Will You Walk Me To The Edge Again?

Kacie Rahm
Thought Experiment #3
Parasites
Will You Walk Me To The Edge Again?

I wrote about night terrors.
I wrote about Shivers.
I was not yet comfortable with my audience.
I had no idea what “the teacher wanted me to write.”
I chose a topic that I could relate to the class.
I felt nobody would want to read about what was really on my mind.
I thought it would be too much, too soon.
I was unsure of how I would be received.
I was not ready to talk about it.
I was embarrassed of my past.
I wanted to write about fear.
I wrote about something scary instead.
I have decided to own up to my thoughts.
I think that is the most honest “experiment” I can give at this point.
I explored in previous writings, but I did not experiment.
I did not experience.
I think I may never truly be ready.
I feel like it is time to reveal myself anyways.
I hear you are supposed to “write what you know.”
I know this:

I try really hard to come to terms with my fears, face them, and push them out of my mind. I once wrote, “I have decided that I'm not going to be afraid anymore.” This was a partial truth. I apologize for not being upfront, but I was not sure if I was ready to reveal my weaknesses.

I am the youngest child in my family. I am four years younger than my sister and twenty years younger than my half-brother. My parents treated me like “the baby” from birth until now, and who could blame them? Child order is a huge factor into the characteristics of any family. I have always felt a kind of weakness in comparison to the rest of my family. I don't know if I brought it upon myself, or if my parents allowed me to develop it by coddling me throughout my life. I don't think I'm completely helpless or incapable, but I require a bit more attention than my sister and tend to react more emotionally to situations than she does. My parents are both really powerful people that demand the attention of whatever room they strut into. My sister is definitely a reflection of them. I have found this to be an impossible shadow to peek out of, but I still try. I feign confidence until it becomes real.

The Child Development Institute lists the characteristics generally attached to the youngest child:
Behaves like only child.
Feels every one bigger and more capable.
Expects others to do things, make decisions, take responsibility.
Feels smallest and weakest. May not be taken seriously.
Becomes boss of family in getting service and own way.
Develops feelings of inferiority or becomes "speeder" and overtakes older siblings.
Remains "The Baby." Places others in service.

Jenna was four years old when I was born. I shattered her world that December 7, 1989. I was the center of attention, in the time of home videos I was the star. When my sister is in a state of drama she regales anyone and everyone in a tale of Rahm's Funniest Videos. Before remodeling our house in Chelan, my family decided to watch all the home videos that were about to be stored for an indefinite period of time. The first few were of Jenna in the time before I was born. Her first steps, a one-man-play she compiled from various Disney stories, her Christmas Cabbage Patch Kid among other things took precedence over everything else. Once I was born though, the videos turned into images of me as a baby, doing nothing of interest, with Jenna squealing in the background, “Mommy look what I'm doing!” After many more videos just like this, Jenna started complaining about what ignorant parents they had been and how they had probably damaged her psyche forever. The next video started with me in a high chair covered in funfetti cake. Jenna crossed her arms and said, “Oh look, another video of Kacie.” My mom insisted that I deserved the camera as it was obviously my Birthday. Like clockwork, the singing began. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday...” the camera pans to Jenna's visibly irritated 5-year-old face, “...dear Jenna, Happy Birthday to you.” That was the end of Rahm's Funniest Videos. I will never forget the look on either of her faces.

I had most of the traits of the youngest child. I was given a cell phone at the tender age of fourteen, my sister had gotten one just a year prior. I wouldn't so much as make my own hair appointments, my parents did everything for me. My sister and I had (and still have) a close relationship, so there wasn't much of a power struggle there. She enjoyed being a leader, she liked being self sufficient. We accepted the parameters of our birth order, and that was fine with us. My parents accepted it too, and even though we have all grown up two or three times over, the same dynamic is there. I still struggle to assert any kind of opinion in family discussions. It is assumed that I am siding with mom or dad or Jenna. Heaven forbid I formulate my own thought, I'm just a child after all. It didn't help that I happened to choose a college in the same city that offered my mom a job. With my parents so close by, it's easy to “be the baby.” I can still go to them when I need support rather than finding it elsewhere. My parents loved taking care of me. I never caused them any trouble until fifth grade. I was born on my due date, I was a good student, “gifted” in elementary school, I did adorable things for their friends, I played “school” with my sister, I followed the rules. Then I got food poisoning one November night in 1999.

