In a city like New York, you come face to face with addiction - manifestations thereof - on a daily basis.
The moment you step out of your comfort zone - home or office - you find yourself in the zone of discomfort: In the shadows of the iconic skyline, as you jostle through the hustle and bustle, wade through piles of garbage bags that colonise the pavements and brave the odious odours that hang around you, er, like a bad smell, you come upon so many, too many, fellow human beings languishing in an abyss of debilitation and deprivation, their lives wrecked by alcoholism and drug addiction. And that's only the visible part. What about the collateral damage that we can't see, the anguish visited upon the families of these people? It pains me so immensely just to walk past or stand near them and become aware of the state they are in. What is it like to actually be an alcoholic or an addict, or to be one of those who love them and have had to go through the heart-rending ordeal of watching them slip, slide and free-fall into that black hole?
A prolonged fixation becomes an obsession.
When an obsession evokes and weds guilt, and when they are entangled in a symbiotic, mutually reinforcing downward spiral, you have an addiction.
It's possible to have a 'healthy' obsession, but there's no such thing as a healthy addiction because addiction is by definition a mutiny, and a successful one at that, against the dominion of a 'sound' mind. The guilt that accompanies addiction eats you up inside. It chips away at the boundaries of normalcy; it gouges a dark pit in your sense of physical and mental integrity. That pit, being dark and ever expanding, is so unnerving you can't help but wish to fill it up, as swiftly as possible, with further bouts of addictive behaviour. A vicious circle ensues.
If Gabor Maté is right in saying...
and if we apply his logic more broadly, are we to ask ourselves the same question when we detect an addictive tendency in ourselves, however mild and however innocuous it may seem?
They say the world is a mirror. It's true, in the sense that while we keep sight of what's out there, we must never for a moment lose sight of ourselves as reflected in the externalities.
We are all cut from the same cloth. Empathy helps us see the invisible but palpable - the unbroken and unbreakable strands of humanity that connect us all.
Philosophising aside, what do these people - the shadows of their former selves - really need? There's not a lot empathy can do: You scratch the surface, you apply a salve (in whatever form) and you provide some symptomatic relief - that's about it.
They need a reset button. I wish I could invent one.
