addiction

http://www.urbanscout.org/addiction-vs-rewilding/#more-569

i mentioned in a recent post my cycles of addiction - of feeling strong, eating healthy, doing productive and nourishing things, and then the fall through cravings into binge eating, lying around, depression, oversleeping, etc. urban scout posted recently about addiction, and the post was followed by a lot of insightful comments.

i experience similar reactions/addictions to those folks mentioned in the comments... feeling isolated because i don't want to keep up with new music, sports, or pop culture references; feeling isolated because sharing my struggles to live differently puts people on the defensive; feeling isolated even inside myself because the addicted part of me still rebels and wants to be modern and wasteful, while voices in my head scorn me for slothful and wasteful decisions.

why does it feel so hard to reach out? why does it feel so hard to open up and imagine that there may be others nearby who would spend constructive time with me? and when will the path open up that allows me to buy some land, so that i can build a life that cuts out the addictive bits of society that are so damaging?

that's my method - isolation from addictions. i can quit cold turkey no problem if i am kept physically far away from the things i crave, if i'm pressured (even subliminally) toward healthier actions, and kept distracted by positive things. i went for two entire months without sugar at one point, and with nearly no baked goods in my diet. it threw my body completely out of whack, and was the most climactic point in the beginning of my shift toward health.

i want to live primitively because it makes it easier for me to be healthy. i can't use electricity (and consume and support coal-mining as a result) if i live somewhere with no power. i can't support fluoridated water if i only have rain catchment. i can't eat pounds and pounds of brownie and cake batter and cookie dough if the nearest store is ten miles away, and i can't use up weird chemicals through air conditioning, can't watch manipulative commercially-marketed tv shows if there's no electricity! i can't waste all that plastic packaging and support industrial agriculture if town is far away, if my garden is closer and easier to harvest, if my neighbors share the harvest from their livestock in exchange for work. i wouldn't support the creation of vinyl siding, asphalt shingles, chemical-laden carpets and paints and furniture if i lived in a sculpted cob home.

i could go on for well over an hour with the list of things i want to avoid, the list of things i don't want to support, of things i feel addicted to and guilty about. i guess it's largely irrelevant at the moment, because the larger struggle is

how do i thrive in the meantime, working in a corrupt and destructive system, to save enough money to buy that land?

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