Addiction

What is addiction ?

"An addiction is a compulsion to use a substance or persist with a certain behaviour in order to feel good or to avoid feeling bad"

The above quote in the first link that I got on google while I was searching for "Addiction what is it ? "
Lets analyse what the above statement has to say:
It says "persistent behaviour or dependence on certain substances in order to feel good and avoid feeling bad"
It define addiction as mean of doing good to self in order to avoid doing bad.
Is it true though ?
I would say, if a person is addicted he does what he does because, the habit or the behaviour is beyond his control. The feeliing of being addict is the feeling of guilt, the feeling of being helpless, lack of mental faculty to be in control of the situation and finally succumbing to the pressures. Its a kind of a circular situation of the addict knowing his problems, him trying to overcome it and in the process being dragged into the hole more so.

What are the most common addictions that people have in day to day lives that seem not to harm them on short term but, are thought to be unhealty on longer time scales.
Cigarette smoking,the extreme case would be chain smokers, people who smoke atleast a pack a day, that would make a approximatley a cigarette every hr and 15 min. Alcoholism, the extreme case of that would be people who are inebriated almost all the time, people who cant see themselves stopping with just one peck on any given ocassion. Gambling, an addiction whose consequences I have come to see on first hand basis every single day growing up as a child. Extreme case involves, people unable to control their urge to squander their hard earned money every single pay day, with some days being good when the addict wins, with the odds of loss being just too high. But still the gambler gambles, in hope to beat the odds and rise to the ocassion.

Then there are some serious maladies, like being addicted to drugs, worst amogst those being, LSD, Cocaine, Marijuana, and such "recreational drugs" as they are called, belong to the family of drugs which affect the CNS directly. They induce the feeling of short term euphoria, and are kind of drugs to which a person becomes strongly addicted, as define by his complete loss of control to avoid the use of drug.

Why do people get addicted ?

An interesting question. The answer to which many a times lies in social structure of our society.

Entering the GUI world

Having worked in the field of Dynamical systems theory, I have been greatly benefited by many of the fascinating GUI applets available online and some of the wonderful graphical applications that exist to understand the problems intutively and at the same time appreciate the theory behind it.
One of the very interesting application is at the following site,
Lorenz Model Applet

Its a java applet on Lorenz model, the very first system in continuous dynamical systems theory that any new student will learn. The java tutorial gives hands on idea about the behaviour of the model and the student can visually see, what is meant by ¨sensitive dependence on initial conditions¨, the very typical property exhibited by any chaotic dynamical system and the source of the more famous quote, ¨When the butterfly flaps its wings in tahiti, it results in tornado in kansa¨.

Have you ever used all the cool applets on Linux machine, for example say, the gnome-calculator, which comes with any Linux OS. I have always wanted to do something like that. With no backgorund in software programming to the details required in GUI, it has always been a daunting task for me to learn. However not any more. There exists this excellent IDE environment called ANJUTA, created by an Indian, Naba Kumar and in addition with some help from GLADE, an interface builder and some of GTK+ libraries, with some basic C programming background, I was able to built in a days time an application much similar to the gnome-calculator I mentioned above. It was really fun and exciting knowing how easy it has now become for any novice to do some cool stuff.

Finally all the tools I mentione above, in the spirit of GPL, are available freely online.
On the passing note, I would also like to thank 2 excellent tutorial articles by Eddy Anhmed on Glade, and a nice tutorial article by Ishan Chattopadhyaya on using Anjuta, which has helped me to get going with fulfilling my desire.

The link to the articles which I think are useful, is provided below,
Glade Tutotial
Starting off with Anjuta

I will sometime soon also post details on how to go about buiding a simple calculator app, on my page.

Depression : Coping with it

Back in india, depression is more mental illness, reflecting weakness of a person, his inability to cope with whatever situation there exists, it is more of something that is as tabooed and bad as some serious illness say like AIDS. Associating depression, or what is correctly termed as clinical depression, with an illness, something that can be diagnosed and cured is hard to grasp.

The fact that a person can be ill with depression is simply hard to understand.

Clinical depression is associated with, as one can easily find by googling it, certain set of symptoms, easy to look for. Usually you are given a questionaire to fill, with answers yes or no, to questions like,

did u have thoughts of suicide recently,
do you think there is no hope for future
do u feel anxious all the time,
have u started to forget things quite often,
have u lost interest in anything that u do,
and the set continues....

