The Things You Do

While attempting combat on the pharmacological front, we also attempted a variety of techniques to shift behavior and thought processes away from the "Harold and Maude"-ish.  Understanding my son's limited intellectual capacity, we would try to keep the advice simple and concrete.  A strong "do this one thing" instruction with the reason being "I know because I read it in a book".

We used three rules for a time.  The rules were simple:

1. Eat Well.
2. Exercise.
3. Do Good Work.

That last rule covered everything.  We used it for "being kind to animals" and "listening in class" and just about any other thing we could think would fit.  While easy to remember and remarkably easy to explain, we hit the wall quickly. The problem was that when he exercised, he felt great while he exercised.  But when he stopped, he started to feel bad again.  In his mind, this meant the therapy did not work since it had no lasting effect.  There was, therefore, no sense in continuing.  No amount of reasoning would help.  In his mind, the results were obvious and irrefutable.  I did it and now I feel bad so it doesn't work.

A neighbor introduced my son to the "teachings" of noted inventor, futurist and (now) high-end vitamin vendor Ray Kurzweil.  Mr. Kurzweil's thesis in his book, Fantastic Voyage, is that we are at the point in technological development that if you take good care of yourself (buy my vitamins) and live healthily (buy my vitamins) then within the next 50 years bioengineering, medicine and associated technologies will have advanced to the point that you will be able to live forever.

My son carefully wrote down the book title and insisted on purchasing it.  I thought that anything that encouraged him to read would be fine.  The book is written for an adult reader and includes long explanations of science and chemistry.  I agreed to read the book aloud to my son and re-interpret it to simpler terms on the fly.  The book quickly became uninteresting to my son because it was not really an instruction manual (save for the vitamin pushing).  My son was looking for the 10 simple things to do to live forever (emphasis on simple).  I even tried to explain that our three rules were embodied in the text but my son remained skeptical of that.  He never asked me to read the book to him anymore but I would sometimes catch him flipping through it seemingly looking for that magic incantation.

Exercise often helped, if but briefly.  A strenuous bike ride or some challenging martial arts made him feel tired and happy but always, the loss of endorphins afterward left him denying the benefits.