Sometimes it’s hard to determine (in terms of heartfelt instances) if living in extremes was there before alcohol or the other way around:

When I quit drinking, my hope was, a bit, to leave the life of dichotomous choices or emotional spikes and dips, a life of black-and-white thinking, whatever you may want to call it, behind me.

Well, that was before I had the diagnosis of ADHD.

So, the answer becomes clearer now – that is, the life of extremes was there before alcohol consumption – but that doesn’t mean I find it easier to work on the issue.

Well, one thing that makes it easier is that living in these dichotomies is not because of the alcohol, but that I went into problematic alcohol consumption BECAUSE of it. That’s pretty important and bears a lot of consolation, because it makes it clearer that sobriety is a very good choice not to topple over.

Of course I have made progress in working on the black-and-white perception of the world, of feeling my emotions in a black-and-white fashion or choosing activities and goals that are not too black-and-white.

The problem remains, however, that I find it difficult to always maintain a rational greyscale spectrum, if you will, of the view of problems and choices. That is, I need to remind myself of seeing it as a spectrum consciously, simply for this exact reason:

You see, the lack of dopamine or the reduced conveying of dopamine has, obviously, a detrimental effect on rational choice and logical conclusions, because the prefrontal cortex doesn’t work properly if you lack dopamine. So, the moment I am in the idle state of not keeping up certain motivations that keep my dopamine going, my emotional balance is starting to stall, so I need some kind of afterburner to get back to the level I am used to.

That is, from am earlier perspective, exactly the problem I identified in other words before, that I need to find my emotional balance line.

This is as true as ever, but since I have more in-depth insights in how my ADHD and dopamine levels work, I can start to sensibly and cautiously utilize methods to (hopefully) come to more balanced levels, so the greyscaling spectrum is more often my emotional guest than my shrieking, hysterical black-and-white hack that keeps jumping on my back.

The main problem right now is that I need to consciously remind myself of it. In a non-neurodivergent brain, literature I read suggests that the positive effect of experience does not necessarily lead to the learning effect of progress in an emotional sense.

What do I mean by that: Normally, if we do something positive, the response and reward will spark a learning effect that is linked to a positive emotion that will enable you to utilize this experience more subconsciously (I guess?), but since the missing dopamine and the reduced efficacy of the prefrontal cortex will lead my brain (I guess?) to go back into “feral mode” and make me see things the extreme way:

Either “yay, everything is great” –> Killing the mammoth will be piece of cake

Or “Gah, everything is just doom and gloom” –> Yipes, the tiger is faster than me, I’m toast.

What my aim is, keeping myself “online” with dopamine and habits, rituals, psycho-tricks, hacks and what-not to enable my brain to (hopefully) learn that there is a “yay, I can kill that mammoth, but first I have to trick the tiger so I can enjoy the mammoth and not be toast”. Well, what I mean is: I want to find a way to condition my brain to easier find the way to a spectrum-oriented evaluation of emotions and situations in a way that I don’t need to consciously remind my brain that it’s not only gloom or happiness. I am in good hope to get there some day.

To quote (or mis-quote intentionally) CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow: “And all (of that will be done) without a single drop of rum”.

Until next time: Keep up the faith in yourself and take one step at a time.