Addicted to Addiction featuring Geoff Hylton

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[00:00:24] Oh shit. Hello and welcome to a special edition. In this episode, this is ramble on the road. And I'm your host, Jeff Nesbitt

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[00:00:34] we are joined by Mr. Jeffrey, James Hilton, always a crowd favorite. We are happy to have. We recorded this a couple of weeks ago and it's really good. I liked the way it turned out. Happy birthday to Jeff, because this is going to come out on his birthday.

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[00:00:54] The paper you're about to hear tells a story that is all too familiar about a [00:01:00] Hollywood writer who accomplishes. And he makes it in Hollywood and he gets jobs on television shows writing, and he makes a bunch of money and he ends up falling into heroin addiction he needs it for creativity and all the other excuses he comes up with of which there are many, and it ends up really wrecking his life.

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[00:01:34] And I know what you're thinking. Instrumentalization why not just instrumentation. And I went back and forth on that the whole time I was writing this paper. I remember that clearly, and I don't remember. Why I ended up settling on the more complicated and weirder sounding word, but I did. So you'll enjoy that throughout the entire paper and it's annoying, but you're going to have to just deal with it like I do.

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[00:02:22] And it's a very smart way to use your chemicals. It's really the only smart way to use your chemicals.

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[00:02:52] Cause I, I really, I wasn't about to go just become a loser and lose everything that I had worked so hard to accomplish. And the [00:03:00] chemicals were helping me to do that, but I had so much guilt and I had so much shame. Embarrassment and low self worth. And I feel it when I'm reading this and it just, it makes me sad because they didn't have to be like that. I used a very clinical and analytical understanding of drugs and their effects on the body and the mind to understand my own life and to make sense of it in a way that didn't lead me to project a future. That was very unpleasant for me. Yeah, I didn't like the traditional narrative that if you're a drug user, you're doomed to die in a gutter somewhere or, or be it, you know, at a trap house, whatever your equivalent doom scenario is for your drug culture.

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[00:04:14] So I'm just going to let you get to the show. In addition to the paper on drug instrumentalization slash permanent midnight. You can also look forward to these topics. Cause me and Jeff just kind of go in after the paper wraps up, we talk about it a little bit, and then we hit several other topics. Pretty hard go pretty. In-depth so happy birthday to Jeff, but we're going to talk about Jeff's romantic life.

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[00:04:43] turn off this road. People just think they can just do whatever they want. Like they own the place

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[00:04:51] Fuck you, what else we got here?

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[00:05:03] Ooh, here's a good one sugar. The other white drug,

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[00:05:11] Talk about life-changing events and some of the dangers facing women today. So yeah, it's a full podcast you're in for it. So get ready to enjoy.

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[00:05:38] Thank you guys so much for being. Or in the show, I really love making these Patrion episodes. They're my favorite. So you guys are my favorite all right. Without further ado, enjoy the show, guys. I love you. I'll talk to you soon.

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[00:00:42] I felt kind of strange because I remembered writing it and I remembered the thoughts that I had while doing it. And I remembered how I thought it appeared. And I think that it was. Different than I was then I was, uh, envisioning it at the time. So Geoff Hylton, I have here joining me today and he's going to [00:01:00] be here with me and we're going to read over this paper and talk

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[00:01:02] Did you get an emotional reaction, like a physical reaction when you read it?

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[00:01:23] and, uh, a lot of this stuff, the, the paper I thought was actually pretty good, but it was, it was kind of a cry for help disguised as. Material. Well,

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[00:01:40] Jeff Nesbitt: a way that is true. That is true with the whole world

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[00:01:45] Jeff Nesbitt: Do you remember the book permanent midnight? Did you ever read that? No, uh, I, I got real into it. I read it for college and it was about, um, Jerry. What was his name? Staller. Jerry stall [00:02:00] stall. So the Hollywood guy, yeah, he wrote, he was a writer on that show. Elf.

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[00:02:08] It's

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[00:02:26] It was a very, very emotional book. And in the end, he decides that he's going to, I think, quit doing heroin, but I don't remember if that was really the final conclusion. Anyway, I am going to read the paper and Jeff feel free to break in anytime you want, if you have comments or questions or, uh, additions, just, just go for it.

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[00:02:50] So I'm just going to go.

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[00:03:02] Marker stop music

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[00:03:07] Geoff Hylton: want to do it.

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[00:03:14] Geoff Hylton: that. I'm like, all right. In Hollywood on sixth street, I dig

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[00:03:24] Geoff Hylton: I think it's amazing. You still have that file.

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[00:03:27] Jeff Nesbitt: everything I've ever wrote.

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[00:03:35] Jeff Nesbitt: a file, but the reason I actually, okay, that's I have a caveat there. I have everything I've ever wrote. I've ever written. I'm sorry, but I have everything I've ever written, but the vast majority of it is locked on a drive that I cannot access.

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[00:04:01] I'm driving back toward Hollywood. When my car, as if of its own volition swings right up union sixth and union.

