701. Some Stupidities Might Be Correlated
I do not suffer from insomnia. But for the case that I ever would, I know a remedy, which is much better than any sleeping drug: Watching 22 guys' aggressive disagreement over the possession of one ball. Especially on a TV-screen, which enables me to turn off the annoying noise. I just cannot imagine anything more boring than watching football, except watching other sports.
It is beyond me, how people can find football interesting and at first I was very puzzled, when reading this.
Therefore I read the source:
After the final play of the Super Bowl, millions of fans will go through withdrawal symptoms from not being able to watch football for months.
Loyola University Medical Center psychiatrist Dr. Angelos Halaris describes the effects this has on the brain and offers tips on how fans can cope.
Halaris explains that when a person engages in a pleasurable activity, such as watching a football game, a neurotransmitter (brain chemical) called dopamine is released in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens.
When the pleasurable activity ends, the person is left with a feeling of deprivation. It's similar to what a smoker feels when deprived of a cigarette - except there's no quick fix like a cigarette for the football fan.
"When the football season is over and there's no other game on the schedule for months, you're stuck, so you go through withdrawal," Halaris said.
- For hard-core fans, the feeling can be similar to post-holiday blues, Halaris said.
Halaris offers these tips for fans who suddenly have to face months without football: - Don't go cold turkey. Watch football on YouTube, or on recordings, in gradually diminishing amounts.
- Share your feelings of withdrawal and letdown with a friend or spouse.
- While it can be unpleasant, football withdrawal is not serious enough to require antidepressants or other medications. And do not self-medicate with drugs or alcohol.
- Most important, buck up. "You're just going to have to basically tough it out until football starts up again," Halaris said.
Halaris is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and medical director of Adult Psychiatry at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.
Coming from ScienceDaily made me wonder, if it were a hoax or a joke. But when getting aware, that the Loyola University is a Jesuit institution, I was much less puzzled.
If this article is meant to be serious, then it is one more case of anecdotal evidence for the correlation of two stupidities.
Jesuit facilities are predominantly attractive to catholic clients. Obviously so many of these clients are afflicted football fans, that their problem caught the focus of attention. It is also interesting to note, that this psychiatrist implicitly presents football as cognitively appropriate for his (catholic) clients. In his opinion the stupid interest in football does not suffice to indicate a cognitive problem, but only the withdrawal.
If this article is meant to be serious, then it is one more case of anecdotal evidence for the correlation of two stupidities.
Jesuit facilities are predominantly attractive to catholic clients. Obviously so many of these clients are afflicted football fans, that their problem caught the focus of attention. It is also interesting to note, that this psychiatrist implicitly presents football as cognitively appropriate for his (catholic) clients. In his opinion the stupid interest in football does not suffice to indicate a cognitive problem, but only the withdrawal.
