Choose Your Own Heroin

by A. E. O'Neill

[Originally published June 2000 at Parrotspeak.net

William S. Burroughs said of the many forms of addiction, "they all obey basic laws. In the words of Heiderberg, "This may not be the best of all possible universes but it may well prove to be one of the simplest." One thing is for sure; junkies know something that the rest of us, too moored in the foundations of our reality to risk permanently losing our belief in it, will never know.

The beauty of physical, all-consuming addiction is in the way it pares reality down to its fundamentals. Desire and deliverance, need and numbness - the painful, primal simplicity of the junkie lifestyle is almost appealing in that the follower of this path is on a continuum parallel to, but not integral to, our own. The effects of the drug and the painful symptoms of withdrawal are more than enough to fill up the human vessel that adopts the lifestyle. For Burroughs, there was still the burning desire to create and to communicate but for most, heroin devours other concerns as it expands to take control of the host's consciousness.

Imagine, without the prejudice of drug addiction entering your mind, a life stripped of all existential turmoil; a mind, existing on a chemically enhanced mental plane, whose only pit stops in our reality are to "refuel." Although most don't embark with this intent, junkies manage to find a loophole in the human paradox. By casting themselves into an alternate reality - a mental state where the descent back to our reality is physically as well as mentally painful - they retain the higher powers of human cognition while being reduced to an animal state by the physical demands of addiction.

In a world that grows more complicated every day; a world where sovereignty over your own thoughts is as likely to be called into question as your possessions, it's such a simple solution. The junkie lifestyle even takes care of any guilt complex you might have about opting out of society; once you are ensnared in the vicious cycle of addiction, you are forcibly freed from the concept of what you "should" do and overtaken by a compulsion to satisfy your craving and, therefore, remain in that alternate universe where the concerns of society are irrelevant.

For the rest of us, there is a daily grappling with the constructs of human society; technology we must learn and struggle with, relationships we must nurture and preserve, politics, the environment, fashion trends, car insurance, news, weather and traffic, education, the homeless, wars and famines, celebrities and serial killers. This is our daily static, the backdrop to whatever it is we do so that we can eat and sleep and dream, without ever knowing the one thing that might make it all worthwhile.

There is only one question and that question has no answer. Why are we here?

There is an inhuman contradiction inherent in the lack of an answer and it is the root of what we are, as humans. It is the root of what we do and what we create; science, art, music, literature, offspring, religion and the irresistible urge to deconstruct and combine the very elements of our universe in a never-ending quest for self-knowledge and determination. It is the root of our desire to make a mark and a difference; to leave proof of our greatness for all to see.

It is the presence of this existential void, so much a part of every waking moment, of our bodies and minds and of the air we breathe, that drives us to the heights of human expression and invention. A boundless passion to learn, explore and transcribe our reality, in the face of that great mystery, is the most poetic aspect of what we call "human nature." That is faith, at it's purest.

This passion exists in all of us and is, at times, an impetus to great achievement. Other times, it is the source of our greatest frustration; we lapse into confusion, mania, paranoia, cynicism and apathy. For all our searching, we realize we will probably never know the answer. The Truth.

In the face of this chilling realization, the mind recoils. Logic fails us and we search the vastness of our minds for some comfort against the void. We aren't designed to comprehend infinity or to leave a question unanswered. We fabricate where we cannot find truth, filling in the holes in our reality with guesses and lies. Science has partial answers which fail to satisfy the soul. They don't "ring true" and therefore pacify only those most eager to believe in that which is tangible and susceptible to the "laws" of the universe, as we have so far conceived them.

Religion, too, has answers, but they only beget more questions and insult the very intelligence that brought us out of the cowering darkness of illiteracy and superstition in the first place. Organized religion - a term which reveals its intention to shape and control thought - seeks to set boundaries on the imaginations of its followers. By issuing a roadmap for the soul's development and a detailed behavioral guide for its citizens, the church tries to control the intellectual passion of the human spirit. By fabricating answers to those existential questions and declaring any further exploration or doubt blasphemy, a punishable offense against God, it seeks to extinguish in the mind that which is the root of all questioning, and all progress.

Blind faith in religion - the kind of faith which is held up as ideal in the church - glorifies an almost animalistic return to our superstitious, pre-literate beginnings. When we stop questioning, we stop developing our minds and, when our minds stop developing, they atrophy and die. Institutions that seek to control the disbursal of information seek to reduce the human mind to a processor of pre-approved information. What remains is a race of obedient workers, grateful to the institution for simplifying their lives.

The face of rabid faith is the face of addiction, clinging desperately to the veil that obscures reality.

