There are many things that fascinate me to no end. I read up on them, watch A&E documentaries on them, and theorize about them. I am fascinated with life beyond earth, with conspiracy theories (like the JFK assassination, the Skull and Bones Society, all things Da Vinci Code), with addiction, with Black history, with financial advice, the Holocaust and with pregnancy, to name a few. It’s as though I couldn’t possible learn enough about those things.
When I was maybe 11 or 12 I read, “Go Ask Alice,” by an anonymous teenager who chronicles her spiraling life of drugs. Whenever Oprah or Dr. Phil feature an episode on drug addiction, I have to watch. I can’t explain the draw. I have never been addicted to anything. While I had dabbled in stupid high school drugs, I never ever felt addicted, nor did I want “more” of any drug, Tylenol 3 included. In fact, on my worst hallucinogenic experience, I was scared at having lost control. It certainly wasn’t fun. I’ve had moments that I have wanted to escape from so bad, but never have I walked down to the shady corners of Rideau Street for a fix to forget.
But I love trying to understand why people use drugs, why they continue, why they fall off the wagon, why they ruin everything else in their lives. Why rehab can work, why it sometimes doesn’t, why people make track marks, why people snuff. Whenever a character tries drugs, it is always my favourite part of the book or movie. I have never known anybody to become addicted to drugs, though I of course have known of such people, as must of us do.
Sometimes when I wonder about addiction, I wonder about what rock bottom is. My mum explained the concept of rock bottom to me when trying to tell me about an alcohol-addicted relative. James Frey wrote that it was waking up in a hospital after falling down an elevator shaft in a drug-induced haze. Trainspotting’s Mark Renton famously chose life. The woman on Dr. Phil yesterday found her son was addicted to the same drug she was and wanted to change, finally.
Then you have to go through withdrawal. I think going through withdrawal would be one of the hardest things to do. It sounds like it is, anyways. Your body is addicted; it runs on a foreign and damaging fuel. It sends messages to your brain that nothing else matters, nothing, just get it get it.
I’m really glad to have never been addicted, and I don’t plan on it ever. But I can’t explain this desire to want to know more about it. Maybe Hunter S Thompson and Anonymous planted a seed in my young, formative years. Maybe it’s the continuing mystery that no one can ever really know why people become addicted, and so I forever search to get closer to a non-answer. Maybe it’s because I’ve been warned about a genetic predisposition, so by knowing and understanding and researching, I am armed, should the situation arise.