mocchi

I got some new books - some I bought and some as Christmas presents. One of them was a novel by a famous actor. I started reading this other book that I'm about to mention, but then I thought, actually I'll give the actor one a go. 

At first I thought it was good because it was smooth and polished, but I very quickly came to abhor it. It was like the voice-over from a nostalgic American movie about a bygone era. Everyone was a character. Nothing strange or disturbing. Everything so damn nice and pleasant....children so innocent and old people so wise....so fake, just like most successful movies. So sweet and insipid. 

So, I turned to Wifedom by Anna Funder, and I was so refreshed. This is writing. It's original, interesting, thought provoking....intelligent....yes, that's what that other book was lacking. It spoon fed you what you're supposed to like, and maybe what people do like. It didn't engage you. What a relief. Sometimes I've wondered if all modern literature is bland and boring....just a series of clichés, but no there is still some good stuff.

engraved

Generally people think that if they're struggling in some way or facing challenges or in crisis, that something has gone wrong. I've always thought that too, but my view has changed. 

The combination of anxiety and depression with the grueling (at least for me - I know it varies) process of tapering off Valium, has been the biggest challenge I have ever faced, but it has literally given me a new life. I had to change, and I wouldn't have changed in any other way. I had to be in crisis all the time.

I'm glad that my drinking nearly killed me because I know now that I can't drink ever again. I'm also glad that the tapering process is so grueling and debilitating, because it means that I can't drink. That was why my drinking got so bad when it did - I was pushed a bit faster than I could handle to reduce my dose of valium, and I turned to alcohol as a way of coping, and it just took over my life within days. 

Then, for about 6 months I had this serious drinking problem. Detox saved my life, but not in a passive way. It was something that I did with help. Their treatment was excellent. I couldn't have asked for better. But I had to stop drinking. They couldn't do that for me. They facilitated it in a really excellent way. 

I don't crave alcohol. I'm not tempted. It would literally kill me if I had a drink, and I'm glad about that. 

the rules

I'm secretly convinced that never having had my tonsils out has tethered me to a destiny of awkwardness at gatherings where finger food and light refreshments are served. It will be said of me, 'He showed such promise, but he was awkward over coffee and scones.' 

horse shoe

I really think - I'm not just saying this - that the left is right about some things and wrong about others, and the right is also right about some things and wrong about others. 

fever

I wonder why it's still so difficult, and I catastrophize.....thinking that things are only going to get worse, but then I'm encouraged when I reflect on the reality that the progress and the changes I am making are permanent.

Like with my taper, I wish I could go more quickly, but then I'm reassured by the fact that these days, when I make a cut, that's it...I will never again increase my dose. 

lift

The best things come out of the worst things, and that's the only way they come. 

appearance

Just like how, with art, you can't represent things in the way that you think they're supposed to look, with personal change, you can't just work on the desired change. 

The change for me is from rumination to action, but it's not just a matter of being more active and thinking less. 

let the right one in

Normality: when your reality is defined by the norm/ the average. Surely it's over-rated. 

my generation

It's when you're willing to go all the way that you activate virtuous cycles. Like when I say night after night that I'm not going to take more than a certain dose of valium, even though I haven't slept well for years and every night I have intense insomnia and every morning I wake before 5, and every day I'm dizzy most of the time and experience debilitating fatigue - a fatigue that makes it hard to function, and yet I absolutely can't sleep during the day. Even though I know I'm inviting more of that by limiting my dose, and the vicious cycle that I'm in seems to go on and on and on and never end, I push....I set a standard - x amount of valium - and I stick to it, and I know that's the way forward. 

cracked

I was talking to a psychologist recently and I said something that I hadn't really thought about much before. I was saying that, even though I have issues with anxiety and depression, it's not because of any trauma that I've been through. There is one exception to that. I had a really bad accident when I was 2 and a half that involved a pretty severe head trauma. 

For all I know, that may be the main cause of my mental health issues. I've led a fortunate life, but I've always been tormented mentally. 

vitamins

As I move from rumination to engagement, the opposite is happening - the re-enchantment of details. 

an abundance of details

When you're depressed and someone's trying to cheer you up by telling you about all the interesting things they did - how they talked to this person and went for a walk in that place and there were so many beautiful views and enjoyable foods to eat and walks to go on and so on......they mean well, but it all seems so empty. Being depressed is like being cold and not being able to warm up and there's something about these cheerful, positive narratives that reinforces that feeling. 

pattern

What I liked about her art was the repetition of small figures on the canvas. This was really an expression of herself - the multitude of small figures spread out over the page. This was a documentation of her trauma. 

lost without you

There's a certain ease that can come even when you're running a figurative marathon. There are things that are stable and constant. 

