Tag: addiction

A Momentary Coffee

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Have you ever got to the end of your coffee and realised you want more. That the desire you had for coffee hasn’t been satiated and you’re not satisfied. As you delve deeper into the thoughts of the moment, that you can actually barely remember drinking the coffee at all. If that is the case there’s a good chance you were also doing something else while drinking the coffee. Perhaps working on your laptop. Maybe drinking your coffee on a long road trip. Or even grabbing a quick sip while doing some gardening. Busy to such an extent we didn’t give even a momentary awareness to the thing we desired, merely hoping to absorb it’s energy induced benefits.

It can’t just be the need to fill the caffeine addicted desire that makes us crave the cup, there must be something else involved like experiencing the taste and the sensations that consuming it provide. If you drink your coffee while completing whatever task you are fulfilling then this lack of focus and awareness of the act of enjoying and appreciating the coffee will be missed and arguably while it may be in your body, you may as well have not even drunk the coffee at all.

You forgot to enjoy the moment you very nearly created, this lack of presence denies existence itself. I’ll have another please.

We live in a world that moves at such speeds that we often don’t allow ourselves the necessary pleasure of just stopping and taking that five minutes to really observe the coffee and appreciate the satiating joy it can provide. So busy we don’t even have five minutes. But we always have five minutes, no one is truly that busy. We just didn’t notice that we wasted that five minutes robotically doing something else. Facebook perhaps.

In the past when I smoked I would have similar realisations. You crave a cigarette but you desire the whole experience not just the nicotine. I would sometimes roll one ‘for the walk’ but while there was a different satisfaction from that version, you still ended up fancying another upon arrival at the destination. There was something that hadn’t been entirely fulfilling about that version of the cigarette, just as there is something lacking from the coffee you forget you’re drinking.

We are so full of distractions. Perhaps we can use things like coffee or cigarettes, both together even, to use as markers to just take that five minutes to bring awareness to our surroundings, thoughts and the moment we’re experiencing. Just five minutes, just the length of time it takes to drink the coffee. There’s thousands of years of wisdom on being present, it can’t all be worthless now we have smart phones.

So Very Thirsty These Days

Hamar Williams1 Comment

I think I’m evolving into one of those people who drinks a little every evening after work. Socially acceptable middle class alcoholism or something like that. When I get in from making pizzas I really enjoy a couple of beers. I takes the edge off lets say. Thankfully I only make pizzas three days a week but I’m aware of that craving for a drink and how much of a habit it becomes to feel it and then satiate it. Saying that in the grand scheme of things I’m probably drinking less over all than if I went to the pub and had a drinking session. Admittedly these don’t really seem to happen a great deal anymore but still the point remains.

Why do I feel like it’s something I shouldn’t be doing then. Is drinking two or three beers on my own when I get in somehow socially unacceptable now. Should I be ashamed of doing this. Why do I feel I need to be sneaky about it, although I’m obviously not, there’s certainly something that makes me want to keep it hidden. Have societies pressures finally got to me. If I had a girlfriend or flat mate it would be acceptable to come back and have a couple of drinks, so being a solitary drinker of two drinks is the issue. I genuinely don’t know what makes me feel like this is something I shouldn’t be doing. I used to be wild – says every thirty-four year old ever – and now I’m experiencing these thoughts and emotions about something so normal. Strange times.

But it would be wrong to mention this desire for a drink without raising awareness of addiction. In this case sugar addiction. I’m not saying alcoholism isn’t a very real thing but having observed that feeling of desire and necessity I have noticed that sometimes I crave alcohol in times when I’m also craving something sweet. If I give up the sugar for a week lets say, I very quickly lose interest in having a drink and it is undeniable the two are related. Anyone who has ever said “Oh I really needed that” after taking that first large gulp of their pint is feeding some addiction somewhere and it would be foolish to deny the existence of sugar in beer. People know and acknowledge the issue with sugar in alcoholic drinks but rarely do they seem to relate the connection between sugar addiction and alcohol consumption. Let’s see how this evolves in these changing times.

New Years Resolutions

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Happy New Year, it’s another year and another decade. The imagery of 2020 alone should get people excited. I’m also a day late but I wanted to talk about something else yesterday and prefer doing things my own way anyway. I hope people are more excited about the prospect of a new year than the horror of a new year – are we excited to leave the grim realities of 2019 behind us or terrified of their continuation. It’s been a good year so far politically as Scott from Marketing has been berated and run out of town for his disdain for and inactivity helping victims of the bushfires in Australia. Still no link with or acknowledgment that climate change may be connected or even a real thing as his bosses in the mining industry instructed him. There was a great moment in the video where he tries to shake hands with a woman who refuses so he grabs her hand and shakes it as the cameras start snapping away. We live in a truly corrupt world. I’m looking forward to Boris from Events similarly being run out of town somewhere over here in the next six to twelve months.

My plan for today was to talk about New Year Resolutions but as you can see from above I’ve already digressed and used up half my word count in the process. I had a small rant the other day about this particular topic and while I stand by it, I also stand by the fact this is a grey area and many people find credible benefits from such actions. It’s just a shame there’s so many others out there inspiring vomit instead.

I suspect I will have four resolutions this year. I’m not sure if that is too many or not enough as this is my first time and a new experience. None of them are that ground breaking either but then I’m not unique and I imagine if you break down all resolutions they’re all roughly the same thing.

