Change the Cage

"It's not the drug, it's the cage."

I was watching Bill Maher the other day, there was this person on the show (I can't find their name) who had just written a book about how addiction may or may not work, reconsiderations of how addiction works, and he said something interesting: "It's not the drug, it's the cage."

The person was saying how, in studies on rats, where rats were tested if they would do unlimited amounts of drugs if given the choice (empty cage, the rat has two water sources, one with just water, one with water and heroin--the rat will always choose the heroin option), a recent group of scientists found that the test was absolutely bogus, it was a false dilemma test, one that when rethought with a rational option for the rat, revealed something quite interesting: the rat doesn't choose the drug if there are options for a happy life available. If you gave the rat two water bottles, one with water, one with heroin, but also put him in a cage where he could have sex, eat healthy food, get exercise, play with toys, receive affection, the rat did not do the heroin. If given the choice between no life and a life with heroin, the heroin is still seen as something other than no life, or a way to numb the pain of no life, but give the rat a chance to enjoy their life, a meaningful and loving life, the type of life a rat should live, they don't choose the drug.

This bit on the show cut me very deeply because it felt like a huge part of the puzzle for what I am battling with these days, as far as my food, weight, and health issues are going, which is poorly. I often find myself wondering how, in the past, I lost 83 pounds once, and 147 pounds another time, eating what felt like what I wanted to eat, though never consumed with eating and eating and eating, and how I wonder why (or how) there are people out there who all they do is become Vegan and they just melt pounds (which I am not doing now--melting weight that is), or as long as they are Vegan it seems like they can drink and do drugs and eat what they want and they don't gain weight. I heard this point on the show and it made sense to me because while I know there are things I'm not doing right with my diet, with my life, and I feel like I am in the process and called to make lots of changes lately, I just don't know how I got here in Boston at 258 pounds and less then three years later I am pushing 340 pounds, my second highest weight ever, with what feels like no control to put on the breaks.

I'm done blaming food for my problems. When I first left my (now) ex-wife, landed in Portland (ME) I drank wine, I ate 1/2 box of pasta, sauce with olives and olive oil, lots of bread, I had biscuits with pre-packaged gravy, grits, corn bread, greasy Drunken Noodles with soy meat, steamed buns and tofu with curry sauce on a regular basis. I only gained 12 pounds in 2 years, and my weight was constantly diving down between 250 and 258 based on my work schedule and Yoga access. I was eating a lot, sleeping less, drinking a lot and I wasn't gaining weight. How did I eat and drink that much back then, not gain weight, and now I don't drink, I eat just as much, I'm not doing Yoga but my job has me more active than my last one, and I am just ballooning up, and then when I do feel stressed I absolutely BINGE eat? I would still binge eat in Portland as well, on days when work was stressful but I didn't gain weight.

I have been thinking lately that something about this life is so wrong for who I am, for what I need to live and be healthy, maybe that's the feeling that changes MUST occur (and are occurring), that my body is saying this cage is not healthy for me anymore and I need to find a happier cage.

Now, I'm not talking about packing my things, leaving my cats and wife, and vanishing out in the world in search for the True Self. I don't feel like my wife or my cats are part of the problem and I cannot imagine facing myself if I abandoned them, or set that part of my life on fire, just because I need to change things. The urge is sometimes there, but the urge is because that's how I witnessed my mother set things in gear when she needed a change, it's how I set things in gear in the past when I needed to change things, but I know that "urge" is a learned behavior, it will only bring people misery, bring me misery, and I'm not looking for a misery that turns into some blind, flailing change: what I need is directed and guided change. It's not enough to just jump cages, the jumping counts, but the cage you jump to must count more.

So, what is so unhappy about THIS cage right now?

When I think about how I went from 400 pounds to 233 pounds in two years, what was changing in my life that took me from UNHAPPY to happy?

When I gained all that weight over five years, I was watching my dreams of becoming a Philosophy professor die. I was living with someone I didn't want to live in who was also occasionally emotionally, psychologically, and physically abusive. I was VERY deep into things that were about death and darkness and evil (not that anything is wrong with that, for most people, but in hindsight, it felt like all of my expression was an expression of misery and death: no life). I was studying full time and working non-stop, my relationship with my mother and father had its first ending point where I stopped talking to them. Of course, I also was walking or exercising much, outside of going to work. I also was eating a lot of meat and cheese and drinking a lot of alcohol to medicate myself from the relationship and the dying of my dreams of being a philosopher. I was also in a writing program where I was being treated like shit, it was very combative, and I was trying to stay afloat and change to being a writer, while really regretting that philosophy and religion was slipping behind me.

In the Summer of 2008 I had my first affair on my ex-wife. It was with a beautiful, strange, complex poet at my writing program, and while she went back to her husband, and I went back to my wife, it ended up being a bit heartbreaking, I mourned through it, and then decided I needed some time off to figure out my life some. I quit one of my teaching jobs, which meant that I was now only teaching at one school. I taught only two days a week, 8-11, and one night a week from 6-9, but otherwise I had a lot of time off all of a sudden and I could think, and write, and read. That was the winter of 2009, and I also joined Weight Watchers, I stayed home a lot that Winter, focused on getting control over how much I was eating, lots of time writing, healing, time to think and wander and roam a bit, I was reading a lot, finally leaving philosophy behind and accepting the idea that I could write, having a very strong emotional relationship with a woman (not sexual--the sort of "lay cheating" where your emotional/romantic life is vested in another person, other than your partner) and that friendship was really supportive (but never went anywhere romantic or sexual, mind you) to me getting my shit together. I also cut a lot of dead weight from my life, people who I thought were not contributing to my happiness. In the first 3 months I lost 30 pounds, and then started using my free time to walk each day, and before you know it I had lost 100 pounds in just under 10 months, in 12 months I was down 110 and starting Yoga, in 19 months I was down nearly 150 and on my way to India, the best shape since my first attempt at being a Vegan and taking up a walking discipline back in 2000.

