well, I went to see a councillor today, a few personal issues, but something interesting came out of it…

apparently the use of drugs during your formative years leads to an inability to "feel" or rather they inhibit emotional growth.

The use of drugs during that period whilst experiencing emotional pain, distress, anxiety, addiction, anger, violence and other negative emotions can lead to you incorrectly learning methods of coping or dealing with those or other issues later in life.

The reason being that the emotional processes can become underdeveloped due to the altered stimulus experienced, this can make it difficult during later life when you are faced with large problems and can lead to almost style regressive behaviour, depression, anxiety and feelings of disconnection, exclusion, jealousy and other such pains.

Every day is a learning day eh! 🙂

hmmm,
that explains a lot about my life…….

So in summary stay away from the disco biscuits?

Does this mean Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall is safe now?

funny that when folk talk about drugs being bad they only focus on the "physical" symptoms, addiction, dehydration, death, etc but they never tell those who need to know what the long term problems can be, yes they often vaguely allude to "mental disorders" but again that term is so broad it fails to deliver anything other than two words likely to be ignored. They should teach what I was told today in the first year of secondary schools! (not just hand out "street style" factoids).

Well, sounds like a great theory.
I (famously) have very little emotion or feelings for anybody (emotionally defunct apparently) and I have always been utterly drug free.
I know why it is but I'd like to hear your councillor's theory on that one.
Maybe councelling works for you but it did nothing for me but then I spent some time in P(sychiatric)2 at Stepping Hill hospital so maybe I was too far gone for councelling?
It's all good fun though. You get to mess with their heads while they try to straighten out yours.

ziggy – Member
So in summary stay away from the disco biscuits?

close mate, but the message really should be:

"Kids if you take drugs now you will probably grow up to be emotionally **** up, you wouldn't like it, step away from the bong"

Is that what the councillor told you?

All this info' is based on what?

What drugs did you do then?

Just curious. There's some hefty 'cans' there.

SB

barca2 did you drink much? alcohol is a drug.

SB

yep

I've nothing from her factiodwise but I will ask what studies have been done.

all of them

no problems 🙂

hat explains a lot about my life…….

+1

Never drunk in my life. In fact due to the personal circumstances, I'd take heroin before alcohol.
I have an inbuilt distrust for anybody who does 'councelling'.
edit= as in a person who says they are a councillor rather then their victims

barca2 I'm guessing your folks liked a drink then?

edit: ah sorry Barca, didn't see your edit, erm surely you yourself have had your fair share of talking then? is that why the distrust?

I have an inbuilt distrust for anybody who does 'councelling'.

Would you like to talk about it?

Just the one folk Mr N. The other one was conspicous by her abscence.
Seriously though, my advice (if it's invited) is ask lots of questions of the lady you go to see and only trust what she says when you've had chance to do your own research.

That made me laugh Richpenny – cheers.
I have to go now.

barca2, cheers I do, Thats why I figured I'd post it on here, it did seem to match up and a lot of what she said made clear sense. Its funny before today I always viewed councillers as headshrinkers, witch doctors, homeopaths and other such lefty tosh and likewise the people who sought advise to be week willed, lilly livered hapless fops. But I appear to have been quite wrong!

M'kaaayyy?

so you'd recommend it Mr Nutt? my opinion is exactly the same as your (old) one, if not a little more cynical in fact… but I do have things that need sorting out, so I shouldn't discount the idea of a 'counsellor' or some such?

Just to add some balance, I took enough drugs to make Keith Richards wince and I never

experienced emotional pain, distress, anxiety, addiction, anger, violence and other negative emotions

and I'm absolutely fine!

So batter in kids. Drugs are great!

yeah, I actually would, I'm genuinely surprised by my change of mind on this matter but I guess the trick maybe finding a good one? I went by my own will to "Relate" rather than being referred by my GP or anything, just felt I needed to get a better grip of things really and its thrown up a few surprises, its all positive though 🙂 .

im sure there is a connection. speaking totally from experience. however, there are plenty of other factors/reasons that can have the same emotional effect later in life. anything in the formative years can have a great impact in development.

I believe if you have an in built weakness and do more than experiment with drugs they will either bring out that weakness in you when it otherwise would have laid dormant or make it a lot worse when it does come out.

MrNutt,
Sounds like it's working for you, which is the main thing.
SB 🙂

You were either pre-destined to be 'cold' or you weren't. Drugs could exacerbate this or they couldn't.
Its very unlikely that drugs on their own would cause any human being to be 'cold'
Councillors psycho babble is very dangerous, and you need to remember they are not medically trained

What Steve said. I took a lot of drugs from 16-24 and am cold, but my brother took even more and isn't. You've been sold a pup, should have bought a big bag of drugs instead

I have had, and still do have some bad times that could be blamed on the intake of my past. Would I exchange it though? Not a chance. I had an excellent time at the time, and thinking back on some of the awesome times I had makes the bad times now a little bit better.

+1 barca – me too. Drug free. Not emotional. Single (and wonder!).

Beware you don't make the map fit the ground.
Have your palm read / tarot cards / tea leaves "Oh, yes, that makes sense, that's me, how did you know, wow, that's interesting, …." and so forth.

Get a 2nd or ever 3rd opinion before you throw yourself off the Humber Bridge would be my advice! 😉

The few people I know who became counsellors all had issues, be they bereavement counselling, RELATE and the like. The very worst joined county council social services; pure crusaders with real axes to grind!

