The F*** It Switch
Let’s be very clear about this, everyone has one. The most vulnerable to the F*** it Switch are often those who appear to be successful, clever, witty, and talented, but they have an inner narrative that tells a very different story to what is on show with all the flash and bejazzle on the outside. They get an especially big designer-sized one with twinkly diamanté ‘On” and ‘Off’ signs.
But what is it?
Here’s a story: it’s about a student band singer who got picked to go big. To the viewing public it seemed to happen overnight, but as far as she was concerned, her music life had been one long round of pee-smelling back street venues where the band had been continually ripped off, however packed the place, and she had spent too much time fending off lurching, drunken, octopus-handed so-called fans.
And then some of the band started bickering about which direction they should be heading in, artistically speaking. The in-fighting made her thin—not drug skinny, worry thin.
She’s a member of the Clean Team. Drugs were for all the other dummies out there. Not her.
Then she and her group were discovered. A big label producer saw her and worked out the fastest way to get rid of the rest of the group, by signing them all, and then dumping everyone except her.
And now she’s on the red carpet at an awards ceremony, nominated for the theme song on a big movie. She teeters up the red runway in a sliver of silver, and that is about all there is left of the once softly curved girl.
There is an ethereal quality to her as she joins the songwriters to collect the award. The television commentators are in swoony hyperbole. They can’t get enough of her. Her agent even had the foresight to hire three assistants for the night—their every medium of contact is exploding. The hordes are circling for beauty, talent and blood.
But no-one can find her. She has disappeared in the bit between coming off stage, the Green Room, and returning to her seat. Everyone is waiting. Everyone watching at home is waiting. Her agent manages to field it for three minutes with the lie that she had to bolt to the bathroom because of all the emotion.
She is found, forty-seven minutes later, at a McDonald’s, just teetering distance from the awards shindig. By the time the press pounce she has already worked her way through a Big N’ Tasty (with cheese), a Ranch Snack Wrap, two lots of fries, and a surprised server has just delivered a second round on the fries, topped off by a McFlurry with M&M’S as a chaser. She is buying for everyone in the joint because she doesn’t want to eat alone, not that she is alone. The word has already gone out and she is sharing the second round with a growing crowd of hoboes who know they have hit ‘F*** it Switch’ pay dirt.
So…
That is a super-charged version of the switch in action. It had to be the high octane version, to get the point across, as in just as she cracked it, and then it cracked her right back.
To paraphrase: at the same time as she was ‘discovered’, she had also lost a lot of weight. In her mind she linked the two. She was pushed hard, and too fast—not sleeping, not eating, surviving only on the adrenaline drug of being surrounded by people, constantly telling her that she could do it, that every sleepless night was just creative brilliance, that every kilo lost was another step towards photogenic fame. And then, when she was right at the very top, at that moment, waiting to go and collect the award, in her nervousness she ate a mini-burger, only about the size of a ping pong ball, part of the grazing canapés for the very polished and very, very jittery nominees waiting in the Green Room.
That was all it took, her Rubicon of not eating snack food had been crossed, her mantra being ‘I don’t eat junk’. But she did, and at that pinnacle moment, even though she had just had the greatest success most people can imagine. She had spent so much time depriving herself of food, thinking about food, feeling constantly hungry. It took just one little ping pong ball of grilled mince, brioche bun, and all the other fru fru filling to act like crack cocaine in her brain, flicking the F*** It Switch.
It’s at that moment that a primordial drive takes over, compelling us into behaviour that seems, on the outside, to be both inexplicable, and hugely self-sabotaging.
But in the real world
That starry version is to illustrate something that happens to all of us, regularly. Well, to almost all of us. Even those who seem not have the switch are usually just a lot better at hiding it, and sometimes for good reason because their switch can have a kinkier trip. But, back to your average, every day version—most of us have a personal inner line on various things that we have decided we will not cross. For some people it’s not eating cakes, biscuits or chocolates, while for others it might be rationing themselves to no more than three porn sites a day. Someone else might feel safe as long as they stay on the right side of getting six hours sleep a night, while another can stay under control as long as they can have three cigarettes a day. And then there are those who have sworn off drugs, of any kind.
The cruelty of the switch is that it can just take one biscuit, four porn sites, one night of three hours sleep, four cigarettes, or one puff of a joint to flick, and then everything goes to hell, the safety barriers are down, there is no going back. Extreme behaviour seems to ride roughshod over everything we know to be rational. The biscuit and cake depriver pigs out, the porn fan goes on an ether bender, the one lacking sleep spins out into a sense of sleep-deprived anxiety, and the one who inhaled goes off on another kind of bender.
‘I don’t have any control, something else just takes over,’ is what so many say when they are talking about that moment when the switch is tripped.
And that is it exactly how it feels, as though there really is something beyond us controlling our actions. There is in a way, millennia of evolution that, in the face of certain kinds of mentally created or real deprivation, will trigger a fight back. Or, in simpler terms, if we deny ourselves something we then think about it a lot, and that singular focus on what we are depriving ourselves of makes the chances of cracking high. The more intense the pressure we put ourselves under, the higher the risk of cracking.
Just knowing this can help. If we know when we are tired, under pressure, angry, lonely or hungry, that we are more vulnerable to the flick of the switch, that is the time to be on high alert. Then, when it does happen, we see it for what it is—a very human response. These two things are really the trick of The F*** it Switch: know what is going to flick it, and understand the craving is a very powerful combination of a primal drive and our very own personalised vice.
My sense now is that it is less about discipline and self-control, and much more about awareness. If you constantly try to beat craving into submission, it is going to win—again those eons of evolution and human desire are just stronger than any one of us. Awareness is the equivalent of shining a white light on craving as it shambles around in the black recesses of the mind, creating havoc. Knowing very clearly what is going to flip your switch is key. Whether it’s a third chocolate when you had rationed yourself to two, a fourth porn hit when three was the personally set limit, it doesn’t matter what the trip is, just being aware of what it is gives us power.
This is a huge subject for something that flicks in a second, so there is going to be a Part II – The Disarming of The F••• it Switch…