Living with Addiction
I remember the first time I ever smelled a cigarette. I had found a packet of them in my mum’s house when I was old enough to know what they were, yet young enough to not know that I might want to try them. Instead I pushed open the soft carton packaging and stared at the neat row of cylinders inside. Whether by instinct or imitation, I inhaled the sweet, fruity scent. Tobacco. I will never forget it. The memory lingers, the same way smell does, the same way smoke does. Once it has permeated, it is difficult to remove — not just because all three of them are stubborn. The difficulty begins in wanting to remove them at all.
Even as a child, I was overwhelmed by the sensation. The intoxicating richness of that scent went in through my nose and straight into my bloodstream. That’s what it felt like at least. I could feel the hairs on my arms rise and my skin start to tingle — an instantaneous sensation that at once delighted and scared me. I don’t know if it started with that pack of cigarettes but I would come to have a life-long association with pleasure and fear, as though the things that had a hold on me — both good and bad — were to be approached with caution.
Although I remember liking both the smell and the sensation, I closed the pack, left it where it was, and didn’t speak of the discovery to anyone. Even at that young age I intuited the danger that those cigarettes represented — not smoking them, not the lung cancer they could induce, nor the chastisement I would receive for handling Adult Things that didn’t belong to me. It was the power I knew that those cigarettes would have over me if I let them — because if I inhaled their scent again, I knew that I would never want to stop.
What I didn’t know at the time and would only learn much later in life, is that even if and when I wanted to stop, I wouldn’t be able to. First, unwilling. Second, unable. This, more than anything else, is how I characterise addiction.
When I was 15 years old, a group of my friends and I used to go to McDonalds almost every day after school. This was a few years before “Supersize Me” came out and our budding pubescent bodies seemed to show no discernible side-effects from this daily dose of empty calories. Not outwardly at least and at 15 that’s all that mattered. Inner beauty was a Later Problem and gut health hadn’t become a mainstream term yet. We used to cross the road to Maccas, as we called it, and discuss our day over salty fries and syrupy Coke. At some point during the course of my high school years we actually had a research trip of sorts into the kitchen of a McDonalds and they showed us how all their soft drinks were derived from a concentrate and mixed with a carbonated water solution. This is what gave their drinks that trademark taste — overly sweetened and lacking in fizziness, perfect for sucking down through plastic straws. What started as an accompaniment to a Small Fries and a Cheeseburger became a quick and easy go-to when all I really wanted was the conversation. We would talk, eat, talk, sip, talk, chew on the straw, talk, talk, talk. These were some of the best days of my high school life and the friendships we solidified on those afternoons superseded all the hours spent on the school vicinity as classmates where we could not laugh, eat and chat as freely and uninhibited as we could in the refuge of a fast-food chain restaurant.
One afternoon while we stood in line waiting to order, my best friend casually remarked, “Hey, don’t do that thing where you just order a Coke instead of a meal.” We were 15 years old and yet even then we were women looking out for each other, the code of sisterhood already deeply embedded. Her comment had made me aware of a habit I had been cultivating without consciously choosing to, without being aware. I did like Coke and I did drink it every day, but only ever on our Maccas outings, never at home and never in any other context. It was, however, all that I would consume and I would forgo the Small Fries and the Cheeseburger when I realised the only thing I wanted was the Coke. Just because I liked Coke more than other things, why did I deem the other things unnecessary? Was it because I didn’t need them? Did that mean I needed the Coke?
I didn’t want to find out the answer to any of these questions, so like the cigarettes, I simply put the episode away into a different part of my mind and chose not to re-visit it. Not because I didn’t want to think about it, but because I knew that it would be safer not to. I stopped drinking Coke. I didn’t stop going to Maccas after school and I didn’t stop consuming its empty calories, but at some point I decided I did not at all enjoy the taste of Coca Cola and that fact re-informed not only my tastebuds but all future drinking habits. To this day I do not drink Coke and when questioned, I answer truthfully: I don’t like the taste of it.
As I approached adulthood, I learned there were worst substances in the world than caffeine and nicotine and that if I could get away with no more than a mild addiction to the smell of unlit cigarettes and the taste of diluted Coke, then I should consider myself lucky. I wasn’t. Luck, admittedly, had very little to do with it and I deliberately pushed mine whenever and however I could. The feeling of being drawn toward something was the same feeling that also repelled me, as though the allure in itself was an encrypted warning sign. Danger, it would signal to me, stay away, and yet still I would gravitate toward the very things that both appealed to me and threatened to consume me. Although it seemed as though I was attracted to the harmful, in actual fact I was often attracted to the rather benign. It was the intensity of the attraction, its persistence and my propensity to succumb to it fully that proved harmful. First, unwilling. Then, unable. I wanted the pursuit. I enjoyed the chase. It was only later that I realised that I couldn’t give it up, that the chase had in fact taken hold of me and wouldn’t let go. This, in a more abstract sense, is just another way to describe addiction.
When coupled with substances, illicit or otherwise, addiction has negative connotations. It would be naïve to deny that addiction can and does have regrettable consequences. What I eventually uncovered, however, was that without a substance to abuse, addiction itself looks more like a behaviour. It begins with an impulse: here is something I like. It is followed by desire: this is something I want. For me, what subsequently occurs is either one of two things: the want transpires to wanting more of something or the want transforms into a need. Effectively, you could surmise, they are same same.
