Maradona: the impossibility of stopping
As a fan of sticker albums, but not football, my connection with the history of Maradona is related. His figure is in any case exemplary, even with respect to psychological aspects. More or less anyone knows of his cocaine-related misadventures, but here I would like to make a different reflection.
He is said to have represented the example of an instinctive, golden and careless footballer who can be done, driven by the desire to accomplish more than he was worried about the circumstances. As someone who does not come from a childhood of ease, did not ask himself the problem of the most comfortable or most logical way, he was looking for the breakthrough.
His figure is the football equivalent of what Al Pacino’s Scarface is in the imagination of mafia films. An overwhelming boss who comes from the street, hungry for success and victory, who manages to dare not out of need, but out of desire to reach the top.
In these paths, good and evil, as some might want to distinguish them in retrospect, come together.
They even arrive generated on the same line. Usually it is thought that on the one hand there is sport, the healthy, true one, which teaches the true values ​​of sacrifice and competition, which teaches to be in a group and work for a common goal. And on the other, the insane lives, lost in vices such as drugs, dedicated only to oneself and to one’s selfish goals, with bogus, destructive results and a negative effect on fiber and character.
Well, all this is not true. The two are two possible phases, made possible by the same premise.
The reason for sporting excellence and that of cocaine degeneration may well be the same thing. Because it is not a question of morality, of choice (which no one would do to cause harm), but of risk connected to temperament. Emile Zola called this fate open to luck as well as bad luck, the ” fatality of the flesh “; and he described stories in which life energy easily bordered on excess or deviance, whereby success and ruin were successive phases of the same life.
For example, athletes with forced rest are on average more prone than non-sportsmen to use alcohol and drugs (as well as food) in a pathological way. Doping has nothing to do with it, rather it has to do with the difficult adaptation to the normal rhythm of an organism accustomed to intense physical stimulation.
However, this aspect is not only evident afterwards, it is often already evident before the end of the sporting career.
When we start talking about Maradona and cocaine it was at the time of his crisis with Italian football. The first real rumors are earlier, but the thing became a topic only in that period, as if to justify an announced divorce. Indeed, to be precise, the rumors began in a period in which his results were not exceptional, and then repeated themselves after years to coincide with the end of the relationship with Italian football.
In short, evil was brought up when things went badly. That he had magically disappeared in between.
It is known that those who go through phases of euphoria and rapid ascent are subject to wanting even more, according to a principle of reverberation, rather than a principle of self-balance. Going beyond can produce various types of encroachment: the drug is only one.
The detractors recalled that Maradona was exceptional, but if necessary he did not disdain fouls, in particular an episode remained famous in which one gets the impression that he also controls the ball with his hand. The story of that episode is emblematic: you had to win, and since it was right to win, the trick seems to be justifiable too. A “going beyond”, both for good, with incredible football feats, and for evil, with the most banal of forbidden touches. But the line, that of determination, of wanting to go further, of not knowing how to give up a dream, is the same.
The parable of the “ maniacal dimension“(That is euphoric, expansive, of” elevation “) and always the same, in the short term of a mania-depression cycle as well as in the span of a lifetime. Just as the seed of depression lies in the excitatory phase that often preceded it, so a fate of trouble and trouble ripens like a fruit from the tree of success and fulfillment.
It is easier to try to take care of those who limp, slow down, can’t do it. On the other hand, those who are exuberant, in full success, ambitious to grow to a maximum and beyond, and difficult to stop. He will not know a restart if not in a sprint, he will not be able to respond to an obstacle without accelerating, just like Maradona did while dribbling his opponents. One stood in front, passed him, and then another, and then two others. It almost seemed that the
But according to the same logic, when speed is the problem, those arriving from an expansive phase cannot brake, do not get used to decelerating, do not agree to travel at lower speeds.
