Pendulums, Time Dilation, and Addiction

Pendulums. This newsletter will be about pendulums.

And addiction.

Because why not. But 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 simply, but there’s a whole part of physics devoted to modeling pendulums. It’s the field of oscillation.

But the thing is, it’s actually fascinating. So much information can be gleaned from studying the flux of force of a single phase, or full swing, of a pendulum. The phase has three distinct points: the positive extreme (picture the pendulum swung up all the way to the right), the middle point (where the pendulum is not engaged in a swinging motion), and the negative extreme (the pendulum is swung up all the way to the left).

Funny things happen when a swinging pendulum reaches each of these three points. 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. Three points, three infinitesimally small instants where, if you slowed time all the way down, the pendulum would have no up or down swing. At the positive extreme (the highest point of the righthand upswing), the pendulum will be the apex of its upward motion, and will slow to a stop. The stop is instantaneous, as gravity overcomes the pendulum’s momentum and it begins to fall, swinging back to the middle, and lowest point. That switch from upswing to downswing has its own middle point: neither a rise nor a fall, which translates to…stopped motion. Same for the negative side. There is an instant at the positive and negative extremes during the switch from up to down when there is no up and no down. There’s no motion at all.

A similar phenomenon occurs at the middle point of the swing. As the middle of the swing is the point at which a downswing switches to an upswing, there is a moment, an instant, where the pendulum is at its lowest point possible. Unlike the stop-motion of the positive and negative extremes, however, the pendulum is still very much in motion at this point. But if it is neither moving up nor down, then it can only be moving one direction: horizontally. Again, for only the briefest of moments—only for an instant—something that exclusively moves up and down and up and down again actually moves neither up nor down.

Cool, right?

I think it’s cool.

So what does this have to do with mental health and addiction? I’m glad you asked.

A healthy mind has a stable mood. A stable mood is the middle point of the pendulum swing. The stability is disturbed, either positively or negatively, when positive or negative things occur in life. The mood gets perturbed either happily or anti-happily, good or un-good, pushing the healthy mind outside its normal stable mood. This is natural. This is a staple of a healthy human life. Sometimes you feel good, sometimes you feel bad, and most of the time, you feel a middle ground of both. And during outstanding moments of great joy or pain in life, your pendulum will swing upwards towards the positive or negative extremes. But mostly, your mood is, on average, stable in the middle. And remember what happens when the pendulum is at its middle point: it’s neither rising nor falling. It is moving horizontally. It is steady. It is motion, but it is at rest.

An addicted mind is not like this. At all. An addicted mind exists at the positive and negative extremes. While high, the pendulum is on the positive upswing, and will keep swinging up until the drug high reaches its apex. This apex is the positive extreme. This here the pleasant effect of the drug is at its maximum. But, like the pendulum, this is also the point at which all motion upward stops, as 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 good part of the drug is over.

Then, the pendulum falls. The high wears off. And instead of settling at the middle point, the pendulum begins its negative ascent, and carries the addict away from the pleasure of the drug. Here is where the withdrawals kick in. As the pendulum up and toward the negative extreme, the withdrawals intensify, until, at the negative extreme, they reach their apex. Here, the painful effect of the drug is at its maximum.

A final bit of physics analogy. Let’s talk about 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, like a black hole. The closer you get to a black hole, the more slowly time passes you by. At the center of a black hole, theoretically speaking, time slows to a point where it no longer exists. And at some point on your journey to the center of the black hole, you pass the Event Horizon, a borderline surrounding the black hole past which nothing can ever escape. Once you cross the Event Horizon, you continue to the center of the black hole.

An addict lives in a constant state of time dilation. When getting high, time passes quickly. This is the upswing toward the positive extreme. The higher the addict gets, the more quickly time seems to pass, up until the point where the high begins to wear off—at the positive extreme. Recall the instantaneous stop motion of the switch from up to down, and that instantaneous relaxation the addict will have that the high has peaked. Down comes the pendulum, on its journey from positive to negative. The addict sobers up, and once completely sober, the pendulum passes the middle point and begins its upswing to the negative extreme. During this ascension, withdrawal symptoms kick in. They are painful, and as the pendulum continues swinging upward towards the negative extreme, they get stronger and stronger. At this point, the addict experiences the opposite effect of time dilation: instead of time speeding up, it slows down. The stronger the withdrawals get, the slower time passes. This continues until the withdrawals reach their apex: the negative extreme. At this point, 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 negative extreme is the Event Horizon. The black hole is the suffering of the addict as he or she withdraws from the drug. Once the addict reaches the Event Horizon, there is only one perceived path forward: suffering. All paths point to the center of the black hole, towards pain, towards misery, towards an ever slowing down of time spent suffering.

The addict has a choice here. Head into the black hole or find a way to get high. Getting high will expeditiously swing the pendulum back into the positive upswing, and start the whole process over. The black hole of suffering will disappear and be replaced by euphoria, but only for as long as the pendulum is in a positive upswing. Do nothing, and the Event Horizon is crossed. There is only suffering ahead.

Can anyone blame the addict for using a drug to escape the prospect of guaranteed, timeless suffering? Can anyone say they would be able to do differently in that situation?

Well, actually, maybe.

Because the thing is, the time dilation only exists in the mind of the addict. To those with healthy minds and stable moods, time passes at a normal pace. To these minds, an hour on the positive side is equal to an hour on the negative. Further, they see that there is no black hole. There is no Event Horizon. They know that withdrawals, no matter how strong, end. Instead of a black hole, they see a bridge. The negative extreme of the pendulum swing is the first step onto that bridge. It hurts, and the suffering is real, but on the other side of the bridge is stability, not an endless, timeless, inescapable black hole.

When in withdrawals, it can be difficult to accept that they are temporary. Nothing in your brain feels normal, and absolutely nothing feels good and correct. This negative extreme is so upsetting to the subconscious brain that it overcorrects, unsure of what to do, and releases anxiety and stress-causing chemicals and hormones—which only exacerbates the impact of the withdrawals. The uncertainty compounds as the withdrawals get stronger, and uncertainty creates doubt, and doubt creates fear, and fear creates paralysis. Paralysis is powerlessness. A one-way ticket to suffering, to the black hole, to a state of hell on earth.

Except, it’s not. It’s a bridge through hell and into stability. Withdrawals are not the hallmark of suffering; they are the signposts of sobriety. They point clearly: sobriety this way! They are the only way to stop the pendulum from swinging wildly, back and forth, from one extreme to the other, ad infinitum. On the other side of that bridge is the stability of a healthy mind that can see clearly.

Much love, 

Matt von Boecklin

Founder / Quit Kit