Is someone familiar with lua enough to override or create the -= or += operator?

I would like to use that instead of:
self.reallyLongDecriptiveVariable = self.reallyLongDecriptiveVariable - 1

With this operator like in java can be:
self.reallyLongDecriptiveVariable -= 1

If this is solely to keep from having to type all that out each time, you could do something like the following:

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function IV(v,i) --takes in variable and increment and applies the later to the former
 
    v = v + i
 
end
 
IV(self.reallyLongDecriptiveVariable,-1) --sic