When I began reading memoirs written by former addicts, I came across several of Russell Brand’s books in which he describes both his discovery of, addiction to and eventual recovery from heroin. One of his descriptions of the addict’s mentality is that if something is good, then more of it must be better. The idea of “more equals better” had become so engrained in me by early adulthood, that I had to learn moderation as a hard science. For as many junkie ticks that exist in the world, there are as many coping strategies and techniques to work around them. While it is difficult to moderate a want, it feels manageable to regulate its dosage. The trick, however, is being ahead of the want before it escalates into a need or before the “more equals better” equation is able to establish itself. Moderation became an acquired habit for me that I tried to weave into all aspects of my life lest something that I took a liking to ballooned into something I could no longer control.
Preventing a want from becoming a need, however, proved to be more of an art than a science. The idea of “more” is something you can quantify — if it can be measured, then it can be mastered (or so I told myself). The idea of finding myself subject to a need — of wanting something with so much ardour that I was at its mercy — truly and rightfully scared me. To want was still in the realm of control but to need was a territory in which I no longer had any bargaining power. The prospect of this was dizzyingly frightening and yet I found myself time and again in this predicament. By this stage I had learned there were worse things in the world than substances and that dependence didn’t only connote a drug.
I learned that relationships with people could be just as toxic as anything you could inject, ingest or inhale and that those we choose to love and to hate can flood our brains and bloodstreams with chemicals worse than the synthetic ones you have to pay for. Needing others is perhaps part of the human condition, so at what point does it transmute into an addiction?
The further I delved into literature on addicts, the more a picture began to emerge of a life built around highs. A drug abuser would seek out a high, and coming off the drug would entail a low and thus begins the roller coaster of addiction around which an abuser’s life was centred. This was a dynamic I could comprehend but what I really wanted to understand was why a person seeks out a high in the first place. If an abuser’s life was based around the highs and lows of addiction, then what was life without addiction? It seemed to me that a life that was not punctuated with the exhilarating thrill of the ride and its unavoidable come down could be woefully summarised in one word: flat. People used to ask me what my biggest fear was because I was interested in the things that gripped me — both positively and negatively — and spoke about them at length. Killer bees, the depths of the ocean, paralysis, the death of my father, darkness. And so on. What I failed to mention was the fear that essentially fuelled these conversations and compelled me to create a list in the first place of things that could make my heart beat faster and remind me that I was alive. My biggest fear was and still is, in actual fact, boredom. I am terrified of flatlining.
People were not my problem, the toxicity of relationships was not my problem, the oxytocin that would saturate my tissues, the dopamine that hijacked my brain, the serotonin levels that would fluctuate — none of these things were my problem. My problem was the behaviour of addiction, not its subject. Wanting others was permissible, needing others was still tenable, but becoming addicted to others was a different beast entirely and it was mine alone to tame. Using people as highs and riding out the lows with them was not a way to live. Even if a life without them seemed flat, even if it meant being bored. By the time I had reached my 30s, I recognised that this was the process of growing up. My mantras, like my moderation, had become habitual: Do not use people to fix yourself. Do not use people to understand who you are. Do not use people to enhance your life. Do not use people, period. Do not use. Do not use. Do not use. A recovering addict is still an addict after all.
When I turned 33 after my second daughter had just been born, I was by all accounts a fully-fledged Grown Up, although the process of getting there felt far from complete. In many ways I was still my childhood self, testing out the boundaries of my own sensorial susceptibilities, caving at times to the physiological satisfactions I could find, indulging for example in the feel of silicone grooves on a hot-water bottle by gliding over them repeatedly with my thumb. In other ways, I was still my teenage self, cautious of habits that could cement themselves over time and ones in which I would find myself enmeshed. A coffee with the girls that turned into a drink with the girls was a ritual, in which I had to remain hypervigilant. A social setting that condones a habit can also mask one and I am wary now of having a life with things to hide. It is better to allow no room for it. The adherence to ritual is a junkie tick and one that I cannot shake. Accountability to others is an effective strategy, however, so I share my rituals with the right people — both chosen with care.
My life now is still largely marked by addiction and this is acknowledged by those who know how to recognise it. What I label addiction, others call by different names. A passion, an obsession, a lifeline, a love — we chase the highs that these things offer us and we settle for the lows that come with them. There are socially acceptable addictions, community-based addictions, addictions that are in fact geared toward health and well-being. After three and a half decades, I have accrued several of them. Self-preservation is also an addiction. It is possible to doggedly, adamantly and fastidiously pursue abstinence, sobriety and vigilance. This requires a degree of extreme commitment to a certain behaviour — familiar territory to an addict.
A few months ago, I planned a trip with some friends to travel to a remote island for the weekend. It required a boat trip over semi-rough waters and would take just over an hour. Because I was prone to sea-sickness, it was recommended that I take a sea-sickness pill beforehand. I remember buying the pack from a Chemist — an over-the-counter, easily available and affordable drug that came in a pack of ten. I remember looking at the small red pills lined in plastic and staring at them for a long time. The relationship I have to pills in any form and for any purpose has long been marked by the downside of addiction and when I see them even now, I am reminded of that. Opening the plastic packaging felt like discovering my mum’s box of cigarettes all those years before, when I was too young to know what it would mean to open it, before I knew what effect its contents could potentially have on me. The caution I had that day as a child I still carry with me, only now with the added knowledge of just how much damage an addiction can cause if you allow it to.
In many ways I am not alone in this struggle. We are all addicts to varying degrees, we all choose our drug or drugs and call them by different names. We all have our ticks, our coping strategies, our communities, mentors, tribes. Addiction can be an affliction but it doesn’t have to be. It can kill you, but again, you don’t have to let it. If there is anything that the years have taught me it is this: addiction doesn’t have to determine how you die, but it can dictate how you live.
