#torturedbyfangs

I can't be sure if the question was supposed to be asking which of the My Little Pony characters in general I like, but if it is, I'm partial to Spike, because he was one of the very first to appear in the show and the one I watched the most in my "childhood" phase, when I was younger than 10 or so. I liked him as a character, I liked how the creators had made him, and I liked the way other people in the fandom reacted to him. I don't think I can say that about other Pony characters -- I liked Pinkie, but Pinkie was always a little bit too much, or at least that was the vibe I got from the show's fandom. I liked Rainbow Dash, but again the fandom was always a little weird about her, especially early in the show when it seemed like she was the central character. The most interesting and complex of the Pony characters? Pinkie Pie.

(I also liked Fluttershy a lot when I was that age because Fluttershy seemed to have an inner life that wasn't the same as what everyone else was having at that age. I can't remember how old I was when the show was new, but it was probably like a few years later, by which time I didn't care much for her any more -- the creators seem to have gotten lazy with her characterization, which is one reason she was not on my favorites list in middle school when I was an obnoxious young fan, although it should be said that in the interests of fairness my opinions have changed over the years.)

I think a lot about death.

I want to die. It's not like I'm scared of death, or at least not in a way that would fit with the image of a healthy person I have built in my mind. I've known I'm going to die since I was a child, and while I was happy to die, I never actually felt happy about it, because I have very strong feelings about being alive, and the knowledge that I will, in fact, die is always present in the background when I'm doing those things, or thinking about them.

I've thought about death a lot since puberty, at least once a week or so, but it's just one of my normal routines, something I might do on any one of a huge number of unremarkable days. I am fascinated by the idea of death; the idea that one day I'll cease to exist is endlessly compelling, almost more so than the idea of being alive.

And then I think about cannibalism. What is it, exactly, that we're eating? Not everything, surely; there must be something there to sustain us. And what do we really mean by "us" here, exactly?

If we're talking about actual human beings: the "I" who dies and the "me" who lives are not really one person, not entirely one, and at the moment we are not the same person. But if I am going to die, or if it's going to be one of my unremarkable days where I just want to sit in bed for an hour, then I still must be me. It's really not too different from being hungry: if I don't eat, I'll starve.

There are times, days, or years when I want to die, not because I'm scared of anything but because it just seems like the sort of thing I should do if I want to. And it's not because of any of the bad things I'm doing in my life; there isn't a list, at least not one I know about, of the various things I could do to be a better person or a worse one, or some other such thing, and I know that the list includes not being myself.

I've thought about this a lot. My thoughts are inchoate, because I'm not good at drawing out and expressing my thoughts, but I have thought a lot about it.

I have thought about this in part because I've often wondered if it would be the same, if I could do something about it, if I could ever make it not happen, if I could be a part of myself that is not just myself but someone else. And I don't know whether that's possible, and I haven't done the best job of answering the question: am I an agent, or a machine, or a ghost, or someone else, or even something in between?

(What am I? I don't know. Not that I'm sure it matters very much: who cares if I'm a "real" "agent"? I've got the job, which is the only one in town that I want. What, does it really matter if I'm an "real" "machine"? Not like I'm getting paid, or anything.)

And then I have thought about it in part because cannibalism has always been an interesting metaphor for my mind; one of those "in the real world, X" analogies. What is me, and what is part of the world, and how can the boundaries be drawn? What can we really know about ourselves and what our limits are, and what they are? (And I'm not saying this in the self-aware "I am a fiction written by a fiction writer" way that some people say it, just in a confused way.)

I can think of lots of other, more concrete ways I've thought about these questions. For instance, my interest in what it's like to be inside a dying person's brain. I don't want to die; I'm sure, even if I were able to, I would find the experience unpleasant, and I hope I can live forever. And yet, I find it intriguing -- not the part where I'm trapped inside someone else's head, and not the part where I'm in the middle of the brain, but the part where I go outside the skull and look at the person's brain, or where I see some kind of interface, some kind of portal, to some part of the physical world that is inaccessible to me but that I can perceive with the mind -- and not just that, but also the knowledge that, in another context, the person's whole body is being used to do something quite different, and that these two things are not really one; that the brain and the whole body are not really the same.

I don't want to die. But I find it interesting. And maybe I'm right to do so. Life is interesting, and death, while painful, isn't interesting enough, the pain doesn't have enough narrative, it doesn't make sense the way the brain does. Death is too dull, for one thing. The pain ends, and the pain isn't what I find interesting. The pain is interesting because the pain is bad -- which means the pain is like other bads, the kinds of bad things that interest me. The pain is interesting in the way that, when I am hungry, the way I'm hungry is interesting. In some deep way, the person who dies is a part of my interests, or part of the kind of things that interest me. And in some deep way, I am a part of the person who dies.

I am no expert on dealing with drug issues or drug addiction in particular, and it is possible I may not have the most up-to-date (or correct) views. (My drug posts were made years ago, as were my posts on addiction.) I'm going to try to keep this general and avoid specifics.

When I was in school, I had an issue with substance use that my mother and I have discussed openly in the past. As I'm not sure I've talked about in those posts, a certain portion of the time I was also drinking, which led to various issues. If you've read those posts, you can probably get a sense of what I was going through.

To make a long story short, what helped a lot was the approach of not allowing yourself to keep using alcohol or drugs, and taking the time to figure out why you use them, what they accomplish in your life, why they are such a drag (for me, the answer is that I drink in large amounts with my friends and family, which is socially pleasant but has negative effects on my body). You need to know these things not because of "science" but because it helps you know what to do in the future and figure out what your needs are. You may want to use some sort of evidence here, but again, I'm no expert on this stuff, and I was never particularly good at taking action based on evidence.

Anyway, I was still heavily drinking on weekends, and the more I would drink the more I would drink. On some nights, I would get so sick from drinking that I was unable to get out of bed the next morning. I used to have a drinking partner whom I had a very deep, intimate and loving relationship with, but this eventually ended. (A big part of my problem is that I tended to feel I owed her this, but I think she ended up realizing I really wasn't capable of fulfilling a "friendship" role for her or anyone.)

Once I figured out this stuff, I didn't just stop drinking -- I started to drink in smaller amounts to keep the effects of alcohol in check (this is when the cocaine thing came up). Some of the drinking was also accompanied by an increasing use of amphetamines -- I still took amphetamines in college, but I later found that amphetamines were causing me some serious problems and I stopped them.

As far as I know, this was basically the right approach. At least for me, it's not the kind of thing you can get through a "treatment plan," it's the kind of thing you have to gradually work out, but you can probably get pretty far along in terms of "I'm no longer drinking to excess."

I've also heard from several people (e.g. from the person I just linked) that they got sober by seeing a "treatment plan" that involved them giving up drinking all together (with no substitution, like "take these pills"). This was not for me -- drinking is still not a good idea for me but, having reached the point where the problem was "I'm too drunk," I didn't take it as a serious treatment plan.

And then there are the people who don't drink at all, which is fine for them, but that's not for me.

(For the record, I've found that a mix of two things helps a lot. First, being very very very honest with myself about what alcohol does to my body and how it makes me feel. I also try to make sure to keep myself in a situation where I know I'm going to drink no matter what, or I can stop drinking with the effort of a single step -- a sort of "no drinking plan" for the next several days, where I try not to drink if I know I'll be doing so anyway in an hour or two.)

This post is about the "bimbo" trope, right? So I don't actually know anything about the topic other than vague impressions gained from a number of people who are very unhappy about it.