I had school lunch that day: mashed potatoes and gravy. For dinner I had a T.V. dinner because my parents had a banquet to go to. I'm going to guess it was the gravy that had the consistency of cat food that made me sick. Around nine o'clock I called my mom begging her to come home and tend to me. I was in the bath, attempting to settle my stomach. I was toweled off and in pajamas when she walked in the door. As if I was waiting for her, I started throwing up immediately after. I threw up all night long, crying and panicking between each bout of nausea. My mom stayed home with me the next day, coaxing me to eat chicken noodle soup or at least drink some juice. All I could handle was about three liters of water. Nobody thought anything of it because I had just been sick.

Between my return to school the following day and the chaotic eating schedules within the members of my family, nobody noticed that I had yet to eat anything substantial a week later.

It took about three weeks for my parents to start watching my eating habits. I was sneaky though. I would take a bite of the banana or whatever they wanted me to eat and then spit it out and hide it under the napkin holder while their backs were turned. As soon as the banana was gone, so were my parents, at which point I would stuff it down the garbage disposal. It was easy to skip lunch because I was at school most days. Dinners consisted of pushing food around the plate and distracting my parents with conversation. I was deceiving everyone, and living off of a handful or so of goldfish and a juice box each day. After about two months of this, my sister cornered me in the bathroom as I flushed a mangled PB&J down the toilet. “I know what you're doing. So do mom and dad. They're scared and they don't know what to say to you, but they're not stupid. Jesus Kacie you look like shit,” she spat out in one breath. My parents started sitting down with me in the morning and watching as I choked down some applesauce or a piece of toast. I would cry and scream about how they were torturing me. I would gag on each bite, and the food would feel like a brick in my stomach all day. I noticed one of my teachers watching me at lunch time, and I knew people were starting to catch on. Still, I was resilient and I managed to hide most of my food back in my brown bag before tossing it in the trash. As my bones started poking out, my family got more and more present around meal time. Finally, I would just ice out my parents. I would stare at the food they were attempting to feed me, refusing to speak and shooting the stink eye. They tried promising me vacations or new clothes if I would just eat, but I would not. Nobody could seem to say or do the right thing, the thing that would make me normal again.

At four months they threw in the towel and sent me to a dietitian. It was a small town, and she was the mother of one of my classmates, so she pissed me off right from the start. She told me I had anorexia. I told her that was impossible. “I don't think I'm fat, and I don't have control issues.” I probably sounded like a whiny little brat, but to this day, no matter how many times I have thought about it, I honestly believe that I was not anorexic. I had an eating disorder, yes, but the roots were different. I didn't look in the mirror and pinch my bone feeling like an elephant. I didn't do push ups before bed. I didn't feel like my life was out of control and that food was the only thing I was in charge of.

In reality, I wanted to eat. I missed the many tastes that you get from food. I missed the feeling of being comfortably full. I missed the color in my cheeks, and the way that my clothes used to fit. I would fall asleep each night thinking, “tomorrow, I will start eating meals again.” I would have a good, healthy attitude until the food was set down in front of me. It would immediately flash my brain to a vision of that night I spent kneeling over the toilet bowl, crying and miserable. The mere sight of food put a bad taste in my mouth, a gag reflex in my throat, and a knot in my stomach. I had hated food poisoning so much, that my body rejected the cause, food. The fear of throwing up was so strong that it ignored my body's natural need for sustenance. No, this was not anorexia, this was something more. I didn't convince my dietitian, however. She ignored my explanations and put me on a strict plan to get me eating normal again in a few weeks.

