Trying to make sense of things..

[mike987]

Phantasist, I think all of this was halistosisux's way of relating to jen and others who are more religious than he is.

[halitosisux]

Yes, lets try to keep this where we all feel that we can be open about our opinions. All we can do is try to speculate like jen says, to try to make sense of things and to relate to each other so that it helps us to cope with all our issues and helps us understand why this problem ever affected us so badly in the first place.

Let's try to bear with each other when we make contradictory or conflicting statements, because it's inevitable while we're trying to put our feelings into words that this is going to happen. We've got a good mix of different types of people, all with unique experiences and insights. We have a lot to learn from each other.

Phantasist, I don't ever consider valid questioning as being disrespectful. I'm quite used to the way we talk to each other - I'm not offended. Finding this forum has been the most important thing that has ever happened to me and the opportunity to ask questions and to be questioned is an opportunity I could not have even dreamt of 20 years or so ago when I was most actively trying to understand what might be causing my BB.

Most people live within certain cultures and have a certain idea of what God is (or isn't) and who they themselves are. Most people find themselves on roughly the right tracks in life. They have a fairly "normal" existence where they tend to take most things for granted, such as their work, their relationships, interactions with others, their interests, etc. Everything fits together, including the religions and faiths which have been imposed on them and that serve them and their understandings of things that go on in their everyday lives.

In my life, most of these aspects of normal life were completely turned upside down. I'm actually a Roman Catholic and went through the whole religious conditioning process throughout my childhood, but I soon abandoned it all because I could not make any sense of what was happening to me and how to connect it to what I was going through. As far as I was concerned, I felt that I was no longer part of humanity. I couldn't see any hope. I felt like a fish who found itself outside it's tank, out of God's sphere, like I'd fallen out of the universe and there was no hope of anyone noticing me or assisting me. I was completely alone. All I could do was see if I could try to find my own way back into the tank. Well, now I have to try to fit back in from this desolation.

About religions and God. I don't know what God is. Some kind of greatness that had a reason to have made everything happen? Religion to me is just centuries of mankind attempting to make sense of everything, blending fear, selfishness, ignorance, stupidity and absolute madness together, so that it can serve the needs of the various cultures who choose to adopt it. So, God/Religions to me, are two completely separate things.

"My life is not mine".. "We must accept with humility and faith whatever happens to us in life, both good and bad, because life itself is a gift from God. He gives to us and He takes from us according to His own plan." This is not religious-talk, it's a fundamental principle. Only if life could last forever could we say it was ours.

About comparing ourselves to others - no matter how we look at this problem, bad breath is really only the problem we've allowed it to become. If we were always able to accept ourselves for who we are right from the start, then bad breath would never have been able to become the problem it became for us. I see people with bad breath (who are oblivious to the fact) who live perfectly normal fulfilling lives, which proves that bad breath (itself) only hinders us if we've allowed it to (whatever the complex psychological reasons are).

Phantasist, it would be good to hear some of your views, particularly on what you mean that bad breath can be neither explained nor understood in terms of God.

[Phantasist]

@Halitosisux,

First let me say thank you for your very thoughtful response to the criticisms in my last message. I see now that my mistake was zeroing in on the cause of bad breath rather than on the effect this condition has on our emotions. I misread the thrust of what you were talking about.

I am so focused in on finding the underlying cause of breath odor that I don't spend much time thinking about the emotional side of it and how much anguish and depression this causes us. It is perfectly valid to talk about what this nightmare has done to us. God knows the suffering I have experienced because of it. The emotional pain has just about numbed me to the point where I can't feel it any more.

I am also Roman Catholic. And I think that my concept of God is very similar to yours. I believe in God more than I believe in organized religion. What you say religion has tried to do over the centuries I have no argument with. And I further agree that God and religion are not the same. What you call "some kind of greatness" I often refer to as the "Original Intelligence", but we are talking about the same entity that started this universe, and as you say, there must have been a reason.