Trying to cure him is as difficult as catching a very fast fish in the net, and at the same time ferocious, which bites the net. He is not a tired person who needs to be helped to get off the ground. It is more like a hot air balloon that you can no longer land, and often comes back down because it gets punctured and crashes, or runs out of fuel.
In bipolarity, in the manic dimension that is expressed at various levels, from the starting temperament to the actual phase, moral distinctions should not be sought, which are not there. The good and the bad are options.
What matters instead is to try to bring the engine revs down without making the deceleration feel too much, and avoiding the crash. The manic patient often experiences this coexistence of good and bad excitement in a single type of “great” and powerful sensation, which cannot be dissected. And they often suffer when they do damage, because at the top of that evil, by moving a little, there would have been a peak of good.
Just as in a football genius the spectacle of the infinite dribbling and the surprise of the hand ball coexist. In technical terms it is called contrast dysphoria : if they stop me and I don’t pass, I push and climb over.
15 comments
# 1
Former user
November 27, 2020
As a non-fan, Maradona strikes because under her casual talkativeness, under her frenzy there is a sort of loss of sensitivity, of depth, that depth of a thousand layers, unfathomable, mysterious that somehow defines the very identity of Maradona. .
His condemnation, perhaps, and the forced or defensive superficiality of his life, that being of him in reality reduced to a surface: brilliant, quivering, iridescent but still a surface.
He never stops, and like a man in full swing as if trying to grasp something that always escapes him a world that loses meaning, vanishes and to find meaning he tries to build bridges of meaning over abysses of senselessness, over the chaos that opens up beneath him.
Here the expressions “satiated and destroyed” or “well-being generates discomfort” or even “those who stop and lost” could fit perfectly, but perhaps those who stop are not lost but on the right path to “save themselves”.
Doctor, very interesting article as always.
# 2
User 606XXX
November 30, 2020
Who knows why the more VIPs, the more doctors they have, the more they risk having bad ends
# 3
Because they can afford to treat themselves as they would like. It is the paradox of wealth. Under a certain income, there is a risk of not having any assistance, such as those who live on the street, or in places where there are no health services. Above a certain income, you risk being able to “pay” to have the best treatments you have decided, and perhaps avoid those that would truly be the best. The rich, at least according to what they say, often spend ten times as much on treatments that are very normal, or (let’s take the case of drug addiction) they often spend on rehabilitation treatments (re-hab) that actually have nothing to do with standard treatments, but which can be stratified according to income, as if they were hotels of the first, second, third category. And in some cases they have a private doctor, see the case of Michael Jackson, who mediates the taking of medicines, which all seem less than medical schemes, they seem more what an addict would do according to his own tendencies. Many are those who feel they are experts in the effects and therefore misunderstand that they know how to use medicines to make their own treatment schemes. If they have the money they run much more risks, because they find facilities and doctors who support them in some way. Many are those who feel they are experts in the effects and therefore misunderstand that they know how to use medicines to make their own treatment schemes. If they have the money they run much more risks, because they find facilities and doctors who support them in some way. Many are those who feel they are experts in the effects and therefore misunderstand that they know how to use medicines to make their own treatment schemes. If they have the money they run much more risks, because they find facilities and doctors who support them in some way.
# 4
User 219XXX
November 30, 2020
Hi, I take advantage of this space to ask you a question always inherent to the relationship between mental disorders and famous people. What do you think of Cremonini’s cicenda who confessed to having been suffering from schizophrenia
According to what I have read, the psychiatrist would have said that the onset of the disease would be attributable to the lifestyle of the singer too concentrated on work and with exhausting rhythms. I don’t know, it seems strange to me.
