Pick Me Up Rebounds

We mentioned that you can never accurately rebalance your brain chemistry with Pick-Me-Up’s. We now know that at least one in ten of us, those who inherit Low Stress Tolerance, spend much of their life trying to do just that. There are three reasons you cannot restore brain chemistry to normal using Pick-Me-Up’s.

INACCURACY

One, as we have mentioned, is that the tiny changes in chemical levels are beyond your ability to adjust “by hand”. It is like trying to level the earth in a small flower pot, when the only tool you have is a four ton bulldozer. You are going to end up with a cracked pot.

REBOUND

The second is the fact that all Pick-Me-Up’s cause rebound. That is, they quickly make you fell well. But when the Pick-Me-Up wears off, you will feel sick just as quickly. For example, if you eat three donuts and drink coffee with cream and sugar, you are giving yourself a big slug of sugar and caffeine. This causes a quick boost in Happy Messenger levels, resulting in a rapid upswing toward normal levels of energy, a normal pain threshold, and an improved sense of well-being. But, as fast as this boost is, that is how fast the subsequent fall will be – toward lack of energy, fatigue, aches and pains and feeling ill. The quicker and more effective the boost, the quicker and steeper the fall. This phenomenon is called Pick-Me-Up Rebound.

People who have inherited a Low Stress Tolerance, who rely on Pick-Me-Up’s to try and feel normal, end up suffering from wild mood swings. Some days they are pleasant, happy and energetic. Other days they are moody, depressed and anxious.

What they should be doing, of course, is trying to LOWER THEIR STRESS LEVELS!!

If one can lower one’s stress level enough to be out of OVERSTRESS, the body will rebalance itself.

But, most people in OVERSTRESS never think of reducing their stress levels. They don’t even realize they are suffering from too much stress. They have been in OVERSTRESS for so many years that they think this is what everyone feels like. So they do the best they can, medicating themselves with Pick-Me-Up’s, and wondering why they “feel lousy” most of the time. They go to doctors who tell them that there is “nothing wrong”, or that they are “depressed”, having “anxiety attacks”, or that they are “alcoholic”.

It is a very frustrating experience for these people. So, they continue to use coffee, sugar, alcohol, and other Pick-Me-Up’s to try and feel normal again. But in doing so, they just make the roller coaster ride steeper, faster, and wilder.

ADAPTATION

The third problem with Pick-Me-Up’s is that the body quickly adapts to many of them. This means that a person has to take ever increasing amounts of Pick-Me-Up's to achieve the desired effect. A person may begin by using one cup of coffee a day, and end up drinking a pot full, or smoking five cigarettes a day, and end up smoking two packs; or drinking two drinks a day, and end up with a pint.

People use these Pick-Me-Up’s as medicines, trying to boost brain Happy Messengers function. But like any medicine, Pick-Me-Up’s have side effects. When the body adapts, and the person has to use large quantities of his/her “medicine”, the side effects of the caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs become very serious.

A person using large amounts of alcohol is at high risk of hurting others, or of dying from a traffic accident, liver failure, or bleeding complications. Heavy tobacco use damages the lungs and arteries and may cause cancer. Lots of caffeine can cause abnormal heart rhythms. Heavy doses of the illegal drugs can easily lead to convulsions, overdose, or death. All of these side effects add more stress to the body, which just worsens the OVERSTRESS.

For all these reasons; the inability to balance your brain chemistry “by hand”; the rebound crash caused by the Pick-Me-Up’s; and the severe side effects of heavy doses; using Pick-Me-Up’s as medicine prevents stability. Using Pick-Me-Up’s as medicine leads to the roller coaster of ill health.

DANGEROUS TEEN-AGE YEARS

Now let us review what happens to at least one in ten persons. They inherit a Low Stress Tolerance. They go into OVERSTRESS usually in the teenage years. They become depressed, withdrawn, do not seem to enjoy life, complain of aches and pain. People around them tell the parents, “don’t worry, teenagers are always like this”.

The person begins to use Pick-Me-Up’s. He or she is seen to be sometimes bright, cheerful, and energetic, sometimes moody, depressed and withdrawn. Pick-Me-Up use begins to settle into a style of maintenance or bingeing. Either way, the roller coaster ride becomes steeper and faster. Finally, the person reaches a shaky equilibrium between the host of stressors, on the one hand, and his or her “medicines” on the other hand.

Although the Pick-Me-Up’s help the person “feel more normal” in the short run, they hurt the person in the long run. All of the Pick-Me-Up’s make the person feel worse than they were to begin with. As long as the person relies on the Pick-Me-Up to try and feel normal, instead of reducing their total stress load, he/she is condemned to the emotional roller coaster. Sometimes well, but sometimes irritable, fatigued, anxious or depressed, the teenager just cannot seem to level out his/her emotions. If this pattern is not interrupted in the teenage years, by helping the teenager deal properly with OVERSTRESS, he/she is quite likely to be facing a life-long losing struggle.