There are things I enjoy now that I never enjoyed before...like fruit. Eating fruit always seemed like a chore. Yeah, it's good for you but it can never be as satisfying as cake or chocolate. It's nothing personal. It's just the reality. But now I feel different. 

Actually, my whole relationship to food has changed. I've never eaten well and that was related to my mental health. Now I don't experience that feeling of wanting and needing to eat but not being able to. 

crisis

It takes time to change. We always imagine change in terms of before and after, and the after is different from the before. The challenge and the opportunity with personal change is that you will always be the same person before and after. 

unoccupied

It takes time to change from being captivated by the inner drama of rumination to actively engaging in life. 

One thing that encourages me forward is knowing that the progress I am making is permanent. For example, with my weekly dosage of valium, I know that these days and for the last year and a half, every time I make a cut, there is no going back - I will never increase my dose, ever again. 

beyond the pale

Sometimes I write something and then when I read it afterwards, I think that I didn't really make the point I wanted to make. I hinted at it, but I didn't clearly state it. I didn't make it clear, and what I wrote could have a range of meanings. 

I wrote something yesterday on Medium, and the main thing I was getting at is that when you know for sure that someone in a position of trust or authority in your life is wrong about something, that's valuable knowledge - it represents a kind of certainty that we rarely have. 

And it always presages a greater truth. 

it says here

Once you've broken your reliance on something, there's a completeness about your lack of need for that thing. I've had fleeting moments like that with valium in the last couple of years. 

I imagined that my need for it would stay the same and I would just get better at negating that need, but there have been moments when I just didn't need it at all. It served no purpose. 

That sense of not needing it is only going to grow, and there will be a point at which that sense will be permanent. All the hard work and fighting I have done against my need for valium is going to culminate in the end of that need. 

The balance of power has already shifted and my need for valium is struggling. It can't win. 

It's taken time. I've been tapering for two and a half years so far. It's taken a lot longer than the so-called experts say it should. They told me that withdrawal doesn't even begin until your last dose. They told me that the withdrawal symptoms peak after 4 days and after that things get steadily better. They told me a lot of other things that are not true. 

renovation

Something strange happens with depression, and other mental health issues, where you take refuge in the very thing that hurts you. 

The Greek word for repentance is μετάνοια - metanoia. Meta means change and noia means mind. So, repentance is about changing your mind.....changing your mind. That's also what recovery is about. 

We have the wrong idea about recovery. We have the idea that if we could just get away and go on a kind of retreat, we could really heal. But I've found from experience that that doesn't work. When you withdraw and take time out from life, it makes things worse. It's like inviting your disorder in and telling it to make itself at home, and it will. The answer is engagement rather than withdrawal. 

համակարգ

Systematizing things can help you to work fast, but it can also drain the life out of the process. 

overcome

It gets to the point where, as helpful as they have been, you don't believe other people's stories of recovery because you are living your disorder. That is your reality and the stories of recovery belong to other people, not you. You are living through the opposite of recovery. 

No one can help you with this. No one is going to rescue you. No one will guide you because no one understands or even knows you. 

You have to forge your own recovery. There is a recovery with your name on it, that only you can create. 

drugs

I'm glad that my drinking problem got so very bad - as bad as it's possible to get - because that's one of the reasons why I will never drink again. 

The other reason is that stopping drinking is/ was overshadowed by stopping valium. Not drinking is easy compared with stopping valium. But also, drinking would mess up my process of withdrawing from valium, and my life depends on coming off valium. 

I'm on my way. Like I wrote earlier, I can see the end now. Before, until recently, it was an apparently endless road stretching ahead, which is quite a burden. Even a marathon has an ending. Now I have a kind of momentum. 

end

Withdrawing from benzos is different from withdrawing from other drugs. With alcohol, for example, you can push through the really difficult period and once through it, things get steadily better. You know that things will get better, so that sustains you through severe challenges. 

