Leslie!! that thread about being addicted to flying...

[xiknal]

It was so interesting to have it come up in chat the other night. Would you be willing to start by explaining how vital it is to keep flights booked for the near future, how important that is to your sense of "normalcy"? I had a similar experience that lasted--oh, a year and a half or two after I started flying again.

Thanks!! :tiphat

Barb

[LesliePHX]

Wull, OK ... I wuz saying in chat the other night that after the mega-flying I had to do this year and last, I don't feel "right" anymore unless I have a flight booked in the future. Maybe it's a case of Stockholm Syndrome, with flying as my captor, or maybe it's a sort of adrenaline addiction. Barb has a more positive metaphor/explanation.

Has anybody else experienced this? Where when you're left with no flying ahead, you feel restless and, well, rudderless?

Leslie
(nuts)
(not the Southwest kind)

[Passenger Mark]

Yea me!!!

For the first time since Christmas... I have no flight planned... it is wierd, and I don't want to forget how!

But will most likely fly to Nasville near Thanksgiving, so hopefully I will not have to go to long.

[xiknal]

well! wow! :woohoo

I was in a state of CRAVING flying that was most intense during the three months following being grounded for 13 years. I was immersed in the process of busting through the fear and discovering how exciting and astonishing--even miraculous--it was. I was seeing an anxiety shrink on a weekly basis and doing practice flights with specific assignments for each. Here's a journal entry for July 27, 1993 following a practice flight from Austin to Dallas:

"I was NOT relaxed on this flight. I was thrilled. I was excited as hell; I can't wait to do it again! When I got off the plane, I didn't feel relief that it was over; I wanted it to continue. I kept saying to myself "I've GOT to keep doing this"--why? (1) to blunt the edge of it, to become more accustomed to it (2) just for the kick! These are oddly in conflict with each other. It seems to me that the intensity of the dread and fear-of-dying that I have for so many years invested in flying is being transformed into just plain excitement!".

I needed to constantly "process the process". My days were filled with scrape-me-off-the-ceiling states of euphoria and almost disbelief. I felt as though something was in the process of being born--'a new flying paradigm' is one way to put it, but that sounds so narrow and clinical. I felt like I MYSELF was being reborn, and it just had to keep on happening like the birth of a baby has to, and the source of its power was in flying. I had to be in the air to plug into it, had to know that another "fix" was coming soon. I mean SOON--within the next week max. Any longer than that, and I started to feel unstable. I was surfing a tidal wave and my ability to stay balanced and function in my daily life required that I be plugged into the source of the wave.

Les, I really like your term 'rudderless'; I began to feel rudderless if I could not fly once a week (this was before I started flying lessons).

Taking flying lessons helped defuse this jones for airliners proper while immersing me in another aviation venue and a big pile of data about it. Still, over the next year or two I was very, very sensitive to the specialness of having a commercial flight booked, and I managed that roughly every couple of weeks or so for a year, including a trip to Belize and several others to Guatemala and Honduras. What I most craved about commercial flying--and I think this connects with your reference to 'Stockholm Syndrome'--was the opportunity to surrender (geez I hope this doesn't sound kinky :blink )...to just GIVE UP CONTROL and bask in surrender and really GROW MY TRUST of that situation and indulge the wondrous feeling of accomplishment that came with it. Meanwhile, spikes of anxiety also came with it...but so what?! That was part of it, part of the kick! It was a drug and I had to have it! I am laughing as I write this. :lol

Barb

[Disney fan]

Yes I need to always have a flight booked, even if that flight is months off.

I think my reasons are quite different though, I never find flying exciting, it always comes with anxiety.

What I find exciting is visiting other countries, sunshine, warmth and blue skies this is my motivation for flying.

I would love to love flying, my mother used to say her holiday started when she got on the plane, she loved flying ,despite having a heart attack whilst flying she continued all her life to enjoy it.

Lynda:ukflag :ukflag

[WillFlyToDisney2]

I know exactly what you mean. I think the "high" of flying - especially after having been so incredibly fearful of it for so long - is like an addiction.

I go to the Delta website often just to look at my itineraries to remind me of my upcoming flights. :airplane

So far I have 4 more flights in October and 8 flights in November booked. WHOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO! Most all of them are on CRJs too.

Kelley

[xiknal]

it feels so GOOD to be addicted to flying after all those years grounded in the wasteland of fear, doesn't it?

Lucky you, to get to fly that often. Well, I do, too, 5 days a week, but in little planes--way cool but not the same! :airplane

[WillFlyToDisney2]

I used to think of the CRJs as "little planes" but not any more. They are quick and speedy. The planes you fly, Barb, are truly the little ones - but just as safe!

Kelley

[xiknal]

...if truth be told, just do not have the safety record that commercial carriers have. There are a number of reasons--not least, the fact that many private pilots just don't have anywhere near the level of training and experience that the pilots who fly the RJs and bigger jets have. They/we have not been obliged to "train up" to the proficiency level of flying IFR day in/day out on a schedule, for example (I certainly have not).

Maintenance is not as strictly supervised, though it's a lot better than on your car.

I won't pretend there isn't more risk. I have had several engine failures in the air--one of which I reported on in detail on the other board in April. I have made a decision to accept the risk, to whittle it as thin as possible and still have the reward. It's something I never would have considered had I not first given my FoF a serious kick in the toches. Learning to land scared the bejeezies out of me, and there have been other confrontations since which have obliged me to master the very thing that gave me the knee-knocking willies.

There is still something really special, though, about flying on the big ones as a passenger, even though the "craving" that I had before has faded. I am very comfortable with abdicating control now (after a lot of reps) but I have never lost my sense of wonder about it. :yippee

Barb

[LesliePHX]

I'm insane about it. The birth-of-a-new-paradigm idea is intriguing. At the very least, it helps me think maybe I'm not so crazy as I feel.

The other day at work a project boss asked who wanted to fly across the country to make a quick delivery to a customer. I said, "Can I go?" He said, "You like Virginia?" I said, "I like accruing United miles!" (This flight would give me Premier status.)

So I get to fly again on Oct. 21. Any one of us could have done it, but I was the only one who wanted to.

At work, they think I like to fly ... I wonder if they are right.

Leslie

[xiknal]

Les...

They ARE right! :thumbsup

I know just what you are feeling about flying. You want as much of it as you can possibly get, and not just for the Premier perks, either. It sounds like we are not alone...though for all the misunderstanding that FoF elicits in the general flying population--including our friends and relations--I think that the addiction to flying strikes them as even less comprehensible!

The odd thing about it also is that the craving is just as powerful even if our most recent flight was stressful or anxiety-ridden. It doesn't seem to matter once we have made it to the other side of the wall...or whatever the best metaphor is. We do not resensitize (or haven't).

Recovery is a continuum and a process for quite a while. But I believe that it really does evolve into a cure when everything stabilizes down into the normal range...except for that childlike sense of wonder and appreciation which never goes away.

My experience with my addiction to airliners was that it, too, was a phase. For me it lasted a couple of years. It might have gone on longer and with more intensity had I not become a pilot.

As for why this hits some of us way harder than others, I suspect it has something to do with the steepness of our recovery curve, which in turn relates to how often we "get" to fly after the first big success. :mickey

What do you and Kelley think about that?

Barb