Addiction

Addiction is a strange phenomenon. It can happen in so many different ways to so many different things. It easier to understand the addictions that have been found to be the result of actual physiological changes in the brain such as smoking and the increase of nicotine receptors. I find the purely psychological addictions a lot more disturbing and frightening. The fact that a human being could be caused or forced, to do something that he really rationally does not want to do and that he know he will regret after he has done is understandable. It only becomes bizarre when the person doing the forcing is the same one being forced. This internal battle that is every bit as real as battle between two human beings but more deadly because at least in a fist fight one of you can run away thus avoiding the consequences of a confrontation. One can't very well run away from one self. Thats the scariest thing about addiction. The inescapably of it all. When struggling with addiction, there is always a fight, there is always a winner, and there is always a looser. Worst of all, there is always another fight to come. If Milan Kundera is to believed, this endless cycle of battles with addiction is exactly what gives addiction so much weight in our lives. The fact that we know that we will meet this adversary again and again and that the outcome of this battle affects the outcome of the next makes it more difficult to carry the burden of addiction.

I wonder what is to be done about it. We can't give in, one of the things that makes us humans is our ability to choose what we want to do. Free will is a cornerstone of what it means to be human. Man was not meant to be a slave, not to another man and certainly not to oneself. In the slavery that is addiction there is no escape, there is no underground railroad. There is only insurrection, the slave must rise up, take up arms and overthrow the master, that is his/her only hope of redemption. But in his weekend state, battered and bruised by past battles he can not do it alone. He must look up, reach up find the helping had that awaits there, join forces with his helper, then and only then will there be hope for a new beginning.