Addiction

Gary Watson argues that the addict is ‘more like a collaborationist than an unsuccessful freedom fighter’ (‘Disordered Appetites’, p. 65), and later that we are ‘not so much overpowered by brute force as seduced’ (ibid p. 71).

The latter of Watson’s two quotes, “[the addict is] not so much overpowered by brute force as seduced,” is the explanation of the former, “[the addict is] more like a collaborationist than an unsuccessful freedom fighter.” Watson argues that addiction acts as a coercive force rather than an overpowering one. An addict is not directly pitted against the desire to consume a substance, but rather, their desires are distorted to the point where their true desire is to consume. The simile Watson argues most people associate to addicts, “an unsuccessful freedom fighter,” would imply that the addict would have to unsuccessfully fight his addiction and lose. The opposing allusion to a “collaborationist” that Watson presents implies that the addict does not fight the addiction, but agrees with these addictive desires. These comparisons illustrate Watson’s claim that addiction is characterized by the effect of aligning ones’ desires to satisfy their appetite for the drug as opposed to overpowering ones’ desires to abstain from taking the drug. We can see Watson’s meaning in another light as follows. The struggling addict can be thought of as a character one often sees in cartoons (let us say Bugs Bunny), with his devilish portrayal (for our purposes his addiction), resting on one shoulder and his angelic portrayal (his resistance to addiction), on the other. The two portrayals do not have any overpowering influence on Bugs and they are not directly combating each other; they just affect the way that he thinks through argument, or seduction. In the

cases where Bugs does the bidding of the devilish Bugs (his addiction), Bugs is simply made to think that his desires are in line with the devilish Bugs’ desires (satisfying his appetite for his...