Painkillers

"Most of us do not take [difficult life situations when we lose our footing] as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape—all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain."

Pema Chodron

When Things Fall Apart

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The only difference between a drug addict and a “normal” person is the drug addict is addicted to drugs and the “normal” person is addicted to something else.

Everybody is addicted to one or more of the following:

TV, food, sex, love, pain, yoga, music, dancing, weight lifting, running, work, failure, success, sports, animals, money, fame, cold, hot, sun, water, snow, driving, drama, talking, eavesdropping, being sick, being angry, being sad, being happy, being onstage, gardening, playing cards, gambling, losing, winning, traveling, flying, jumping out of planes, sailing, swimming, jet-skiing, danger, safety, excitement, silence, loudness, shopping, the latest technology, antiques, celebrities, athletes, singers, politicians, current events, past events, the future, fighting, making up, making lists…

That is UNLESS you are an active drug addict or alcoholic, in which case you don’t have time for anything else because your whole life revolves around getting, using, trying to stop, lying about, hiding, stealing, and thinking about drugs or alcohol.

If aliens were to observe this characteristic human trait in all its varieties, they might think that drug addicts and alcoholics are just myopic or simpleminded. They could say something like if you give up alcohol and drugs, you can get addicted to a lot of other things.

Most people would call this a false equivalence: being addicted to TV doesn’t put your job, marriage, or children in danger. Most drug addicts and alcoholics will die (somehow) if left untreated, which can’t be said for people addicted to Star Trek.

Maybe, but the difference isn’t the difference between apple and orangutan; it’s more like the difference between sailboat and motorboat, soft-core porn and hard-core porn, hard-boiled and scrambled eggs. And the farther you zoom out, the less this difference is noticeable.

The fact that one is usually fatal, and one is “normal” is inconsequential from an existential, universal perspective. Think about it in the context of our size and place in the Milky Way Galaxy: if people are only the tiniest grains of sand on an endless beach, doesn’t the false equivalence melt away? After all, from that perspective, even the difference between apples and orangutans disappears. ?

Drug addiction is widely considered a disease – which is better than calling it a moral or personal shortcoming.

However, from a distance, are the drug addicts and alcoholics the only people with this disease, or are they just the only ones dying from it?

People say quitting heroin is really hard, and the withdrawal is miserable. Try this exercise: pick two healthy, unhealthy, or neutral things on your personal list of addictions, and stop cold turkey. You might not believe it but it will be as hard for you as it would be for you to stop using heroin, and the withdrawal would suck.