THE HAPPY BONDAGE OF ADDICTION
Over the course the of next several posts I’d like to explain why creatives are at greater risk for addiction than the next person and what you can do to deal with your addictive tendencies, whether they manifest as an addiction to alcohol, painkillers, overeating, shopping, or one of the “adrenaline addictions” like racing down the highway at breakneck speeds or one of the “distraction addictions” like compulsive Net surfing, email checking, or computer game-playing.
The short story “The Bound Man,” by the German author Ilse Aichinger, is a beautiful piece in the existential tradition. It goes as follows. A man awakens one morning to find himself inexplicably bound by rope. Instead of removing the rope at his first opportunity, as we might expect him to do, he decides to remain bound and to become a circus attraction, turning his accidental bondage into his trademark work.
How strange! Why would a person happily accept such bondage? It is similar to the question that Franz Kafka poses in “The Hunger Artist,” where a man, who also chooses to become a circus attraction, starves himself to death because he can’t find food that interests him. These authors are asking variations of the following vital question: “Why do people carelessly, inexplicably, and even happily do things that harm them so much?”
Addiction is this kind of bondage. Addicts cling to their addictions and not for anything can you pry them away from their alcohol, cocaine, tobacco, Internet surfing, video-game playing, overeating, shopping, or sexual escapades. Tell them that they are dying: no matter. Tell them that they are wasting half their life in front of a computer screen or in the aisles of department stores: no matter. Remind them that they can’t have love or a real life if they use sex as a drug: no matter. Point out that their liver is already not functioning, that their nasal lining is already perforated, or that their lungs are already black: no matter. What you experience as you talk to an addicted individual is that he or she is completely indifferent to your good arguments.
Creative people squarely fall into the category of people at high risk for addiction—people who accept the “happy bondage” of an addiction even though they might be expected to know better. It isn’t just romantic mythology that creative people are more prone than their peers to succumb to the lure of an addiction. It is a fact, and there are many reasons for this. As we go along, we’ll explain these reasons: why, in addition to the biological, social, psychological, and developmental risk factors that confront many people, extra risk factors confront the creative person.
The connection between creativity and addiction isn’t a new one. The “struggling artist” who succumbs to alcohol is a character we’re familiar with. Consider what Tom Dardis has to say in The Thirsty Muse: “Of the seven native-born Americans awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, five were alcoholic. The list of other twentieth-century American writers similarly afflicted is very long; only a few of the major talents have been spared.”
You don’t have to be a professional writer to run extra risks for addiction. Whether you are a “Sunday writer” or world-famous, someone who doesn’t know what they want to create or someone who knows exactly what they want to create—if you have a felt sense that creativity matters to you, then you run added risks for addiction. While you may not see yourself as the world’s next Nobel Prize winner, you are no doubt creative in the broad sense—in the sense of feeling that you have potential to manifest and living under significant pressure to manifest that potential. As a creative individual, you want certain things from life; and that very wanting increases your risk for an addiction.
Are you at increased risk for addiction? Give the following test a whirl. Answer each of the following questions yes or no.
- Are you prone to boredom?
- Do you prefer to do things your own way?
- Are you eager to manifest your potential?
- Do you feel under some pressure to “make something” of your life?
- Do you feel empty if you aren’t doing something interesting or exciting?
- Do you dislike “wasting time”?
- Have you ever “fallen in love” with a book, a movie, a song, a painting?
- Are you curious about how things work, including how the universe works?
- Do you get frustrated when you see things done poorly or incorrectly?
- Do you find yourself in opposition to some elements of your culture or your society?
- Do you look for ways to improve systems or methods at work?
- Do you change your mind on the basis of new information?
- Do you feel that you sometimes have quite good ideas and quite interesting things to say?
- Do you see yourself as more of a “lone wolf” than an “ant in an ant colony”?
- Do you experience “time passing” as a kind of pressure?
If you answered “yes” to even one of these questions, you are at greater risk for an addiction. Simply by virtue of seeing yourself as an individual with potential, as someone who questions life, is interested in things being done right, and who gets bored when your mind isn’t occupied, your addiction risks are increased. More next time.
Are you a nonfiction writer? Come join me for three months of nonfiction book coaching. Learn more here.