxication -- the intoxication of clear-headedness. But obviously by the time I realize that I am intoxicated, I will have left the state of clear-headedness behind for some time. Then the paranoia will begin again.


Paranoia: fear of drug-dependency. These are concerns worth addressing directly because paranoia is a recurrent dysfunctional pattern. I want to see if it can be eliminated, and how.

First: drug dependency. I've already experienced this with nicotine -- and once out of the dorms I kicked the habit. Demerol I felt was more potentially dangerous, but it is not readily available to me. Marijuana is certainly not renowned for its addictiveness. Even anti-drug people mainly decry it as a "gateway" drug. For me it *has* been a gateway -- but not to opiates -- rather to hallucinogens, again, not known as highly addictive substances.

Thus my culture is more or less giving me the green light on the addiction question. The question becomes: do I trust my culture? Not thoroughly. But on an issue like this I tend to do so, because there are two large camps engaged in a dialog about drugs, or should I say a shouting match, with extremists in bothe camps pushing for polar-opposite views. And even the anti-drug people aren't too scared of marijuana addiction.