Why does the idea of heroin addiction affect me so strongly? I don’t really know. I mean, there are people in my family with cancer, too, but somehow that doesn’t get to me in the same way.
Possibly it’s because I have so much invested, philosophically and emotionally, in the idea of freedom, and heroin goes in and attacks the will like almost nothing else. I tried a while ago to figure out whether “cancer of the will” was a phrase that people use to describe addiction. It seemed like the answer was “yes, but not widely”, so I don’t know if I heard/read it or came up with it myself. But it seems apt to me. Heroin addiction isn’t an external force overpowering the will, but a malignancy of the will itself. How do you fight something like that?
Fuck heroin. It makes me so sad and so angry.
And now here are a few songs about heroin, some of which sometimes make me cry…
