ADDICTION ISN’T YOUR PROBLEM, IT’S YOUR SOLUTION! Behind the home that my family lives is a spot. Those local, dirty, no-real-building spots where the area boys go to get an alcohol fix. Only, it isn’t just alcohol these boys can get. They have their pick of pills there too. On some days, all you hear are the loud voices of high men and the raspy one of a woman you can probably picture from her voice. Bleached to the point of redness. Dreadlocks done on hair that’s already falling off of her head. On other days, some boys decide to try new things. That’s when you hear sounds like they were murdering an animal. They’d run in any direction and would need to be held back by different people. Sometimes we’d see them from my house window. The stories afterwards were usually that they ran mad. Those that didn’t though would often be seen going back for another fix. An addiction my father calls it. They can’t control it. In the 1800s, the Victorians had opioids. In the 1900s cocaine was discovered. In the early 2010s, Mark Zuckerberg created the ultimate hit that was Facebook and the flood of social media addiction began.  Over 10% of social media users are addicted. 9 million Americans of ages 18-25 are addicted to substances, which is more than 27% of the American population. At least 10% of that same population are children of ages 12-17. Addiction is worldwide! Everyone you know, and everyone you don’t know, is addicted to something. The difference between you and them is that theirs is less harmful than yours they can hide under the arm of everyone does it, while you have to hear the words addict ringing in your ears every five seconds. What is an addiction? The basic definition is a habit of activity that is often injurious. More than that, an addiction is a pathological relationship to mood altering experiences that have life damaging consequences. As an alcoholic, you aren’t just looking for alcohol. You’re looking for the escape of reality that the drunkenness allows you. As a junkie, you want the feel good that the pills provide. As a social media fanatic, you want the validation and distraction that social media gives. We are all junkies in our own ways. Addiction is the solution to our problem.  Everyone has a problem. What matters is how you deal with that problem. Imagine yourself as a web developer. You have a problem you’re trying to solve by creating an app. You create different apps and take it out for field testing till you get the one that is best received by everyone. Just like Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, the app becomes the solution for whatever problem it fixes. Until using it becomes a reflex action. You addiction! Your brain soaks the information of your solution so thoroughly that every time the need arises, it sees no other solution than the solution that has been provided time and time again. If you’re lonely, or restless, here’s social media to keep you occupied. If you’re lonely or looking to escape reality, here’s alcohol or drugs. All addiction is the solution to a problem. It became an addiction when you started abusing the solution. Change. Different things impede the rehabilitation process such as boredom, and the inevitable reality check. What will I do when I have to face the reality I’ve been running away from, and the reality of what my substance abuse has caused in my life? The truth is, the only one that can get you to stop an addiction is you. There is no book that’ll magically cure you. There is no 21 day treatment that’ll do the job for you. The only thing that can change is YOUand YOUR CHOICES.  Substitution. In atomic habits, James Clear states a need to put a new and better habit in the place of previous bad ones to avoid boredom and relapse. If you do not choose to substitute your previous actions with new ones, chances are high that you’ll end up doing the same thing. Environment change. James Clear also states that removing yourself from triggering environments will take much of the load of rehabilitation off your shoulders as going back to the same places will trigger the same responses in you. Conscious acting. As addictions quickly become subconscious programming, you must fight to keep conscious of every action.   Everyone is an addict of a different grade. What matters is how you deal with your addiction, whether big or small. I’ll try to be less dependent on social media. You try to be less dependent on whatever your pill of choice is.       