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[00:04:36] jerry stall describes his sudden urge to procure heroin after being clean for a year. This compulsive drug seeking and taking behavior is common in Jerry's story and is known to be one of the defining characteristics of drug addiction

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[00:05:09] While at other times he suggests that the events of his past, such as the untimely death of his father, Maybe driving his use at a deeper level.

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[00:05:31] The formation of drug addiction follows a somewhat predictable course, characterized by a repeated cycle of state. Those stages are preoccupation or anticipation intoxication or binge withdrawal and relay. This is from a coop and mole paper in 2001, not all who use drugs go on to become addicted.

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[00:06:02] Geoff Hylton: I'm sorry, is this, is this from Jerry or is this from you? This is from

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[00:06:12] um, this is just me. And so this is an academic paper. So if there's things that sound like bullshit, speak up because they need to not be bullshit. This, everything in here has to be cited and referenced and everything. So it needs to actually be real . Not, although, okay. Not all who use drugs go on to become addicted. In fact, most do not. While some continue to use drugs at increasingly productive lives.

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[00:06:39] all the older guys, I admired took vast quantities of. Of course, I can't name any of them. Now they've all gone on to take their true places. Captains of industry stalwart and substantial Republicans, whom it would not be cricket to expose as useful. That's a quote

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[00:07:15] Despite the large body of research on drug addiction, little has been reported regarding non-addictive forms of drug use,

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[00:07:30] A national survey conducted by the substance abuse and mental health services administration. In 2005, showed that of all the people classified as current alcohol drinkers, only 14.9% met the criteria for addiction. Furthermore, among the 20.4 million current users of illicit drugs, only 34.3% were estimated to qualify.

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[00:08:09] That's from cube and Creek. These effects make treatment difficult are usually long lasting. If not irreversible and place the addict at a high potential for relapse, it was proposed by Mueller and Schumann in 2011, that non-addictive drug use is a normal possibly even adaptive behavior. And that addiction is not the inevitable result, but instead represents a shift towards pathological brain.

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[00:08:59] Step one [00:09:00] is the seeking and taking of that drug to change the current mental state into a previously learned state, which then facilitates step to better performance of other previously established behaviors and better goal achievement, mental states, or modes of action guide, subjective perception, memory retrieval, and autonomic and behavioral responses.

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[00:09:41] With respect to the outcome, psychoactive drugs can be used to facilitate a shift from a current mental state to one that is more likely to lead to an effective goal management. Thank you. For example, if the goal is to get home from work by the behavior, driving a car, The [00:10:00] person can perform this behavior more effectively in an attentive state, rather than in a tired and distracted state, and may use a drug such as caffeine or amphetamine as an instrument to improve performance and ensure achievement of the desired goal.

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[00:10:27] That seems,

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[00:10:33] Jeff Nesbitt: I feel like it may be always is in that gray area. Cause they they're. So they drugs are so like emotionally stirring that is hard to pull apart and make it seem like such a, it almost feels like it's trying to separate it from that.

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[00:11:10] It's too much of a word instrumentalizing. He was instrumental in using heroin as a way to alter his mental state and make himself more socially interactive and more interested in the work that he would be rather not. This pattern of use is in stark contrast to the end of the book. After Jerry has lost his family, his home, his career, and his health, but continues to use

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[00:11:51] Much like Jerry, the average junkie begins his habit in the driver's seat. A healthy, non disordered person can make decisions about whether or not to use a [00:12:00] drug and is able to consider the benefits as well as the consequences of those decisions. Sometime later, depending on the drug and the severity of the habit, this sense of control somewhat disappears often before the user is even aware of it.

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[00:12:22] cube and Creek 2007, proposed a neuro adaptive view of the changes that occur within the brain's stress response systems and reward pathways. During the transition to drug dependence, their theory stems from the opponent process theory, Solomon and Corbett in 1974, which states that emotions work by opposing pairs, example, joy and sorrow, fear and relief.

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[00:13:08] allostasis as opposed to homeostasis is defined as the adaptive process of maintaining stability through change at cost to the organism. This occurs when an organism must vary all of the parameters of its physiological systems in order to match them appropriately with the chronic demands and establish a new set point.

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[00:13:52] So a way to understand that is like, let's say you, you really like candy. You, you eat a piece of chocolate, you get that [00:14:00] initial bump in dopamine, and then it's followed shortly after by a slight drop in dopamine. And that is just to reset your, your homeostatic measures.

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[00:14:32] However, if additional administrations of the drug are repeatedly used to retain or prolong the process and limit the B process, the organism will adapt to these new demands and transition to an alostatic reward state in which reward threshold is increased and an effective baseline falls

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[00:15:10] For example, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis or HPA. corticotropin releasing factor CNS,

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[00:15:17] Jeff Nesbitt: Chronically dysregulated, leaving the organism in a persistently stressed. Following acute withdrawal systems have not yet been restored to their proper operating range and the organism experiences, a state referred to as protracted abstinence it's from Qube and Creek 2000.

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[00:15:58] It is theoretically [00:16:00] possible to use a drug in a manner that does not cause immediate harm to the user. Okay. This is where I started getting interested. Yes. I'm trying to make my life make sense with this paragraph. Um, so , with strict self-regulate. It is theoretically possible to use a drug in a manner that does not cause immediate harm to the user.