I have a little difficulty with your statement "My life is not mine..." I believe that if you are born into this world, then you have a right to your own life. We have only one life, and no one else should have a right to your life.
About comparing ourselves to others I will not quibble. Yes, there are people who live normal lives with bad breath, but it has been a life-changing hindrance to me.

"Phantasist, it would be good to hear some of your views, particularly on what you mean that bad breath can be neither explained nor understood in terms of God."

All right, I will explain it, but it will be pure logic rather than emotions. There are about 200 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, and there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe. It also appears that most stars (if not all) have a bunch of planets around them. This means there are probably trillions of planets. We know that most of them don't have the proper conditions for life. But even if only a small fraction of planets are inhabited by intelligent beings, it would still be a large number. On our little planet Earth we have close to seven billion people. Can you imagine how many intelligent beings there might be in this universe. There is no way I can believe that God spends His time handing out bad breath to people here and there throughout the universe. Therefore I do not see the condition of bad breath in any religious or spiritual way or having anything to do with God. I see it as a purely physical affliction which must be diagnosed and cured in a physical way.

Again I want to make clear that I went off on a tangent of pure logic when you were talking about emotional effects, and that was my mistake. I apologize if I made anyone feel bad.

[halitosisux]

I don't think any "normal" person could even begin to comprehend what we all go through with this problem. I think that generally though, it's regarded as one of most people's ultimate nightmares - but they'll never comprehend how devastating and how far reaching this problem can be unless they actually go through it and experience it.

When I sit here and think of all the things, the way this problem messed me about, as though there was some kind of intelligent force playing games with me, that's really what I'm trying to say. And had I been a religious person, I could have found explanations and possible reasons and comforts for this. But I'm not, and yet I just KNOW inside that the things that happened to me were not just coincidences. It's like the rules of probability were all bent to make everything happen the way it did.

I doesn't really matter how many stars or galaxies there are, that's only a relative scale. If there is a "God" or "original intelligence" that created a single atom in the whole universe, then it will have been capable of creating them all, along with all the forces responsible for all their interactions. So, anything is possible really. If "God" could have created one single atom, then "God" can make anything happen, including our lives and everything that happens in it.

When I watch the film Blair Witch, it's the closest feeling I've ever known to what I've felt inside, suffering with BB. The whole detachment and abandonment from the outside world as though they're stuck in a totally different dimension, the fears when they go to sleep at night. Rays of hope followed by the despair and the inevitable hopelessness they know they are descending further and further into.

When it comes to the purpose of life, I don't really have much of an opinion about this. If there is an "intelligence" that chooses to put us through this (and life in general) then maybe it's to force us to open our eyes and our minds and our hearts in ways which we otherwise may never have otherwise done.

Every day of my life I felt like some kind magician. Anyone who knew me, didn't really know me. I had to build up a certain image in people's minds as to who I was, whilst at the same time not having a clue myself. My God what a contorted nightmare.

And that was just one aspect of it. But by far the worst aspect for me were the things I dragged other people through, particularly my parents - their worries, their confusions, their disappointments. I only hope that one day, in some way, they'll be able to understand why things went the way they did.

[Phantasist]

Halitosisux,

It seems we have landed squarely in the realm of religious belief and philosophy. It gets very deep when you think about what God is and our relationship to God. Great minds have wrestled with these questions for centuries, at least since the ancient Greeks. I have some ideas on the subject, but I have no wish to force my thinking on other people.

I suppose we could carry on a lengthy discussion in the religious section, but what would it solve?
I will just mention the main distinction between us. You believe in what is generally referred to as an "Intervening God", a God who takes a hand in our lives as individuals, who is somehow responsible for what happens to us. I, on the other hand, believe in a God who gave us intelligence and free will, and has made US responsible for what happens to us. This doesn't mean that God doesn't care about us, but we have the freedom to act in our own behalf.

So that is what I believe is the main difference. But I respect your thinking, and I appreciate that you opened up your feeling to me. I feel I have drawn you out somewhat. And I see that even after having cured your particular bad breath condition from your partially impacted wisdom tooth, you are still suffering the emotional impact of years of loneliness and despair. It's easy to understand why you felt that some "intelligent force" was messing with you. It seems that way with all of us, because we are helpless, we have no power to change it. We are social animals and for so many years you were on the outside, like a fish out of water (outside the fish tank). All of us who suffer from this devastating nightmare are wounded, and you still carry the scar.