I did loads of drugs. It was great!

All fine now. It's great!

all drugs the same ? Isn't that rather far fetched ?

another drugs success story here, taken most of em long term with no real issues.

To paraphrase Homer, 'I owe it all to Yes I cannabis'

My cousin, an intelligent chap, has been smoking super-strength (skunk) weed for years now. It has literally left him a dribbling wreck; he's been diagnosed as having Paranoid schizophrenia (Drug induced). Funded by you an I he is no longer capable of work (according to the 'system').

I'm convinced he'd be fine if he came off the skunk.

Stay away from drugs, kids!

Good to hear a different viewpoint. It makes sense- chemicals artificially altering Endorphines etc.

However I also feel STRESS affects your emotions and how you deal with situations current/future alot more than past chemical consumption.

Dr Hora A Quack

+1 Burls72

some people go completely monkey scalping nuts from taking vast arrays of drugs.. some people definitely benefit from it..
some people go off thier cake and end up a dribbling wreck without any drugs at all.. ohers really should know when enough skunk is enough.. and others abuse drugs yet experience a huge permanent improvement to their personality.

drug use is an inevitable teenage rite of passage these days and will highlight, magnify and sometimes compound any underlying emotional and mental problems that an experimantal teenager might be having..

drug use is an inevitable teenage rite of passage

Maybe where you hail from mate, but don't even think of tarring others with your blinkered opace view.

As long as people exist (like you) who actually think this way, certain sections of society will perhaps natrually accept drugs, in whichever form, to be the norm. They are NOT. Never have been, never will be.

drug use is an inevitable teenage rite of passage

Definitely not/disagree.

Where I came from (Hudds) some people smoked weed and Skunk but it tended to be the POORER people. Sorry, a sad fact but true.

all drugs the same ? Isn't that rather far fetched ?

Exactly. The counsellor is making sweeping generalisations. I had a colourful youth and sampled many natural and synthetic psychoactive substances including all the well known ones and can honestly say that it is ridiculous to suggest that there will be a uniform impact. (Think of the famous spider web experiments.)

I'm seen by those close to me as being particularly empathic – my missus tells me it's one of the things that she loves about me (and I, in turn, value that love) and I had my experiences, especially with LSD and a variety of mushrooms. If any thing I would say they heightened my emotional awareness as they (or, the circumstances in which I took them) revealed aspects of my 'self' to me and o helped me know myself better. They also took me to outer space, hooked me up to a global psychic underground dedicated to underthrowing the overground, turned walls into windows, and in later years helped me understand French post-structuralist thought etc etc. Everyone's mileage will vary.

Purely subjective experience, of course, but the point is that it's a little worrying that your counsellor is speaking dogmatically about something that is contextually – and chemically – dependent upon individual circumstances. It's good that you find some truth in what she's saying and if it's helping you then great but that doesn't mean that everything that comes from her will be true. I'm all for counselling but counselling individuals as opposed to counselling from a rigid and dogmatic position.

You were either pre-destined to be 'cold' or you weren't. Drugs could exacerbate this or they couldn't.
Its very unlikely that drugs on their own would cause any human being to be 'cold'

(Mental health nurse writes)…. I mostly agree steve-austin, likely not to be drugs alone, but depending on what age you are and why/when you used them. The notion that people are born to be emotionally 'cold' is pretty much dead, the debate is to what extent people are genetically loaded for some mental illnesses, how people become autistic/aspergers, but that your early years as a child and teenager count more for anything in the development of the 'counseller-able problems' spectrum.

If you had a long enough patch of your life early enough, where you really couldn't even leave the house in the morning without a cushion of drugs then its quite possible you missed out on or 'un-learnt' some of the useful psychiological processes that usually rumble on unnoticed in 'well' people. That's not to say you can't re-learn them later though. Bob etc, your own drug use may have been of a nice happy and recreational nature. Or you might just be luckier than Mr Nutt. He does mention the 'while experiencing emotional pain, violence etc' which is of course a hugely unqualtifiable factor and also afected by one's own relilience and the availability of support from parents/family.

There is also a relatively unresearched so-far notion that prolonged use of amphetamines might frazzle so many neurons/connections/receptors in your brain that you become a bit 'wooden', in a similar way to untreated psychosis or dozens of acute psychotic episodes might do. Trouble is, so many of the potential 'research group' in this case may have been using amphetamines to 'self medicate' that it is hard to tell whether its the drugs or the illness. Or if the drugs also made them ill.

Finally there was also 10 years ago a relatively unresearched worry that we may be on the cusp of a lot more pre-senile dementia (ie alzeimers-like but in your 40's) from lots of use of 'proper' ecstasy in the late 80's. I've not really encountered any more cases like this recently than I did ten years ago. By the sounds of it many of those people are fit and well, riding mountain bikes and posting on 'drugs are ace!' threads on here. Phew.

Just say no.

drugs, in whichever form, to be the norm. They are NOT. Never have been,

Uhh, we have had brewing alcohol for every day consumption for a *very* long time as well as the sacralization of other substances in various rites.

I'm not an advocate for drug use at all – i only drink coffee semi regularly and drink very occasionally now – but denying the fact that humans *have*, according to the best evidence available, always used drugs of some form then the best way of coping with widespread abuse of them isn't a 'string 'em up, hang 'em high' (well, maybe high's not the best word) approach but working out how to manage them so that they have the least harmful consequences.