THB some mental disease make one actually feel good

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Week 14

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That’s a lot of daft craftiness.

Motion: THB some mental disease make one actually feel good
Role: PM (gov.)

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The situation in mental health is not so good right now. Young people fall prey to all kinds of mental afflictions; and the message from the field is that more experts and therapists should be available to stem the tide of ADHD, depression and insomnia. There are some disease such as schizophrenia which in likelihood would never feel good among its bearers, what with the delusions, sensory overloads and voices in the head. The question goes, are there any slight or severe forms mental disease that can be enjoyable? You do not have to grab your copy of ICD-11 to join and take part in this discussion. Merely use your commonsensical point of view, please.

Alcoholism
I believe that some forms of alcoholism may be fully enjoyable. It is known that some writers write under the influence and may even produce a string of notable works that way. Cratefuls of claret or red wine 🍷 might be their go-to alcohol, but it could also be something else, as it is a bit of a cliché. Civil servants have been known to drink during the day in the 1970’s. It was the duty of their secretaries to keep outsiders at bay while they were too drunk to function socially.

The thing about alcohol is that it gives a golden or silvery lining to an otherwise grey everyday experience. If boring things may be experienced drunk, they are more tolerable. The problem is not the rush but the hangover. Over time and with age, hangovers become worse and worse. To this we must add a physique that can tolerate the carcinogenic qualities of alcohol; that bodies do not develop cancers due to the presence of alcohol in them. Successful alcoholics who can manage their hangovers have a good chance of enjoying life while inebriated.

Bipolar Disorder: Manic Nirvana
Another disease that must feel good is the flip side of the depression coin: mania. Being a maniac. When manic, a person may feel several of the following feelings: exuberance, love, megalomania, omnipotency, power tripping, rush of blood to the head and wanderlust. Those feelings are those of an overheated mind, but they would nevertheless feel good for the “sufferer”. Other typical symptoms of mania are brainwaves, desire to move about, insomnia, scant hunger and thirst for intoxicants. If a person can handle his of her manic impulses and weave a coherent fabric out of the life of a maniac, in the way some artists can handle it, the general, overarching feeling is wellbeing.

Codependency
There are several standards for codependency, but my definition would be this: a person gives just one person in his or her life 5 functional roles: that person is a best friend, family, love interest, only friend and relative. When we normally source those people from different circles, a codependent person sources them from one person.

Again, codependency could potentially be very enjoyable. I began to experiment with my GF and started calling her far more often than I would have done in the past – just for the heck of it. 3 calls a day. Sometimes I made her call me back. We could chat for an hour at a time. I felt loved, and the feeling was mutual. It was not all roses. Sometimes I got angry and argued. But the process as a whole was pleasant. Now, it could get even better. Let’s posit I was being bombarded with another female person with similar intentions and purposes. Constant calls and messaging, jealousy, reaffirmation. It could be potentially very enjoyable and I might feel the loving sentiment in it, provided that the woman in question respected my boundaries and did not overdo her attachment and attention. My hypothesis is that I would actually enjoy a codependent, overattached girlfriend.

What seems to be the case is that we have a naive, narrow, simplistic view of derangement. Mental troubles are dismissed out of hand as destructive, negative and unenjoyable. I have tried to prove that at least three of them are downright pleasant or a mixed blessing. So, the challenge of the future would seem to be such that we cannot always cure our mental disease but sometimes we do not even want to. We’re better off with them.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Alustan aiheen vaatimalla pontevuudella. Annan toverilleni mahdollisuuden jatkaa samoin suuntaviivoin ja tarjoan hänelle omaksi näkökulmaksi esimerkiksi anoreksiaa, jonka kokijat useinkin näkevät sairautensa miellyttävänä ja tavoiteltavana. II tiimin jäsenet joutuvat sitten keksimään väittelyn uudelleen ja vaihtamaan sen suuntaa jollakin tavalla. 

THW divide adults in Freudian terms for their relation to alcohol

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Week 14

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Motion: THW divide adults in Freudian terms for their relation to alcohol
Role: PM (gov.)

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Whenever we are discussing the consumption and use of alcohol in public, the negative sides tend to dominate the tenor of the discussion. Somehow talk does not progress far from the advice parents give to their kids or a sermon that a pastor delivers to the congregation about the dangers of using alcohol. Or what LDS Church missionaries say about it. Even if we develop from infants who cannot stomach alcohol to teenagers who see its allure to adults who need copious amounts of it at a banquet or on a hot summer day, the dour tone of the discussion is based on the souls who will lose their lives to that substance. If there weren’t alcohol-related deaths and disease, how would we talk about it, then?

