Addiction

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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I’d like to discuss addiction from a philosophical and psychological perspective.

As Mark Renton says in Trainspotting, " ‘Choose your future, choose life’ but why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?", addiction can be, for those few intellectuals who are trapped in it, a very philosophical matter that defeats their own psychological and moral obligations.

Addiction allows the addicted to overcome morality and reasoning. - This, in and of itself, can often times be more addicting than the drug (or whatever it may be) itself. It is the ultimate nihilistic procrastination, and at the same time it is the most hedonistically understandable resort for society’s trash, losers, and burnouts.

When you’ve got a drug that does all the metaphysical work of bringing you satisfaction, why bother with the materialistic process that should be partnered up with that satisfaction? The process gets abandoned - and a new one takes its place. This time, the process does not precede the satisfaction - instead the new process is what follows the satisfaction. The new process is, doing what it takes to get more and maintain the feeling of satisfaction.
The process becomes a function of the satisfaction, instead of vice versa.

Heroin and other opiates? The nihilist’s goddess! For those overwhelmed by the excessive stimulation and the unsatisfactory slave-esque lifestyle, the opiate gets rid of all that. Not only in a realistic sense, but a psychological one. While on opiates, its almost as if the part of your brain responsible for reminding you what a fuck up you are gets shut off - that little part of the brain which society has infiltrated to fill your head up with informing you what your obligated to do, what mandatory milestones must be followed, and when that little part of the brain gets shut off, any subordination with society is purely coincidental or the junkie has subordinated by choice, because he wants to subordinate, not because society has obligated him to subordinate.
“Billy McMillan Anderson! Clean your room!” “I’m cleaning my room because I want it clean mom, not because you told me to!”

Speed and cocaine? Instead of shutting down the “moral obligation” center of the brain, amphetamines and the like simply give the user the motivation needed to follow through with every whiny demand society has to make. What normally is a lazy kid with a short attention span, suddenly becomes the highest graded kid in his class - and he still has time to do his chores, help his mother with the dishes, write an extra 15 pages on the essay which was only required to have 4 pages, fix dad’s car, and cure cancer all in one day. Why? Because the kid is finally given the mental energy to do so! But what happens when the kid realizes that a large portion of society’s demands can never be met? Or perhaps, what happens when the kid realizes that society shouts out demands merely for the sake of shouting out demands? Then the kid becomes psychotic! Because he puts so much mental energy into completing a task, only to find out that the task itself was designed so that he couldn’t complete it - just so that it could give a cheap narcissistic power-trip to somebody who likes shouting out orders.

Marijuana? LSD? Much like the opiates, it sabotages the area of the brain in charge of morality. Although instead of shutting down the area of the brain in charge of morality, the psychedelics divert the attention of that part of the brain to something completely arbitrary and seemingly all too significant (the trippy colors, the opened perspective, all the entertaining gibberish that is going on in the brain almost like a kids television show) it no longer becomes necessary to attend to the boring, gray, and dull rituals of normal life.

Religion? A purpose to follow. For the people who could never find a purpose, they now have one. Be it bigotry, a peace of mind from the concept of “death”, or preaching - they now have a purpose to follow. And whatever mental anxiety that religion may have alleviated, it is now substituted with what the religion exchanged it with. Subordination with the church, tribute to the church, etc.

Alcohol? It dulls down the brain’s incoming and alters the brain’s outgoing. Our brain’s information shipping dock receives way fewer imports, and sends out disproportionate exports.

Once the brain finds that “one thing” that it wants, whatever that “one thing” might be, all the other unnecessary things get pushed into the peripherals if not out of sight entirely.

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I’d like to join you.

Indeed it can. But, it can also be something that the addicted person thoroughly and genuinely enjoys.

I have two separate responses for this:

1.) Nihilism is basically the belief that life is pointless and there is no objective morality. Furthermore, addiction isn’t necessarily a way to “overcome morality and reasoning”, but a way to live: addicted to something. Also, I personally don’t think that Nihilists are trying to defeat reasoning or morality; they just look at it differently than other philosophies.
2.) If it isn’t too much to ask, please define the following for the other users of this board: “Trash”, “Losers”, & “burnouts” …

Should it be partnered up with it? Well, I can state that, with most addictions, the people having the addiction usually need to find means of supporting their “habits”, and that usually means financial means such as working, although the US Government discriminates against people having drug addictions in the workforce.

