I can’t stop. Quitting smoking was easier than this. Once I move my mouse to the icon and double click to start playing, my entire night is wrecked, and so is my mousing hand. Seriously, I can’t stop playing. Even if I close the game and leave the computer to go do something else, for hours I’m still playing the game in my head. I see those goddamned squares when I’m talking to someone and all I can do is try to solve puzzles that don’t actually add up. It’s ridiculous how addicted I am to this.

The insult to the injury is that Minesweeper is so 1998. I think I’ll seek some counselling and maybe go to a Tetris clinic to get me down from this.

I was in a big house, ostensibly a place I lived in. It was clean, the light was cold, the walls were white. Found a needle full of heroin. Someone told me to not inject it, but that’s exactly what I did. I walked off, found a vein in my left elbow, and shot up. Like it was nothing. Felt the cold warmth in my arm as it spread. Felt it take over. Felt it take control. I disposed of the needle and stumbled into my bedroom, fell into bed. Felt everything that’s ever been described to me: mental calm, inner peace, warmth, a sense of belonging, a feeling of love.

Maybe my life is so cold and lonesome that there’s an excess of the neurochemicals associated with belonging to something and being loved; that they manifest themselves in dreams. Sounds plausible. I also watched a movie last night with similar themes to the dream, so there’s that. Things like movies and shows always reassemble themselves into the plots of my dreams.

Everything is explained…except for the fact that I’d willingly shoot up heroin in a dream. Like it was natural. It’s a dream, so no consequences, I guess. Not something I’d like to do, ever, mostly out of the fear of sliding downhill, like I did with cigarettes. The first smoke came naturally, flourished in an environment of friendship and solidarity with other people, and slid down into a lonely 2-pack daily habit.

I never want to play with that kind of fire ever again. I want to feel loved, to feel like I belong, but not at that price. Never at that price.

the scientists found that the caudate area of the brain — which is involved in cravings — became very active. Another area that lit up: the ventral tegmental, which produces dopamine, a powerful neurotransmitter that affects pleasure and motivation.

I remember that craving, that high, and I miss it like someone in recovery. The addiction to being around someone is definitely neurological:

Dr. Helen Fisher put it: When you fall in love, “exactly the same system becomes active as when you take cocaine. You can feel intense elation when you’re in love. You can feel intense elation when you’re high on cocaine.”

The article goes on to state that romantic love isn’t really an emotion, but rather it is an innate need that works below reason, emotion, and logic. We need love at the root of it all. We also try to avoid rejection; love it or leave it, rejection brings us actual pain. It’s true. Another study by the same researchers found that when volunteers who had recently been dumped were presented with pictures of their exes:

The insular cortex, the part of the brain that experiences physical pain, became very active. “People came out of the machine crying,” [Dr. Brown] said. “We won’t be doing that experiment again for a long time.”

On the face of it, this research appears to suck some of the romanticism out of romance, but underneath, it actually supports the concept. Everyone has the need for it; everyone has the capability for providing it. The complication is found in all the layers of crap we place on top of it; the Ritual, the Dance, the waiting three days before calling the number handed to you at a party, the preening and posturing to be bigger and more cocksure than the twenty roosters before you and the twenty after. The best tactic is to relax and be your awesome self; be honest, be genuine, listen to your needs. It sounds like good advice. Maybe it is.