“IT HURTS SO GOOD”

The attribute of helping in the short run, yet doing harm in the long run is what we refer to as “hurting so good”. This is perfectly exemplified in one of society’s most commonly used substances, cigarettes. People use cigarettes as a Pick-Me-Up, helping to boost their sagging Happy Messengers. At the same time, the cigarettes cause severe long term damage to your body. This increases the stress that caused the need for cigarettes in the first place. This vicious cycle, which “hurts so good”, is characteristic of all the most addicting substances found in our society.

As an instructive exercise, let us try and design the perfect addicting substance for human beings. Let us call it “Addict-o-matic”.

First of all, we have seen that all the Pick-Me-Up’s cause rebound. The sugar high, for example, will be followed by the sugar low. Although sugar may temporarily make the person feel better, the deep rebound will make him feel worse again, so he will want more Pick-Me-Up. This sounds like a good place to begin our designing. Let us throw a nice concentrated lump of simple sugar into our potion.

We can do even better if we put in a few more Pick-Me-Up’s. For these Pick-Me-Up’s let us select ones that lead to adaptation. Yes, let us add some caffeine next. Caffeine produces a nice rebound low. In addition, the body will adapt to the presence of caffeine. At first, one cup of Addict-o-matic will give a person quite a brain messenger jolt, but as time goes on, the body becomes adapted to the presence of the caffeine. Now it may take three cups, a pot, or three pots of Addict-o-matic to produce the same effect. As the person gets used to the caffeine, his Addict-o-matic consumption must go up for the Pick-Me-Up’s to work. Then, his sugar consumption will skyrocket. This will cause wonderful new peaks and valleys in his blood sugar and really make the roller coaster ride wild. Yes, sugar and caffeine together make a pretty good Addict-o-matic. Do you know anyone that drinks coffee with sugar by the pot-full every day?

But wait a minute, there is another Pick-Me-Up that people become tolerant to: alcohol. Let us throw in an ounce of whiskey. As the person develops a tolerance to the effects of alcohol, it will take ever increasing amounts of alcohol to achieve the same brain messenger boost. This means larger amounts of Addict-o-matic, and even wilder ups and downs of the personal roller coaster.

At this point we surely must have designed the most wicked addictor, don’t you think?

Actually, we can do even worse. What do you think would happen if we could somehow, slip something into a potion – something that would intensify the person’s STRESS LOAD?

If our potion could increase the person’s stress load, it would make his OVERSTRESS worse, which would increase his need for Pick-Me-Up’s. The beauty of this scheme is that the same potion that supplies the Pick-Me-Up’s would then also supply more stress. This, in turn, would make the person need more Pick-Me-Up. It is a vicious cycle.

We can increase the person’s stress load with Addict-o-matic if we add some small amount of poison to it. The poison acts as a stressor, increasing the need for Pick-Me-Up’s. But the poison has to be mild. If it is too strong, the person will get too sick, and he won’t drink the Addict-o-matic. Well, it turns out that we already have the poison in the Addict-o-matic. Alcohol is a liver poison, directly killing or damaging liver cells. This damage will add more stress to the body, making the Addict-o-matic much more potent.

(It is interesting to note that alcohol plays two separate roles in Addict-o-matic. First, it has a Pick-Me-Up effect, immediately boosting brain Happy Messenger levels. Then, it has a slower role as a poison, causing a worsening of the OVERSTRESS)

We can also increase the person’s stress load by adding certain allergy-causing food substances to the Addict-o-matic. We know that the most common food sensitivities are to milk, corn, and yeast. Since we are leaving no stone unturned, let us dump all of these foods into Addict-o-matic. Let’s use a high fructose corn sweetener for our simple sugar, add that right to the caffeine and alcohol, and then put in some milk.

We don’t have to worry about the yeast, because it was added to the mix when we added the alcohol. You see, alcohol is produced by yeast fermentation of sugar. Every alcoholic beverage already contains bits of yeast protein. So when we added alcohol, we also added bits of yeast.

OK, now we have concocted the perfect Addict-o-matic. It contains one, or all, of the common Pick-Me-Up’s; simple sugar, caffeine, and alcohol. It also contains one, or all of the common food allergens: milk, corn, and yeast. In addition, the most potent version of Addict-o-matic contains a mild poison, such as alcohol. Of course, it is even better if you smoke a cigarette with it!!

In reality, you can buy Addict-o-matic ready made at the grocery or liquor store, movie theater or ball game. It’s called rum and cola, Kahlua and cream, Mexican coffee, beer, rum cake, chocolate bar, wine, etc. Most of our “junk food snacks” are simple or complicated versions of Addict-o-matic. THAT IS WHY THEY ARE IN SUCH HIGH DEMAND; THAT IS WHY THEY ARE SOLD EVERYWHERE.