The Embarassing Thing About Addiction

I saw a really cool film a while back - "Mr. Brooks". The basic line running through the film was that this upstanding, decent business and community leader was in fact a serial killer. It was in its own right, a good film - a nice suspense thriller. I enjoyed it on that level immensely.

But so much of the film was really about addiction. The main character is battling an addiction. He's been able to stop killing as a result of AA meetings, and in the course a few nights his fortunes reverse and he's back in the saddle again. His addiction takes the form of an alter ego - a person whom he has conversations with - and he is methodical and precise about pursuing them all the while engaged in a dialogue with this alter ego regarding the character of the work, or the enjoyment.

An addict first guards the time they'll spend doing whatever it is that they're addicted to. They'll carefully arrange things so that time takes first priority. And if you give them a little bit, they'll take alot. Its a good guess that the person you're serving drinks to will be unable to take one glass of brandy , if they're an alcoholic. To drink means to pursue it to its logical conclusion of getting drunk.

And perhaps so too with murder.

Whats really embarassing about addiction might not be the pursuit of the addiction itself or the compromising situations one can put oneself into as a result of the addiction being played out. Rather, it might just be what happens after you defeat the addiction and then realize that the time and space you've allotted to your old hobby was in fact a large bloc of time taken from life itself. You have to face the fact that what replaced that bloc of time was a pursuit that was largely secondary in nature, and come to terms with the fact that you're now living a boring life.

Other types of addiction are heuristic in nature. In an essay I will upload later, we'll look at a group of people who are completely addicted - as an entire society - to the present tense. A people who have no past, or future - no art, science, not even linguistic recursion - a people whose disdain for the modern world is so severe that even the names of people visiting, are a source of mockery and are quickly replaced. Imagine visiting someone that you told your name to, who sort of throws it back and forth, making various sounds with it - then renames you? Because you look like someone they already met?

We enjoy keeping our distance at such times - we're after all, a modern, cultured people. But somewhere in the back of our minds perhaps this is the ultimate waste of time - a complete social and linguistic system that does nothing but waste time and human life. With society patting you on the back and congratulating you the entire time. No creation myth "It's always been this way". No history past two generations. Not even words for color, or quantity .."That looks like the color of a berry" (instead of red).

...Guess which environment these people live in... Jungle, Desert or Mountain?