I feel like waxing epigrammatic, so I’ll start with a La Rochefoucauld-style observation. I’ll maintain that “All addiction is procrastination.” Or perhaps I should say, “All addiction is a form of postponement.”
Of course it’s always wrong to use the adjective “all.” But that word lends my pronouncement such an air of universality and importance that it’s hard to resist. So I’ll leave it in, although you and I will understand each other to know that life is more complex than to be characterized by “All.”
Nevertheless, I do believe that the goal of postponement is at least a component of most addictions. I know that it’s at the base of my eating too much. In my case, there’s also reading. As long as I’m reading something, oh so justifiably educational - I can’t be writing. But eating is my most certifiable form of excess.
Oh, there is the deliciousness of the food available from modern grocery stores. Once I get a bite, I can’t pass-up further indulgence in the sheer tastiness of it. I eat even though I’m not hungry – to treat myself, to give myself a degree of pleasure that the world so often withholds. But most of all, I eat, in order to postpone having to do anything else. While I’m eating, I can’t very well be digging ditches – or horror of horrors – facing the empty page and writing something worthwhile. I’m allowed a respite from hard manual or mental labor while I’m eating. And so I eat some more, and I prolong the eating, and I eat again. The more I can eat, the longer I can postpone doing anything really taxing.
Sometimes there are bonuses to overeating that extend beyond the meal. After I eat too much, I feel logy. So of course I can’t start any serious writing project then. I have to wait until my mind is crisp again. In fact, maybe a nap is called for. I tell myself I shouldn’t launch into that crucial first sentence of the Great American Novel until I’m thoroughly rested, until I’ve digested my meal, and with it, my thoughts. And so it goes – for the day – the week – the year – the years.
People who have more serious addictions are probably often subconsciously intent on avoiding obligation on a wider front. The alcoholic incapacitates himself so he can’t possibly be expected to function as a good father, a good worker, a consistently productive member of society. All those things can be so importuning – and so downright difficult. So taking that extra drink that disorients him enough to make him ineffectual is the perfect answer.
The drug addict can be an even more hard-core avoider. Spaced out on crystal meth, who can be expected to succeed at any job? No one can possibly expect anything of you and you can’t possibly expect anything of yourself once you go all the way and become “The Man with the Golden Arm.”
You start the downhill spiral. Negative circular feedback is the hallmark of every sort of bad habit and addiction. You besot yourself – on food, liquor, drugs, or some more subtle wont - in order to avoid doing the hard work of life. But as you’re lying abed in that stupor of incapacity, you can’t help but feel the weight of your avoidance. You feel like a draft dodger. Perhaps you were justified in keeping your life safe and in not involving yourself in such-and-such a senseless war. And yet, there will always come that suspicion of shirking to weigh you down. To squelch that feeling of guilt, you will increase your consumption of whatever activity or substance served to disqualify you in the first place. And the decline accelerates. And round and down you go.
To break out of this spiral of decay, you have to stop delaying. You have to stop using the excuse that you’ve got your mouth too full just now, or that you’re too woozy to get moving. You have to force yourself to do what, deep down, you know you are uniquely meant to be doing, what you are uniquely capable of creating. You’ll have to do the hard thing. That will mean removing yourself from all the easy, habitual haunts, and stretching yourself to sing that high note, crystalize that difficult thought into clear sentences, build that bridge brick-by-brick. You’ll have to pull yourself up the steep stair of rightful accomplishment. How cleansing, how right it will feel to be up and at it at last.
Oh, but it’s a labor of bone. It’s tough to start, and even tougher to sustain a creative regimen. I frankly don’t know if I have the energy right now. A snack might fortify me for the road ahead. Yes, surely it must be snack-time. I’ll start after I have a little something to eat.