Now, I was counting calories mind you, but I wasn't Vegan, I was eating whatever I wanted as long as I came within points, I was sleeping a lot (a daily nap was essential), I was working less, my ex-wife and I had a plan to move down South so I could quit working and focus on writing full time, and I was indeed writing a lot. I had respect at my job, admiration of my students, I had no debts, my ex-wife was responsible for our budget and bills while I was in charge of housework and contributing only $1000 a month to our budget, and for some reason, something just sunk in, it worked, and the Yoga took over, an event occurred that showed me it was time to find a way to leave my marriage, and that was painful, but still, everything I did was working, and then of course I met my current wife, which was a dream, and I was still losing weight, and getting stronger and then somehow.... I struggled in Maine, I couldn't wait to leave there, but these days I tend to think of Maine as the "good ole days" in my relationship and life reset, and here I am in a city I love a lot , with this great new family life, great and high-paying teaching jobs (I made nearly $70,000 last year!), but something broke, something in me or in this life just broke, this cage got unpleasant to live in at some point, and now I keep hitting that damn heroin bottle (food, weight gain, poor health) and not understanding why.

It's not like I don't know how to change these things. I know about positive thinking, the Secret, Conscious Creation, and yet, it's like there's some sort of dart or arrow in me that makes it too difficult to move forward and do what I should be doing to make the changes. The toughest part, it seems, is that I don't know how to change things until this semester is over, which is mid-April, when right NOW I feel like things not only are changing, but NEED to change.

So, what can I change? What needs to be affected to make this a happy cage once again?
(Here are my thoughts on this so far)

1. I need to focus on how my thoughts work. I have become a bit of a rage addict, a part of my mother and father's personality (both, I no longer speak to) that I somehow have adopted as part of my survival mode mentality the last few years. I have developed, as a friend recently put it, "enthusiastic resentment/resentful enthusiasm" and all I seem to do is live on the wasted energy of fighting people, places, ideas, that I really don't need to fight nor change nor teach to. If I can return to that inner calm again, and learn to focus my psychic and visual energy on creating happiness and opportunities that I want to occur, then I am closer to living a less stressful life.

2. Must get out of debt. I have about $10,000 I can pay off this semester (which was the original impulse for taking on this much work), and if, when I can buckle down again and live on less, like I used to live in Maine, and my healthy days in Boston, I can look at the Summer as not stuck working so much anymore.

3. Work less, make more money. Might sound crazy, but really, I am working like CRAZY now for money that is going either to creditors or to my food addiction, so it's like I am working for nothing. With a greater mindfulness to how I spend my money and why, I can "afford" to take less jobs and thus have a lot more free time to be myself.

4. Get back to a walking practice. Granted, it's Winter, and a CRAZY one at that, but as the weather gets better and my schedule lightens up, there is no reason I cannot develop a walking practice again Realistically, I could walk home on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, take a long walk on Saturday, and that could set up for the Spring and early Summer where I start doing 7-10 mile walks each day. Eventually, that should combine again into some sort of physical discipline.

5. I could get out of this hectic race of working lots of unstable jobs and get 1 full time job again. Have the maturity to keep it and make it work for me, and then develop a life around that schedule that lets me move and be active and have more control of my eating during the day. Then again, I could maintain this adjunct life, promise myself to work no more than 12 classes a year (which would average about $40K still before taxes), promise myself to keep 3 days off each week, and develop a life that involves something else for stress reduction and passion other than eating or thinking about eating.

6. Therapy. Good, quality, Jungian therapy, some way to reflect on the last few years, make sense of them, and narrow down what this person NOW thinks is a happy life.

7. Get a hobby. Really, these days, eating is my hobby, supported by the less hobby of cooking, which is then followed by eating. Gone are the days of comic books, toys, writing, music playing, magick, video gaming, and I think that having some sort of active hobby again, something I can throw myself into, would really fill up the time where I can't think of anything better to do with my time other than eat or look for food or sit around and stress.

8. Change location. It's time to find a new community in Boston or leave Boston, but I think there is something about this area that isn't supportive for me anymore, and I need a place to live that is more supportive of being alive for me, more secure, more about developing a future that is secure, loving, happy, and fulfilling.

9. Figure out what to do with my life, no matter how absurd it may sound, and JUST FUCKING DO IT.

What I think it comes down to is:

* working less (by which I mean, more wisely)
* living more simply (by which I mean, rich with what I have)
* having a physical discipline again/moving more (by which I mean, Yoga Body and Health)
* developing a hobby (by which I mean, writing and playing an instrument)
* doing exactly with my life what I feel I want to do with my life (and now: What does that mean?)


So, this is my way to say that I now realize that it's not so much the food, the addiction, but the life: a happy life makes the addiction and the unhealthiness less attractive as a way to dwell.

I'm tired of the poison, I want the play. The best part is that, the more I want the play, the more the Universe seems to be putting the people and things into my life that will allow the play, the great and joyous life to occur. I need to let the Universe spoil me, and stop feeling guilty or resentful that happiness is my birthright.