Adrenaline Addiction

Just finished a 60 hour work week. And no, I'm not including InterVarsity and, actually, I'm not including lunch breaks. The School of Psychology just finished its largest event of the year, the Integration Symposium and I'm wiped.

Actually, I know I'm tired, but I don't feel tired yet. Yes, the ever-pleasant and delightful 'adrenaline rush' is what I'm still experiencing. I worry about how my body will respond tomorrow when there is suddenly so much less work to do, will I crash? [and on a complete tangent, do you all remember how "adrenal glands" made your zerglings go friggin crazy fast?]

I don't think that I have tapped into the adrenaline reserves this deep since I was in college, and I am surprised to remember how addictive it is! I forgot how good it feels to have your mind completely clear and ready to go at the end of an 11 hour day. Knowing that if you tried to rest right now, your brain would be moving at a mile a minute. I remember how I used to feed off of this. I would eat adrenaline.

When I first began interning, my supervisor, Elizabeth, pushed the disciplines of the Sabbath rest and of daily rest in supervising me. What was hard about that, at first, was that taking sabbath rest cuts you off from the Adrenaline diet. It forces you to need normal amounts of sleep and get appropriate rest. And so first I fought against it! It wasn't until I took a prayer retreat halfway through my first intern year that I realized how instable (and unhealthy) the adrenaline diet is. As I tried to pray and rest, my body showed how empty it was! Sabbath rest is now an important part of my life.

And so I reflect on rest, more for my own memories sake. To remind me not to get back on the adrenaline diet. I need good rhythms of rest and work... I need to be nourished by God's presence in my life, an altogether different and much more sustaining diet than Adrenaline.