The medication available in the western world where it is appropriately treated as illness, basically works on rectifying the chemical imbalance in the brain, something called neurotransmitters, that play role in conveying information from one brain cell to the other.
Class of medicines that fall into category called SSRIs, i.e., Selective Serotonin Reuptake inhibitors, like the more common, ElLilys, Prozac or Zoloft by Pfizer, work by blocking serorotin reuptake mechanism, thereby more serotinin stays in the synaptic cleft, (layman words, the space between 2 connecting cells,). High levels of serotonin over an enduring time period create changes in cell configuration in terms of more channles made available for better communication between the two connecting cells, the amount of serotonin produced, as well as in the number of serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SERT ) expressed. An increase in serotonin creates a change in SERT expression and consequently effects mood and other serotonin affected behaviors. It is these compensatory responses at the cell that improves or enhances mood and is considered to be a form of solution to depression problems.


This is one approch to problem of depression which is purely scientific. However, many a times depression is more than just some chemical imbalance. Upbringing of a child, child who is repeatedly criticized or treated unfairly, not allowed to think or act independently, denied love and attention, compared unfavorably with others, humiliated repeatedly in front of others or made to feel worthless and unwanted, very likely will develop low self esteem while growing up and suffers from feelings of inadequacy. Failure might follow, and if you are unable to meet the expectation that society have from you, depression might result. Basically as might be diagnosed correctly, one might start feeling complete hopelessness and self pity. He might start worrying over trifle matters and might loose sight of where hes going.

In such case, society plays an important role to bring the person back on track, more than anything else. Close friends, relatives , family, all with their share of love and respectful approch towards the persons problems might help him more than anything else, to feel important again.

Finally, sad events like the recent suicide of famous indian model/actress/MTV VJ, which are just spur of the moment things can be prevented by the ill person himself, if the person under such critical depressed condition has a little bit of courage to seek help.

France Equality

I have now quite a few times read about, the policy of france to ban any display of religious bias by an individual in public schools, by that I mean, Sikh kids are all banned from france public schools unless they stop wearing turban, similarly, muslim women are not allowed to wear their traditional headscarf in any public place, nor are christians allowed to display large crucifixes dangling down their neck. The stand by french government on this issue is, public display of religion creates bias in society, they want to strictly seperate religion and state.

I wonder what will france achieve imposing such a ban on people at the same time claiming its democratic staus, which by its definition allows people to adhere to their faith and freedom independent of state interference, as long as no harm is being done. If one extends this crazy idea a bit further, imagine not allowing people who could afford, to own say, Mercedes Benz, cause it will then create bias in the society amongst rich and poor. Imagine banning exams, as it might result in distinction from bright and smart kid from a dumer. You simply cant do this. Society is made to be baised, people have all the right to choose and follow what they believe in and state should not have any authority to have control over individuals right of freedom. In a way this law, has repercussion of an authoratirian state, trying to impose stricture on individual under disguise of glaringly farce idea of ¨all being done for the benefit of society¨

Nostalgia

Read 2 articles now by parth, one elaborating on those wonderful days of us 4 being at rock beach discussing almost anything and everything under the sun. In his recent blog parth describes the initial days of struggle when a new graduate student comes to united states of america, the memories of 4 long years back, at the turn of this century, when he and avinash first landed in the US of A.

Neways for me today the nostalgia is quite different... It all started believe it or not, with me preparing for my presentation, which i am supposed to give in a weeks time for review of my scholarship. As it happened, I landed at this site called, Raaga.com.
Under the Music directors link under Hindi music section, as most people would do, I choose to see what was listed under R.D. Burman, supposedly the greatest music directors of all times. Found a link to music of movie GHAR, and the particular song,
"Aap ki aakhon mein". Almost the whole day working on my presentation, it deemed appropriate that this song which holds tremendous significance to me, conjured up all the past memories, ironically during almost the same time, as parth was talking about, 4 years ago, of me being in Ahmedabad.. Still arguably those 45 days have been the best in my life so far.
That led me to go to India store to see if I could find the movie, but it turned out that none of the stores had GHAR with them.. It sucked big time. Determined as I was, to see some classic, it occured to me that the movie Ijazat, about a couple who, are seperated for life by circumstances, to meet one day at railway station, would be an excellent choice for satiating my desire to bath in nostalgia.
For sure the movie did its job. The whole movie, Rekha reminded me of that someone and god knows what would I not give to be in the place of Nasurrudin Shah.
Moments like these make life for sure!!!!!!!!!