Getting high vs been Happy?
The Cycle of Emotional Tension
All human beings every day have a variety of things that trigger emotional tension; we have things that make us anxious, depressed, angry, frustrated, stressed out, sad, bored, and from time to time, pleasure. Every day humans have these interactions, internal and external, that create emotional tension, and we all must have mechanisms to dissipate that emotional tension. Subconsciously, we migrate more and more to using a particular substance to instantly arbitrate all of those emotion tensions that are evoking the emotional tension.
Carbohydrates: The "Drug" of Choice
The mechanism used is an incredibly powerful, toxic, instantly gratifying drug that blows the endorphins through the roof of your brain and, amazingly, unlike almost any other drug out there, doesn't cloud judgement, doesn't muddle thought, and makes you feel fantastic without any immediate harm. That drug is the most toxic drug known to mankind, at least in terms of endorphin activation, and that drug is simply called carbohydrates: sugar and starch.
Sugar and starch do not belong in the modern human nutritional system; they belong in the drug category, along with crystal meth, heroin, alcohol, and nicotine, whether it's from a vape or cigarettes. More and more, we use carbohydrates and the act of snacking like a baseball bat to numb, soothe, and obliterate emotional needs. So while it may have been effective to obliterate those emotional needs, it would come back very quickly, and you need more and more and more. Hence, the pattern of snacking that is very similar to someone smoking.
The Downside of 'Getting High'
While getting high all the time to dysfunctionally manage emotional needs, it doesn't make you happy because on the back end of that high is negativity, guilt, harm, and repression that you should have been dealing with. You become a less and less effective human being and less and less happy with yourself the more you use this method to get high. It makes you stressed and angry. The other way to manage the emotional needs instantaneously is to eviscerate yourself at people around you; you become angry, anger outbursts become a way of life. It sucks, and it hurts you and other people around you, all in the name of dysfunctional emotional management. So you become really good at getting high and awful at feeling happy.
The Nature of True Happiness
Happiness comes from within. Happiness is a responsive event to things that you do that relax you and calm you down, that you are proud of. There is no pride in drug addiction, no matter how pretty the pizza; it's there to get you high, it isn't a work of art. Things that really make me happy are things I accomplish that require some effort up front. There's no instant gratification like drugs; all drugs that give you instant gratification are drugs to get high that give a person the pretext or excuse to become an addict, like a carbohydrate addict.
Effort, Pride, and Self-Esteem
The things that make me happy are the things that I do, and it's not about the outcome; it's about the pleasure I put into something. Every child plays and has fun, most children are exposed to some form of spirituality, all kids play games, all kids draw, all kids run and ride bikes, draw, paint, and sing, and are creative. They have their imaginary world and imaginary friends; that's creationism. All kids have human connections, and there is nearly always at least one empathetic one, but we lose that empathy if we don't use it to provide happiness on an effort-investment basis. The return on the investment of effort is pride—pride in our accomplishments, not the results. Pride in the effort itself builds up self-esteem, which builds up self-confidence that creates and engenders happiness.
Know the difference between getting high on addictive behaviours with remorse and negativity on the backend, and an unconditional happiness that requires the investment of effort. There is no downside; whether you win or lose, it isn't outcome-based, it's effort-based. It makes you proud, it builds up self-esteem, it builds up self-confidence, it makes us human. Trade in getting high for the hard work and the pleasure of being happy.
A Call to Reflection
Understand the difference between high and happy, and you will be a much more effective human being. If you're going to sustain a keto-carnivore way of life, you cannot do that by killing your best friend, carbohydrates, and not replacing her with a diverse set of friends called happiness—not the seven dwarfs, but the act of effort to provide happiness. That is carbohydrate addiction.
If this message resonates and educates and shines a light on something that is in the darkness in our country right now, which is carbohydrate addiction, I hope this message got you to step back from your life and look at it from those two perspectives.