The plan was to eat something about half the size of my fist each hour. This was manageable, as I had been eating daily minuscule portions already. After two weeks, I would eat something the size of my fist each 2 hours. After two weeks of that, I would be eating five small meals a day. It was embarrassing, because my teachers had to help facilitate this process. The feeble eleven year old minds of my peers could not comprehend why I was doing such a thing, and I lost a lot of friends along with twenty-five pounds in about two months. My mom would come to school every day and watch me eat at lunchtime, and this was a big red flag to the rest of Morgen Owings Elementary that something was wrong with me.

About six months after the food poisoning, I was finally eating normally. Possibly even overeating, as I had denied my body nutrients for so long that I felt insatiable. It took about another year to get back to a healthy weight. My parents asked if I needed counseling, but I declined. They didn't really know what else to do and feared that any little comment could set me off. I think the resolve I had when I would refuse to eat really frightened them. Everyone was so happy that I was eating, they didn't want to disrupt it. Everyone assumed I had body issues and I let them believe I had been anorexic, I even believed it myself for a while. It made a whole lot more sense to me than the truth: that I was ridiculously afraid of a natural body process.

At the age of fourteen I was struggling with my earlier stages of insomnia, and began getting lost in the world wide web. I followed some kind of hyper link trail to a list of the ten most common phobias in the world. I almost stopped breathing when I got to number seven: emetophobia, the fear of vomiting. The fear of throwing up. There were people who had a phobia of throwing up, and a lot of them. It is one of the most common phobias in the world. I Googled this new word, emetophobia, and found a wealth of information and support. Not only was this a legitimate phobia, but the irrational behaviors I had were being experienced by thousands of other people: abstaining from alcohol, fear of pregnancy (morning sickness), fear of boats and planes (motion sickness), getting panic attacks whenever you have a stomach ache, obsessing over expiration dates and the way food is prepared. I printed out an FAQ page and wrote my mother a heartfelt note explaining that this was what I was experiencing and that my eating disorder had been a direct result of that night I spent in the fetal position on her bathroom floor with food poisoning.

She told me the next day that dad was also emetophobic, that it was important not to dwell in the past, and that the important thing was that I felt better about the situation. It was one of those insanely “mom” moments where she manages to say everything right, then end it. She did treat me differently after that though. I was held like a child whenever I went into one of my sick-stomach panic attacks, even though I never actually threw up as a result. I was no longer given a good cop/bad cop inquisition from my parents if I said I wasn't hungry at dinnertime. I had my life back, and the trust of my family. Simply knowing that I hadn't made up my fear, and that others struggled with it too was enough for us to collectively move on.

This story has been living within my brain, festering for almost ten years. I used to write poetry, a lot of it. I would write a poem almost ever day. I felt like a liberated person then. There was a subject I just wasn't willing to touch though, or two really: my eating disorder, and my emetophobia. I would write about my brother and his addiction, or living in my sister's shadow, or whatever guy I had a crush on that week. I would not write about things that I could be judged on. I felt like people in Chelan were beginning to forget about my eating disorder, or at least had found some new scandal to concern themselves with. Why remind them?

But now I remember the cathartic process of writing. The release, like once it is written down it exists in the world and it is no longer in my hands. I think that if I have learned anything in the past couple of months, it is that you can't truly own a thought, or change it, until you can look at it from the outside. You have to be your own excluded opinion sometimes, and the easiest way to exclude yourself is to read the situation from another place. This is not the same as distancing yourself from it. I have distanced myself from my past long enough, and it has not accomplished anything. You can never really escape from the memories that live within you, but if you express them and put them into the universe, you might be able to live with them.

