One of the last Carnivals of All Substances

Ya' gotta' love it. I took these pictures (well, not the strawberries*) in the stairwell of a Winston Towers condo building in Miami Beach, median age resident 62, maybe higher. Yet there's a revolution going on. Can you imagine the condo association meetings? Someone plastered those signs from the 24th floor on down to the lobby.

This was going to be, and probably is the last carnival of all substances. Most of the submissions are either selling something like Hoodia Gordoni, botox, HGH, a new sleeping aid, or vitamins. Or they extol the benefits of herbs, organics, and alternative life styles.
Frankly, we were reaching here for recovery stories, the kind that make a person stop and think.

And I'm just not getting any of those. I did a little reach out to my buddies at the 12-Step blogs, asking for some help, but only got a couple of nibbles.

So it's time to move on for now. There's still Obsession! a blog carnival due to post at the end of January for those of you with obsessive thoughts, compulsions, or children.

One last time, let's go in the order received.

Tracee Sioux is still ranting against smoking. We're putting you on the board, Tracee.

And Erin, at What Winners Do, one of my favorite recovery bloggers, asks the proverbial question, is a jones for a substance an addiction or a mental disorder of those weak of will? We therapydocs usually hold by two diagnoses, dependency and abuse, but You might like to read this.

There's something about tea drinkers, Southern tea drinkers specifically, that makes me just want to brew up a pot and mix it with tons of sugar and sip it through a slice of lemon. Read about that side of the Mason Dixon line in A Public Diet.

Dr. Hal chimes in thinking he can rewire your urges to smoke and drink (everything's got to be rewired, you know, since Tim Allen of Home Improvement got us all started.)

Blue Skelton Productions warns us not to watch the movie Smiley Face about a pothead. She shows the trailer and it really does make pot smoking look very sad, indeed. So maybe that's a good thing. Surely it's cringe, but some people like cringe.

Stop Drinking Advice.Org tells us to meditate AND use CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) to stop drinking. I'll tell you right now, though. You don't meditate AND do CBT at the same time. That's for sure. They do not mix.

Wellness Junction tells us NOT to go into McDonalds if it's the Big Mac attack that drives your compulsion for Pure Junk. She's got something in the post about an "accountability partner" that sounds interesting.

Karen at the Bilerico Project, an LGBT awareness/rights blog informs us that meth, MSM (men who have sex with men) and HIV all vary together in a study of Californians. That's a scary thought. I'm having my research methods class take a critical look at this.

Carol Bentley who writes copy can't lie about the products she recommends. Well, she can, but it doesn't usually come out authentic. She's serious about a particular chocolate that's supposed to be good for you. I just report the news, folks, I don't do the research, so take it with a grain of salt. Or would you say, a glass of milk.

Rita's path to fitness is exercise. Just move, she says. Like I said earlier, this is not a fitness blog per se, so I shouldn't have considered this post for today's carnival, but exercise does raise endorphin levels, so I gave it a little lee-way.

HOWEVER. This is it. The Carnival of All Substances is hereby on on hiatus. Too many off-topic submissions, too little patience on my part.

*But just out of curiosity, do you think that strawberries really can cure cancer?

therapydoc

I Did it for You

The kids came over for lasagna the other night and Cham said, "Mom, you're really misleading people on your blog! If they knew you, then they wouldn't think that you have bad eating habits!"

She's talking about those of you who gave me advice (One Piece of Chocolate) about how to avoid the chocolates that my colleague, Not So Serious Doc, keeps in a bowl in the office next to mine. (They're Hersheys Nuggets for crying out loud.)

Serious and I share a suite and I'm there all the time getting free therapy.

How could I resist a huge bowl of chocolates? Especially the ones with the bits of toffee. Who notices a single piece that's missing when there's an entire bowl left to choose from, anyway?!

But Cham, what I didn't tell you is that I'm actually trying out reader suggestions. I bought a big bag of pretzels at Jewel just the other day. Not the kind with the honey and mustard, either. I'm going for filler, not flavor. I realized that the reason the chocolates beckoned me from the next room, when ordinarily they would not, was that I was, in a word, hungry.

And it's the fault of my patients that I've been hungry. Indirectly, it's their (your) fault, and not because I'm not paid enough to afford food.

Here's the story.

I used to be a normal person and ate sandwiches. I would skip breakfast (go ahead, beat me up for skipping breakfast, tell me again how it's the MOST IMPORTANT meal of the day). But I'd make a really great sandwich for later on, and didn't care in the least if the office had a faint odor of onions, mushrooms, garlic, and green pepper in an omelet that lovingly fondled the salad in a pita. Every creation had something new, maybe a tomato, maybe a little avocado.

The better, grainier loaves of bread at the grocery store had to be tested. Anything could find it's way into my sandwiches as long as it was kosher* and hadn't once been part of a mammal.

Even Swiss cheese, but especially muenster. And since it would be my only meal of the day, I didn't worry at all about calories. I'd linger over the sandwich sequestered in a drawer or a brown bag, stealing a few huge bites between patients. I'd only devour it all at once when I was really hungry. But generally brunch would be history by 1:00 pm.

And it was a good life.

Then one day I noticed I was dozing off on the job. I mean, there would be moments when I couldn't keep my eyes open! I'd have to nap between patients, literally lie down on the sofa. Maybe it was me getting older, maybe it was stress. But patients noticed, for sure they did! And I was embarrassed that it was obviously a strain, keeping the lids over the baby blues propped up.

I could retain what people said, meaning I could repeat back, and I'm skilled enough to still do the therapy literally in Stage I sleep, but it was terrible!

This went on a few weeks before I knew what had to give. The food. Without food I'd have no problem staying alert. Maybe it's the opposite for most people, but it is this way with me. So I changed my eating habits, saved the big meal of the day for the evening, and haven't looked back.

And for the most part, not eating during work hours has worked out just fine. I bring grapes to the office, and some dried fruit. An apple in season is divine. The thought of eating candy was never something in my dietary scheme. Oh, maybe a sliver of good chocolate cake, but not candy.

I stay awake now, and will add a few pretzels to the mix, see how that works out.

So friends. When you ask me how I got myself into this predicament, this problem of choosing to eat or not to eat the candy, I have to tell you. It would never have tempted me in the old days, but it tempts me now that I've given up real food.

And if you were to ask me why I did that?

I would have to say, I did it for you.



therapydoc

*kosher is a very complicated subject, and I couldn't possibly begin to tell over all of the rules. For our purposes it would mean no reptiles or crawly things, shell fish or most birds that fly in the sky, certain fish, and pork. Most meat requires all kinds of attention and special treatment, and even vegetables and fruits (especially if there might be a worm or another bug feasting upon them) can be a problem in the land of Israel if you're Jewish. Also, non-Jewish wine, cheese, leavened products during Passover and those owned by Jews during Passover, after it passes over. . ."new grain" products. Things made in vessels that have contained or been used to cook non-kosher food. Oh, and mixing milk and meat is out. For all intents and purposes, Jews should be the skinniest people on earth. :)

What's this?

These aren't that great (the pics, that is, the candy's just fine).







I had wanted to upload them for yesterday's post about me teaching high school A P Psychology (you'd have to read the one below this to understand the connection between candy and teaching psychology.) But I had some trouble.

So here you go, just a taste.

And one correction:

The business name might be FANSTASIA chocolates. The nuts are from ILLINOIS NUT. Whatever. Better pics will be up on Sunday along with the Carnival of All Substances.

Chocolate, you see, is a substance.

See you there!

therapydoc