Love and Addiction - 2. What Addiction Is, and What It Has to Do with Drugs

Written by Stanton Peele

In: Peele, S., with Brodsky, A. (1975), Love and Addiction. New York: Taplinger.

© 1975 Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky.
Reprinted with permission from Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc.

Breuer preferred what might be called a physiological theory: he thought that the processes which could not find normal outcome were such as had originated during unusual hypnoid mental states. This opened the further question of the origin of these hypnoid states. I, on the other hand was inclined to suspect the existence of an interplay of forces and the operation of intentions and purposes such as are to be observed in normal life.
—SIGMUND FREUD, An Autobiographical Study

When we talk about addictive love relationships, we are not using the term in any metaphorical sense. Vicky's relationship with Bruce was not like an addiction; it was an addiction. If we have trouble grasping this, it is because we have learned to believe that addiction takes place only with drugs. In order to see why this is not the case—to see how "love" can also be an addiction—we have to take a new look at what addiction is, and what it has to do with drugs.

To say that people like Vicky and Bruce are genuinely addicted to each other is to say that addiction to drugs is something other than what most people take it to be. Thus, we must reinterpret the process by which a person becomes dependent on a drug, so that we can trace the inner, psychological experience of drug addiction, or any addiction. That subjective experience is the key to the true meaning of addiction. It is conventionally believed that addiction happens automatically whenever someone takes sufficiently large and frequent doses of certain drugs, particularly the opiates. Recent research that we will cite in this chapter has shown that this assumption is false. People respond to powerful drugs, even regular doses of them, in different ways. At the same time, people respond to a variety of different drugs, as well as experiences that have nothing to do with drugs, with similar patterns of behavior. The response people have to a given drug is determined by their personalities, their cultural backgrounds, and their expectations and feelings about the drug. In other words, the sources of addiction lie within the person, not the drug.

While addiction is only tangentially related to any particular drug, it is still useful to examine people's reactions to the drugs which are commonly believed to produce addiction. Because these drugs are psychoactive—that is, they can alter people's consciousness and feelings—they have a strong appeal for individuals who are desperately looking for escape and reassurance. Drugs are not the only objects which serve this function for people who are predisposed to addiction. By seeing what it is about some drugs, such as heroin, that draws the addict into a repetitive and eventually total involvement with them, we can identify other experiences, such as love relationships, that potentially have the same effect. The dynamics of drug addiction can then be used as a model for understanding these other addictions.

We will see that more than anywhere else in the world, addiction is a major issue in America. It grows out of special features of the culture and history of this country, and to a lesser extent, of Western society generally. In asking why Americans have found it necessary to believe in a false relationship between addiction and the opiates, we discover a major vulnerability in American culture that mirrors the vulnerability of the individual addict. This vulnerability is close to the heart of the very real and very large significance of addiction—drug and otherwise—in our time. Consider our image of the drug addict. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and fiction like The Man with the Golden Arm have taught us to visualize the "dope fiend" as a criminal psychopath, violently destructive to himself and others, as his habit leads him inexorably toward death. In reality, most addicts are not at all like this. When we look at the addict in human terms, when we try to figure out what is going on inside him, we see more clearly why he acts as he does—with or without drugs. We see something like this portrait of Ric, an on-again off-again addict, from an account given by a friend of his:

I helped Ric, now off his probation period, move out of his parents' house yesterday. I didn't mind the work, since Ric is such a nice guy and has offered to help put new linoleum down in my kitchen. So I set in to do the wall-washing, vacuuming, floor-sweeping, etc., in his room with good spirits. But these were quickly turned into feelings of depression and paralysis by Ric's inability to do anything in a reasonably complete and efficient manner, and by my seeing him, at the age of 32, moving in and out of his parents' house. It was the reductio ad absurdum of all the inadequacies and problems we see around us, and it was goddamned depressing.

I realized that the struggle for life is never done, and that Ric has blown it badly. And he knows it. How could he fail to realize it with his father telling him that he wasn't a man yet and with his mother not wanting to let us take their vacuum cleaner to clean his new apartment? Ric argued, "What do you think I'm going to do—pawn it or something?" which has probably been a real possibility on many occasions, if not this time. Ric was sweating in the morning chill, complaining about that fucking methadone, when it was probably his needing a fix sooner or later and his father noticing and knowing and saying that he couldn't take a little work—that he wasn't a man yet.

I started right in cleaning—Ric said it would be about half an hour's work—because he had been an hour late picking me up and because I wanted to get it over with so as to get away from him and that place. But then he got a phone call and went out, saying he'd be back in a little while. When he returned he went into the john—presumably to fix. I kept on cleaning; he came out, discovered that he didn't have the garbage bags he needed for packing, and went out again. By the time he got back, I had done everything I could, and he finally set into packing and throwing things out to the point where I could help him.

We started to load up Ric's father's truck, but it was bad timing, since his father had just come back. The whole time we carried things down and placed them in the truck, he complained about how he needed it himself. Once, as he and Ric carried down a horrendously heavy bureau, he started in on how it and the rest of the things we were carrying should have stayed where they belonged in the first place, and not been moved in and out. Like Ric stepping out into the world, to love, to work, only to retreat; to be pushed or pulled back inside, to go back in again behind drugs, or jail, or momma or papa—all the things that have safely limited Ric's world for him.