I would guess that over 50 % of adults discover one great paradox of alcohol in their adulthood that they did not discover while they were still teenagers. It is that taking again the “poison” that almost “slew” you last night will smooth over the pain the next morning. This is called The Hair of the Dog. It means that if you caress an incurred bite of a dog with hairs from that same dog, you will feel better. It is a metaphorical way of saying that ‘alcohol cures hangovers’. And it does, in moderation. Stuntman Bam Margera has blamed musician Ville Valo for introducing him to morning drinking, or not caring about whether one drinks AM or PM, and thus exacerbating his first dormant now rampant alcoholism, but the truth is that Mr. Valo just introduced him to the time-honoured tradition of “hair of the dog”… curing the hangover in the simplest style. In the next, I am comparing how psychologist Sigmund Freud’s developmental stages correspond with the way adults perceive and use alcohol.

Oral User: Taste
If an adult is left on an oral stage, (s)he is predominantly pondering the taste of alcohol. (S)he wants to sniff the bottle, the cork, the glass and other people’s breaths the morning thereafter. The person gives overemphasised focus on the bouquet of wines and discerns aromas of citrus, dandelion, melon, tulip and vanilla in them. Other drinks receive the same kind of attention. The person may want to spit all or some of the drinks consumed out. The person values quality over quantity. But it’s all false.

Anal User: Status
Another kind of alcohol user is more interested in what kind of status a bottle of whiskey or wine enjoys in a bar or book about those drinks. It is honourable to drink expensive single-malt whiskeys and rare red wines. Even when it comes to beer, this drinker enjoys rather one bottle of £20 ale than 4 x £5 beers in a row in good company. Alcohol is measured by money and rarity by people who have that persuasion. But it’s all false.

Latent User: Abstinence
The latent user does not use alcohol at all. If (s)he has to drink something as part of a larger company to celebrate something, (s)he would choose a non-alcoholic ersatz drink, such as non-alcoholic sparkling wine. 0,0 % is the preferred alcohol content of his or her drinks. This may result from a former alcohol problem, which compels one not to drink at all anymore or a life-long abstinence from childhood, which is often the result of having witnessed a brother, father, mother or sister succumb to the charms of alcohol, and keep that as a warning sign for all future ahead. This person could use alcohol physically, but chooses not to use it for various economical, mental and social reasons. If others overindulge in alcohol, these people underindulge in it. And it’s partly false – but not entirely.

Adult User: Acceptance
Who I am interested in and focussing on is the kind of user of alcohol who takes the substance as it is for what it is. It comes with a cost but it also has its true rewards. Alcohol causes hangovers, awkward situations with the law and other people and costs too much. For all that, there are also valuable emotional, intellectual and social situations and states of mind into which one would not get if one did not drink enough. Romantically, relationships typically begin over a drink or two. Alcohol breaks the ice when the pieces of the puzzle are otherwise well onto their places. Some poems do not write themselves without booze. The pros and cons of alcohol, or its SWOT matrix is understood to exist. And it does. This is not false.

On some level, the discourse on alcohol should aim for describing the last described level or stage of alcohol use: the adult stage. The earlier stages are somehow arrested in development and naïve. There should be an implied link: An Acquired Taste for Alcohol equals Adulthood. There is one caveat though: once you overdo your adult intake – measured in braincells, money, people or time – you may find it necessary to become an abstainer due to reasons recounted under the rubric of a latent user. But, for those who stand more for the oral or anal user of alcohol, proceeding to the adult level is the way to go.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Koska en ole pitkään aikaan ollut pääminizterinä, tartun nyt siihen tilaisuuteen, kun aihe on sellainen, että puoleni tarvitsee täsmäohjausta (kaikki eivät muista heti ihmisen kehitysvaiheita). Tämän jälkeen keskustelu käy itsensä omalla painollaan. Hyvin aloitettu on puoliksi tehty.

THC bosses not responsible, if employees do not recover on weekends

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Week 36

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NB. C stands for Considers

Not everyone spends their energy at work, as there are so many enticing alternatives.

Date: 6 Sep 2021
Motion: THC bosses responsible if employees do not recover on weekends
Role: Member (opp.)

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People today suggest that they live their workaday lives as if they were walking on a razor’s edge. The work demands too much but also leisure demands too much, let alone family, if there is one, since leaving home. It looks as if the perfect, nay, possible wage-earner’s or salaryman’s life was like steering a vessel between two adjacent islands through a very shallow strait. What is also implied is that it’s like this because “people are too virtuous”, meaning that they “perform too much” both at work and at leisure. But, what if it rather is this way because people are too vituous?

