I was caught in the haze of ad­dic­tion, in the red room at the old house, read­ing the New York Times. Read­ing the sci­ence sec­tion al­ways makes for good pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and for a pseudo-in­tel­lec­tual so­cial sci­en­tist like me, ar­ti­cles with pre-di­gested neu­ro­science make fine con­cealed weapons.

I should have been study­ing. Or think­ing through the im­pend­ing changes in my life. My fiancé was going abroad, we had a new puppy and I was stum­bling through life in a cloud of pot smoke and emo­tional avoid­ance. This is truly the best time to take an in­ter­est in brain de­vel­op­ment.

The ar­ti­cle was about habits, good ones and bad ones. It said that you can­not get rid of bad habits. No sir, they are here to stay. The only thing to do is make new ones, make bet­ter ones. Try­ing to quit smok­ing? Don’t pain your­self over hav­ing 3 cig­a­rettes in a day vs. 4, just go for a run! Try­ing to stop eat­ing fatty foods? Don’t beat your­self up over that piece of fudge, just eat a car­rot too. The stub­born­ness of bad habits makes per­fect sense given what we know about the brain’s adapt­abil­ity. I’m glad, after all, that the marks reg­is­tered in my gray mat­ter have stayed put. I still know how to tie my shoes, and I still know how to ride a bike al­though I don’t do it very often. Cher­ished mem­o­ries stick around, parts at least. This etch­ing makes for other trou­bles too. Most peo­ple don’t know that the hall­mark of PTSD is the in­tru­sion of un­wel­come mem­o­ries, the per­sis­tent re-ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of a trau­matic past.

By a cer­tain age, most of us are de­cid­edly wed to our pre­ferred sources of dopamine. I for one am prone to co-de­pen­dency and sub­stance use. Like most hu­mans, es­pe­cially my peers in the “self-es­teem gen­er­a­tion,” I also thrive on com­pli­ments and pos­i­tive re­in­force­ment, pats on the habit head. This ar­ti­cle’s ad­vice was sin­cere and I heard it clearly, “All your bad habits are here to stay, ac­cept them, love them. Sur­round them with good things.” Rats in a bleak cage will self ad­min­is­ter co­caine until they die, rats in a stim­u­lat­ing, safe en­vi­ron­ment will find a com­fort­able rate of use. Be the good rat.

So, at the thresh­old of my most dif­fi­cult se­mes­ter yet, I bought pro­duce. I de­vel­oped a com­pli­cated ex­er­cise rou­tine. I would first walk the new puppy, in­creas­ing speed and dis­tance as he aged. Then, yoga for sup­ple­ness and lim­ber limbs, fol­lowed by weight train­ing and pull ups. I would eat a strict diet: whole grains, sweet potato, grape­fruit, tea. Of course I didn’t plan to stop pulling into the Plaid Pantry, munchies rag­ing, and find­ing the old candy gang I knew and loved. No prob­lem here, folks, noth­ing to see! I’m de­vel­op­ing good habits!

I wouldn’t quit smok­ing cig­a­rettes, as I’d al­ready read the eu­logy on that idea (it was in the Times!). If I could just exert my­self with enough force, the old habits would sim­ply be crowded out by the new ones. I was going to com­pletely rein­vent my­self, to­tally un­con­sciously. I would con­quer my so­cial awk­ward­ness, not by pa­tiently look­ing at what caused my sense of alien­ation, but by forc­ing my­self to go to par­ties in a grand mal state of ten­sion. I would do it full on. And what to do, if by some chance, I was two years deep into a re­la­tion­ship, en­gaged, and mis­er­able? Get a dog to­gether, of course.

They were strange and fren­zied days, as the girl pre­pared to leave for a se­mes­ter abroad. I worked fran­ti­cally to pro­duce the image of a co­her­ent life, of a self re­silient enough to stand on its own. Of all the myths and de­nials that up­hold bro­ken per­son­al­i­ties and bro­ken homes, this may be para­mount: the no­tion that we are au­tonomous from one an­other. “I’m fine! Stop ask­ing.” This is what the al­co­holic fa­ther of­fers to his son as the ex­pla­na­tion for his pal­pa­ble mis­ery. “We’re fine! Stop ask­ing, this is a pri­vate mat­ter.” This is the ex­pla­na­tion the al­co­holic fam­ily of­fers to the rest of world.

And who is it, what en­abler, who whis­pers at night, “If I can just love him hard enough, love him for long enough, be his good habits for him, then he’ll change.”

It doesn’t work like that. My life was not co­her­ent, and bad habits aren’t just bad habits. They don’t come with­out their rea­sons, al­though it’s easy to think of them  as an alien force which de­scends, with no fath­omable mo­ti­va­tion, to pos­sess and ruin our too trust­ing minds. The nail bit­ing, nose pick­ing, junk shoot­ing, and tar­di­ness are eas­i­est to deal with if they are ran­dom, ac­ci­dents of the chaotic uni­verse. They are not. At bot­tom, some­where be­neath our tan­gled con­di­tion­ing, they are the prod­uct of re­peated at­tempts to find com­fort from suf­fer­ing, and they stick around, not be­cause they work well, but be­cause they meet some min­i­mum. A cig­a­rette doesn’t soothe anx­i­ety for more than five min­utes, and it breeds more wor­ries down the line, but that sooth­ing is enough for that mo­ment. Rea­son enough to light up. Bad habits are more than they seem, they are the cur­rent state of a sys­tem doing the best it can to sur­vive. My one time part­ner was doing the best she could, shuck­ing off to Nepal to get some per­spec­tive. I was too, and in the clas­si­cal form: de­nial.

This the code by which I was raised. When my dad joined Al­co­holics Anony­mous, he started apol­o­giz­ing for things. A mis­placed anger, a sharply sculpted tone of voice, and then he would say, “I’m sorry about ear­lier, it was habit en­ergy.” A strip of paper ap­peared on our fridge and stayed there until we moved, “You be­come what you prac­tice most.”

These habits we have are often a smoke­screen be­tween us and the lives we’re lead­ing. We have daily rou­tines of for­get­ting and we go about the weeks and months doing the dili­gent work of avoid­ance. Ex­er­cise and leaves of kale are good for you, they help build a healthy life, and I wasn’t wrong to turn to them. I was a fool, how­ever, to for­get that be­neath the habits is some­thing scarier. Down there are the true needs and de­sires.

What if you did stop? When the fil­ter is be­tween your lips and you bring the lighter under your cupped hand to start your first drag, what if you stopped your hand right there. With your grip tense and your thumb primed to spark the flint, what if you waited there? What do you re­ally need?

You Will Not Have Me - Amelia Spin­ney