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Never did I think that I’d repeat in my own life the theme of the dark movie Christiane F. A wildly popular film in Germany, the book version was a best seller there. (I enjoyed an English translation)
I was disappointed, down the years, at the show not entering American popular culture. I saw the flic with (I think) subtitles in a Canadian art house, and I thought maybe the subtitles explained why a show so powerful went so unnoticed. But today, looking at critic Roger Ebert’s review, I see that in the US the film was released with a “shockingly bad dubbing job.” Ebert gave the feature 31/2 stars, opening with, “This is one of the most shocking movies I have ever seen.”
Christiane is a sociable, ordinary teen. Her story is legion: taking a little heroin, not enough to get addicted, oh no, everybody knows how bad addiction is. “I can control my using.” My words too. At the movie’s end Christine is still alive, but she doesn’t have a life: Only an existence.
Call me defensive, but before you condemn users for being in denial, you should dam well look at your whole society being in denial too: According to the police chief of Toronto, the US War on Drugs “is a farce.” Shades of Vietnam!
During the Vietnam war for “the hearts and minds,”—so that villagers would choose democracy over communism—simple things that would have super-drastically cut the appeal of doing bloody insurgency, such as land reform, were never tried. To my American readers: Do you know what’s untried at home? Up in Canada, where drug use is a peacetime thing, there are more drugs in the countryside than in the cities. Do you know why? You won’t learn to win your war unless you have windows to “see,” and open them to “listen.” (A young intelligence officer, angry at willful ignorance, wrote a book about the folly of waging a War Without Windows)
You and I, of course, aren’t in combat, praise the Lord. In our everyday life we’ll merely deal with paying the bills and enduring the latest outrage from the traditional media. Or, more likely, from social media, (SM) media where we aren’t supposed to pass along fake information, but we do. “Vaccines make you magnetic! Look, spoons are sticking to me!” …Conspiracy! …Bigness!
Everybody knows SM can be bad. We know the SM fat cats have their algorithms set to reward outrage and sensation and dopamine over any sober news: Nobody rewards Detective Friday from televisions’s Dragnet saying, “Just the facts, Ma’am” deadpan. For us, traditional media is just too boring compared to SM. Oh, maybe not for you and I, dear reader, I’m just talking about others.
Silicon Valley millionaires make our clicks as easy as eating potato chips. As in the TV chip commercial, “I bet you can’t eat one…” (Stop! I said just one!) I know, but I keep thinking I can control myself.
In April I thought my life must be awful, maybe lacking in goals or something, because I kept clicking on SM. In May, as a wide eyed tourist in London, surely my life was good. But not good enough to keep from saying, “Just one more click…” Wasting hours of my precious holiday. In June, I’m trying to face my dopamine addiction.
Not all dopamines are from a substance. For example, I remember a wife with a husband addicted to sex (S) She felt frustrated, saying something like, “He comes home from an angry day at work, he wants S. He comes home from a good day, he wants S to celebrate. He comes home from a neutral day, he wants S for the boredom.” Sounds familiar. For my part, if my SM quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, even during a beautiful London holiday, then “maybe” it’s an SM duck.
And if I say “maybe” then surely that’s denial, which begins with me behaving like Christiane F. thinking “it’ll never happen to me.” I know the facts, but so what? That does not set me free. I mean, if “smarts” did the trick, then professors would cycle through the Alcoholics Anonymous program faster than anybody else.
… One of these days, instead going down the rabbit hole, and later standing up from my device feeling hollow, then feeling shocked to meet the clock face, I will instead become sensible. Like a respected computer millionaire, Paul Graham, who had a similar problem: He resorted to setting up a second work-only computer across the room, one without any web connection… Too bad it ultimately didn’t work. (Excellent essay link) Not fun.
Forget “not before noon” or “only on Sundays.” —Say, did you hear that AA is “spiritual,” NOT religious?— Truly, if I am willing to do “whatever it takes” then maybe it will be sensible to figuratively get down on my knees, pray, and quit cold turkey.
…
…
Sean Crawford
Behaving as if I’m still addicted,
East of Eden,
June, 2022
Footnote: Searching “David Bowie” and “Christiane F.” results in a music video clip.
Blog note: Maybe, instead of on the fives, I should reduce to posting only on the tens—or solely on the 15th. Yes, the 15th would mean once a month. Temporarily.