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[00:16:41] Just kidding. I didn't put that part, for improving cognitive function, increasing alertness, combating fatigue, and improving mood at low to moderate doses. But when administered at high doses, psychostimulants produce a brief euphoric effect followed by a state of hyper arousal, restlessness anxiety, [00:17:00] declining cognitive abilities, and can even cause delusions and hallucinate.

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[00:17:26] there will be a resulting tolerance to the positive effects, which will likely lead to an escalation and consumption and a shift to an alostatic state and eventual addiction.

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[00:17:58] This is consistent [00:18:00] with the assumption that overused leads to aloe Stacy's aside from the fact that this suggestion places too much faith in people's ability to objectively evaluate their own behavior in terms of immediate and long-term rewards and consequences. It also assumes a high degree of self-control, which is not something that people in withdrawal are no.

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[00:18:37] He always made sure to get as high as he could. This exaggerated instrumentation is likely to have been a major contributing factor in his development of. As consumption is increased in both frequency and dose. The capacity of a drug for instrumentalization is eventually exceeded and no further improvement of the behavior can be achieved.

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[00:19:11] I E the death of his dog and his father when he began using drugs in his youth, uh, quote, relentless daily drug use through high school and beyond way beyond was my way of not finding out. Another quote, the whole point of drugs is to keep you from thinking the dead, stay buried along with all their ugly artifacts and quote.

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[00:19:52] Forget about being cool. I forget about being underground. It was a way of staying ashamed and quote [00:20:00] abuse at a young age, likely altered his emotional and psychological development and laid the foundation for the addiction that would develop in the years to come.

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[00:20:31] And quote, Jerry's perceived need for continuous emotional blunting paired with his unlimited access to drugs, led him into an extreme spiral of addiction. Although it is theoretically possible to use drugs in a non-addictive way. The road to addiction is a slippery slope. The wide variation in personality experiences and genetics make it difficult to say who is capable of maintaining a habit of drug instrumentalization and who is not.

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[00:21:15] Since these evaluations are considered to be prerequisite to proper instrumentalization it is important to know what conditions make accurate evaluations more or less likely, and whether or not a person in early stages of addiction is able to make these evaluations.

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[00:21:47] So if you made it through that, thank you. I appreciate it. It was a lot. , but yeah, I just it's, I, I think that's super interesting. I wrote that. And now when I look at some of those things, I like, I [00:22:00] can feel emotions tied to some of these sections where I was literally just trying to make my life make sense to me.

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[00:22:09] Geoff Hylton: quite a bit. I just curious. What'd you get on the paper? Oh, I got

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[00:22:14] Geoff Hylton: Yeah, there was one.

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[00:22:39] You can use them to. Get you through the day or you can use them to block out the world I mean, it's usually one or the other, but it doesn't have to be. I dunno. What do you, what did you think?

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[00:22:55] Cause some of that stuff, it was hitting a little too close to home. I didn't want to, uh, I [00:23:00] didn't want to reflect on my, my drug use at this period of time. So I kind of. I tried thinking out side of myself and that was hard to do.

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[00:23:21] Like I was using drugs at this time for everything I was using them to get through school. I was using them to get through social activities. Always using drugs for something, but also really it, it caused me a great deal of stress. And I, I hated myself for it. Like I felt horrible about who I was as a person.

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[00:23:47] Geoff Hylton: Do you think just the fact that you're using drug, like at the time made you a piece of shit? That's what I felt because you weren't like doing anything that was piece of shit worthy,

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[00:23:55] I mean,

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[00:24:04] Jeff Nesbitt: it was just. Yeah, I don't know. I just want to go back in time and give him a hug. He's was like, dude, everything's fine. Chill the fuck out there. Take your drugs and enjoy them. You're going to be fine.

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[00:24:21] Geoff Hylton: Maybe if you didn't have that mindset, then you would have been a full blown addict going to be. That was the, the, the emotion that kept you regulated. Somebody who didn't, who wasn't thinking like that, because I know like I'm at that stage now where I'm at, like at that stage.[00:00:00] Jeff Nesbitt: All right, you free loaders. That's all you get. Somebody's got to pay the bills.

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[00:00:17] Somebody's got to pay the bills and these ramble on the road episodes are for the Patrion subscribers. So I put out a little, just a little teaser, a little tidbit just to get you interested. But if you want the whole shebang, you got to pay the price and it's pretty affordable. So head on over to patrion.com/ramble by the river or ramble by the river.com and click the subscribe link at the top of the.

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[00:00:46] These Patrion episodes are a lot of fun. So please enjoy. Don't forget to like subscribe, share on social media, all that good stuff. And as always have a wonderful day. Thank you guys for listening. I really do appreciate it.

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[00:01:05] There's another free episode coming out later this week, episode 69, farting through silk part two with mood Smith. So you have that to look forward to that should be out before Friday. Yeah. You guys have a great week and a happy birthday to Jeff Hilton. All right, guys. Thanks again. Bye. Bye.