quote:— David Gemmell
I tried to quit smoking and found that the years of polluting my brain with nicotine meant that I couldn't string a reasonable sentence together without filling my lungs with smoke. I went three months without a drag, took a good look at the crap I was writing and lit up.
He died two weeks after quadruple bypass surgery.
How to write and stay healthy... a puzzle?
(Accidentally posted this in F&F... sorry, KDW)
My dad died on 28 July, too. I gain comfort from thinking that he's no longer in pain, though.
Slightly Off-Topic:
It seems that a lot of celebrities in Australia are dying. We lost a politician the other day and yesterday we lost the almight Steve Irwin, may both of them Rest In Peace as well.
Steve Irwin's death seemed one of those stories that blows into the news seemingly from nowhere and hits you hard. I turned on Fox News yesterday at seven Eastern and there it was, the lead story. What a shock.
CLL
But I did a little bit of reserach on David Gemmell. I'm going to find one his pieces of work and read it now.
It's like sharks. Shark attacks are very rare, even though there are typically lots of sharks within a few hundred feet of shore. The hype is much greater than the statistical danger. Sharks and rays could kill you, but generally don't.
*I have very broad definitions of addiction, which include overeating, inauthentic relationships, and sleep deprivation as well as alcohol, nicotine, and drugs that are fun enough to be used in spite of negative consequences.
The American psychiatric definition of addiction includes:
1. Interesting enough to use despite negative consequences
2. Withdrawal accompanies non-use
3. Tolerance/increasing intensity of use over time
4. Obsessiveness- which would include the idea that smoking is the wellspring of one's writing ability.
I used to own a game shop where we had themed rooms kids could rent out per hour to play their games, (and a database of other kids who played the same games and we'd organise groups for them, ) and was amazed at how much jolt® cola they bought coupled with the requests for us to stay open until 3am. Of course these two things are not unrelated.
POOKA: By the above definition is it possible that some forms of OCD a can be a type of addiction to almost fetish-like behaviours? I ask because a lot of those kids that came into the shop were incredibly bright but had weird little habits. The worst were like little ritualistic movement like twiddling their hair and then blowing on their fingers, over and over again and he would get really mad if you mentioned it.
BTW: My wife is Samoan, her dad was telling me a long time ago that the stingray is one of the things they fear the most when out in the water. Very dangerous, according to him.
On topic:
It is easy to think that you owe your creativity to something external to yourself, substances or whatever. I have always been concerned that my work involves sitting in front of this blasted monitor and so too does my writing. Both require lots of time and I constantly worry about my health. Chasing kids and renovating the house doesn't seem to shift plaque in your arteries the way swimming or cycling etc does 
PS: Will mis Colin Thiele too, Storm Boy was the first time (as a kid) I ever read a book first and waited desperately for the movie.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited September 05, 2006).]
Being attacked while diving is rare, but considerably more likely to be fatal.
I think that OCD behaviors are a little different. While any OCD behavior obviously fits the first (compulsive) and fourth (obsessive) criteria, very few of them will exhibit withdrawal or tolerance. If an OCD person isn't under stress, the compulsions will ease and there is no negative effect experienced from reduction of the behavior. You can even forcefully interrupt any given compulsive behavior and it will simply be replaced with something else. But once a compulsive routine is established, it doesn't usually become more extreme or progress.
If the worst such behavior you ever noticed was twiddling his hair and then blowing on his fingers, I can understand why he got angry when you mentioned it (if he was indeed OCD). That's a comparatively harmless behavior, and forcefully interrupting it would be clinically unsound since almost any other ritual that would replace it could be self-destructive. Either that or the kid didn't want to talk about his unusual method of dealing with split ends.
OCD: It's been awhile but wasn't one of OSC's books dealing with OCD; tracing the wood grain on a floor. Am I hallucinating that? Clue me, somebody.
