The Brain’s Black Ops

This blog is live, present and occurred on 20th July 2024. I have been out on parole for a while now – and there is lots more to come on that – but I’m jumping to today for a blog topic because it’s about coping strategies. In prison I found that writing things down made them more processable – maybe it made them real and helped me accept that there was something I needed to deal with. Anyway, If you’re reading it, I guess I felt ok publishing it.

The last weeks and months have been challenging, there have been ups and downs – but I have found great resilience and coped pretty well all told. I left prison clean – I don’t drink, smoke, vape, take drugs or gamble. Now for a guy who used smoked 30 a day for 25 years, was a voracious binge drinker and weed lover – I have been, and am, a poster child for positive change. But today, under great emotional strain, my Brain’s Covert Operations team made a play that shocked me.

Over the last 24 hours I have been going through the most emotionally charged experience I can recall since my first days in prison. The trigger back then was not prison – but trying to come to terms with my having murdered my partner. It says something about the last days events that I found them more difficult and challenging than anything that happened in over a decade in UK prisons among the noise, the privation and the eternally simmering undercurrent of rage.

During the more than 1,000 hours of CBT, programmes, therapies, courses, education and support groups I learned the coping strategies that I was lacking. I needed to know that I could manage my emotions in the future. I dove in to the chemistry of the brain, and the power of a dopamine hit combined with operant conditioning resonated. So many of my triggers and behaviours now made sense to me – and knowing that there was a logical and scientific trigger for behaviours meant that there was a logical and scientific way to manage those behaviours. For those of you who get the dopamine hit – it’s a fucker isn’t it? For the others, I’ll try to explain.

Dopamine provides a natural chemical high and is highly addictive. It’s the body’s way of giving you a high-five! A well done! When our hunter gathering ancestors found some ripe fruit that was full of sugar they got a chemical “Atta Boy”. It was to make them remember how to get energy quickly and minimise exposure to predators. Nowadays we get our dopamine hits when we buy something new (picture peeling the protective film of a new iPhone), when we get a like on social media and through vices. In one group session we discussed dopamine and the biggest natural hit comes from orgasm. So if we set the orgasm at 100 dopamine units, as a clumsy scale, we can look at the vices and their relative levels. A cigarette was estimated at 150 dopamine units and heroin at 400 for example – that’s a shit load of Facebook likes in one hit.

But over time, we build up a tolerance to dopamine and the effect becomes muted – while our craving for dopamine increases. Have you ever had a craving for a junk food, a burger, kebab or bar of chocolate – and yet, after you’ve given in to the craving you feel disappointed? Well that’s the cruel paradox of dopamine. Most addictions, including drugs, alcohol, gambling, bingeing, screen obsession and impulse shopping are driven by dopamine cravings.

So for nearly ten years I have been a non-smoker. There were a couple of times when I thought about smoking – notably when I was watching TV shows like Mad Men or Sons of Anarchy where they smoked incessantly. But generally, a cigarette just isn’t in anyway appealing to me. My dopamine comes from the gym or from cycling and I’m a pretty grounded and balanced guy.

But this afternoon I was ambushed by my Brain’s Black Ops squadron. They have been lurking in my head for nearly a decade, watching, waiting and planning. Today they shot their shot. As I alluded to at the beginning, I have been going through an emotional wringer for the last 24 hours. I was aware of my anxiety levels and noted the physical cues. Upset stomach, tension, light-headed and kind of seeing the world through oil. I functioned through work, I wandered through the supermarket and I think I bought something I didn’t want or need – nothing appealed to me. I felt discombobulated, adrift and aimless. I felt tremendous sadness. I felt small and afraid. My anxiety was screwing with my chemical balances and my emotions.

I was walking home in a fog. I had my headphones in but hadn’t played any music! I was dragging one foot in front of the other and saw a whole, unlit cigarette just sitting on the ground in front of me. I don’t know how long it had been waiting for me, but it didn’t look surprised to see me – why would it? It was part of the ambush and the signal for the Covert Team to pounce: ‘That will fix the sad Moose! Remember? Remember how good that first drag feels? That’s an orgasm and a half sitting right there for you!’

The sly little wankers! I didn’t smoke it – The Covert Team must have triggered a coping strategy tripwire and blown themselves up I guess? And that’s the difference between the pre & post prison moose. The old me would have had a ciggie and a joint and gotten pissed. The new me never considered it. So while I would rather not feel pain, every time that I do I find I am better at coping with it. As I am challenged to cope, I become better at coping and the impact of pain diminishes for me like the impact of dopamine for addicts.

So instead of smoking the ciggie or giving in to any of my old vices I wrote this blog. My old way would be to bottle things up and deny them. To an extent I still need to process things myself before I talk about them – that hasn’t changed and I really don’t want to speak to anybody – things are still too raw. But I have made changes, thanks to opening up to amazing friends – I still don’t want to speak, but I sent them a text. I told them that I was hurting and why, but I also said I just wanted space. I assured them I’m ok. They’ve acknowledged that and for now I’m doing alright. But by sending the text I also know that I will be having conversations with people next week. There will be tears. I know this. The pain will not vanish, but it will ease. But tonight, I’m still very much in it – down the road I’ll reflect on these events and share them with you.

I’ll cope.