PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

Hello, and thanks for dropping by.  You might already know that the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my ebook 'How To Become A Crack Addict' (Jan to April 2013).  You can also buy this as an ebook by searching the title on amazon.  If you do, I would be really grateful for a review - there are three already, and another would be good.  As for now, this blog is the frequent musings of yours truly, Benjamin of Turnham Green, your loyal blogger, and ex-drug-addict, or something like that.  And here is today's helping...

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

Possibly one of my favourite clichés, though I don't have many.

I find it hard to believe that some people are more intrinsically impatient than others.  I'm pretty sure that I have been, at different times in my life, both very patient, and utterly impulsive.  I can remember, for example, studying hard and long for my exams at school, knowing that each rereading of my notes would only perhaps instil another small fact, or half-fact, into my mind, and that perhaps only for a few hours or so.  But I plugged away, doggedly some might say, hoping that something would come of this repeated behaviour, over the months ahead.  Equally, I can remember, with scary recentness, my inability to abstain from crack for, literally, minutes, let alone hours or days and beyond.  Now, I see both these states of being as choices, at some level, rather than expressions of 'who I was'.

If it wasn't me choosing to score crack, regardless of the consequences, then who was it, what was it?  It certainly wasn't, in my view, a 'disease' that dictated my conduct until such time that I 'surrendered' to it, and followed the 'suggestions' in my twelve-step guide.  Yes, there is wisdom in such books, I do believe, but there is also fantasy, perhaps born of the early 20th-century American form of Christianity that informed, and still informs, the books of AA, NA, and the other 'anonymous fellowships'.  I chose to study, and continue styding for my exams, I chose to score crack, and smoke it, knowing how I would feel after.

I guess it's important, for me at least, right now, to express and acknowledge this, because I can look back on my using as a 'special time', i.e. a time where normal rules didn't apply, like when the laws of physics go awry on the event horizon of a black hole.  No, they were not special in any sense other than they were a time when I was using, against my better judgment, maybe, but using because I chose to - because, if I didn't chose, who, or what, did?  And there's this Ockham's Law thing, isn't there, which promotes the notion of choosing the most likely answer to any conundrum, until such time that something else becomes the most likely answer.

Perhaps this sounds like waffle, but at least I know now that I can't blame anything much for that fact, apart from the fact that I have chosen to write this, chosen not to reread it, and chosen to risk the fact that you, and even I, at a later date, might call it waffle.  If it is, then at least I've only wasted ten minutes of my time, compared with ten-plus years wasted on crack, and its consequences.  How much of your time have I wasted?  I choose not to answer that.

And that is all I have to say today.  Thank you for reading.  See you soon, I hope.

Oh, and this is a song I chose to write:  I'm Too Tired To Kill You