“So, when I am talking about addiction I am considering it in regards to substances and behaviors, excess and restriction. This definition encompasses the most casual (i.e. my two new vibrators) to utterly destructive (i.e. my mothers thirteen year struggle with opioid addiction that ultimately led to her death at age 52). Not to mention the slippage between those two extremes that is, in many instances, more of a crash than a slip. This interest in addiction considers the societal conditions that have caused so many people to become dependent on vices be that sex, Instagram, heroin, online shopping, alcohol, gambling, nicotine, exercise, cannabis, food, porn, work, etcetera. Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom offers that perhaps “people take drugs because they feel unfree, and drugs make them feel freer. Or, people take drugs because they want to escape their heavy and painful conditions, but find themselves reburdened and enslaved by addiction. Or, people take drugs because freedom is hard to bear, and addiction offers a counterweight to that unbearable lightness of being.”

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