He keeps saying “I just don’t know”. I think this is important. I think many addicts, myself included, often find ourselves confused. We want to be passionate, but don’t know how, or where, or why.
But the strong feelings that are released or caused by altered states of the sort characterized by addiction are a sort of ersatz passion, or even an ersatz meaning formation. You don’t know, still, but you feel like you do. It’s a temporary solution to existential confusion, to “lostness”, to “Verworfenheit”.
Reading about Reed, it doesn’t appear he himself used heroin. He was an alcoholic and meth user, who died ultimately of liver cancer. But the basic mindset is the same.
For workaholics–and in important respect all addictions have unique features as well as commonalities–the rush is competence. It is getting things done. It is a feeling of control, of mastery, of winning. And there are always more details to be sorted, new initiatives to begin, more information to absorb to stay on top. It is all about keeping a low simmering anxiety buzz punctuated by period dopamine hits. It is, in other words, all about having a place and a purpose and a way forward, and keeping that line taught so that nothing else ever pushes through. Too much slack, and some part of you will start asking questions and looking around again.
And I will speculate for sex addicts it’s not all that different from work addicts. You are always looking for that next conquest, and always looking to sex as a qualitative alternative to the workaday world. I think workaholism and sex addiction dovetail marvelously, and are most likely highly conspicuous in many CEO’s. I’ve known one or two myself.
In both cases you maintain a low key anxiety–you can never be sure when you make a pass at a new woman if it will work–punctuated by regular dopamine hits. Fucking is fun, no doubt, but I think for true addicts the best moment is actually just before it begins again. This is how I visualize it, anyway. The relief at the beginning is actually better for most than the actual orgasm. This is precisely what makes it addictive behavior. There is nothing wrong with having fun, and sex is some of the best fun you can have. But what addicts bring is the opposite of emotional presence. They bring need which will not and cannot be satisfied in that or any other encounter. But if they could be satisfied, they wouldn’t be addicts.
Few thoughts. I’m a pretty basic alcoholic, but all that is changing. I have found I seem to be OK with a beer or two before bed. That never used to be the case. If I had two I had to have six, then some hard liquor. That part of my life seems to have passed.
I actually gave myself permission to get drunk last night, and bought a bottle of Aquavit for the purpose. I had probably four fingers in a glass–which is a lot for most, but not for me–then went to bed. I NEVER used to do that. Absolutely never.
I may in the end give up booze, but increasingly it is seeming like I am, to use a Feldenkrais term I like, “reversible” with respect to it. I am becoming capable of setting boundaries, of using it, I think, for its intended purpose.
One day soon I may have a daily whiskey for my health and pleasure, and leave it at that.