One Hundredth : Totally Addicted To Stress

One Hundredth : Totally Addicted To Stress: "There was a BBC News Article at the beginning of this year which was headlined

'Gamblers' brains addiction clue'

It basically outlined the alleged differences between the brain of a serious gambler and someone who was not. Apparently if a gambler 'wins' something it has less of an effect (neurochemically) than if someone 'normal' wins something. I'm not really sure how this made the news since it seems bloody obvious. I'd imagine heroin has more of an effect on someone who has never taken heroin before, and I'd imagine a boxer feels less pain when he's hit than someone who has never been hit before.

The article specifically said :

The researchers suggest the explanation could be that people with such addictions cannot maintain the amount of the brain chemical dopamine - which produces feelings of satisfaction and pleasure - which they need in the ventral striatum, through everyday life.

Instead, they need stronger triggers - such as drugs or excessive gambling - to compensate.

Again, none of this seems particularly revelatory but I suppose it's nice to know the mechanism by which such changes occur.

In a similar vein a story last year gave the example of 'procrastinating monkeys' being turned into 'workaholics' through a type of gene therapy. Story here : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3557310.stm

This time :

'Normal monkeys and people procrastinate - tend not to work very well when they have a lot of time to get the job done, and work better when the reward is nearer in time,' Dr Richmond says.

'The monkeys under the influence of the treatment don't procrastinate.'

The treatment consists of blocking an important brain chemical - dopamine.

Now, I am reluctant to say that any of this is meaningful or in any real sense, I'm not sure. At the very least the write-ups themselves are terrible in that they (at least in the first story) imply that gamblers brains are different to non-gamblers before getting an addiction - which is very different from what is actually said. No doubt some implied from the article that some people had some sort of deffective gene (although, to be fair this is not stated in the article).

I mention this because this week has been rather stressful on two fronts, but I've kind of enjoyed it in a sick way. Normally, as I've said n times before I find it difficult to revise, do my work, things like that. This is a gradually increasing problem since I was about 6 or 7 years old I think. With every level of education it's gotten worse.

For instance, I remember actually revising hard for tests in primary school. I'm not sure why I cared, but I spent ages doing example spelling and maths tests just for practicing sake. I seem to remember being very very stressed at what the teachers / my mother would say if I failed.

I think however, this 'stress' feeling gradually eroded in my mind. I stopped being as worried, and by the time it got to GCSEs or A-Levels it really needed to be crunch time to get the motivation together to do something.

Some people have pinned this down to a form of depression. I can't really see it. Usually I'm having a great time, so long as I overcome the mild guilt to do with wasting time.

But just to give an indication of how far it's got. I've got 2 hours before an exam. It's a Master's Degree exam at the London School of Economics. For my particular subject ('Housing and Social Policy' which I agree is hardly that common) it is probably the top institution in the country, and arguably as a result the world (the American's Universities are undoubtedly superior but their studying of social policy is not directly comparable). So one can presume the exam is going to be reasonably challenging.

I have not studied for this exam. I do not mean that I have not read through my notes, or re-read the course material. I mean that I have literally not studied for this exam. I did not attend classes, I have no idea of what's on the reading list, and I'm only dimly aware of the subject matter. I briefly looked at a past paper about ten minutes ago, and I realised I didn't even understand most of the words let alone the sentences they went onto make up. We are expected to draw those nasty graphs you get in economics which involve mcp(1) reaching mc(1) when demand inestalicity has been altered because of demand subsidies. Fortunately due to failing to get a 'C' in Maths at A-Level I never did Economics at Undergraduate Level (due to missing the entrance requirements), I did Politics instead (thank you Mr Vijapura!). So the only experience I've got with such nonsense is my Business Studies A-Level. Most of which I did in 1997.

The point is, I'm woefully unprepared. And I'm a bit stressed about it. But not enough. I feel like I'm on the brink...kind of like when you've done one pill and it's not quite enough to bring you up fully.

Of course it might just be that I don't care. It could be that I'm hardcore. But...then again I do actually care about the consequences of failure. I could theoretically lose my job and there's a very real chance I could have to pay £8,000 as a result of failing. So what am I doing with my last two hours? Well, obviously I'm writing this Live Journal entry of course!

The other instance of stress this week came from work. Yesterday was the 'Joint Leasehold and Property Services Team Away-Day'. Now, does that not sound dull?

Of course it does. And by christ it was. At least four people actually fell asleep during the day from what I could tell. And lucky me, I had the last slot of the day - a two and a half hour presentation on all the work they think I've done over the last x months. Which of course, on the whole doesn't work. I have been doing somethings, but nothing they'll be able to appreciate or look at. I was asked to demonstrate 8 hand-held PDAs to a group full of surveyors to train them on how to do Decent Homes Surveys, and....well, you get the idea.