I made a decision at the beginning of this thought experiment. I decided that I would write the entire thing in one sitting. I decided that I would write it after dark and would not sleep until it was complete. I decided that I would not delete anything when I edited it. It may not be a poem, but now I know that I can write such a thing. It is something completely true and honest. It is an experiment in my readiness to speak. It is an experience that I have enjoyed, despite being awake until after 5 am writing it. It is the culmination of my thoughts since the first day I sat in English 203. It is not weak.


Things I Cited

The title of this paper can be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTOKnYNI3tU

My very first piece of writing for Parasites can be found at:
http://kaciesays.blogspot.com/2010/01/i-tremble-theyre-gonna-eat-me-alive.html

Information on Birth Order can be found at: http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/birth_order.shtml

Information on emetophobia can be found at:
http://emetophobia.bravepages.com/

All of my poetry can be found at:
http://www.authorsden.com/kacispoetry

You Think We're On The Same Page, But I Know We're Not

With 1 week until my Biology 101 final, I am in a place that I do not like.
I have never failed a class in my entire life, In high school I never got below a B, and I haven't gone below a C in college.

I have always worked hard in my classes, I have always been a good student.

My Bio grade is determined between 3 tests and a lab. I got a D on both of the tests so far. I aced the lab but it is only worth 20% of the grade.

I tried really hard. I went to class all but twice. I studied. I went to review sessions. I went to office hours. I read the text book. I still (almost) failed.

I know they say "D for degree" and I could technically still pass the class, but in order to get GUR credit a C- is necessary. I have never struggled this hard to earn a C-, I never thought that was something to really try for. I am going to have to really bring it up on the final in order to be done with science forever.

This fear of failing is something that I have never felt when it comes to school work.

I don't know what my fear really is though. I'm not worried about my school record, my GPA is still pretty solid and I know it will be even better when I am done with GUR's. I fore-warned my mother that I might get a D and she told me not to stress too much and if it happens, it happens. If I have to retake the class or choose a new lab science to take, then I can worry about it then. What is my REAL fear here?

I think maybe fear can be a mechanism we use as motivation. I am motivated by my fear to work really hard studying for the final even though I have still scored low on the other tests. If I didn't have any fear of my final grade, I wouldn't have the "get-up-and-go" attitude and would say, "Fuck studying, it didn't do me any good before."

I think my schoolwork can sometimes fall to the wayside, and even when I should be getting A's, my attitude will be so lazzes faire that I settle for a B. Maybe the fear is just enough to keep me stimulated. Not so much interested, but engaged.

Anyways, I am glad that this finals week I have only to worry about Bio, because it is going to take all of my energy. Fear is EXHAUSTING.

Update as of 1:35 AM March 10:
This plurk (http://www.plurk.com/p/43pbo7) has made this situation 1000x better.

You Should Have Known By Now, You Were On My List

I don't know if I will ever get married.
My list of demands is just so... detailed and specific.
Also, I am only 20, so I could just keep adding stuff to this list.


My future husband:
--Kills spiders by squishing AND flushing them and will do so at all hours of the day/night.
--Loves scary movies regardless of the quality
--Doesn't mind adopting children rather than having our own
--Knows me well enough to get me a silver/white gold/platinum ring, NO GOLD
--Will allow me to have the wedding in Lucerne (up lake from Chelan)
--Doesn't mind puking children, I can handle changing diapers but I lose it when people throw up
--Supports me having a job or making as much/more money than him
--Does not smoke cigarettes/chew
--Likes my family/is liked by my family specifically Jenna/mom/dad
--Hates winter and will live somewhere where it is sunny year round
--Loves to travel and will sacrifice nice cars/expensive shit to do so
--Likes to read
--Wants a cat and a dog
--Does not wear Ed Hardy/Affliction or spend more time on his hair than I do
--Falls asleep to TV
--Accepts only 2 days a week devoted to Sports programming
--Allows me to act like a 7 year old when I'm sick
--Knows how/likes to cook and will do so a majority of the time

Who would want to marry someone that makes a list like that?