Benzos aren't like that. It does vary. Some people seem to experience that kind of dynamic, but I haven't. For me, things get worse with time, and that tendency goes on and on indefinitely - for months and years, and at times it seems like it may be permanent. It's like, you always have to move into the storm rather than taking shelter. 

I'm at a point now where I can imagine the end. I can conceive of not needing valium. 

spoken words

I learnt French for about 4 years in high school, but I never really felt like I was learning it or had learnt it. In year 9 our teacher showed us a French video and it was like any other foreign language...I had literally no idea....not even a single word. 

Then, years later, I had a look at a French Bible and I found to my surprise that I could read it. I at least had basic comprehension. 

nota bene

I think it's worth noting that a lot of the advice that great writers have given about the importance of drafting and redrafting and how your first draft is always going to be rubbish, comes from a time before word processing.

Ernest Hemingway's famous statement about the quality of first drafts is based on a world where manuscripts were typed. 

We take for granted the ability we have to edit as we go, but it makes a huge difference. Even as I write this blog post, I'm writing, deleting, revising, as I go, and constantly reading over what I've written and adjusting it. 

patterns

When people are really angry or upset or emotionally overwrought, their words are a kind of poetry. 

burn

What seems like a refuge is a trap and what seems like a trap is a refuge. 

In the past I always had trouble eating enough. It was a complex mix of malevolent influences that conspired to starve me and keep me lean. 

My religious mania - holy insanity - symbiotically engaged with my mental torment....it was pure and radiant. 

Looking at the huge neon lights reflected on the water at night from the star ferry on Hong Kong harbor, I thought of the saying - 'color is the suffering of light'. 

mgh

She was still and full of potential energy, like a coiled up spring. 

-en

Meaning is elsewhere doing stuff with other people who think that meaning is doing stuff with me. 

азго

Between March and July of 2022, I had three separate conversations that educated me about my life. The first conversation taught me that I had started a new life - that I am a new person. The second conversation taught me how I need to be different to be that new person - the change required of me. The third conversation taught me, in practical terms, how to live my new life - how to make the change. 

unseemly

I remember once, feeling the pain and stress of depression which builds and builds and leads to breakdown, thinking that, if I was different, I wouldn't feel this pain. I could clearly perceive in my mind that if I grew and was - not stronger, that's not quite the right word - but if I could endure and grow and change....that's the answer. I wouldn't feel this pain if I grew. 

You think it's wearing you down, and you panic, but actually it's building you. 

something different

Films are just endless novelty and surprise and spectacle and comedy and drama and romance and action, and it's so eminently boring. 

let's go

The grueling process of tapering killed my old self. 

I reached a really good milestone to finish off the year recently - 10 x 2 mg of Valium a week. 

My next cut will take me down to single digits. On a good day, I can get by on 1 x 2 mg. On a hard day, I take 2 x 2 mg. I know that's against the rules. You're meant to strictly take the same amount each day, but I don't work like that. 

So, anyway, because I can get by on 1 x 2 mg, that's my next step - doing that every day....so, from 10 to 9 to 8 to 7....I can see that happening. It's not impossible. At the beginning of this year, reaching where I am now seemed impossible, but here I am. 

Where to from there? I can clearly envision that as well, because I already break 2 mg tablets into quarters. So, instead of taking a whole 4 quarters, I will cut to 3 quarters - .75. 0.75 x 2 mg a day = 5.25 x 2 mg a week....so, from 7 to 6 to 5. Then .5 a day = 3.5 x 2 mg a week. From 5 to 4. Then .25 a day = 1.75 x 2 a week! From 4 to 3 to 2 to 1.....and stop. 

I will surely stop at some point before I reach 1 x 2 mg a week, and that will be a great day. 

exacise

You know what I would like?....Someone to express the spirit of Australia like Lana Del Rey and Ethel Cain express the spirit of America. 

the reason

One of the biggest challenges of tapering off benzos for me is not being able to sleep at night and then experiencing extreme fatigue during the day, and both of those things feed each other and fuel my anxiety and depression. 

It seems unnatural, like it shouldn't be like this. After all this time, it's still affecting me like this. 

I think the problems of insomnia and fatigue are just a way that the problem can manifest and if they weren't the problem, it would be something else. 

I can and do frame the problem in different ways. I can think of it as my need to move from rumination and withdrawal to engagement and activity. It doesn't seem like that's the problem to me. Like, for example, when I can't sleep at night, that hardly seems like the same issue, but, on another level, I know that it is. 

