Addictions in parents and other grown up authorities…

summer-view from the middle of Sweden.

[slightly edited and updated June 26]. In the news today they say that many children are worried over parent’s internet dependency (or Internet addiction).

Many children have called Bris, Children’s Rights in Society’s worried over their parents’ Internet habits. A study from 2007 shows what influence Internet has for children’s ill-health.

“They are often filled with shame, anger and sorrow, but also questions about what they shall do.”

Mothers who are caught in Internet-playing many hours a day or fathers porn-surfing (even child porn!!!) and sex-chatting. When children get to know this they get worried and don’t know how to handle it. And Bris-Children’s Right in Society has noticed this. Last year they noticed a striking increase in the number of calls and emails from (exactly) children, not knowing how they shall solve their parent’s problems. According to an investigator at Bris this discovery can be compared with when children discover that their parent’s abuse alcohol, drugs etc. because the set of problems are the same.

“It is as shameful as addiction, and they have to handle it in the same way as other forms of addictions.”

In first hand it is parent’s visits to porn-sites children are reacting most strongly at. Most of the children calling have seen their parent’s visiting porn - and even child porn Internet-sites.

They write in the article that parent’s (and other grown ups, if they are authorities of any kind for young people my addition) ought to wonder what sort of models they are to their children or other children they are authorities for. True I think... We are or can be models in many different respects...

Addition (quickly translated and written): I searched under the label addictions and there was one on “Parasiten – the Parasite…” A swift translation of parts of that blogposting:

This year a book came in Swedish written by a man Fredrik Ljung just above 30. A book about "a drug-addicted in suit", a man newly examined from school of economics and business administration (the most prestigious in Sweden in this case), with a

“well-paid job in the finance-branch, dressed in expensive suits.”

As the author once was.

He and his companion mean they could work high pressuredly and at the same time abuse drugs without anybody noticing it.

They mean that alcohol-problems are still more common in working-life, but drug-problems are increasing (earlier drug-addictions were less common, people used alcohol instead?). These two men are now treating other people with the same problems as they had.

10 % of the employees in average on a work-place have problems with alcohol and drugs they think, and those coming to them are young, just above 30 and they have an already established pill and drug-addiction. Most of them are men, but they think women are much cleverer in hiding their problems (so THAT problem, with drug abuse, is partly hidden).

Alcohol and drug problems are overrepresented in high achieving professions and in circumstances where kick-seeking people search themselves to. Pressure achieving and a feelings of insufficiency make many seeking help in alcohol and tablets, and maybe later also drugs, to handle their live (things that drove them into these works in the first place, and on wrong premises?). Most common are marijuana and amphetamine, but cocaine is also increasing.

Silently (feeling so sad and horrified again rereading this): Hiding ones problems by using drugs of all kinds… Keeping silent of shame? And if you can’t manage things you are no real man (or woman)??? The hypocrisy! Showing a façade. And that about being “a real man" again… Does women want that sort of “real men”??? Or what sort of women want such a man?

The author thinks it is important focusing on the request (demand) for drugs, and to watch so people feel better and don’t have to resort to drug use to make their lives endurable. And this should actually have started early in life, where children ought to feel they are worthy, lovable just as they are etc. Silently: how nice is a life being drugged all the time or a lot of the time actually? Being blunt (avtrubbad) most of or the whole time? Oh, this is so sad.

What is lying at the bottom? From where comes the mania being clever and achieving? The feeling one isn’t good enough if one doesn’t achieve and even achieve enormously? The feeling one has to control oneself, or rather not being weak, but showing a (false) façade of strength?

The author said he had never had any problems getting the tablet-store renewed!! No physicians refused to prescribe new, or more, tablets (he visited 20 doctors and there were never any great problems)! This also made me think… It has been a lot (or at least some) talk about being observant towards this phenomenon, i.e. that people goes to many different physicians to get medicine, especially when it comes to calming medicine, sleeping pills (But thre hasn't been any straight talk about narcotics)… But they have found in research that women and men are treated differently by doctors, and employees at for instance the Social Insurance in Sweden etc. Treated differently because of their gender - AND thus their status in society (quite ironical)?? Women with problems are treated with more contempt and less respect!?

Ljung says he succeeded keeping himself “floating,” as he says, for eight years. He started abusing alcohol systematically when he was 19 years. During these years he changed his whole acquaintance-circle, only associated with criminals (in suits??), he was heavily in debt, had two broken relations behind him and hardly any contact with his parents. In short his life was in a real mess.

Suddenly he realized the truth; he wasn’t the successful and enviable person he had struggled so hard to become.

It stands:

“Henrik is filled with contempt, both against the society and against people in his environment and this permeates [genomsyrar] his strivings in reaching the top, which is a well paid, status-filled job on a bank in London or New York.”

Oh, how fun! And really something to strive for!! Observe the irony! The principal figure in the book is ironical, arrogant, show contempt for weakness, is floating above… The reviewer of the book earlier this year characterized the principal figure with the expressions "hubris" and "self-contempt. "

Yes, what does Miller write about irony for instance? And about addiction?

This really made me think once again…

Addition June 26: Struck me about Jane Fonda's bulimia. Also see "Starving for Attention." She thought that she was so occupied with her eating that she lived like in a glass-bubble, cut off from the environment and not really their for her children (Vanessa and Troy?). And she could slightly imagine how this for them. If I remember right. Sidetrack: but it feels as she is still in denial to a high degree, and have been "taught" forgiveness by therapists...

And I recently also read about Britt Ekland (actually Eklund!!), the Swedish actress, who has problems with osteoporosis, and it struck me this can (must) be because of constant concern about the weight. And she must have done plastic surgery (the lips??) which hasn't been really successful... I have done plastic surgery too, a (really) big (and tough) operation. I was offered another one, but at that time I had accepted how I look and didn't make a second operation... And before this operation the female doctor said she didn't think this operation was necessary, but if I wanted to make it they should make it... Oh, this is a long story...