Like A Rolling Stone

Kacie Rahm
Thought Experiment 2
Parasites

Like A Rolling Stone

Me and sleep have always had a tumultuous relationship. In my first Parasite-themed blog, I wrote about my history with night terrors. “When I was younger, I had night terrors. I would awake in the middle of the night from some half-conscious nightmare that was so real, I would be literally paralyzed with fear. I would hide under my blanket and quiver uncontrollably for hours at a time, until I would finally pass out from exhaustion.” I have not had many of these terrors since childhood, but every now and then, usually at times of high stress, they resurface. After the night terrors there was “the man outside the window,” which is the name my sister and I gave to the ghost that haunted our house. He would pace loudly outside the corner of the house that happened to be my bedroom just about every night. I was able to fall asleep despite him, because a familiar ghost starts to lose it's frightful qualities after a while. Once I reached high school, the nights began getting later and I became more of a diva about how I would eventually end up in dreamland.

I can't fall asleep without some kind of noise. I prefer television, because the soft glow is also something that lulls me to sleep, but in a bind I can handle an oscillating fan or easy listening music. I know people who can't sleep without eye shades or a tempurpedic pillow, but for me there's nothing like a dull roar to distract my mind. I personally have troubles falling asleep at night. I'm no doctor, but according to limited research on Web MD, I show symptoms of clinical insomnia, such as “trouble falling asleep” and “daytime sleepiness and irritability.” I can never seem to turn my brain off at a reasonable hour and have tried many things to remedy this. The combination of Valerian Root tea and cartoons on the TV has been doing the trick recently, but I still wish I had the ability to just fall asleep without it being a process.

Sleep occupies roughly 1/3 of our entire life. A huge fraction of our time here on Earth is spent horizontally, eyes closed and minds open. I think sleep, although a state and not a place, is where I feel truly “at home.” I have struggled to define the word “home” for myself, especially recently since I have lived in 4 different places in the last 2 years. In another blog that reads kind of like a poem, I first revealed to myself the connection between home and sleep. “Over the mountains I feel uncomfortable... I lack that total familiarity that can melt me into restful sleep.” I know that I tend to sleep better in my own bed, but since I wrote that blog I've realized that my bed has changed just as often as my house. Maybe it's not the bed, but the sleep that makes me feel at home. I also linked comfort to home in that blog, which is something that I have thought about extensively since writing it.

If home is the place where you feel the most comfortable, then it could definitely be a state of mind rather than a physical location. I feel most comfortable when I am traveling. I don't mean physical comfort, because who in their right mind is comfortable on an airplane or train? I mean that place in your head where you are completely satisfied with where you are and what you are doing. I want to go everywhere and see everything that this world has to offer. Whenever I am in a new place, especially with a foreign language or major cultural difference, I know I am one step closer to that goal. Some people get overwhelmed by culture shock, or frustrated by under-developed conditions, but I embrace it. I know that I will still go to that familiar state of sleep even though I am surrounded by the unfamiliar all day. This got me thinking, maybe the reason I don't feel like I have a home, is because I'm static. I've been living the lifestyle of a poor college student and funding for vacations is just nonexistent.

I think that when we become too familiar, we stop growing. In high school, English classes were a joke. I had the five paragraph essay down, and I enjoy reading and writing. I could go through “To Kill A Mockingbird” and highlight all of the bird references, or explain the symbolism of T.J. Eckleberg in “The Great Gatsby.” I got a solid A on every assignment in every English class up until graduation. Even in college where I felt challenged by my English classes, it was more because of the reading level than the actual thought process. Then there was Parasites. The very first day of class I knew it would be a different experience. Now here I am, writing a paper without a prompt. No direction, no clear idea what I want to say, and that completely unknown feeling that I am stepping into a vortex. However, my discomfort and my unfamiliarity with this classroom structure has made it one of the most propulsive learning experiences I've had. Once we get locked into a little cage, “the box” if you will, with our comfort foods and our sweatpants and our five paragraph essays, we cease to learn.