I wanted to be inspired, and I wanted it to be real... Asa on her lucid album.  In primary school, when people told my older sister she looked like Asa, I took it as a personal compliment. I had a vague image of the face that owned the voice of the song that was on repeat in my home. The face wore glasses, with a halo that hovered on top her large afro, completing my image of a goddess.  Who is Asa? Bukola Elemide was born on the 17th of September, 1982 to cinematography students in France. Two years after her birth, they moved back to Lagos Nigeria where the musician was raised.  Her childhood, she says in an interview, was mostly her on her own. Her father's music influenced her with works of Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Fela Kuti Bob Marley. She knew she wanted to do music and secretly enrolled herself in a school where she learned to play the guitar in six months.  She wrote music, but many people didn't believe she would have any audience for them and even relatives told her to write music people could listen to. There seemed to be a general consensus that she wasn't going anywhere in life.  After 18 years in Nigeria, she went back to France to study jazz.  Back in Nigeria, her first single, Eye Adaba started getting airplay, and in France, teachers told her she was ready to become a recording artiste.  The first album.  In 2007, she released her first album under naive records, with Cohbams Asuquo as her producer.  It was self titled Asha.  The album consists of 12 song and set the pace for what we could expect from her as a musician, which is anything and everything.  The first song, Jailer is an upbeat pop song about modern slavery with the analogy of the prisoner and the jailed used to explain social oppression and how the society destroys itself.  The lead song, Fire On The Mountain was a mixed song with sounds from pop, r&b, soul, and even a little bit of reggae. It speaks of the self destruction of our country as a mountain on fire from which she says no one is running.  If you listen to Asa's songs with the aim of putting her in a musical category, it would be like those carnival games where you hit the mole with a hammer. When you think you've got it, another one pops up.  She even describes herself as weird and not fitting into anyone's narrative.  I don't want to release another jailer, she said about her album lucid.  In keeping with this, her songs follow different patterns, with her inspiration from her own experiences.  The 'V' album She released her fifth Album 'v' in 2022. In the album, she features Wizkid, Cavemen and Amaarae, and gives us a brand new sound.  She speaks about love. Not only romantic love, but also platonic. The love of friendship, love lost, love that is possessive. The album is a selection of different love experiences from different perspectives. Everyone has their own song here. Just pick one.  What is Asa up to now?  In February of 2024, she released the single titled ODO. The song is r&b/soul and is about love, a subject she seems to have a lot to say about.  I'm a lover, she said in an interview with Youtuber Korty. Her guitar makes a special appearance here.  We should be expecting something new from Asa as she said ...I probably will never wait that long between albums anymore.   

Oversleeping is self hate.  You woke up to your alarm this morning, hit snooze (or turned it off completely like me), and went back to sleep. Then you woke up tired and went back to sleep again. Now, you have a throbbing headache, feeling like your body is rebelling against you.  What you have done is confuse your CIRCADIAN RHYTHM  The circadian rhythm represents all the rhythmic fluctuations that happen in your body in 24 hours. It is your biological clock. In this clock are different rhythms — the sleep-wake cycle, your digestive rhythm, your daily hormonal activity.  The gland that controls these rhythms is the HYPOTHALAMUS.  Through external cues which are light and dark, the hypothalamus stimulates the pineal gland to release more melatonin — the hormone that induces sleep. The melatonin release gradually increases in darkness, and peaks at midnight, allowing us to sleep. After midnight, the melatonin reduces gradually, allowing us to wake, and light signals more melatonin reduction, allowing us to be alert.  Easy, right? All these reactions are trained and can be changed with variations in external cues — light and dark. For example, when you travel to a different time zone, you operate on the time zone of where you travelled from, and feel sleepy all the time — what we call jet lag. Slowly, because of the difference in light and dark, your body adjusts and you begin to sleep normally in that time zone.  What happens to this circadian rhythm when you oversleep? It causes you to sleep some more.  As it is a trained cycle, it has a default setting that can be changed or tweaked by oversleeping. Your melatonin starts increasing and decreasing irregularly and you start sleeping when you shouldn't. You've trained your body to require more sleep than it actually does — like with an addiction.  The new haphazard sleeping pattern affects the rest of your circadian rhythms as they are all intertwined — sleeping decreases the action of the hormone insulin which reduces glucose levels in the blood. This is why you get the headaches, the bad moods, the feeling like someone used you as a punching bag.  Unfortunately, some tweaks in the circadian rhythm is not all it causes. Every tweak in your body's natural balance has its effects.  1. Diabetes.  Like I said, sleeping decreases insulin. This is because it increases cortisol, which inhibits the action of insulin.  As insulin is necessary for blood glucose control, it's inhibition can lead to hyperglycemia (high blood sugar levels) 2. Obesity.  Do you have that friend that gets fatter when they sleep? Or even fresher? You actually do increase your chances of obesity when you sleep too much.  3. Depression This is bidirectional. Depression causes you to sleep. Too much sleep puts you in a bad mood. It's not known which comes first—the depression or the oversleeping — what is known is they lean heavily on each other.  