In this, the information age, we pride ourselves on diversity and education. We lack the naivete required for blind religious faith, choosing instead to place our trust in democracy. The technologically advanced society instills in its citizens what it calls a good work ethic; devotion to the principles of responsibility and reciprocity. The good of the many, we are told and must believe, is more important than the good of the one. For "free" society to be a success, we all must have our place in it and we all must contribute the physical and mental essences of ourselves to that success because, if just one person upsets the balance, we all suffer.

This rule is illustrated in the case of David Koresh, held up as an example of what happens when you fail to respect your government and its laws which, after all, are designed to "serve and protect" you. Anarchist, religious fanatic, cult leader, martyr. This rule applies to the trial and persecution of another visionary, Bill Gates; once a shining example of the triumph of industry and intellect, now a martyr to the cause of capitalism. He had to be brought down, not because he was running a monopoly (the government itself is a giant, unquestionable monopoly), but because he beat the system at its own game, embodying the Work Ethic to its logical extent. When your work ethic begins to benefit you as a person, more than it benefits society, you must be cut down to size.

So the government and the church want to make us unthinking cogs in the machine - that's nothing new. What is particularly disturbing, though, is the zeal with which we embrace our servitude to the machine without the slightest thought to where it will take us. We seek, instead, to derive some sort of joy out of the toil. We try to convince ourselves that we can and do know all the answers and that, somehow, working 50 hours a week as a CGI Programmer or Legal Secretary or Meteorologist is fulfilling our fundamental hunger for meaning. If it fails to do that, we question ourselves. What do I want to DO with my life, we ask, as if the small words under the name on our business card held all the answers to thousands of years worth of human philosophical exploration.

We surrender to the opiate of drudgery. We extract a sense of meaning from the pride we feel in mastering and performing our job. A skilled technician is just as much a slave to his hands as a janitor, and just as valuable as a cog in the machine. The most venerated professionals, though, are the ones whose careers are viewed as "selfless;" the teachers, doctors, social workers and activists of the world.

The Work Ethic convinces us that, although our way of life depends on the exchange of currency for goods and services, the real work is in the maintenance of humanity. These jobs are emotionally taxing, pay badly or not at all and offer little or no recognition in the eyes of the world - that goes instead to supermodels and sports heroes, who we are trained to admire and loathe simultaneously for their exquisite irrelevance.

We are fully in the clutches of the Work Ethic mythology when we believe ourselves to be trapped by the system that feeds us a desire for wealth, power, strength and intelligence but cripples those who set the standard for those qualities.

We embody the Work Ethic mythology when we believe ourselves selfish and superficial for enjoying the fruits of our labors rather than donating them to the less fortunate.

Our human reasoning is dumfounded by the paradox we are forced to swallow. We give in to self loathing and guilt; we regret our weaknesses and our ignorance because we've been brought up to believe that in a free society we can have all that we want so long as we work hard enough for it. We hold aloft the inner city youth who claws his way to the top and gives back to society through benevolent politics. We hold aloft the gentleman CEO who donates half his profits to charity out of an altruistic passion for humanity - and a fear of the IRS. When we don't feel satisfied and fulfilled by the rewards of hard work and charity, we hate ourselves as we've been taught to do. What is left to aspire to, but escape?

Huddling with ten or twenty other cold, sniffling humans under a bus stop awning in January, waiting for a city bus to jolt and wheeze its way to the curb so that you can relax in front of the television for a few hours before getting in bed, exhausted and paralyzed by physical and mental boredom, you catch a glowing strip of blue out of the corner of your eye. It's a sign in the window of the travel agency across the street and, under a spotlight, partially obscured by the screaming yellow price sticker, is a faraway expanse of azure sea. From across the street you can almost hear it lapping at the platinum sand, framed by gleaming white hotels and dotted with swaying palm trees. Happy, laughing couples in bold floral prints embrace in the tropical breeze. For two weeks and all my savings, you think, that could be me.

We yearn for meaning and fulfillment, but the world we have created only offers us distractions and illusions because there are no answers. It's too great a void to look directly into, so it must be diffused by the distorting lens of our constructed systems. Christianity, astrophysics, devotion to a borrowed cause or chemicals, it's all the same. Keep the wheels turning and the static will drown out that little voice. Don't look at the man behind the curtain. We don't want freedom - we don't even know what freedom is - we just want something to adequately feed the fire that burns in all of us, something that makes it okay just to exist, without questioning why.

So, what is the answer? If I had it, I don't think I'd be writing this, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's not to be found in Twelve Steps or Seven Habits. There are no instructions - no cheats - for this game. We don't even know what it means to win. The only thing we know for sure is that we have this life to do with as we please; it would be a slap in the face to whatever force propels us to squander that life in servitude to the forces of bureaucracy. If this is a game, it's a choose your own adventure. Will you opiate yourself and sleepwalk your way through the time allotted, hoping to be rewarded at the end for your strategic pain-avoidance? Or will you evolve - turn and face the void, devour and experience life - claw your way to the next level?