Fucking Junkies

     by Max Mooseman, author of Bastard! A Mushroom Trip

What the hell is addiction? I have always had trouble pinning it down. Not to long ago I heard from somewhere that addiction is doing something over and over again that you don’t want to do. I like a lot of things about this definition but I still don’t think it covers it entirely. 

One of the things I like about this definition is that it seems to take into account that two people doing the same thing the same amount might not both be addicts. There might be one man shooting an opiate into his arm every time he thinks about the kids he hasn’t seen for far too long. Another man is having the same amount of drug pushed into his system so he can drown out the pain of a horrific injury long enough to have some semblance of a conversation with a child who he wants to spend as many of his remaining moments as possible getting to know.

I think defining addiction as something you do over and over again that you don’t want to do gets at something deeply true. People can be addicted to anything and people can do anything without being an addict. I would never call the second man in my example an addict. However, as soon as I try to use my working definition past this one important observation it seems to fall apart. 

People do things they don’t want to do over and over again without being addicted. I am sure many people reading these words trudge off to a job everyday they would rather not go to but they choose to because they care about their families. Even more simply, I wipe my ass everyday. I wouldn’t play with poop on a daily basis if the alternative wasn’t much more horrible. 

Maybe that is what is missing from my definition. Maybe addiction is doing something over and over again when you would rather, and could, do something else. Maybe an addict becomes an addict when they know what they want to do, they have everything they need to do it, they know they have to choose between the thing they want to do and the thing they always do and they settle into the undesired habit. Could addiction be just some version of routinely disappointing yourself? That feels right to me. 

Anyway, I gave Harper my laptop because I was watching YouTube instead of writing and filming and earning money and I was starting to feel like a fucking junkie. I know that feeling well unfortunately. So, here I am. Itching and grumpy and rambling. 

-Max

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