Having experienced more than enough suicides in my life I really do feel for the family. Those in grief can't help but feel guilty and you always wonder if you could have done something earlier to prevent it.

Mental health is a disease that is only really starting to get the recognition it deserves, and one could argue a lack of media in the past is one of the reasons we have been so slow to act.

I did 10 years in the Cops and never once spoke to a mental health professional, even after my boss hung himself and I was on duty when it happened. I was always surprised I had to be tested each year to carry a firearm yet no checks were done on my mental health to use the thing.

All I can hope are cases like this are used in a way to encourage those with the illness to reach out for help.

Great thread, all humans have a unique individual story, and it is important to listen and hear others.

I have a long story, but the short version is 10 years in the Cops, left 2 years ago, moved to the country, suffer from PTSD and anxiety, became unemployed, struggled with loss of identity and connections from the Police. I quickly found myself in a pretty dark hole, nothing seemed to matter, I had lost all sense of purpose, nothing excited me, and I was at the lowest point I had been in my life.

I sat with my thoughts wondering how it came to this, as a teenager I took any job, did anything, spoke to anyone and was full of life without a care in the world. Fast forward 25 years and I was a grown man awake in the middle of the night wondering why my brain was torturing me. I read plenty of self-help books, reached out for help but nothing really worked.

Thankfully, over time things have gotten a lot better. If I reflect on what is different, the main thing is I found something to do, I was lucky to get part time work I enjoy. I had always enjoyed photography and decided to pursue that even more regardless if it made me any money. Once I became busy, started helping others and felt like I was contributing the chatter in the head faded, time has healed my wounds regarding the Police, and I can say I am excited about what is ahead.

It appears for me the medicine is being busy, focused and having a feeling of purpose. I truly hope everyone who is struggling can get the help they need, and I wish you all the best going forward.

This must be how Wallaby supporters feel.

I have very fond memories of staying at my grandparents house when the All Blacks were playing in the UK. I would sleep on the couch in the lounge, my grandmother would set an alarm, get up, wake me up, put on the TV and then pretend to be interested in the Rugby. She is long dead now but credit to her for letting a young bloke watch his idols in the middle of the night.

I was in the Police for many years. I remember one bloke, heavy meth user, broke into 30+ houses, in and out of Jail. He got out and disappeared off our radar, I thought he must have moved or died.

About 6 months later I run into him at the Supermarket. He has work boots, pants etc on and looked completely different. He spotted me and I made small talk with him. I Said "haven't seen you around" He said, "I'm too bloody tired after work to break into houses."

So after hours upon hours chasing him, going to court, years in jail. All he needed was a job.

I honestly believe the key to reducing offending is education, employment, strong family and social connections.

All the dependent drug users I engaged with couldn't have cared less about its legality. That made no difference whatsoever.

I am all for legalisation, if you want to reduce the harms of drugs you need to give people a reason not to become dependent on them in the first place. Plenty of people use alcohol responsibly and cannabis would be no different.

So true it's scary.

@Godder said in Happiness Scale:

My personal rules for maintaining some semblance of happiness:

1. Don't sweat the small stuff
2. Don't worry about the stuff you can't control
3. You don't have to keep up with the Joneses
4. Don't let the bastards grind you down.
   5. Masturbate as required.

I like QT, he needs more time at this level.

Also need to spare a thought for the poor Police that have to attend that scene to gather evidence, I couldn't even imagine how they would deal with that. I realise they are professionals but they are human too.

@kiwiwomble said in Coronavirus - Overall:

@anonymous said in Coronavirus - Overall:

virulent

i assumed @chimoaus was trying to say more contagious but less harmful

Lol I clearly fucked that up, thanks for the correction.

Looks like Omni might be a good thing if it is more contagious but less harmful, good way to top up our immune systems and will help the antivaxers get some immunity to more harmful variants.

@nostrildamus said in Pleasure and Pain Balance:

I'm afraid games are typically designed to fed addictive and compulsive behaviours. I have a doctor friend overseas who said he himself has an addictive/obsessive personality and the only solution for him is to avoid them entirely.
Me as well, but luckily I get bored quickly.