Certainly, the hair twiddling was odd, what I was commenting on was kids who had a fetishisistic belief that they could control the roll of a dice etc by doing weird things, like twiddling the hair and blowing on the fingers or saying a cerain word under their breath, or rolling particular coloured dice. They seem to think their behaviour could change something that was otherwise out of their control. Bit like a magic ritual or superstitious thinking.
Can superstitions etc be construed as OCD or addictions?
Can a bad habit be destructive and compulsive and be more like OCD than an addiction?
All questions here, no answers.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited September 05, 2006).]
quote:
But experts stressed that stingrays were not usually vicious and rarely attacked and killed humans, unlike the range of deadly creatures Irwin had confronted in the past.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060904/ts_afp/australiapeopleirwinwildlife_060904125339
That's my last post on the subject. I know better than to contradict a Samoan on topics close to her! 
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited September 05, 2006).]
I guess you'd call this an OSC OCD.
[This message has been edited by Aust Alien (edited September 06, 2006).]
I have a way of explaining it as people living in neurotransmitter crisis, where they rev up their levels, then crash, back and forth. There are several flavors of neurotransmitters, but the most familiar ones are inhibitory and excitatory. A person with inhibitory crisis behavior is going to tend toward OCD. A person with excitatory crisis behavior is going to tend toward ADD. Some people have low levels, which is the more common explanation, but I think the simpler explanation is if the receptors are overactive in some way. At least, it sounds more hopeful to explain it to my kids that way. They aren't victims of a genetic famine. They just have gas-guzzling brains.
When I didn't pay attention in class, it was usually because I was thoroughly disinterested in what was being talked about---probably a mistake on my part, because it seems to me now that a lot of what I was bored with might have been valuable to me later.
. . .(For David Gemmell)
. . .(For Steve Irwin)
"You seem intelligent, Mom, how could you not know this crap was hereditary?"
I know I'm banging on a bit but I'm really interested in the conection between, obsessive behaviour and the a 'magic' mentality. or If I do A (controllable behaviour) then I can make B (uncontrollable event) occur — or not occur as the case may be.
That last paragraph make any sense? I'm going to start researching magical mentality and see what i can find. *hoptoad salutes and runs off into the trenches*
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited September 06, 2006).]
All of these are real and apply to lots of cases but there seems to be trends amongst GPs, like a fad Diagnosis.
Do you mean literally what you meant? That B is uncontrollable, and the _mentality_ deceives someone into thinking that they have control? Or do you mean that B _seems_ like it shouldn't be controllable in that way, and the mentality perceives something deeper that allows it to be controlled after all?
In other words, are you looking into magic as superstition or magic as "real" magic?
If some uncontrollable event the person has been trying to forestall through obsessive, ritualised behaviour occurs, what mechanisms allow that person to maintain their belief in the ritual behaviour? For instance: "I must have done something wrong. That's why the 'event' occurred." In this case the failure of the ritual actually confirms the belief in it. It works if it works and if it doesn't work I'll have to try harder and be more precise next time. This places the 'event' squarely back in the 'controllable' basket.
I'm seeing a sort of self-induced, psychological misdirection allowing the person to suspend their suspicion that the event is truly uncontrollable in the first place and instead focus on their own 'failure' in the ritual methods.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited September 06, 2006).]
(CFS? Convenient Food Services? Computerized Forwarding System?)
According to the OC foundation, engaging in the compulsions supposedly alleviates the obsessions, but I have to wonder about this. If there were something I could have been doing to avoid my obsessions over the years, I would have done it. Now I have to disengage from the psychological tract when I recognize certain patterns and tell myself "these are not real thoughts. These are symptoms of Stress and poor diet.
I think there is a degree to which CFS and ADD were used as "I don't know what the hell it is" diagnoses, kind of like Asperger's Syndrome is now becoming. You can agree that these syndromes are real or not. I know thinking of mine as a syndrome helps me to escape it.
My health worries me, spending too long at the keyboard.
I'd better dust off and fix-up my bike.
In Novemeber I'm going to try NanoFITmo. Like the Biggest Loser only it's just me