I don't know how many of you have had to do training or presentations but two and a half hours is an enormous amount of time to fill. I could probably read out one of my longer livejournal entries in about three to four minutes. So you can imagine two hours worth of babble. Well over a hundred minutes of blagging.

I was told about all of this last week. And when did I start preparing anything? Six A.M. yesterday.

I tried to start the day before. I have no desire to look a full in front of 18 people (the audience) all of which are my colleagues / managers I see every day. But I couldn't. Even with Ritalin I couldn't start such a project until I knew there was absolutley no alternative.

And I did. And I got up at 6, started at home, went to work early, wrote two power point presentations, sorted out a 'PDA on a projector demo'. The stress had just hit the mark and I was ready to go.

It went well. Four seperate people came up to me afterwards to tell me that it was easily the best bit of the day (damning with feint praise) and people actually were awake and attentive for my bit.

I don't tell you this to boost my flagging ego. But to illustrate a dual point. I need stress to do any damn thing but also, because I need to know the pay-off is right there.

You see, I think I might have m sickness (or an addiction), and my sickness (as I have commented before) is one shared by many others. It is a disease very much of modern life. It comes under the very broad heading of alienation (a topic I've gone on about many times before) but instead of being alienated from others, I am alienated from reality itself.

To explain. If one is in a task=>result situation then our brain chemistry is specifically designed to make us feel good (rewarded) about what we have done. Even ignoring the physical pleasure, if you are hungry and you get food you feel better mentally (well, unless you've eaten McDonalds, then you just generally feel like shit). And by and large, life is a variety of these types of scenarios. We are faced with a problem, shortage, dilemma, etc - we solve it, we get rewarded (in a variety of senses, I am simplifying to the point of absurdity here).

Conversely, if we do something 'bad' (or stupid) then there is a negative response. You put your hand in a fire, it burns, you take it out and know to avoid it in the future. A great deal can be said on this subject, but this is the crux of the matter.

But modern (and by modern, I am taking the widest possible definition) increasingly defies this. To go back to gambling a moment, the day I lost £5,000 I cannot say I felt 'bad' as such. I felt disbelief. As one imagines one would feel if a very close relative died. Numbness I suppose one could term it. It just didn't seem real. I can't remember the circumstances clearly, but I think I went back to bed.

Why? Because, for all intents and purposes nothing had happened. I had pressed a few buttons, some lights had flashed, the end. There was no pain, no discomfort, nothing of that nature. Sure, undoubtedly some brain chemistry stuff was going on as in the article referenced, but I'm not sure what it was related to.

The point I am making here is that our minds are very powerful tools. They do their best to cope with any stimuli you through their way, but they are not infinitely powerful. As a result, when things that are 'strange' (for want of a better word) occur a muddle can occur.

Something like a phobia seems like a good example of this. People are frightened - to the point of irrationality - of things like spiders. Now, it seems that being afraid of spiders (in the wider sense) is actually a pretty good idea. Historically a great deal of humans may have died from spider bites (I'm not sure) and a combination of cultural, psychological and perhaps biological factors could combine to make you scared of anything eight-legged. But of course, it can get silly. I was walking with a friend of mine once and he recoiled from a particular house very suddenly. I was confused, and looked at the house. No large, dangerous dog. No psychotic owner-occupier wielding a shot-gun. No structure about to collapse. What was his problem?

It turns out that there were some stuffed tarantulas on the window-sill. In retrospect they were fairly large, but the point is they were clearly dead. There's no way they could threaten him, but he was still 'scared' (I suppose repulsed would be a better term but it makes no difference here). It's clear that some sort of short-cut existed in his mind so spiders meant run away irrespective of anything else.

But back to my point. If I knew there was some immediate danger then I'd be motivated. But there isn't. Even if I go in, write 'I am a fish' two hundred times then I won't have any problems for a good couple of months. And from my mind's pathetically warped perspective, that's not enough.

So there's two parallel problems.

1. Stress / Pressure has diminishing returns
2. Rewards and Costs have to be reasonably quick.

I think this goes for a lot of problems. We hear regularly in the news now of misbehaviour from children (and adults) who act in a strangely anti-social manner. Two kids in Wales got an ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) recently for a range of poor behaviour (link) and there are tales of kids throwing stuff off bridges onto passing cars.

At the other end of the spectrum even amongst the very bright there is an increasing apathy towards exams and studies. How many times have you heard (from the very bright) 'Oh shit I've not done any revision'?

Conservatives sometimes point at a lack of discipline (or even corporal punishment) when looking at kids misbehaviour. And they might have a point. But the worst kids often come from the worst (most violent) families. I'd give good odds that a majority of wife-beaters were hit by their mum or dad.

Costs (in a variety of forms) SHOULD exist for poor behaviour (like rewards for good behaviour) but they should be immediate, structured, proportional and not to be casually, regular and arbritrary. If not then our minds, in my opinion, simply cannot cope and we are left with being alienated from causation itself.

That's all for me. I'm off to fail an exam."