Namely, for every hard worker, there are probably two whose work entails a constant staving off of boreout instead of burnout. They receive 100 % of the pay that they get, every time, but their work load is only about 20–25 % of what they could do if they really stretched themselves to the limit of what they can do. In this scenario, the unfulfillment experienced at work becomes a burden in its own right. People like this act as civil servants, custodians, firefighters, infodesks, janitors, life-savers, museum guides, night watchmen, psychotherapists, receptionists, train conductors, etc. If you take a long, HARD look, you can see who really puts in work and who does not from job to job.

I would say that people should stop complaining of how they cannot convalesce to their full work potential at their workplace on weekends if they have these three things in order:

There Is an Education
The first component is that the person is educated for the job, at least partially. A formal education can never hurt an employee, because it teaches at least the basic routines, ethos and terminology. If that was not learnt during education, it would have to be learnt during work. Also, the education should disperse at least mostly the lingering thoughts of being an impostor. A person who is educated to do his or her thing is not an impostor. Impostors are the ones who fake CVs. I admit that top expertise is better than real CVs – but real CVs are better than fake CVs.

There Is an Eight-Hour Workaday
The present 8-hour workday in Finland at least, not necessarily elsewhere, the fruit of political parties’ and trade unions’ labour, guarantees that a workday is not too taxing timewise. Also, many take an hour or more out of that in the form of coffee, lunch and tobacco breaks. That’s 7 hours and counting, down from there. The remaining 16 hours of the day can be devoted to something else, provided that one is a subordinate, not middle or high management. The end result is that an individual employee spends a far greater amount of time not working than working per a week. Many have taken this attitude to the gym, where they likewise spend more time browsing or idling than working out.

There Is Health
Often there is nothing wrong somatically in people, apart from back pain, insomnia and obesity. All of them are treatable by diet and exercise. Yet, people do not acknowledge their basic good physical health but move on to complain about their ill mental health. That is more difficult to cure and harder to pinpoint, so the reason to feel bad about work becomes chronic and perennial.

If I go back to my previous claim that people get full pay but only give a fourth or fifth back in terms of their work performance, I would further claim they may put that extra energy into depraved leisure hobbies. The reasons to drink are many, and unfulfillment at work could be one of them, surely. Little by little, bored-out workers may start making their lives “more challenging” – because work cannot make it challenging – as they juggle alcohol, leisure and work together. Why keep two balls in the air (work and leisure) when you can keep three (work, leisure and alcoholism)? Of course, all of the balls will fall on the head of their juggler a bit later.

One should ask oneself the questions
● Am I an impostor?
● Do I contribute greatly?
● Do I compromise my work because I don’t contribute greatly?
I would say that weekends probably do not provide recreation, rest and relaxation, if the answers to the questions are yes, no and yes.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Molemmille puolille löytyy argumentteja ja puoltajia. On paras, että toimin 3:ntena jäsenenä omalla puolellani, jolloin mentäisiin tärkeysjärjestyksessä alaspäin puuttumalla ensin työn stressaavuuteen, sitten vapaa-ajan stressaavuuteen, perhe siitä välistä unohtaen, ja viimeksi kohdallani vinoon menneen vapaa-ajan stressaavuuteen, vaikka sen pitäisi olla rentouttavaa, eli oma osuuteni on tämän hierarkian alin puola. On mahdollista, että opposition puolella voi toimia vain silloin, jos on todellisuudessa nähnyt työelämää, kun taas hallituksen puolella voi toimia muutenkin.

THW not exact sobriety from those who author books/write for a living

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Week 34

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The Bottle and Books are (to some extent) compatible.

Date: 23 Aug 2021
Motion: THW exact sobriety from those who author books/write for a living
Role: Leader (opp.)

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I read a 50th Birthday Short Profile Interview on a Finnish male author in the biggest national daily. He has authored several pieces of fiction, one of which is in the pipeline to become a movie in L.A. He claimed that he stopped drinking when he was 30 or 31 in order to “accomplish something in t/his life”. Even though he could WRITE while under the influence, he maybe felt that he could not write anything WORTHWHILE. He had long supported himself in being an advertising copywriter before a full-fledged writing career. He did not have children.

