On Heresy: the 4th C

Once a week, I do volunteer work at a local charter school, in their gifted students program. Their gifted students program is cutting edge, because this particular school also recognizes, and integrates, what they call "twice exceptional" students into this program.

These students are students who have demonstrated exceptional test scores or IQs, but who have other issues, typically ADHD, Asperger's, or are otherwise "on the spectrum" of autism. They have sensitive, developing brains.

These kids can be a challenge, and joy, to learn to work with, because you have to throw away your paradigms and learn to sync-in with them, to get performance from them. And the performance you get may not at all be in the form that is conventionally expected. So it forces you to have an open mind, and be creative.

What does this have to do with 12-step heresy, and this as-yet-undefined fourth "C?"

Ahhhhhhh...

These students, the "twice exceptional" students, are prime candidates for our future peers. They work in bubbles of their own worlds, poorly interfacing with the conventional system. Poorly integrated with the normies of their peer age.

Some of them have intellects, and sensitivities, well beyond their years, but social skills well behind. They are pariahs, outsiders, living on the edge of genius. Their vivid minds take in more stimuli, yet their skills are poor in filtering them, and processing them, and working through the resulting issues, socially.

These are the kids that may never feel at home in their own skin. For whom isolation and pain may be constant companions. Who may be painfully aware of their deficits, despite their gifts.

These are potential future addicts, of a type.

DEPENDING ON HOW THEY ARE HANDLED AND DEVELOPED.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, may I present 12-step heresy, what I call the fourth "C":

Contribute.

Yes, it's been pounded into my head that we don't cause, control, or cure another's addiction. This is doctrine that has withstood the decades pretty well, and been very useful and comforting to countless -Anon programmers: Al-Anon, Narc-Anon, etc.

I believe wholeheartedly that the addictive brain has feedback pathways or neurochemical anomolies that are out of the bell curve of normal. And it may be that there is some threshold event that starts the train running, such as a toxic episode, or series of toxic episodes, that get the bad circuitry fired up and screaming for more.

It will be a long time before we know, for sure, but eventually we will. For now, we have brain scans that definitively show that addiction is a different set of brain functions than normal brain functions.

We can see it on the pictures, and see the damage it does afterwards, too.

We can associate some addictions to particular brain structures, using imaging.

There is so much more, to come. So little we really know, about how the brain works.

While seeing may be believing, it still is not etiological. We don't know what exactly is happening, in the imaging - only that something is different, from the "normal" brain scan.

Imaging does tell us that stress can induce brain changes, as well. And permanent function changes. Some postulate that chemicals induced under stress cause brain development to progress differently:

The paradox for the brain comes when there is repeated stress over many days or when glucocortical levels remain high because of adrenal overactivity or poor regulation of the stress response. The result is atrophy of pyramidal neurons in the hippocampus and shutdown of ongoing neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus. After very prolonged and severe stress, pyramidal neurons may actually die. Through these processes, the hippocampus atrophies. This can be seen in the human brain by magnetic resonance imaging.

While I don't wish to write a dissertation, and don't want to drone on until your eyes glaze over, here is my point:

When you listen to where people come from, in the rooms, it's not all that odd to hear of a traumatic past. Especially childhood. There are environments and events that forge abnormal, addictive brains, in part.

The external factors of environment and event may be the last straw to a genetic predisposition, but they can indeed contribute to making such a brain. Some brains are very sensitive, to start with, and easily affected more than others.

My point being, when you wander the earth, remember this. When you interact with others, remember this. If you spend time with children, remember this. You are part of their enviornment.

There are things that we CAN manage, that contribute to the forging of the addictive brain.

HERESY!!!

I stand by my opinion. And, in 20 years, so will the burgeoning reams of research.

Be careful how you treat your fellow human.

And judge them.

And know that your behavior can affect others.

Keep this in mind. You are free of responsibility concerning the three "Cs," but you are responsible for the fourth. Especially with children.

-The Traveler