The following is my "opinion" and is in no way meant to say I believe it to be definitive for all.

I have been thinking alot lately about "pain" and "feeling"

Human beings can experience pain two ways, emotional and physical. Feelings are either emotional or physical. Therefore, I like to think that pain is a feeling and a feeling can be painful.

There have been a lot of Scifi books, tv shows, movies, etc. that have "robots" or androids that are meant to be just like humans. When you really think about it, what is the only thing that distinguishes a robot from a human? (One is created by God and one is created by someone who thinks they are God)

However...

If I were to get into a bad accident and lose my arms and legs. Have brain damage and injure my heart in a way that made me have a high risk for heart failure...and then lets say doctors used modern technology to put me back together...(I know it sounds like "Terminator" or that old TV show from the 70's "The 6 million dollar man," would I still be human?

Well, I believe I would still be human even though I may only still be 25% flesh and blood. The main thing that would still ensure that I was, in fact "human" would be that I would still have the ability to "FEEL." Robots do not feel. So then this begs the question, "Could a robot become a crack-head?

That question brings up the question of, "Why would a robot "want or need" to smoke crack? Well, becasue robots do not have the ability to "want or need" in other words, they can not "FEEL" And why do we smoke crack? To feel good...

Since I stopped using crack, pain (physical and emotional) has been effecting me on a whole new level. I compare what I am experiencing now to the "blind" person who has a hightened sense of smell or hearing since they can't see.

Since I stopped smoking crack and in turn can not "FEEL" the Euphoric (physical) feeling or the Paranoia (emotional) feelings that crack gave me, I have actually started "feeling" pain, both physical and emotional on a whole new level.

Due to my very active athletic youth I have alot of physical problems that cause me chronic pain. I have lived with physical pain for years but it has only been within the past 4 months that this pain is almost enjoyable....wierd huh?

Over the past month I have had "ankle surgery" and 2 proceedures on my lower back. I have had this chronic headache that has not let up for weeks yet I actually crave the pain associated with them all. When I had my ankle surgery and had to have an IV put it and then the post operative period of extreme pain I was beginning to "enjoy" the pain.

As I ponder WHY I have become addicted to pain I can only gather that it is becasue as a human, I need and want to "feel" something. Pain, if nothing else, does make you feel and KNOW that you are alive. When a nurse sticks a 6 inch needle in you arm to start an IV and misses the vien and has to start over it is painful, but when it was being done to me, I was thinking, "Wow, that feels INTENSE!" Do it again!

God designed us all to "feel" good and to feel bad. The ability to "feel" is one of God's greatest gifts. However, it is a gift that can be abused. God does not intend for us to feel "pain" either emotionaly or physically, but He allows it so that we know soemthing isnt right. In other words, the feeling of "pain" is the bodies way of telling us that soemthing is wrong.

We also have the ability to feel "pleasure" and unlike "pain" He wants and intended for us to consistently experience the feeling of "pleasure." However, he designed us so that we already had the ingredients inside of us to experience pleasure and pain. He designed us so that we do not "need" any outside or artificial substance to be able to feel pain or pleasure. He gave us everything we need the day we were born. The ability to feel happy or sad, strong and weak, euphoric or depressed, pain or comfort, and for the life of me I don't understand how it all works other than to say it is influenced by our daily decisions to allow ourselves to be influenced by God or Satan. (Good or Evil)

Over the centuries man has done everyting he could to "fabricate" feelings. We have created artificial substances to fit any category. If I were to somehow lose all ability to feel, I know there are thousands of things created by man that I could take, use, see, hear, or do that would make me "feel" something.

Crack cocaine is one of those substances. However, although it is a creation of man, it is a product of evil influence. Man has taken something created by God (the coca plant) and turned it into something artificial that induces the ultimate false feeling avaiable to mankind. Now when I say "false" feeling, I do not mean that it isn't real. The euphoric feeling that crack gives is VERY real. However, it is false in the sense that humans were never meant to feel THAT euphoric using soemthing that God didn't put in us divinely at birth.

Yes, we get the euphoric feeling as the cocaine causes our "God Created" brain to release chemicals in the pleasure area, but God never intended for those chemicals to be induced artificially. I have never experienced anything quite like the euphoria that crack gives, without using crack. This just tells me that although God gave us the ability to have this feeling induced, he does not want us to experience euphoria on that level at least while we are here on this earth.

Satan uses it as a means to make us feel as if WE are God becasue with crack, we can essentially create our OWN feelings without God. Those feelings come with consequences though and this tells me that they are not from God.

Getting back to the matter of "pain." I believe now that the reason pain has become so intriquing to me is becasue it is a "manufactured feeling" I am not suppose to feel that much pain under normal circumstances, but the fact that I can poke a needle into my arm or put a cigarette out on my forehead whereby I "manufacture" pain, once again, I induce something that God did not intend or want me to experience. The fact that I can do it anyway, becomes almost addictive just as the ability to feel euphoric came about with crack.

I know this seems masochistic and very stupid but the fact that I have experienced it and began to really think about the implications, I am beginning to understand even more about how wrong smoking crack cocaine is and know in my heart that it is impossible to please God and use "anything" that induces an "artificial" feeling whether it be good or bad. And furthermore I am much more aware of the consequences of doing anything for the purpose of trying to manufacture a feeling that God did not give me the ability to experience naturally and under normal circumstances.

I still do not fully understand why I sometimes feel happy and sometimes feel sad for no apparent reason. The even more puzzling thing is how I can feel happy or sad and know that nothing in particular initiated the feeling, it just happened. Regardless, I know that from now on, I would much rather have good and bad physical and emotional feelings that I do not understand than to have good or bad feelings that I manufactured artificially.