Addictions
Thursday, June 24th, 2010 | analysis, sex
Too much of a good thing is always bad, they say. Also, too much of a good thing can lead to addiction, no matter what that good thing is, or how innocent it seems – chemical liaisons just form in one’s brain, pleasure inducing hormones such as dopamine and serotonin get repeatedly released, in high quantities, whenever you get that “good thing” around (dopamine) or have a good taste of it (serotonin), and there we are. It works for chocolate, for mountain rides, shopping, blackjack and it also, or especially, works for sex, love and their magnificent combination.
Now, as human beings we value freedom. We value it so much that we fail to truly understand it many times, and, generally, we realize it’s gone only in the most trivial, obvious cases. Truth is, we lose it each time we refuse to fully understand a situation, each time we trade realism for idealism because idealism sounds so much better, only to end up with a deformed perception on reality – like a clear image on it would be easily achievable, anyway…
We love chocolate for the delicious reward that it is, shopping for the illusions of beauty and infinite seduction it brings for our narcissistic selves, idealism for its righteous passion, and we love love. Many of our addictions are originally natural and nonetheless useful things. Even blackjack – I know someone who made a living for his family out of it, during the hard period following World War II. But when we can’t resist emptying our debit & credit cards at the mall, we lose ourselves. Even more when we can’t see the reality and refuse to understand the whole depth of people in their purely human greatness and even more human misery or mediocrity – an addiction to idealism leads fast enough to a taste for misconceptions and prejudice. And even more when love ceases to be generous and becomes dependence and obsession (great article here, by the way, although it only covers erotical love).
Someone told me recently that everyone is an addict, and if they should be addicted to something, they would chose love and ideals. My firm belief is that nicotine would be better.
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