Though the class started out as a thought experiment, it has mutated into some kind of dysfunctional family. We are starting to know first names, or at the very least match plurk names with faces. We are opening up, sharing more of ourselves with each blog or comment in class, and we are communicating ideas more freely with each other. So if I have this family, one that is struggling with the same issues (readings) as I am, then does that make this something like a home? If we stick with the idea that home is where you feel comfortable, then no, absolutely not. I have felt many things in this class, but comfort is not one of them. The only kind of comfort I have felt has been from the consistency of my note taking.

The first day that I took notes on Plurk was January 15, two weeks into the course. I wanted to take notes but found the idea kind of absurd in relation to the way class is run. No, bullet points on a college ruled sheet of paper would simply not work. Plurk had a different feel though, my fellow classmates could contribute their ideas, and I could attempt to wrap my head around the things we had learned. I have since written notes every day that I have been in class. It has gotten to the point where I am known for this practice. On February 22, I was late to class by about 10 minutes. That was all it took for, “Dahamburgler is starting the notes thread in the absence of our notetaker!” to ding into existence. Have the note threads brought a level of comfort and familiarity into a class that is anything but organized? There are about three people who consistently contribute to my threads and a few people who favorite them every day, but this alone is not enough to make me feel at home.

If I am not at home in school, where I pay tuition, then I should feel at home when I come back to the place I pay rent. This has not been the case. I love my little two bedroom house. I love my seafoam green kitchen and my sun porch and my carport. I even love my roommate, she has been my best friend since ninth grade. However, I don't live with her anymore, I live with her stuff. She spends about 90% of her time at her boyfriend's house and that's her choice, but I can't make this a home without her. My parents house isn't a home either, they have a new lifestyle and three grandsons to worry about. For the first time in my life I feel like I could go anywhere.

Some people might think its depressing not having a home. I think I could make a home wherever I please. Like a rolling stone, anywhere I lay my head is my home. If we go back to the beginning, the part where home is just a state of mind, maybe sleep, then I do have a home, or many homes. Maybe we're placing too much emphasis on this idea of having one place we call home. If you make any place home, then you will never get homesick. If you make any place your home, you can invite anyone over at any time.

This thought process has liberated me to the point of no return. I have no reason to stay here, in fact I have an overwhelming desire to get the hell out of here. All of my connections to people are strong enough to survive time apart, or weak enough to cut ties entirely. My sister, the person closest to me and also something like my alter-ego, left on a whim to Korea for a year. If she can do it, I can do it. I have always enjoyed traveling and have had an awesome amount of opportunities to do so, but never alone. I have never just packed my life into two suitcases and started over.

This isn't the same as running away. Running away means there is something pushing you to leave. What I have is something my Anthropology teacher would call a “pull factor.” There is some unknown force pulling me out of my cozy little life and forcing me in the direction of anywhere else. Besides, I don't even have anything to run away from, I'm not in debt, no psycho ex boyfriends, haven't committed any felonies. What I want is to find that unfamiliar place where I can grow, much like Parasites has been for my education. I want to wake up in a foreign place, wake up in a train, wake up in an airplane. I know that I can make any place feel like home, because I decided that home is not a place anyways. Home is anywhere I decide it is, and I decide it is not here anymore.


You know what is surprising? I feel like I'm going to sleep amazingly tonight.

Inspirations and limited citations include: every plurk ever, especially the note threads, every classroom discussion thus far, http://www.WebMD.com, my blog at http://kaciesays.blogspot.com, every book I have ever read, my own mind, my sister's blog at http://adventuresintherok.blogspot.com, my life experience, my absentee roommate, and of course, Tony Motherfucking Prichard.