The same can be said about most conventional ways of achieving satisfaction.

As a nihilist, I’m gonna have to disagree with you there. Personally, I don’t use or worship heroin and other opiates, nor do I even find them to be significant in any way.

You seem to be insinuating that society is correct and the addicts are incorrect. Well, the validity of that depends on how you look at things.

I like this part. Many teachers and parents take these power-trips you speak of. But what if… the kid never finds out, or if the kid meets as many demands as he/she wants? Who are we to assume that the kid on cocaine/speed wanted to meet all of society’s demands?

This seems wrong. It’s still necessary to attend those rituals, or else your lifestyle would probably cave in (metaphorically, I mean). Everybody who is a member of a society has certain obligations to meet. Or, if he/she doesn’t want to meet those obligations, then he/she will probably get caught in avoiding so. This would probably lead to legal consequences, which could be “good” or “bad” for the person, depending on how they view incarceration or whatever their punishment may be.

But even if they believe that they now have “purpose” by means of worship, death will still defeat the purpose that thought they had in life.

To be honest with you, I don’t think that alcohol is really that compelling. Sure, it alters your mood and perception, but not enough to matter, in my opinion.

If it’s not too much to ask, please define “that one thing” for the users on this board.

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I have a theory in regards to addiction, and I feel it holds at least some truth being that my theory is the result of my own struggle…

My theory is this - Drug abuse is a method of entertainment, escape, coping, etc. The utility of any drug, in my opinion, cannot be argued in that capacity. Therefore, addiction - more specifically habitual drug abuse and/or prolonged prescription use for mind-altering purposes - is esentially a response to the seemingly excessive demands of life (these are subjective and often relative of course). In other words, after the association is made between a particular exessive-stimuli and the coping mechanism used to deal with it, the need for said mechanism increases in direct proportion to the percieved intensity of the stimuli. So, when one finds a coping mechanism related to some undesirable interaction with particular stimuli, one will naturally utilize that tool - especially in cases like work where you don’t have the choice to simply separate yourself from the undesirable. In doing so, an association is made and the two go hand-in-hand - one is not experienced without consideration of the other.

There are a few reasons this behavior can turn into a physical and/or mental dependancy…

First, is simply drug tolerance, and/or the phenomena of “chasing the dragon” - An increase in the use of the coping mechanism (drug in this case) is experienced in such a way that the effect of the stimuli no longer has bearing on the desired effect of the coping mechanism - the effect itself becomes part of how that individual experiences the particular stimuli, it is now habitual and expected that the stimuli will be interacting with the coping mechanism (drug) upon each experience. The desired effect of the drug is shifted from coping to the disassociative or socially-promotive value of the drug’s effects. That is to say the drug, at this point, is no longer used as a defense because the presence of the defense is presupposed, rather it is used as an offense to not only deal with the stimuli, but also overcome it.

Also, modern/cultural lifestyles have changed dramatically with the infusion of technology and long distance communication. Manual labor is at an all time low and education stressed more than ever, which results in tediously boring careers that require little physical ability. At the same time, the value of currency is emphasised more than ever and material posessions glorified. Thus robbing the working class of any comfort they may gain through monetary income. The numbing of our minds through school and career - the dogmatic, beaurocratic customs and beliefs dictated by a respective culture become oppressive to those who are not simply accepting of, or happy with, the standard or adept to survive within said standard. These particular phenomena in modern culture result, quite literally, in a feeling of inadequecy in regards to one’s life. Almost as if to say one’s physical or mental state become evidence that the physical and mental influences of life are not beneficial to life. Thus, some people are basically left with a feeling like “I am not meant to live like this” or “I can’t live like this”, yet those individuals are faced with the dilemma of survival (being that “survival” has become playing one’s part in an already established system). The end result is a large group of alienated people that are forced to live and survive by standards their mental or physical state of being will not accomodate. Taking a drug, especially prescription, to make said standards more palatable is easily justified in the face of that kind of agony and hellish uncertainty.

Last, I will just mention boredom in general. In conjunction with the perpetual dulling of our minds and life styles - there is the almost seemless, yet debilitating boredom and malaise in regards to daily life. People do less, own less, give less, think less, earn less, and spend more; with those tendancies comes a looming feeling of wasted time, suppressed creativity, dull emotion, and energy/sleep deprivation. All of those feelings leave one with some manner of pain or displeasure - hence the fact that we have drugs specifically targeted toward each “problem”.

