Slack in the Devil's Chain
Sovereignty & Addiction
When you’ve been to the very bottom of the addiction trenches you know firsthand what addiction looks like. You see it everywhere, regarding all kinds of things. It’s in small behaviors found in daily routines of every type of person in relation to every possible type of vice. Addiction is ubiquitous, and dare I say it may not even be inherently negative. The trick is, we’re supposed to become addicted, just not to feelings or results.
Or pleasure, or suffering for that matter. The trick lies in becoming addicted not to a feeling but to a process that produces some kind of beauty or useful function. A master painter did not put brush to canvas and instantly comprehend every trick and technique needed to create timeless art. No, they had to try and fail countless times. With each failure, the devilish desire to quit offers an exit and the difference between the master and the hobbyist is this insatiable addiction to the process which propels them to cut through the temptations to let failure crush them and persevere against all odds.
When you’re in love with the process failures are not meteors, but rain drops.
The big difference here, other than the obvious factor of creative output, is that when the artist is without paint for a few days their body and mind does not fail to function. They may feel fear at the thought, but it is entirely different from the fear which the chemical addict experiences in the same situation. One could wax dramatic and say the painter cannot live without their paint, but the drug addict quite literally cannot exist as the person they know they are without that on which they have become dependent. This is not to say they drop dead, but that their normal physiological and mental processes are so detrimentally interrupted by this lack that they are reduced to a fraction of their normal capacities, and this on top of extreme anxiety, dissociation, and intense physical discomfort.
An addict who is out of dope cannot consider anything except how to get more dope. It consumes the whole being with concern. It usurps logic, morals, ethics, and can eventually erode love itself. This perceived importance is grafted awkwardly to their hierarchy of needs somewhere in the neighborhood of food and water, but above safety and acceptance. Such great suffering is created in the mind and body in withdrawal states that it is no wonder - I’ve yet to come across a curse or malicious spirit that can compare to the hell of chemical dependence. The experience of such torment creates a memory that can be referenced to conjure that fear again, as if new, whenever a memory of it is triggered. This is trauma, but a strange sort compared to what is commonly discussed.
Although I just finished saying withdrawals are worse than curses, it is vital to our understanding to see them as similar conditions. More specifically addiction, to begin with, is possession. When the artist is ecstatically painting, they are possessed by something. Likewise, so are drug addicts. Half-assed animism won’t help us in these deep waters, so we need to see the chemicals for what they really are - Demented, weaponized aspects of plant spirit-consciousnesses.
Even when it comes to synthetic drugs the analog was copied, or synthesized and altered, from a plant. Nothing is just a thing, especially not living things and their petroleum-based shades. There are beings attached to the drugs. Always.
This means that while the artist might be somehow beholden to the divine muses who course through their body as their wrist dances above the page, the addict is likewise beholden to a being residing within (or connected to) the chemicals they feel they cannot live without.
Saying nothing of the character of these beings themselves, it is safe to ascertain that the dynamic of relations between the addict and the spirit of the dope begin to take on, at least from the perspective of the addict, a decidedly demonic tone. The Devil tarot card immediately comes to mind, the dependent bound to the beast who holds power over them. The drug addict may even hold true to their personal morals and ethics most of the time, so long as there is a bit of slack in the chains. However the second the chains tighten they begin to deconstruct their scruples, to justify infractions. Many addicts would not even think of stealing while they are high, but twelve hours into shakes and chills their tune may change dramatically.
The reason for this on the shallow, psychological side of things is obvious. The metaphysical nuances are more profound.
The mundane truth here is that need grows, desperation grows, and priorities are renegotiated to open up new possibilities. The hidden truth here is that the addict has relinquished their sovereignty to a spirit and the spirit now holds a higher position in the hierarchy of the addict’s life than the addict themselves - They have given up control. The weaponized plant spirit is now in a position of authority. This is self-orchestrated and initiated by the addict’s own free will, albeit usually without properly informed consent and most always unconscious or forgotten.
In the case of the artist serving the muses we find a difference in that the muses are not threatening the well-being of the artist should they refuse to paint. The muses may punish by abandoning the painter, but they do not threaten with affectations of torture, and subsequently the fear of the memory of that torment. The artist can choose to paint or not, and the risk is only to their enrichment, not their health or sanity - The results either way will not be malicious.
A functional addict is someone who successfully avoids getting called into a meeting with their pharma-demon-boss most of the time. They may have a system worked out where they never have to face the fact that they’ve relinquished their sovereignty. They may even still believe it belongs to them. If supply and dosing can be worked into a schedule, and that schedule militantly followed, they may avoid a situation where their overlord steps in to remind them who they serve. This could go on for years and those close may never have cause to notice, but this does not change the fact that they have given the final say over to something other than themselves.
The difficult part of being tuned-in to spotting chemical addiction in others is that when you see it on someone, you know immediately that regardless of their intentions, their success at managing it, their charm, their talents, or your love for them, they simply cannot be trusted under certain conditions. This is because there are decisions they have given up their agency over. There are calls they don’t get to make, and they are usually unaware of that fact until it’s too late. They mean well, but can only do as much as they’ve been permitted by their superior officer to do.
If dealing with a drug addict is something you have to do, the most important thing to remember is that nothing they do to you is personal. You’re talking to someone who is always at war. You’re talking to a person who has an invisible gun to their head every moment of their life, a clock ticking away their well being. It’s important to remember when offering them solutions that you’re not just dealing with the person for whom you care, you are also dealing with the entity with whom they are entangled. And that entity will do what it needs to do to protect that entanglement.
While I have not personally experimented with the possible implications for actionable magic based upon these observations, I sincerely think there may be avenues herein to magically assist those who are in the trenches.
As a final thought, an anecdote.
The addictive impulse in myself became dislodged from drugs over seven years ago now and in the interim it has bounced around, temporarily latching onto one part of my life or another. It latched onto magic for a while before it became obvious that it was also a bad place for it, for many reasons. It latched onto video games for a while, as a mostly harmless compartment in which to safely store this burden, and yes, I was aware of these inner processes as they were occurring.
Then, recently, I began to feel an urge to play music again after years of distance from my old passion. I have been approaching with caution, without desire for finished products or a pat on the back. There were two weeks recently where all I could do was play and research music gear and in that hyper-focused time warp I felt something almost literally click into place.
The burden I had been carrying around had changed again, but this time it felt relieved. And I mean it when I say that It felt relieved. I could feel the feelings coming from my addiction-burden and they were feelings of relief. I, myself, only felt amused.
Could it be that every drug addict only has to find the healthy, creative thing that is shaped like their addiction and ceremonially break the false hierarchy they’ve established with their drug of choice?
I don’t know.
But it’s definitely worth exploring.