A Plague of Tics

This story has to do with a guy that has tics and it discusses his struggles of everyday life. He follows the same routine everyday and has difficulty breaking the habits. It doesn't help that his parents are unsupportive and his teachers are not of much help either. The one part of this story that I found quite interesting was whenever the boy was riding in the car with his dad, and the boy went to press his nose up against the winshield and his dad slammed on the brakes. The boy's nose was bleeding, but the odd thing was that he actually enjoyed this kind of pain. In the story he said that "touching objects satisifed a mental itch, but the task involved a great deal of movement: run upstairs, cross the room, remove a shoe. I soon found those same urges could be fulfilled within the confines of my own body". I just found this remarkable because I never would have thought that someone would actually enjoy the sensation of pain. Most people would think quite the opposite so I found it interesting to see that this boy with tics actually felt a different way. He likes this feeling because it's something that he can not seem to get rid of. This same pain went on for a while, until he reached his freshman year of college. At this point in his life, he started discovering drugs, drinking, and smoking. He says "I'm unsure of the scientific aspects, but for some reason, my nervous habits faded about the same time I took up cigarettes". He was using this as a sort of medication to rid himself of the tics. It was honestly kind of hard to read this story because I felt bad for this boy. First of all, its sad enough that he had to deal with these constant struggles, but then his parents not supporting him was just making his life go even more in a downhill direction. The worst part about the entire thing was that he had to resort to smoking in order to get rid of the pain he felt inside. He shouldn't have had to do that, I mean he can't help how his behavior was. So, his parents should have been there supporting him the whole time, in order for him to make it through life a lot happier, instead of having to resort to these drugs to make him feel a little better about himself.