Diagnosis of Invertism and What to look out for:

Diagnosis of Invertism and What to look out for:
By William S. Burt, Sounguru

Diagnosis of Invertism is mainly dependent on the person afflicted to answer a few honest questions about their invert keeping habits. This honesty makes it very hard to actually diagnosis someone as being an Invertaholic. As with other inflictions like alcoholism and drug abuse denial is always the first stage.

Most cases the symptoms are recognized by friends and families long before the afflicted person actually knows that they have a problem. Invertism is as with other compulsive behaviors is not truly curable. But this takes full cooperation by the afflicted individual which sad to say in most cases will not happen due to the need to fulfill their Invertaholic ways and the fact that denial is prevalent throughout the affliction of the disease.

Over the years thru the success of drug and alcohol programs there have been some clear steps to help identify the afflicted individuals and I would like to pass those on to you so maybe you can help someone or even recognize the problem with in yourself.

Neglect of other activities of other types of aquatic life: This is usually the first symptom of someone inflicted. They start to neglect other things like going to a store unless it is near a known place that carries inverts or setup a tank and instead of looking at fish to stock it with they look for inverts first.

Excessive Tank Setup: The afflicted person will setup tanks in every corner of the house some still sitting idle until the right invert is found.

Impaired Invert Selection Control: This is one of the most serious and harmful part of the disease and takes two forms:

-The inability to select an invert for addition or to introduce to a newly established tank.

-The impulsive behavior to buy or save every invert seen.

Persistence of Tank/Supply Acquisition: Here the person will try and acquire the so called needed supplies to setup a tank or to maintain a tank at the expense of other things like rent, mortgage, or food.

Large Blocks of Time Related to Inverts: At this time the person starts spending more time watching their inverts or creating more ways to think about inverts. This can and does include writing articles about inverts, taking walks just to collect leaves (not for health reasons), surfing the web looking for new inverts, and wondering if inverts are really the highest life form or was that just a dream.

Withdrawal: This is when the person finds it hard to leave their inverts for even a short time. A good way to spot this is when the person calls to check on how the "kids" are doing with the babysitter he/she never actually ask about the "kids", but wants to know how the inverts are fairing.

Tolerance: This is when the afflicted person needs more new and exciting inverts to seem happy. This does not include new baby inverts in an already established colony but new species and tanks to fret over.

Now if you are wondering if you have a problem than you probably do. Normal people never even think about it. If you have sworn off inverts and found yourself a few days later staring at your invert tanks or buying a new invert then you most certainly have a problem.

Now sadly in today's society there is no known cure or NMI (No More Inverts) groups formed to help you. The only thing you can do is go to the Arizona Inverts Web Forum where you will be loved and welcomed with open arms. We may not be able to cure you and in most cases will make it worse, but we are all in the same boat with you. So we hope to see you there and let us help you deal with the Invertism that inflicts you.

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