subject: A Preview of the "Bionic Theory of Addiction"" [print this page] A Preview of the "Bionic Theory of Addiction""
I want you to open your mind to these words and imagine something for me. The reason I ask to "imagine" is so that I can attempt to show you what does not exist in your life. Now I want you to imagine scarcity, in the most basic form. What do your thoughts jump to, what do you not have enough of, seemingly always? Love, Money, Air, Food, Friends even Now I speak of you about a scarcity of drugs, a reflection of our human inability to control our drives. Drugs bring out both the best and the worst of our society, towering hospitals, tyrants designed to insure us, and street remedies sold under cover of a gun. Our addiction is not a geographic plague, sweeping the country one ghetto at a time, but a racial trait. We all have the potential for addiction, just as each of us has the potential to find the cure. The reasons why I believe everyone can become addicted is because we are all already addicted, drugs are just a more condensed and refined object of that desire. We are addicted to things that came be harmful in excess, such as
Speeding
Junk food
Exercise
Vitamins
Stealing
Sex
Food
Water
Air
That Wednesday night sitcom
I once performed a comedy routine at an AA group, to brighten the mood and bring up my theories. This routine was a monologue that sounds something like this
"I' am an addict, have been as long as I can remember. I can't remember the first time I used, but I know I can't live without it. I don't even think about it anymore, using is as natural as reaching for a glass of water. If you tried to take it away from me, even now, I would claw and bite to get one more hit. Hell, I'm on it right now. I love to go swimming because it makes me feel the high more; I decorated my house with plants that help me make it. I cannot even go a minute without it because I' am an addict. I' am addicted to oxygen.
This is a humorous exercise in which you confess to having an "addiction", such as; sugar, vegetables, TV, reading, etc It scares people when they see just how easy this is to do (note; above monologue was just a paraphrased example). Our natural/racial addiction is to food, water, air, and sex. Cynics may respond by saying "but if you need those things, it's not an addiction", my response is to rudely ignore them for now and go on. Not because some criticism are true or false but because some things are more addictive than others. Food is a natural need, but just where one draws the line between eating to survive and eating for fun is a question psychologists will debate till the end of time. At what point do you stop taking *Norco for your back and start taking it for depression. Everyone is different, even though we all have a tendency to overindulge; everyone does so in a different fashion. Some things are rarer than other, causing us to value them more, seek them out despite hardships and consequences. Every great love story of our time was about an addict, who went through too much to get a girl.
This has been an introduction into The Scarcity Gene by Derik Mitalik, available wherever unwritten books are sold.
*Norco (brand name for 10mg hydrocodone/325mg Paracetamol) is a derivative of codeine that treats moderate-severe pain and it is famous for the habit forming consumption it causes in persons taking this medication
