Addiction's Tipping Point-Part I

PART I: ADDICTION AND DOMAIN PUSHBACK

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In the highly acclaimed film, “Ray,” Oscar winning actor Jamie Foxx brilliantly reenacts the tumultuous yet noteworthy life of one of the most talented singers and musicians of all time, the legendary Ray Charles. Every great film protagonist exhibits some form of “inner struggle,” and Ray’s biggest personal demon was a nearly insurmountable battle with heroin. As the film audience, we peer into Ray’s abysmal journey into the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” side of the music industry, helplessly watching the gifted musician sample the industry’s “not-so” forbidden fruits before finally landing at Heroin’s inescapable doorstep.

For a considerable portion of the film, Ray appeared to enjoy the balanced combination of a successful music career, a happy family life and a regular sampling of heroin. This was because his employers and his wife were unaware of his drug use. But habits grow hard to hide, and after discovering Ray’s bag of heroin, Ray’s wife forcefully but lovingly confronts him. Under confrontation, Ray assures his bride: “If I felt like this would jeopardize my music, or you, or providing for that baby, I would stop in a minute, but I know it won’t.” As the audience, we quickly learn just how futile words are at restraining an addiction.

The point to consider here is not that Ray Charles was addicted to heroin and that heroin is morally bad or personally reprehensible. Instead, I’d like to propose that Ray’s heroin usage, and any other addiction-producing action (APA) such as pornography, alcohol, gambling, etc., is not officially recognized as an addiction until something or someone “pushes back” against it. Through this understanding, I will show how ideologies embracing “tolerance” wreck cataclysmic damage across the many domains of society by unintentionally eliminating addiction-producing action’s essential “pushback” mechanisms. And finally, I will show how the Biblical Worldview exposes how this strategy operates, who is ultimately behind it, how pervasive and multi-faceted the strategy has become, and what must be done to eliminate it. But for now, let’s get back to the movie…

Until the moment of confrontation, Ray merely enjoyed a good high alongside the other facets of his personal and professional life. To Ray, it was merely an accepted part of his personally chosen lifestyle. It was only when a new force, in this case, his wife, came against that lifestyle that his drug usage could now officially be questioned as being an addiction. Ray faced with an ultimatum: give up the drug, or else. His family stood in direct opposition to his accepted lifestyle, displaying intentional resistance to his personal choice of action, or exhibiting what I will call for the sake of this article: “pushback.” The choice made at the moment of pushback determined whether Ray was objectively addicted, or had merely enjoyed the drug for a time and was now over it. In the film, Ray chose the former, telling his wife: “You know what, you can talk till you’re blue in the face. It don’t matter, I’m not going to stop.”

At this point, Ray could be classified as having an addiction by his Family “Domain” – those in his circle of influence and relation – since he had chosen the drug over what attempted to resist it, in this case his wife. But Ray did not need to personally classify his heroin usage as an addiction – provided he distanced himself from his Family Domain. His particular career choice afforded him that opportunity. After telling his wife, “I don’t think that the road is a good place for you and the baby,” Ray then spent the majority of his time on the road, away from any further Family Domain pushbacks. Once again he could subjectively claim his heroin usage was merely part of his personal lifestyle, since nothing, other than the family domain, was pushing back against his addiction-producing action at the time.

But that didn’t last long. The next domain of pushback was the Governmental Domain. Arriving on a flight from a former gig, Ray is accosted on the tarmac by the police and charged with Heroin possession. Again, his personal lifestyle faced yet another pushback. But the Governmental Domain carried greater consequence and farther demographic reach than the Family Domain. Rejecting the Family Domain for the sake of his personal lifestyle simply forced Ray to avoid a small microcosm of society: his wife and child. But ignoring the pushback of the Governmental Domain required Ray to distance himself from the very society he existed and functioned through. Society itself now impeded his personally accepted lifestyle. Because of Ray’s societal influence and popularity, Ray rejected the pushback of this second domain, delving even deeper into his chosen lifestyle.

The third domain of pushback was the Financial-Supportive, or Marketplace Domain. After the signs of addiction became physically visible, Ray’s well-intentioned producers came to Ray concerned about his growing and now manifesting addiction. This time, Ray not only ignored the pushback, he replaced the key individuals in his Financial-Supportive Domain, hiring a new management group less concerned with his personal life and more focused on profits. Ray was once again free to pursue his lifestyle unhindered. Sort of. Because now the Family, Government, and Financial-Supportive Domains, critical areas of existence and function, stood opposed to his personally accepted lifestyle. Continuing his personal lifestyle unhindered meant that his acceptable fields of existence and societal connection had radically shrunk. But, as tragic as it was, as long as Ray distanced himself from any domains of pushback, he could still engage in his personal lifestyle without personally acknowledging his heroin usage as an addiction. Let me break it down very simply:

The combination of the addictive and repetitious nature of Ray’s personal choice of actions produced addiction. Addiction produced domain pushback. To fight acknowledging his personal choice of action as an “addiction,” Ray distanced himself from these domains. As his acceptable domains shrunk, so did Ray’s ability to exist and act, since the domains of pushback were simultaneously domains of existence and daily function. Which led to the final domain of pushback. A domain impossible to distance from, a realm impossible to combat.

The final domain of pushback was Ray himself.

Eventually Ray’s own biologic body attempts to fight the addiction through rapid physical deterioration. The problem with the pushback of this final domain is that the addicted and the domain of pushback are the same entity. So there is nothing to distance from. With nothing left to distance from, the addicted person no longer has an addiction – the person becomes their addiction. When an individual becomes their addiction, the addiction is free to consume the individual at will – for the physical will of a man cannot overcome the addicted physical flesh of a man without serious intervention, and the end is nearly inevitable. When there is no more individual to consume, there is also no more addiction. In the film, we see that through Ray’s distancing himself from the domains of pushback and contining his personal lifestyle unhindered, he eventually became his addiction, and it nearly killed him.

Though the movie “Ray” was just smoke and mirrors entertainment, where society is quickly heading is no harmless fantasy…

[go to part II]