4. Joint pains. Doctors have stopped prescribing rest for back pains and have stated encouraging more physical activity. Too much inactivity is bad for the bones. 5. Death.  Yup, you read that right.  Studies have linked too much sleep to earlier deaths. I didn't create the statistics, don't fight me.  Yesterday, I told my sister all this, and she said it's all well and good, but she's going back to sleep. Like her, you'll probably still want to sleep after reading this, but there are ways to avoid it.  1. Physical activity when you wake up Exercising, even for five minutes, will help you keep yourself awake. If you're not the type to go for a morning jog, you can do squats, anything. The activity will take your brain out of that early morning lethargy. 2. Sleep-time and wake-time alarm.  You're training your body to sleep and wake at regular intervals. So, depending on how long you as an individual needs sleep, set an alarm and let it dictate your sleep and wake.  3. Don't hit the snooze button.  This needs to be said. You shouldn't be postponing waking up. You're training yourself to need those extra minutes of sleep.  4. Don't sleep close to the phone or alarm clock. You are happy to hit the snooze button because you're still laying on your bed. Instead, you can put your phone in your bathroom, in the living room, anywhere that's not right beside you. The time that it'll take you to reach that place will allow you to realize that snoozing the alarm isn't worth the catch-up game you play for the rest of the day.  5. No bedtime eating.  Food makes you feel heavy. Eating at bedtime doesn't only disrupt your digestive system, but also your sleep-wake cycle.   The human body exists on the basis of dynamic balances. Never accumulate too much of anything.  I'm not saying you should sleep less than the regular amount of time you do sleep, everyone has their individual needs. The point is to find yours and work with it.  Disclaimer: This writer defaulted twice yesterday.

The song Rescue by Lauren Daigle has returned to it's rightful place on the top of the genre charts over and over again since the release of the Look Up Child Album in 2020. The writer initially doubted a good reception, but this song has become somewhat of a beacon for the lost, the desperate, the hopeless.  You are not hidden.  There's never been a moment, You were forgotten.  Right from the opening lines, the song proves it is not your usual gospel song. Where most gospel songs are from the point of view of the singer, this one is from the point of view from Jesus himself talking to you.  It is the believed talking to the believer.  So what is it about? Lauren Daigle describes a vision she had before writing the song of a girl "...the girl has caught herself in a desperate situation. She is running to all these vices in order to find just an element of hope, or just something to keep her in the process of desperation." This resonates with the opening line where Jesus is talking to the believer who has lost hope, believing you have been forgotten.  It's impostor syndrome.  Impostor syndrome is the experience of intellectual or professional fraudulence according to Wikipedia. In other words, it is you convinced you're fake. A charlatan.  You've fallen into the pit of sin so many times that you've become less confident in God and your faith in him, and more confident in your sin. At a point, going back to God makes you feel stupid and disgusted.  What do you do? You go back to sin.  It is a cycle that feeds off you for itself, targeting your faith.  The song goes on to say You are not hopeless.  Though you have been broken Your innocence stolen.  Relatable to this is the movie that a lot of people first heard this song.  Redeeming love.  In this, Hosea and Gomer (Angel) have been put in 1800s America. Angel is a prostitute, and God has told Hosea she will be his wife. Hosea goes on to tell her of God's promises, but Angel with her impostor syndrome doesn't believe she should get any better than the whorehouse. And even when she leaves with Hosea, she returns more than once.  God goes back for her each time with the reassurance that she's not hopeless.  Still, she didn't feel worthy of it.  This is you. You're no David. You're probably repeating the same sin in new ways, like Angel, convincing yourself you don't deserve any better.  I hear you whisper underneath your breath I hear your SOS, your SOS.  Despite what we may think, our going back to sin is the cry for help. It's us saying we don't know what to do at that point. As Lauren Daigle says, were looking for an element of hope. Or something to keep us in that process of desperation that feels good for the short term.  Jesus hears you.  I will send out an army  To find you, in the middle of the darkest Night. It's true.  I will rescue you.  In the chorus, Jesus is telling us he has never, and will never give up on us.  Yes, the Bible says your sin defiles the temple of God which is the body. The same Bible says there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. It also says Jesus, not you, will take your sin away.  So there's no need for you to act self sufficient, like you can do anything outside of God.  What it truly is I like to think of it this way. God made you, and made all things. There's nothing you can do that will shock him at all, much less make him denounce you because he knows all the things you can do. Instead of denouncing you like you think, he waits.  That's part of Jesus' love. Patience.  For Lauren Daigle, this is her most personal songs, having written it for a loved one going through a similar situation.  I've personally sat on my steps many nights and plugged this song into my ears after wondering if medical school is worth it. If I should just throw it all away and find a bridge in Lagos to start my mechanic shop.  This song is for everyone who feels hopeless, for everyone who feels desperate, for everyone who feels like they're at the end of their rope in life... Lauren Daigle.    Now that you know about this song, give it a listen. It works wonders for the wounded soul. 

