Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

by Judith Grisel

The tale of opiate users is one of such great love and such great suffering as to make Romeo and Juliet seem like a middle school melodrama. This class of drugs delivers heartbreak like no other, initially providing a sense of security and well-being that soon transmutes into something like being stranded on a barren moonscape without oxygen. In the beginning, opiates are an ideal other. As they beckon graciously, it feels entirely natural to respond with trust and gratitude. Unlike stimulants, or even alcohol, the subjective effects of these drugs seem almost perfectly subtle as they bestow utter contentment. At first the relationship is fun and easy, polishing up cloudy afternoons that might otherwise be irksome and muting broken edges of disappointment. As with requited love, the myopic sense of contentment in opiate’s embrace is like an island vacation or a trip along a golden road; everything superfluous to the relationship recedes to a distant horizon. So what that life is full of small hurts and insults, because the perfect antidote can be readily found in a pill or bag. If only it could stay this way! But, alas, for reasons that seem cruelly capricious, the drug becomes fickle just as your longing grows increasingly urgent. “Darling!” you whisper and then cry, “Please? Please, please!” What has happened? Why can’t you experience the perfect solace you once shared? Smack is all you care about as the intimacy you shared gives way to hopeful longing and then to deep g...