In short, my conclusion boils down to addiction being the result of societal/cutural pressures, the death or discouragement of indivduality, and denial of our most primal nature. We are like the tigers being used in a circus. Wildly free, intelligent, instinctual creatures forced to be an actor in a play they do not understand and cannot possibly relate to – however, instead of mauling one of our trainers, we just pop some benzos or opiates and deal with it like zombies.

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Well, coming from my personal experience with speed, I had so much mental energy that needed some outlet, that as soon as someone was making a request for me (fix something, answer a question, etc), my mind had automatically began piecing together a solution for their problem. Almost as if I was in a highly effective auto-pilot mode. Even though the “kid” knows that he doesn’t want to follow through with society’s demands, and even though he knows it is out of his character to do so, the shear amount of mental energy at the disposal of the kid causes him to automatically follow through with the demand anyways.
These are just generalizations of course, there are more factors at work here like dosage, etc, but I can tell you it is pretty common for a kid to right an extra 15 pages for an essay that he really didn’t care about (and 15 pages is no exaggeration… I remember when I’d see other kids on ADD meds spending their recess hour organizing the locker and homework in alphabetical order instead of playing outside with the other kids… It wasn’t until I had tried speed a few years later that I realized why they were acting the way they did).

That’s exactly the case though, people who use psychedelics more than occasionally tend to have their metaphorical ‘cave’ collapse - and usually they do get caught when they abandon their obligations, but the strange thing is, that no one cares that they’ve completely let go to life’s obligations… Even law enforcement in some cases won’t bother doing anything about it if they find someone who is obviously stoned and smells strongly like marijuana. They find it better to just let the individual’s life begin to fall apart by its own accord so they can re-learn for themselves what life means to them - this is usually true for law enforcement who actually care about the pot-head’s well-being. Most of the time, if law enforcement catches somebody with weed (here in the USA) they won’t do anything more than give them a slap on the wrist and dispose of any marijuana they find - they rarely give out fines and even more rarely incarcerate somebody with weed unless they had a large amount of it or were trying to sell it. They don’t care so much about catching the users as they care about catching the sellers.

To be honest, I’d rank alcohol up there as one of the most intoxicating drugs. People feel as if drugs are placed in stratified groups of intensity, that alcohol is weaker than weed, and weed is weaker than the other drugs. But putting them in such hierarchical groups isn’t accurate.
As far as intoxication and intensity of effects go, alcohol is a lot more impairing than heroin, meth, and cocaine. The latter are more addictive and much more pleasurable, but alcohol is still more impairing. There is a lot of misconception with “hardcore drugs”… in reality, Heroin is much more subtle and enjoyable than depicted with common belief. Heroin creates pleasurable sensations all over your body, as well as creating mental euphoria and sedation.
Its usually the case that the more pleasurable a drug is, the common belief is that its more impairing and intense as well - which isn’t true.
When I say “impairing” i mean your basic symptoms like: lack of motor control, less connected with reality, etc. The only drugs I’ve found which I would say are “more impairing” than alcohol are dissociatives like Ketamine, phenecyclidine, dextromethorphan, nitrous oxide, etc.

Read my original post a little more light-heartedly with a pinch of humor and exaggeration, and you’ll see what I was trying to say… we could pick apart and look for flaws in the technicalities of virtually any post on this website, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything really.
It’s best to look more at what an individual was trying to say and look less on what was actually said. For example, I don’t think you really need me to define “that one thing”, but instead you were actually just trying to sound a little condescending. Unless you don’t speak English well or something, forgive me for my criticism… But if you really need me to define those terms, then I feel sorry for your word comprehension level

5

No, I was being serious about you defining “that one thing”… I didn’t understand what you were referring to, and I guess, now I still don’t.

Since you “feel sorry” for my word comprehension and believe that I cannot pragmatically speak English, I guess I’ll end my part in this confabulation. Instead of interacting in this thread, I’ll venture elsewhere to construct a more delectable vocabulary.

I’d love to insult you, but it’s apparently against the preconstructed rules of this board.

Goodbye… and I hope someday I learn enough words to conduct a philosophical interaction with you.

~~Jeff

6

“that one thing” was referring to whatever a person gets addicted to… drugs, gambling, sex, etc

Society’s “trash, losers, and burnouts” is referring to the individuals who society deems expendable. The lazy people, the slackers.