[OffRoad]

Something I have noticed with MLCers is that they are tired of being the responsible one. They want to go have fun. It's easier to have fun if you let someone else be responsible for everything. To get someone else to be responsible for your sorry self, you would need to be accommodating to encourage their "taking care of you".

Kind of like having "mommy"or "daddy" make everything better for you.

The part that gets me is that H introduced me to all kinds of fun things (geocaching, off roading, hiking the national parks) and right before he goes off the deep end, he stops doing ANY of those things. (I'm still doing them) Maybe it's just me, but getting drunk in front a computer screen while playing video games with other geeks doesn't sound like nearly as much fun as experiencing REAL life....but I guess he can be anything he wants in a computer game. And yet he yells at S16 if he play too many video games. *Sigh*

[Anjae]

But three was a caveat as well--no one knows which of us will go into identity crisis because we learn to compensate and make the word believe we have our sh!t together.

Or we learn to be grown ups? Still, since for me is a neuro-chemical issue, mostly linked to very high stress levels and depression, in my view of it, a person who had no issues can still have a MLC.

In fact, the way I see it, we can all have a MLC providing that the "perfect" conditions get together.

There is a lot of talk about pretending, but I find it hard to believe that all these people have been pretending. Also, we have known them for decades. We knew their weaknesses as well as their strongs.

Since at MLC they suffer a personality change and not even them recognise themselves, the pretending is not something I lean much towards. But, amongother things, a very long time in fight of flight mode, that is brought up by the excessive stress + high levels of  adrenaline would lead to all those strange MLC behaviours

Also, depression really is a black dog on one's shoulder and it can lead to delusion, psychotic episodes, mania (bipolar is a form of depression, depression with two poles, a manic and a depressive one), etc.

I'm not saying that foo issues do not come to the forefront in a person having MLC, but for me they are not what causes MLC, they are enhanced by the hormonal biochemical state our MLCers are in. It is their minds, and hormones, that cause the mess. It all has to do with neuroanothomy. Stress affects the enteric nervous system, the enteric nervous system is part of neuroanothomy/causes of neurological effects and, if damaged, provokes damages in several neuro areas.

Or if you prefer, it has to do with the sympathetic and the parasympathetic systems. The sympathetic system is also knows as fight or flight and the parasympathetic system as rest and digest. They affect smooth muscle, cardiac muscle and glands (cortisol, the hormone that leads to stress is release by a gland, the suprarenal gland).

As a general rule both system interact upon a certain thing in the body, is opposition, or, if you prefer, in balance. For example, the parasympathetic system will lower the heart rate and the sympathetic system will raise it.

However there are a few things that only the sympathetic system does, that is, they have no counter action by the parasympathetic system. One of them is the adrenal gland that produces cortisol (stress). It is not difficult to see how out of control levels of cortisol, that cannot be countered by the rest and digest system affect our MLCers.

And since these system have many different effects on the brain (the brain is much more than just what is inside our skull, it has connections to, among others, the enteric nervous system, central nervous system, etc. and those systems run things from digestion to muscles).

Since our emotions and perceptions are affected by the state of our brain, nervous systems, hormones and chemicals levels, for me MLC boils down to a neuro physiologic issue that brings forward weird ways of thinking and acting.