# 5
User 606XXX
01 December 2020
Eh, now the latest cry among the vips is having some kind of mental disorder, just just supplanted by covid
# 6
Vips usually propose unlikely diagnoses or in a way to induce compassion or admiration (such as: how I got out of it, how I defeated depression, how I have to fight with the disorder x being well now etc, how it affected my childhood, how hindered me but then I did it etc). What I have to say disturbs me because unfortunately those who are ill take care of themselves and hope to get better, and even if it is not so difficult to feel good, it is wrong to say “I defeated this disease”, this is a personal experience, but in proposing it in public it would be more correct to say how we are treated and say that fate loved us. Often then there is on the one hand the desire to say that you have something very serious, and on the other hand to say that you have come out of it, things a bit contradictory alas.
Or say that you would have severe depression but have learned to react, similar nonsense. If one is standing it means that his legs are working, that’s all.
# 7
User 606XXX
02 December 2020
Well, but it is not like a “lottery” to recover from a psychiatric disorder I think a doctor, or am I wrong
or at least, from depression (to say), as far as I know, you can heal with excellent probability, it is not like having, for example, certain types of cancer which are sadly death sentences.
# 8
Certainly. But the concept is that you defeated nothing, you healed yourself and it went well. Or you did not take care of yourself and it went well, because not everything goes away only by treating it, even serious depressions end by themselves, but there is a reason why they are treated instead, that is to prevent them from becoming complicated and interrupting life. of a person. It is like covid: when someone comes up with unhappy sentences about the fact that it only affects people with other diseases, and a way of saying that those who die have something “wrong” or in any case a handicap that the speaker does not have. And so too does saying “I have defeated” the illusion of controlling certain events. Illusion reinforced by a journalistic and theatrical language for which those in a coma “are fighting”, those who are sick ”
# 9
User 606XXX
02 December 2020
one more maybe stupid question, doctor. For millennia, man has discovered psychotropic substances as a “cure” for anxiety, depression, etc. If a depressed person gets drunk “is better” so to speak, and there is no “resistance to treatment”, everyone is affected by alcohol.
In the same way, it is not possible to study a drug that affects everyone or almost everyone
. It is a simplistic speech, but I’m sure you understand what I mean.
# 10
No, it’s not true that alcohol has the same effect on everyone. There are those who do not hold it and those who perceive it as euphoric. Ditto the cocaine. Minorities, maybe. For now in reality we have very rough things, because almost everyone has to study samples “designed” to make a good impression, that is with the exclusion of a series of categories such as drinkers, subjects with multiple pathologies etc.
# 11
User 606XXX
02 December 2020
that is, if I understand correctly, antidepressants may in some cases not work because they are used on subjects with other pathologies, and on which perhaps the antidepressant is not good And this is not
reassuring
in the statistics , somehow ..
# 12
Yes, right. In controlled clinical trials, several categories are typically excluded, including substance abusers, ‘too young’ and ‘too old’, and people with multiple diseases who are not in general good health. Now, this makes the final data that comes out better (at least so it is thought, because in reality it is not taken for granted), and the effectiveness in real cases is not so high. For example, we also found opposite cases, such as methadone on those who also had other mental illnesses, in addition to addiction: the outcome was better if used at certain doses, so the figure in that case was better on the most demanding patients. But in general this way of reasoning is used also so that it is clear that there is only one disease and only one drug at stake, if possible.
# 13
Former user
12 December 2020
One last consideration, beyond the case studies and statistics, then I am silent, I will never understand why there will always be a tendency to reduce complex figures to stereotypes, not to recognize fullness, and often the rich contradiction of their thinking.
Jackson himself (not Michael) but the neurologist who wrote about reminescence was very different from Jackson who saw all thought as propositional calculus. The former was a poet, the latter a logician, and yet they are the same person.
The schizophrenic, for example, always complains of an external influence: passive, victim, he cannot be himself.
The autistic, on the other hand, would complain, if he complained, the absence of influence, the absolute isolation.
“No man is an island, complete in itself” but to be an island, to be totally separate, and necessarily a death
Possible but not necessary, because even if the connections with others, the society are lost, there can be direct connections with reality, do not influence, do not mediate and do not touch by anyone.
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