Discovering The Junkie Inside Me

Last night, after commiserating with a friend about my new job and the shitty day I had, I sat down and re-examined my life. I'm prone to do this quite often because I'm the first one to say that if someone isn't happy, make a change. I practice what I preach.

About a month ago, I got a job with Specialities Cafe as a low-level manager. WAAAAAAY low-level. It's not a bad job and it fit the criteria I had at the time: there's a regular paycheck. It really is a good company that does a lot for it's employees. It asks for a lot in return, which mostly consists of running your ass off every second to tend to the thousands of mandated details they have for every single fucking process. It's a typical corporate job and as such, even my supervisors can't meet the corporation's expectations. If they did, I wouldn't have been there until 8pm with the Regional Manager to close up shop during my training days. (You are expected to walk out the door half an hour after closing which is IMPOSSIBLE.)

In other words, the employees are constantly in crisis mode. Oh wait, allow me to personalize that.

I am constantly in crisis mode.

Bingo. Now I know where my frustration originates.

Ever since the time I was about ten or eleven, my family was constantly in crisis. Every six months we were moving. Without going into the sordid details, let me just say that I learned to survive, not how to thrive. When a person is subjected to chronic stress like that, if forms life-long patterns. In other words, one becomes a junkie for stress. Like a junkie, a person like myself will subconsciously seek out toxic situations that give us our stress fix, even if it is detrimental to our well-being and/or relationships with others.

The mechanics of the situation is that the brain produces biochemicals that affect our emotional state. Given enough regular exposure to these biochemicals, a person can become addicted to a particular state, which could be productive or detrimental. Take exercise, for example. You've all heard of  "runner's high", when the "feel-good" biochemicals called endorphins kick in. When you say things like "What's that idiot doing running in this awful weather?" you've probably identified an exercise junkie who craves that endorphin high and will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means going cross-country in minus-10F weather.

The upside is that I - and people like myself -  are not necessarily doomed by our past. With honest and courageous introspection, one can come to understand the source of discontent and treat the disease. Thankfully, I'm a terrible liar, even to myself. I just gotta know why I do the numbskull things that I do.

I noticed while I was going through my day that I had trouble walking. (By the way, yesterday was a day from hell where literally every single thing I did just exploded in my face) I listed. I stumbled. I found trouble forming my words at times and was confused. Just. Like. A. Drunk. Why do I say that? Because that's the unscientific identification of the symptoms of stress. In alcoholic circles, it's called a "dry drunk". I hadn't consumed any alcohol or drugs. I was drunk with stress via crisis and I created it for myself by obtaining an employment situation that fit all the criteria I needed in order to feel that way. I worked fuckin' hard for that moment!

This is called taking responsibility. I did it to myself. I was relaxed and had a super-low level of stress running the hotel in Idaho. After four months, I told myself that I was ready to come back to Seattle and conquer the world. What I was doing, in actuality, was preparing myself for yesterday, my self-created disaster.

Um, you can always find hints to what's going on with yourself if you listen to the things you say. At Specialites, you receive a really cool metal key fob as an anniversary present that shows how many years of service you've put in with the company. When my supervisor showed me his, I laughed. (When he showed me his key fob, you sickos.) I said, "So, this is your version of an AA coin, eh?" Everyone in the office laughed heartily. Now, when I look back on that conversation, I realize the laugh really was on me.

As any good drone from Alcoholics Anonymous will tell you, admitting that you are powerless is the first step towards recovery. Well, I'm not powerless.