on addiction

[lauralh]

I wrote something on my web site.


While walking in Marymoor Park with a friend, we discussed addiction. I never really "got" addiction. I think it's partly because of my "puritan" upbringing. While I've managed to shake the "if it feels good it must be bad" syndrome, I still sort of think "if it feels too good it can't happen too often." Which has served me well. Although I'm not sure if it's a puritan/hedonist viewpoint, or just one of those things where likewise I'm untrustworthy of happy people. Not that I'd rather be miserable than feel good, but I'd rather just feel normal than blissed out constantly. Once in a while (a day, a week) is ok, but I've occupied a state of normalcy for so long that I'm incapable of functioning when I'm not close to that state.

Anyway. So I claimed I'd never gotten to the point in a substance or activity where junkies get, the point where the pleasure is gone but you keep doing it anyway. Then I thought for a second, and amended it: "Unless we count dating." And it is oh so true. Even not dating, sometimes, just friendships can get to that point where the memory of the pleasure is far far greater than the actual pleasure received from being in the relationship.

And just when it gets to the point where you might consider ending things, the other person somehow recreates the pleasure, and you have a perfect day. Of course the frequency of these perfect days has no option but to decrease, and soon it's not a perfect day that makes you stay, but just a perfect hour. And you know it's no good, you know you gotta get out, but it just keeps cycling on.

So that's my addiction. Which is all the more amusing as I'm such a misanthrope. But hey, maybe that's why.

Comments

[xkisses.livejournal.com]

Nice.

I find myself addicted to cigarettes. But I see addiction as something where you have to have it every day, and will postpone everything and switch shit around until you can get more of what you're addicted to.

This is my argument against my being addicted to drugs or alcohol. Sure I do them, sure it's more often than most people, but I can easily go a week or six months without. However, when I go out, it seems to always be in the mix, and thus comes the assertion that i may be addicted. ::shrugs:: Iguess it's all prespective.

I do feel you on the being addicted to dating thing, I think. I am definitely addicted to Jeff. I don't think I could go a week without him; I'll switch my whole schedule around to see him. Weird. Dependency or addiction - or are they the same thing? Either way, both sound negative. Yick.

[meekgirl.livejournal.com]

yeah, I've discussed all this in terms of whether "psychological hedonism" is true (i.e., do people do what gives them pleasure.) The answer is, I think, that people only START doing things based on a pleasure-pain calculus, but they continue doing them because they are attached to the object itself. So people are partly characterized by psychological hedonism and partly by object-relations. The object relations part is kind of like inertia--once you start, you find it hard to stop. But, again, if you do stop it's because of a delayed application of the pleasure-pain calculus.

Awhile ago, I was trying to characterize my relationship with a friend as still rational/hedonistic; I wasn't holding on to him because I was attached to him as an object, but because it would be very high-cost to look for someone else with his conversational pleasure-giving capabilities.

I don't know how much I really believe all this economics-like stuff, or where ethics fits in, but it's fun to see how far one can take it.

[fragmentchild.livejournal.com]

Puritan/hedonist? :)