By Paul Weiser
One of life's more difficult tasks is explaining to an addict what's wrong with his addiction (or with addiction in general). This discussion tends to collide with modern moral relativism ("who's to say what I'm doing is wrong?") but can nevertheless be fruitfully pursued in a useful way.
What the addict will say is, of course, that his substance (or, in the case of gambling, sex or sodomy, practice) of abuse makes him happy. (He may also adduce withdrawal pains, which are non-fatal and almost entirely histrionic with the common substances, wholly so with the various vices and practices.) It is, then, appropriate to advance the discussion by addressing the nature of happiness.
Happiness, linguistically and in fact, derives from what happens. It results from a pleasant and unexpected circumstance: you marry, raise children, enter situations fraught with potential discomfort and failure but in the event they turn out well. You are happy - then. Happiness can be invited and prepared for, never forced or made permanent.
Addiction is an attempt to force happiness. The needle, the bong and the rock shut out experience of the unexpected; compulsive sex and gambling use a behavior which produces drug-like chemical stimuli to, again, force expected - by intent preordained - raptures. But the pursuit of happiness is a search for transcendence of past experience and expectations, indeed, of certainty itself... hence the need for progressively greater applications until overdose, financial ruin, disease and physical decrepitude intervene.
In short, the difference between forcing and pursuing happiness - between addiction and successful human life - is the difference between narrowly coercing one's micro-environment and enjoying, accepting, courting reality - one's macro-environment - while making as many improvements (and, most importantly, self- improvements) as one can non-coercively manage. Force happiness? You might as well try to buy a rainbow.
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