I know that that change is the whole reason for all the challenges I go through. 

adaptation

I've wondered what it would look like if you could convey the power and feeling and essence of a song, in writing. Of course, you can't. Why then do we think that you can make a film out of a novel?

culture

People become invisible in systems, just a problem to be solved. 

storee

I thought that Crying in H Mart was fiction, but then, watching a lot of interviews of Michelle Zauner, I found out that it's a memoir. It's non-fiction. 

There isn't as much of a clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction any more. It's understood that recounting history or actual events involves story-telling, and that people can have very different interpretations, not just of texts but of the realities those texts are based on. 

Non-fiction involves stories and fiction is the best way of expressing some truths. 

strange creations

I engage with God's word. I speak my word to God and listen. I run my body. I put nutrients into my body. I mix things together and apply heat and spices, then something different emerges. 

When I make art, I'm no longer conscious of the mechanism of it - the way that I'm moving the stylus over my wacom intuos drawing tablet, and how, because of the narrowness of my desk, my tablet sits to the right - and quite far to the right - of my keyboard. I'm aware of my mind creating the art....I have ideas and I bring them into being. 

One of the things that made me realize this was that I got a wacom ONE - a creative pen display. You plug it into your computer and then you work on the screen of the tablet itself. With the intuos, you draw on the tablet and then you see what you draw on the monitor. It takes a bit of getting used to. 

So, I connected my wacom ONE to my computer and I had it on my other desk and I'm sitting in front of it. There are so many ways in which I don't know how to use this but one of the main ones is that it's in front of me, and I'm so used to drawing to the side, that I couldn't get my hand to work. So, I packed it away, just like I did with my intuos when I first got it and found that I couldn't use it. After about a year, I got it out and just forced myself to use it. Maybe that will happen with my ONE. 

n☰xt J☰n

Are consciousness and will just very detailed stories? Is that all there is to it? If AI becomes sufficiently well developed, will it think it is conscious? Or maybe a more interesting question....could a sufficiently complex AI convincingly simulate consciousness? Could it be so convincing that we can't tell whether we're talking to an AI or a human being? 

story

Your experience, your thinking, your inner world, is utterly unique, but also eminently relatable. 

Emerson wrote, in his essay 'Self-Reliance':

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

punctuated

In writing, you can create anything, and there are an infinite number of things to write about. 

not work

One of the things I learnt from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is that when you draw in the right way, it's not laborious, stressful, hard work. When I try to draw realistically, it's always a chore and draining - every detail is difficult, but when you draw in a state of flow and you access your inner artist, even a detailed drawing can be done with a sense of ease...it's just a matter of systematically engaging and adding all the details. 

work

My first real job was teaching English in Hong Kong. It felt weird getting paid for something that I took for granted - something that I didn't have to work for....my ability to speak, read and write English. 

break up

I don't know if I'm going to reach some turning point where things will get easier at some point next year. I know at least that I'm well into this process. 

Things have been getting more difficult lately, or that's how it feels. That makes me think I'm getting worn down, reaching breaking point, falling to pieces. But that's old thinking. I've thought that many times before, which means that it's never true. 

I don't have my eyes on the prize. I have my eyes on the race. I'm ready to keep running. 

all seasons fail and recover

I reached a really good milestone by the end of this year. I didn't feel ready, but I knew that was all the more reason to take the next step. 

water

There are bands that are legendary, but I haven't listened to them. That stops now. The bands:

• Death Cab for Cutie
• Bullet for My Valentine
• Sonic Youth 

I've now listened to all three, in the time it took you to read the list. 

turning

Nearly all the time for the last two years, I have felt the really difficult stress that comes with anxiety and depression. It's like it was between 2010 and 2014. 

It's different this time though. I have a sense of its purpose in my life. My life is forever divided between pre 2022 and post 2022. 

for all you know

I don't believe what the benzo withdrawal experts and coaches say any more. All they know is their story. 

They have helped me, they really did, but they will not have the final word about me. My story will not have a happy ending because they said it would. 

It's partly that my experience is not what they say it should be. They tell a story with a happy ending, so that you will envisage that for yourself, but no one can give that to you. 

No one except God is my benefactor or lifesaver. 

coda

the autumn of my life