They do say if you have addicts in your family you have a far greater risk of becoming an addict also. I can vouch for this personally.

@machpants Fuck that makes us look even worse, what are our analysts doing if this bloke can make it look so simple.

@taniwharugby The woman in the podcast references gaming addiction a fair bit and has it in her book also. It's fucken tough because gaming is so much fun for the user and when they game with mates it has that extra layer.

I envy those that can play casually and then put it down and do other things. I guess an alcoholic feels the same way about alcohol.

What I find interesting is why some of us become addicted to certain things and not others. Or why some people can do the exact same thing and not get addicted. Plenty of social drug users never get addicted.

I think a lot of the time the behaviour is masking some other trauma or thing we are trying to escape. The addiction gives us some relief at the time but eventually it just gets worse.

@nzzp Thanks, it resonated with me as it rang very true. I have a gaming addiction where I can get lost playing games and when I am down that rabbit hole, I find it very hard to enjoy other things, I just want to go back to playing games. My wife told me I have an addiction and I laughed her off and got defensive etc.

That was 12 years ago, and I am now in a good place where I have deleted all the games from my PC and Phone and find only abstinence works for me. As soon as I start playing, I fall into the same old patterns.

I thought addiction was for substances such as drugs and alcohol and I didn't really consider other behaviours such as food, gaming, social media and sex as real addictions. But they work in the exact same way in that we are forever chasing that high and we feel awful when not engaging in that behaviour.

Like everything in life, it's about balance, but this balance is hard to achieve when we are surrounded by pleasure enticing substances and behaviours.

@rancid-schnitzel 100% agree, I think working towards any tough goal that takes effort and is challenging always feels good when you reach it.

There is a real paradox that we have a mental health crisis when we have the highest standard of living ever. It kind of makes sense in this pleasure/pain paradigm as we have literally removed every possible obstacle in our way to make things as easy and pleasurable as possible.

It is no wonder many people are miserable as we are all in dopamine deficits just by the way we have engineered our lives.

I believe lots of exercise and having a creative outlet to challenge ourselves is key to achieving a more balanced life.

I wonder how many posts we can get before we talk about the original post lol.

I recently listened to a wonderful podcast about addiction, pleasure, and pain. The crux of it was that pleasure and pain (not necessarily physical) are found in the same part of the brain and they have to be equal or in homeostasis.

If you experience pleasure you have to experience some sort of pain/low to get back into balance. The more pleasure you seek/experience the bigger the downs, cravings, and feelings of depression etc.

The trouble is we are in a time of abundance and many of us are addicted to some sort of pleasure giving activity. If we get too much pleasure, we start to lose the ability to find joy in other things.

It is all related to dopamine which the brain releases as a reward to get you to do the activity again. But if we get too much dopamine, we go into a dopamine deficit to get us back to homeostasis.

Think about when you see a trigger for your addiction, you get a spike of dopamine in anticipation of the reward immediately followed by a deficit which is the craving, you feel slightly agitated until you get the thing and get your dopamine hit.

And this is the trouble with addiction, we end up in a really big dopamine deficit and as soon as we stop doing our addiction, we feel bloody terrible.

The upside is abstaining from pleasure/addiction will eventually reset your balance and allow you to find pleasure elsewhere.

Basically, we should purposely be doing things that are difficult such as exercise, working out problems, walking and just spending time off our pleasure giving devices as this puts us into the negative and we have to feel good to get us back to balance. Thoughts?

This is the podcast I listened too, found it very interesting.

admin  /  Aug 23  /  Podcast

Are We All Addicts? Anna Lembke, MD On Our Dopamine Nation

Rich Roll sits down with psychiatrist & Stanford professor Dr. Anna Lembke to discuss the neuroscience of modern addiction, dopamine fasting, & more.

Damn, So we could have had Quade playing for the ABs if he had just waited a bit longer.