But I will say this. You are a sensitive individual, and an insensitive person would have been affected less. But your sensitivity is not a weakness, it is a strength. It has given you insight that other people don't have, It has made you understand what other people are going through. After all, you are still in this forum eventhough you have eliminated your bad breath. You are still doing research, trying to come up with answers, trying to help people who are suffering. You are better than most and you deserve respect.

Best of all, you're still young. You still have decades of life ahead of you, and yes, I still say your life is your own. So do whatever adjusting you have to do, and start living it. You may find that life isn't perfect even with clean breath. But so what! Just plunge ahead and do what you like, whatever makes you happy. You have a chance to get back inside "the fish tank", and you're smart enough to do it. And don't let my nitpicking disturb you. Just say to yourself, that stupid Phantasist is at it again, and have a good laugh.

[Jimi Stein]

I'm almost in awe of how anything could be so well designed to make us this powerless.

Throughout our genetic history, before civilization (assuming the condition existed back then) there was no reason that a genetic weakness to BB couldn't continue to exist. In the animal world, where rape is commonplace. If some guy had a susceptibility to BB, but he wanted a certain mate, he'd just have to man handle her into submission, give her a child, and pass on BB to his kin (whether that be a gene related to PND, reflux, bad teeth, whatever).

We aren't so perfectly designed, particularly if you consider the way of the modern world. The human body, as with all living animals in their environment, have been forged only for survival. Conditions or traits that are undesirable, but don't have enough of a negative impact to stop procreation, continue to persist. Of course now, where we are ruled by order and law BB is a real killer.. But if there was nothing stopping me from having any mate I wanted, even if my breath smelled like crap, and I was feeling wild enough, I might stop at nothing to make babies with that person.

The fact that very few people have chronic BB is already evidence that any trait promoting BB hasn't been very successful.. We are just the unlucky ones.
Thankfully, we have science, medicine, and odorzout (man I hope that works! I would carry around a cylinder of that stuff and snack on it in public. I don't care how weird people think I am)

I think it is the antibiotics and drugs that make us have bad breath, nothing else. I blame it on stupid fuckers in white wardrobes......

[Tibya]

What makes me feel crazy is that I used to be antisocial anyway during my young adult life. Emotions controlled me and I was always depressed... I wonder if it was my constant stress and depression that triggered the BB,

@Mike and All,
This may be a good point to discuss to look into for bb reasoning. Do our personalities (which in turn contributed lifestyle) have caused us bb?
Common childhood experience, young adult life isolation and depression, anti social or shy etc.

I was a shy child. Often depressed and could hardly converse to anyone during my teens. Easily hurt and emotionally controlled. I am totally different now, but still very emotional.

Maybe someone should start a thread this, like other common symptoms.

[halitosisux]

Phantasist, thank you. I know that anyone in my position would feel the same desire to want to try to help others who are going through the same nightmare.

I think in order to believe in anything, we'd need to know what is reality in the first place. In terms of humanity, where the "God" who made everything, did so with the intention of creating mankind (for whatever the reason might be for wanting to create mankind). Religious people will have plenty of explanations for the purpose of mankind's creation/existence and the reasons why everything in life is the way it is.

But, reality might not be anything like it seems. For instance, for all I know "God" might only be interested in my existence. That everything else, the universe, other people etc, are just there as part of an illusion to allow the experience of life to happen for me. That sounds more like a dillusional concept, but it's still a possibility of how "God's" hand may be working.

Or maybe the "original intelligence" created a framework to allow mankind to come into existence and to evolve and evolve until eventually "God" appears at the end of it all. Reality could be absolutely anything.

Anyway, I think it's important to try to understand how this problem relates philosophically to our whole existence and how that transcends into our behaviour and the psychology and understanding of how this issue ever became such a problem to us in the first place. This is just as important as any cure could be.