This blog is about pendulums.

And addiction.

Because why not.

Stick with me on this one.

So. What can I say about pendulums that hasn’t already been said about pendulums? They swing, in an upward and downward path, from one extreme to the other. Sounds simple, but there’s a whole part of physics devoted to describing the movement of pendulums: oscillation. Oscillation is a dynamic and fundamental part of mathematics and the understanding of repeating signals in nature. And there’s an entire set of mathematical formulas to model this. Sounds cool, right?

Right?

Well. It is. It’s actually fascinating. And not for the reasons you may think.

Let’s start by describing the journey of a pendulum as it moves from one swing to the next. This journey is called a phase. Each phase has three distinct points:

• The positive extreme: when the pendulum is swung up all the way to the right.
• The middle point: where the pendulum is at its lowest point.
• The negative extreme: the pendulum is swung up all the way to the left.

We can also accurately describe the phase as a flow of upward and downward movement—the pendulum swings up, then swings down, back up, and back down, on repeat. Yet, when the pendulum reaches either of the positive or negative extremes (the highest part of the upswings on the right or left side) or the middle point (the lowest point of the swing), there will come a point where the pendulum stops rising and falling.

At these three points exist three infinitesimally small instants of time wherein the pendulum has no swing, a very un-pendulum thing to do.

At the positive or negative extremes, the pendulum will slow to a stop. The stop is instantaneous, as gravity overcomes the pendulum’s upward momentum and it begins to swing back down. In the process, the pendulum must experience a moment where there is neither a rise nor a fall, or, in lay terms, translates to…stopped motion. The pendulum is suspended in perfect balance between up and down. No motion. No momentum.

Think about that. A point of absolute zero. The instant at which change is about to occur.

Cool, right?

A similar-yet-different phenomenon occurs at the middle point of the pendulum swing. As the pendulum crosses from the positive side to the negative side, it crosses the middle, or lowest, point of the swing. At this point, it is neither moving up nor down. It is moving in only one direction: perpendicular to the vertical access, or, looked at another way, straightforward. Again, a very un-pendulum thing to do. If you were to cut the pendulum loose at exactly this point, it would travel away from you in a straight line.

To recap, the phase of a pendulum, which swings in perpetual motion, has one point of zero swing, and two points of zero motion.

So cool.

Right?

Right.

So what does this have to do with mental health and addiction?

Well. I’m glad you asked.

Think of the pendulum as a human mind. A healthy mind has a stable mood. A stable mood is the middle point of the pendulum swing, a point without ups and downs. The stability may be perturbed, either positively or negatively, when positive or negative things occur in life. Mostly, however, a healthy mood is stable, right in the middle. It is in motion, but its motion is straightforward.

An addicted mind is not like this. At all.

An addicted mind exists at the positive and negative extremes. While getting high, the addict’s pendulum is on the positive upswing, and will keep swinging up until the drug high reaches its positive extreme. This extreme is the apex of the high the addict feels. It’s as good as things are going to get. But this is also the point at which upward motion stops, and the high goes from upswing to downswing. An addict knows well what happens at this point—that switch flips, and there is an instantaneous moment of realization that the high is going to fade away.

The pendulum falls and the high wears off. Then comes the negative upswing, carrying the addict away from the pleasure of the drug. This is when the withdrawals kick in. And as the pendulum reaches the negative extreme, the withdrawals intensify. Once at the negative extreme, the painful effect of withdrawals is at its maximum.

Okay, before we continue, a final bit of physics analogy. Time dilation.

Time dilation, very basically, is a phenomenon in which time moves relatively slowly or quickly depending on proximity to a time-distorting object. A black hole is an excellent example. The closer you get to a black hole, the more slowly time passes. At the center of a black hole, theoretically, time slows to a point where it no longer exists for you. At some point on your journey to the center of the black hole, you pass an Event Horizon: an invisible gravitational border encapsulating the black hole, past which nothing can ever escape. Ever. Once you cross the Event Horizon, there is no alternative but for you to continue to the center of the black hole, where time slows to a literal halt.

Theoretically.

An addict lives in a constant flux of time dilation. While getting high, time passes quickly for the addict. This is the upswing of the pendulum toward the positive extreme. The higher the addict gets, the more quickly time seems to pass, until the instant when the high begins to wear off. Down comes the pendulum. The addict sobers up, and once completely sober, the pendulum begins its upswing toward the negative extreme. Withdrawals kick in. They begin mildly painful, but as the pendulum continues swinging upwards, they get increasingly painful. Time slows down for the addict. The more painful the withdrawals get, the slower time passes. This dilation effect continues until the pendulum reaches the negative extreme. Here, the agony of the withdrawals is so severe that every second lasts a minute, every minute lasts an hour, and every hour is an eternity.

The addict has reached the Addiction Event Horizon. Just beyond it is a one-way path to a black hole of pure suffering.

The addict has a choice. Let go of the pendulum, and travel past the Event Horizon, towards guaranteed, timeless suffering, or find a way to get high again. Getting high will expeditiously swing the pendulum back into the positive. Suffering is avoided. For now. Until the process repeats.

Now, I ask, could anyone blame the addict for using a drug to escape the prospect of guaranteed, timeless black hole of suffering? Could anyone say they would be able to act differently in that situation?

Well, actually, maybe.

Because the thing is, this time dilation only exists in the mind of the addict. To people with healthy minds and stable moods, time passes at a normal pace, no matter what anyone else is going through. To these people, an hour on the positive side is equal to an hour on the negative. When they observe an addict entering withdrawals, they see that there is no black hole. There is no Event Horizon.

But this is only easy to see with a healthy mind. When an addict in the throes of severe withdrawals, it can be difficult to understand, let alone accept, that they are temporary. The addict feels like he or she is living in an alternate reality—a waking nightmare. This alternate reality is so brutal that the addicted mind may feel like it has embarked on a one-way ticket to suffering, to the black hole, a timeless state of misery.

Except, it hasn’t. There is no black hole. No Event Horizon. Only a bridge. From addiction and instability to recovery and stability. That's it. Looked at from this perspective, withdrawals are not the hallmark of suffering; they are the signposts of sobriety. They point out clearly: sobriety this way!

The only way to stop the pendulum from swinging wildly back and forth is to let go of it. To let go is the only way to permanently avoid the suffering that comes with this extreme oscillation. In fact, the only one-way, guaranteed path to suffering is to hang on. Withdrawals are temporary, but addiction continues as long as an addict allows. That’s the ultimate irony. The black hole of suffering is the addiction, not the withdrawals. Withdrawals end, and when they end, they reveal all the best things about the world, things that could never be found while swinging through the highs and lows of addiction.

Let go of the pendulum.