I Don't Like The Drugs But The Drugs Like Me

Kacie Rahm
Thought Experiment #1

I Don't Like The Drugs But The Drugs Like Me


I have dealt with many interruptions in my life, some of them so frequently that I barely consider them interruptions anymore. The disrupting act of packing and traveling, whether temporarily or permanently, has become so common recently that I feel like I have never fully unpacked. The constant buzz of my cell phone in my pocket is so commonplace that I check the screen even when there is nothing new to see. Illnesses no longer require an absence from school or the attention of my parents. Yet there is one interruption that I have not been able to nonchalantly adjust to, however. That interruption is drugs. Drugs come in many forms, and the interruptions do as well.

The first interruption I can relate to drugs was to my family dynamic. As I mentioned in my blog, entitled Maybe You're Better Off This Way, “I have dealt with an older brother who struggles with an addiction to Crystal Meth. I have known this since before I truly understood what drugs were. I knew he was 'sick' and 'different.'” My brother's name is Jason, and he is an addict. He has been interrupting me for my entire life between collect calls from King County Jail and becoming the “other mother” to my three nephews. There was the countless interventions, family visit days at rehab, his relapse at my high school graduation, witnessing the Jerry Springer moments between him and his wife, and driving him to the birth of his third child because he was too wasted. Each time he seemed to be getting better I would believe him, and then the interruption of his failure would occur again.

In my blog I explored the thought that drugs might be parasites. I have approached the word metaphorically. To me, a parasite is something that enters a host and physically or mentally alters the behavior of the host. After realizing that the thought experiment would require challenging ideas and comparing notes with my peers, I decided to see what they had to say about the subject. On Plurk, I posed the question: “Do you think that drugs (or any other self-induced 'parasite') counts as a parasite at all?” I had not counted on receiving over two hundred responses, but felt the discomfort necessary to experiment with the thought. I saw that not only did people disagree with me, but more and more questions evolved from the original. I asked if something is voluntary, does it count as a parasite? The first response that caused me to rethink my original idea came from Jesse8162. He said, “It's not really completely voluntary once the original person is taken by addiction.”

Addiction and drug use are not synonymous terms. I find this to be true because I would say that most of my friends and family members fall into the category of “drug users.” My mother and sister love their wine, my father his beer. My friends partake in drinking, marijuana smoking, and cigarette smoking. However, I would never compare them or myself to “addicts.” Addiction, according to Dictionary.com, is defined as, “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.” The only time I ever remember someone close to me having severe trauma from the cessation of drug use is when my four month old nephew had to come down from the opiates his mother had passed through her breast milk. After realizing that the occasional drug use I condoned and accepted in my daily life had never seemed parasitic before, I altered my original thought. In response I wrote, “I think that's the way I'm leaning, like addiction is the true parasite, drugs are just a substance.”

Just as I felt conversation had halted, user betzi asserted, “It could be the biologist in me, but 'parasites' implies a living organism.” Because we had been discussing technology and language as parasites in class, I had not really explored the idea that only living organisms could be true parasites. Right as I realized what this idea would propose, betzi expanded on her point, “The parasites aren't the drugs but the people using them.” It was hard for me to really consider this idea, perhaps because I am biased. Having an addict so close to me, I found it nearly impossible to consider him a parasite. I felt angry that someone might even suggest this possibility. Who was this betzi, and how dare she call my brother a parasite? Instead of closing my laptop and ignoring further response, however, I decided to see it her way.

If I were to take the definition of parasite at face value, maybe I would think differently about my whole argument. Dictionary.com defines parasite as, “an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment .” I feel that calling the addicted person a parasite would not be scientifically sound by this definition. The addicted person does not enter any kind of host and obtain it's nutriment. I think that it could be argued by the dictionary definition, drugs could very possibly be considered a parasite. Many drugs come from natural ingredients, i.e. tobacco, marijuana, heroin, opium, cocaine, hallucinogenic mushrooms and alcohol. Even chemical based drugs such as methamphetamine and prescription drugs are synthetic versions of natural drugs. If we consider these natural ingredients living organisms, which enter the body of the drug user and react according to their body chemistry, altering their behavior, then they are definitely a parasite.

