Accidental Change

I was looking for the old high school diary entry that I was going to reference, but it became long and involved and impossible, so I thought, screw it, just move, just act.

On Saturday Patrick had a laser tag birthday party. The words 'laser tag' still instill an old knee-jerk jolt of dread in me because of the last time I tried to play, which was in high school, I think. I made it through the vest-fitting stage, barely, shaking with panic at how everything was blacklit and the actual playing stage looked darker. How I didn't know whether I'd be startled every time someone shot me and my vest vibrated. How I didn't know what the sound of the lasers would be like, whether it would be too loud. And when they released us into the arena, it turned out to be a maze. A dark, windy, smoky, strobe-light-filled maze, and there was no way, just no chance at all, that I was going into it.

That high school experience ended in my sitting down outside the arena and regretting every second of my not joining in the fun while simultaneously feeling that it was impossible - impossible! - that I would now or ever be able to do something as scary as enter a smoky, stroby, maze with dark corners and suddenly firing guns. And the contrast between then (only 8 years ago at the most) and the experience Saturday shocked the hell out of me when I sat down to think about it later.

All I felt Saturday was a vague sense of anticipation, not more than leftover neural firings from high school. When they released us into the maze I ran straight into it and started playing, and all I thought was, this is so cool, this is so cool. But not even in a, 'this is so cool, I'm so glad I can do these sorts of things now since I never could before' kind of way... just in an in-the-moment kind of way.

So none of this occurred to me until later... but later it occurred to me in the form of a ton of bricks:

I spent a lot of high school wondering when I would just... spontaneously change. When my chemistry would shift and I would stop feeling sick and anxious all the time, or when I would be able to do the normal things that normal people did and react normally, instead of inevitably ending up far removed from it and on my way to some 'safe' place somewhere. I didn't really consider that in order to change I would have to take action. I just figured a doctor would eventually find the right medicine, give it to me, and I'd suddenly be better, be normal, without having to lift a finger.

Turned out I was right.

Well, sort of. Turned out I didn't need medicine, unless you count time as medicine, which I guess it is, especially when it's carrying you further from high school (and I say that as someone who liked high school, you know, as much as I could for someone who couldn't do a lot of normal, non-scary things). I did need to thrust myself into new situations over which I had no control, no safety net. But once I was there, I didn't have to do anything. I just had to live and suffer and live and suffer and watch my worst fears come true and blossom into no big deal.

And it happened so slowly that I didn't even notice it happening. I emerged on the other side of it not even knowing that I had travelled through a tunnel, and not even knowing that I should be falling on my knees and giving thanks every time I walked into a classroom and sat in the middle, or had a sleepover with a friend, or performed in a concert, or ran whooping into a laser tag arena.

It's the most personal evidence that I have of a sea change washing up slowly. I don't know what lessons to take from it since if I tried to replicate it, I know I couldn't. All I know is I changed my surroundings, I took away my safety net, I made it impossible for myself to escape, and it just happened. It would be a long leap from this to saying that it would happen like that every time. I wouldn't feel comfortable making that leap.

Creeping Normalcy

Interesting... but actually obvious when you think about it.

The problem with putting it into play on purpose would be that it appears to work by virtue of total ignorance of its process. Note the phrase 'unnoticed increments'.

Although I'm sure a weaker version of it would make a change more palatable, even if it were on purpose. That's how most varieties of programs are generally advocated. There aren't many exercise programs out there advising beginning jazzercisers to start out with jump-splits and high kicks for an hour a day, or Buddhist monasteries insisting their new monks meditate for 20 hours a day and live on tea and bread. Are there? Maybe there are. I wouldn't know. I have no experience with being a jazzerciser except for the knowledge that that isn't a real noun, and no experience being a monk other than having lived with someone who meditated for five hours a day and went to a Buddhist university. I have experience with seeing a psychiatrist, though, during my high school years, and when they were advising me about my severe anxiety, none of them dared suggesting that I cure myself by immediately entering the school's talent show or sitting fenced in in the center of a large classroom. No, it was 'feel yourself out... go at your own pace' and 'why don't you try taking deep breaths and counting to ten' and 'maybe tomorrow you can sit one seat in from the door instead of right next to it' and 'could you maybe set a goal for next year of being able to play an obscure instrument in the school band production?'

Come to think of it, creeping normalcy never worked for me. All those suggestions fell flat. The only thing that ever worked for my anxiety was throwing myself into terrifying situations with no possible escape. Like sitting in the absolute center of the bleachers at a Shakespeare production, where the bleachers are tiny and have about an inch of escape room when everyone's sitting down, and it's considered a major faux pas to be standing and squeezing and excuse-me-ing through the crowd while Macduff is stabbing Macbeth or whatever. Or traveling to a very isolated area of a poor country where malaria and bird flu abounded and good hospitals did not (abound, that is).

But that just supports my theory (which I'm in the middle of in the 'Choice and Change' thread) about how tricking yourself into thinking you have no choice, or literally giving yourself no choice, may actually be a good thing in embarking on change.

Drug rehab programs must have recognized this. When you go to inpatient rehab (from what I've heard) you leave everything you know and are familiar with, and go to a place where you're treated as if you were at boarding school. You are accompanied everywhere... bathroom included, bedroom included. Checks at night. Body checks. Monitoring on your phone calls. No care packages. No possible way to possibly relapse. Free will plays no part in it; choice plays no part in it. That is, while you're there. Afterwards is another story.

Afterwards, choice comes flooding back in overwhelming quantities. Yes, you're supposed to keep up with a counselor and groups... but you don't have to, and it's easier not to. Yes, you're supposed to find new friends who enjoy things other than drugs... but you don't have to, and it's easier not to. Yes, you're supposed to fill your nights up with clean activities... but you don't have to, and it's easier not to. Are these choices easier or more difficult to resist after a period of such restricted choice? Do people just get used to doing what they were taught in rehab, or do they revel in their sudden freedom and relapse more easily?

I'm not sure if an enforced creeping normalcy would have higher success rates than rehab, which rarely jumps above 50%. I'm also not sure how enforced creeping normalcy would have to manifest itself. Slow replacement of (for example) drinking with other activities, one half hour at a time? Alcohol slowly becoming unavailable, out-of-place or inconvenient during these new activities? The new activities slowly becoming the norm?

Of course nobody can constrain their own freedom of choice forever, and that's why it's so difficult to sustain a new state.