What bugs me about people who have struggled with addiction to either booze or narcotics – in general, not just authors or writers – is the fact that those people seem to only be capable of P2P work after they quit the hard stuff. They become camp counselors, coaches, personal trainers, shrinks, support persons, therapists, youth workers or the like. It’s like they’re saying, “I’m not capable of normal adult stuff anymore” i.e. an office job or something. Also, the birthday boy had left children off the agenda as if to say, “I still consider myself an alcoholic, who cannot be entrusted with or support children”. For all that, he had not even experienced true adulthood addiction. Most drink while they’re 18 to 29. The human body and brain can take alcohol the best at that age, so there is an incentive to do it, as long as there is the money to do it, and even if there wasn’t, since one can always drink for free or scrounge at some friends or in some nightclubs and pubs. The imaginative young mind can come up with ways to obtain alcohol, and it does.

Book Conception in Sobriety
Writing under the influence of alcohol has a long history, so that the two became almost intertwined during the 20th century. Many authors left their mark in literary history because or in spite of their heavy drinking. To me, it seems that they probably followed a certain trajectory which allowed for this to happen and are the ground rules for “Alcoholic Authorship”. The first thing is that when a book is in its planning stages, the author should not drink. In Finnish, such a phase in an alcoholic’s life is sometimes called “Bleaching One’s Nose” (i.e. the nose returning from red to its natural beige–pink colour). During this stage, the author should outline what the book is about, what its central message is, who its cast and their back stories are, what its rough structure is going to be like and how it will end, even if it’s open-ended as a conscious decision.

Resumed Drinking During Its Writing
When the cast, ending, plot, structure and theme of the book or a long essay have been decided on, the hard labour of writing awaits. When it comes to authors who most often come up with an end, plot and theme WHILE they’re working and writing (that is, improvised authoring), alcoholism might not be an option. When the author knows what (s)he will be writing about at the precision of one chapter, the drinking can resume. Writing is not hard when the basic grid is in its place and there is a clear goal at the end of each chapter. The author may drink in the morning, during the day and in the evening, alternately. (S)he can also be a morning or an evening person in terms of her or his circadian cycle, as long as the writing brings in enough cash to take care of bills, groceries, mortgage/rent and travel.

“De Profundis”
What alcohol does to the author’s mind is that it marinates it with chemical molecules of its own. When the author is writing under the influence of alcohol (or drugs), inhibitions go away to some extent, even though not wholly, and the prose may incur a flavour of its own. To me, it seems that certain genres of writing may expressly benefit from an alcoholic writing. Erotica, fantasy, horror, science and speculative fiction are those genres that get something in return from a feverish mind that fashions the sentences slightly rebelliously and recklessly. The genres and the books that belong in them are supposed to be about escapism, so a clear & sober mind is not the best kind to bring them into existence.

I believe it’s not a coincidence that some authors have started both a) boozing and b) writing. They need both, as opposed to people relations, and, little by little, the whole yin-and-yang thing becomes a lifestyle. I also read how a young man had died in a car crash. He had steered a car, with many of his friends inside, against a trunk of a tree. He was conscious while he was talking to the emergency paramedics and could communicate. But, as the crumpled car was removed bit by bit from around his torso, the pressure weakened and he could not breathe anymore. Apparently, internal bleeding and organ failures are so bad in car-crash victims that they are kept alive only because the wreck of the vehicle acts like their surrogate self. When it’s removed, they die. It’s the same with alcoholic writers. They are like car-crash victims in that once the sheltering metal of their addiction is removed from their lives, they may not live very much longer after that.

What I have talked about applies mostly to writers of fiction; preferably, presumably. Even so, I see no reason why it could not apply to writers of non-fiction as well. The way in which they differ from writers of fiction is that they have to be slightly more functional during the daytime to obtain all the source material they write about. But, lest we forget, writers of fiction also do a lot of database and library research before they embark on a writing mission. Just like writers drink differing qualities, quantities and strengths of alcohol, their day routines may differ from each other. The end result is nonetheless a functional, dysfunctional alcoholic writer – born to do it. While we may judge a book by its cover, we have no way of knowing what has gone into its making. The hygienic black-and-white print won’t tell.

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Perustelut(t)/puolustelu(t): Puhe on kompakti puolustus vanhan liiton traditiolle, joka voisi jatkua nykyajassakin, jos sillä olisi vain harjoittajia ja kannattajia. Ajattelin aluksi olevani I tiimin 2. puhuja, mutta muuten sitten itseni 1. puhujaksi, koska puhun niin “autoritatiivisesti”. Uskon, että olen avaajana varsin pätevä ja jätän liikkumavaraa myös jäljessäni tuleville tutkimaan aihetta toisenlaisista perspektiiveistä.