User Jesse8162, who was very vocal in response to my Plurk inquiry, suggested that I read his blog. It was actually written as a response to my original blog about drugs as a parasite. Upon reading his post I found a similarity within our experiences with drug users. His blog reads, “When someone is strung out on drugs, it's almost as if they change identities from who they were before. The brother/sister/mother/father/husband/wife that was known before is no longer the person they once were.” The idea that drug use changes behavior is not beyond the average person's understanding. Any medical reference will tell you of the side effects to various drugs. However, when drug use and addiction is close to you, you understand that it does not only change the person's behavior, drugs change the person. In my own blog I wrote, “You could see it in his eyes, or rather see nothing in his eyes. He looked like any trace of his soul was gone,” in reference to my brother under the influence. In many of the books I have read about drug abuse, there is support to this idea. The book Crank by Ellen Hopkins tells the story of a sweet girl named Kristina who becomes addicted to meth and takes on a completely new personality. When she is high, she uses her “other” identity, like in this passage, “her tongue curled easily beneath my teeth, and her words melted between my lips. 'My friends call me Bree.'” This common idea within my research helped support my original notion that drugs are a parasite, especially because of the connections I made to Shivers.

In Shivers, the slug-like parasites change the behavior of the hosts to the point that one could barely refer to them as people. Besides appearance, they held almost none of their original selves. For example, their actions were lust-fueled and erratic, innocent little girls became fierce predators, and they seemed unable to express most emotions, besides crazed or blissful. The difference, however, is that the hosts of the shivers did not want to be infected. Most of the movie involves a character's attempts to escape the building uninfected once aware of the parasite. First time drug users make the conscious choice to partake in the drug use, with the exception of date rape drugs slipped into drinks. It is hard to be unaware that you are wrapping your lips around a pipe or snorting powder up your nose.

This is the part where I decide that if anything, addiction is the true parasite. The act of using drugs is voluntary. Once a drug user reaches the point of addiction, the point where they suffer extreme withdrawals without the drug, the point where they are using drugs to feel normal rather than “high,” that is when the parasite is in power. This is an involuntary situation, as nobody believes when they start using drugs that they will get addicted, and a lot of people never reach the point of addiction. I also feel like the drug user can not be the parasite, because then there is no host. Though I understand the argument that the drug user is the only living organism involved, I do not agree with it. As cephalopod responded to the Plurk inquiry, “Everything manmade, everything tangible, is natural.”

I went into this thought experiment with an energy and a vigor for the parasite that has interrupted the majority of my life. I barely touched on the subject in my blog, and once I posed the question to my peers, I realized that I am not the only person passionate about the subject. Some of the people most involved in the conversation were not even classmates. One might believe that the drug is the parasite, the user is the parasite, that the addiction is the parasite, or even none of the above. People advocated each option to me. In the end, I believe that the state of addiction is the parasite. It feeds off of the host, changing their priorities, involuntarily taking them over mind and body. I have watched the transformation in many people, and I can not in good conscience blame them entirely for their vices.



Works Cited
Gortner, Jesse. "A Very Real Parasite Problem." Web log comment. Story Time With Uncle Jesse. Jesse Gortner, 26 Jan. 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2010. .

Hopkins, Ellen. Crank. New York: Simon Pulse, 2004. Print.

Rahm, Kacie R. "Maybe You're Better Off This Way." Web log comment. Kacie Says. Kacie Rahm, 19 Jan. 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2010. .

Shivers. Dir. David Cronenberg. Perf. Lynn Lowry and Allan Kolman. CDFC, 1975. Videocassette.

SpaceyKacie, Jesse8162, Cephalopod, and Betzi. "SpaceyKacie asks..." Plurk. Kacie Rahm, 29 Jan. 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2010. .