Firstly like everyone else who feels like shit after Christmas I’m going to get fit. I have been putting it off for a while as I’m still nursing an old jiu jitsu injury. Sounds heroic until I admit I hurt my shoulder doing a forward roll in the warm up of the one class I attended. I will go back to this and also do some yoga. I love telling people I am yoga teacher because I once did a month long training course in India but all that makes me is a cliche. It does mean I am capable of practising on my own though so have little excuse for not especially when I understand it’s benefits. It’s the mornings I struggle with but apparently that gets easier with practise. Perhaps I can use some of the discipline required to do this each day. I’m only thirty-four and feel sore, more than I should at this age.

This links in with resolution number two which is to sort my diet out. I was discussing with a cousin over Christmas about joint pains and she was suggesting that cutting gluten out has reduced these pains in people she knows. I’m not suggesting I’m going to dive into some kind of gluten intolerance hysteria but it does show how important diet can be for overall physical health. How energised we feel, physical recovery, overall health – diet plays a role in all of this, just as exercise does of course. There is no golden rule for all with diet, something people always seem to miss the point of, but it is important to discover what really works for us.

One thing that sometimes prevents me from making the most of my time is that like many people the world over I’m suffering from addictions. In regards diet, certainly consumption of sugar needs addressing but for resolution number three it is time I addressed the procrastinating opportunities social media and constant access to online nonsense through my phone has. In mornings I don’t often do yoga or get started properly with my day because I spend an hour checking out whats going on in the world of football – a soap opera for men – and I apologise for the gender stereotyping but it’s a stereotype for a reason. Phones allow for procrastination and we waste so much time in the day as a result. There have been times in the past that I have intentionally gone the full day without using technology, and by evening I have run out of things to do I have been so busy. Like giving up smoking I will use the approach that when I immediately think of going online for no other reason than habit and addiction, I will give it five minutes and then if I still want to I will. It works with cigarettes, why not with other addictions too.

And finally I resolve to make something decent out of this blog. I doubt I’ve done over sixty posts yet which means I have over three hundred to go. It is daunting but also shows how much opportunity for learning and practise is still ahead. Doing this every day will always give opportunity for fluff days in which I have little time or am hungover but to make the most of it means I really need to be strict and mentally disciplined, try new things and push myself. Today I read an interesting article in the Guardian by Max Rushden on Bobby Madley, just as I had written yesterday about him. It was better researched and partly as a result better written. It was interesting to see and very useful to be able to compare the two, there are always opportunities to learn if we’re willing. I also want to step back to some of my original intentions such as answering philosophical questions from my Philosophy Now magazines which I haven’t even attempted, poetry or something similarly creative which I haven’t even contemplated and I just thought yesterday that maybe I should try a book review, so theres one of those coming when I finish my current book on how to utilise fear. These things are not always possible when limiting yourself to a small word count of four to five hundred, and while that has it’s benefits there is always scope for flexibility. Seeing as this piece is over one thousand words, and the only one over six hundred so far I am clearly happy to break my own rules.

It is clear to say that there was nothing really groundbreaking in any of my resolutions, but then there never are with these kinds of things. I also had to rush through them without any real details but it gives you the gist and the point as previously mentioned is to allow people the opportunity to realise there are many others out there struggling with the same things. Hopefully to know we are not alone gives a certain strength of resolve. I also just realised that resolutions means to find new solutions and resolve to find new ways to solve – in this case how we approach and live our lives. We are forever attempting to solve the riddle of life – these new solutions for a new year.

Coffee

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The time is 17.09 and I’m drinking a coffee. I enjoy coffee, sometimes I really enjoy it and most days it’s the thing that quietens the screams, makes me feel normal again and allows me to start the day. One liberating moment in life is the one in which your ego gets kicked in the balls as you realise you are not unique, there is with certainty at least one other human being, most likely about one billion, that does, thinks or enjoys the same things as you. In the instance of my relation to coffee the one billion number seems inadequate, because – standing up in the circle – I am an addict. What is interesting with this though is that circle contains over seven billion people because I guarantee there is not one person on earth who is not addicted to something, whether that is coffee, heroin, sugar, running or self-deprecation, everyone out there has that something that makes them feel normal again.

Of course I suspect I know little about addiction in general and mean not to offend as this is understandably an emotive topic, but I have my own observations of myself and although that is only one reality, it is not always easy to go on anything else. There have been times when I have had addictions to cigarettes and considering the fact I crave them for a moment as I think about this it is perhaps the case that addictions never really leave you. Renton certainly said something along those lines about heroin. Then there have been times that I’ve just needed a beer but I wouldn’t say I’m an alcoholic. Part of that necessity was possibly the sugar in the beer or dehydration, but it could very easily have been the habit of consuming that beer be that after work or by the beach on a hot day.

A friend of mine goes to the pub most afternoons and drinks three or four pints but he very rarely drinks anywhere else. He told me once that having grown up with parents running numerous pubs it was more the environment he was going for than the alcohol. After spending a month hanging out with him, it became clear that this repetition was habitual as much as anything else. If changing environment changes habits and is recognised as a way to get over certain addictions, then there must be a link. Is addiction nothing more than habit, our habitual response to a perceived need in the moment.

Perhaps this is common knowledge and I’m just catching up. Perhaps I’m oversimplifying a complex issue. But perhaps we should start focusing more on our habitual responses and we won’t simply find a new thing to be addicted to every time we overcome the other.