It's Monday, and you're wondering why you're drowsy with the hair of an underpaid witch?  On the 17th of October, 2022, 'Monday' was named the most hated day of the week by the guinness book of world records. Yup! You read that right. Mondays have a bad reputation. You wake up and you remember all the things you have to deal with, because it's Monday again. The weight of the week is on you.  All over social media are people that loathe to face Monday again. You're probably one of them. The reason the above fact is true is all rooted in what you did to Monday, and not anything Monday did to you.  You're the problem! Like every other thing in your life, your decisions and perceptions all boil down to your mental predisposition. 1. You've over hyped Friday Freedom.  Your Monday problems all start with Friday. Friday is the true weekend, because that's the day you do what you want to do, because you're free.  What freedom?  You have gotten to believe that you lead different lives on weekdays, and weekends and Friday is the portal to becoming those different people.  I salute you Mr alien. In fact I want to be you? Because weekends are for rest right? So what else would our alien portal self from the week be doing on weekends if not rest? God forbid you work!!!!!!!!!  This perception that Friday is freedom and Mondays are caging lead us to.... 2. Procrastination.  In other words, you don't want to deal with it. You want to avoid things for as long as you can. Now there's no more space to avoid all the things you've been avoiding since Saturday morning. You actually have to answer those emails, and write that book, and go to work. You let the pressure overwhelm you and become mini Dracula on Mondays. Suddenly you're posting #ihatemondays on your Instagram.  You've gone through this before. You go through it every Monday. What you don't seem to realize is...  3.Doing things the same way with different expectations makes you insane.  On Monday morning, I woke up and did the exact same things I did last week Monday. Complete with telling myself that I'll surpass my writing goals for the week and blow it all to smithereens.  It doesn't work that way, I realized this morning. If I did the same thing this week that I did last week, I'd end up doling out the same output, and feeling just as inadequate as last week.  This inadequacy that you feel every Monday is one of the things that factor into your hatred of Mondays.  You've programmed your mind now to associate Mondays with pressure, burdens and the weight of all that work.  4. Social media brainwashing. Another factor in the mental programming that Mondays should be hated is social media.  When you consume depressing Monday feed, your mind saves it for ammunition you can use against future Mondays.  It's your fault my dear. You did it, with valiant help from your Instagram feed.  5. Oversleeping is self hate.  Let's pretend today is Friday and not Gloomy Monday. You just got off work. The sun is low. There's a slight breeze that makes the weather just perfect. You're feeling on top of the world in your Ankara dress.  This weekend, you're going to achieve a lot. The same way you said you're going to last Friday. But this weekend is for real. You'll catch up with your friends, you'll write more, you'll plan your life and yada yada yada.  When you get home though, it's light out. You wake up Saturday morning and skip breakfast to sleep some more. You crack your eyes open, have breakfast and sleep some more. You wake up on Sunday morning. Now, you've slept so hard that you have to sleep off the sleep that you just slept.  Well done o! Sleeping beauty's president general! You've successfully slept the whole weekend. Congrats!  It's Monday now and you've created the person you see in the mirror with the nightmarish hair whose eyes can't seem to stay open. And you've messed up your circadian rhythm (the biological clock that tells your body when to switch on and off) with all the sleeping. So you now want to sleep some more. But sleeping got you into this mess in the first place.   What a dilemma.  So you see, our Monday problem is a potpourri of different things that we let in over time. And these things spoiled Monday for us.  A perfect solution to these things are: 1. Do a little work over the weekend. It won't kill you.  Weekends aren't solely for sleep. You can put things in place so you don't have to start over on Monday morning. What you don't know is, if you had gotten anything done during the weekend, the momentum from doing it would fuel you into Monday.  Remember that you have to do your job anyway, so what use is procrastinating? And if you've already started, it's easier.  2. Stop sleeping!  Your biological clock is constantly getting messed up. So you need to find something better to do that involves your consciousness.  3. In the words of someone from the internet who I do not remember... "just pretend it's Friday." If you're bent on keeping your perception of Friday freedom, or you can't ever forgive Monday for what it did you your childhood, just pretend it's Friday. You're just as free. You just have all the responsibilities as you always have. Monday or no.