(Psychological) Gravity’s a Bitch: On Addiction and Phillip Seymour Hoffman

by Steve Neumann

You are a comet. You were formed by material and processes in the deeps of time, hurled from your home star system out into the wider universe. You’re able to travel for long stretches through vast swathes of space relatively unencumbered; but as you approach certain sufficiently large celestial bodies, you feel the drag of their gravitational pull. Sometimes you get pulled in so close you can never break free from their influence, and are forever caught in their orbit. There’s even a chance you could perish altogether. 

These bodies are your weak spots — maybe even your blind spots — those areas in your life that cause you a good deal of what we normally consider an excessive amount of anxiety, stress and pain. You may see these bodies looming on the distant horizon, or you may never see them coming, realizing you’re under their control only after you’re already firmly in their grip. 

Gravity’s a bitch — psychological gravity, that is. And just like the gravity of physics, this type of gravity is pernicious, in that the closer you get to its field of influence, the harder it is to escape. But people can and do escape. Why is it that some people can, while others can’t? This question is as much philosophical as it is psychological, and deals with the always fun topic of freedom of the will. 

Poor Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It’s tough to see anyone succumb to drug addiction, even anonymous, complete strangers; but I always seem to get an extra pang of loss when that person is some type of exceptional talent, maybe because talent is so rare, and there’s a fear that it might not appear again. But that feeling usually subsides after a few minutes, because I realize again and again that life is a profligate spender. Clearly heroin was Hoffman’s greatest gravitational weakness. The Hoffman-comet got stuck in its orbit and eventually disintegrated, after flaunting its radiance across our skies for years. Almost immediately upon hearing the news that Hoffman died of a drug overdose, people generally fell into two camps on the matter: one, that addiction is a disease and he succumbed to it as if it were cancer; and two, he did it to himself and therefore has only himself to blame.

Is one of these conclusions correct, to the exclusion of the other? Or is there a middle ground that lays blame on both — or neither? I don’t now remember where I first found it, but I came across a blog post from someone named Debbie Bayer who has “worked for 9 years as a psychotherapist in facilities treating addiction, mood disorders and eating disorders,” and who has “over 25 years experience working with 12 step communities.” The title of the post is “Phillip Seymour Hoffman did not have choice or free will and neither do you.” Coming from an expert in addiction, that would seem to settle the issue. Except that it doesn’t. It is, however, a clear cut example of the first opinion I mentioned above, and it may also be the prevalent one. 

In talking about the few sorry souls out of the vast majority of us who haven’t succumbed to addiction, Bayer contends that their brains simply don’t respond in the same way that a hopeless addict’s brain does. This is undoubtedly true — and a tautology. Of course their brains responded differently; otherwise they wouldn’t have yielded to the narcotic temptation in the first place. But the stronger claim about addiction is that an addict is hardwired or genetically predisposed to it, with the implication that they are fated to be addicts, and nothing they do can commute that life sentence. Their comet-trajectory is fixed, and it’s just a matter of time before they fall headlong into a star of destruction, and their feathery ice-flame is forever extinguished.

But is this really true? Is it the case that someone born with a predisposition to addiction will inevitably become an addict, and likely die from it? Yes, gravity’s a bitch, but even comets get knocked out of their orbits every now and then. The universe is in motion — stars explode and die, jettisoning vast amounts of material into their environs; other stars are born and grow, greedily accumulating ambient material; other celestial bodies collide and spread debris in all directions. Space is awash in detritus. 

Likewise, our friends and family die, and we feel the jolting psychic reverberations of these events; other friends and family are born or otherwise enter our lives, providing opportunities to alter our trajectories; and strangers collide, for good or ill, and the results of these collisions can send us careening far and wide. In other words, there are ample opportunities for life to change our direction. 

But it could be argued that, even though we are constantly buffeted by events, by chance and circumstance, we still have to be cognizant enough to exploit them to our advantage. If I’m fated to be an addict, and to die at the hands of the dragon I’ve been chasing, then it doesn’t matter what life throws at me, right? If my best friend tragically dies from a heroin overdose, what is that to me? If my partner gives birth to a beautifully delicate little girl, what do I care whether or not I’m around to see her grow up and have a family of her own? If a shady dealer holds a knife to my throat or a gun to my head and robs me of all my money, what do I care if I have to steal in order to get my next fix? 

I’m sure many people cringe at the thought of these scenarios, but nevertheless they continue to believe that the addict has no choice in the matter. But if we take a look at what Bayer considers to be some of the mechanisms involved in the etiology of an addict’s fix, we might find some room for choice. She says that when withdrawal symptoms (e.g., physical distress, anxiety caused by emotional stress, etc.) reach a certain critical mass in the brain, then “the brain automatically cuts off the access to the frontal lobes (in a manner of speaking) and begins to direct the body to rebalance the stress, to find equilibrium.” But what happens before this point of no return is reached? Aren’t there opportunities for the trajectory of the addict’s comet to be redirected? Just because the addict is experiencing those negative emotions doesn’t mean that he must feel them, or at least that he must continue to feel them — why can’t those feelings change before it’s too late, before the addict texts his dealer? 

There is some research that shows that bad moods and good moods can lead to preferences for different kinds of foods. An example from the research shows that, “if given the choice between grapes or chocolate candies, someone in a good mood may be more inclined to choose the former while someone in a bad mood may be more likely to choose the latter.” Personal experience seems to bear this out. I’m usually stressed out by the end of the week, but instead of making a rejuvenating fruit smoothie packed with vitamins and minerals, I’ll grab my glencairn glass and fill it with a dram of bourbon, preferably Mr. Hayden’s amber restorative. [1] Surely the same forces are in play when it comes to a narcotic like heroin. [2]

So the crux of the research is that “individuals in a positive mood, compared to control group participants in a relatively neutral mood, evaluated healthy foods more favorably than indulgent foods,” and that “individuals in positive moods who make healthier food choices are often thinking more about future health benefits than those in negative moods, who focus more on the immediate taste and sensory experience.” As a result, the researchers recommend what they call “mood repair motivation,” or getting the individual to focus their attention on more harmless ways to alter their mood. They suggest talking to friends or listening to music as mood boosters. 

Engaging with friends, listening to music — these and ten thousand other activities are the forces that present themselves as raw materials for us to exploit to our advantage. But it’s up to each individual to come up with the right recipe that will generate the desired changes to his trajectory. An addict’s choices are just as productive as the unchosen forces that have shaped him hitherto. And even though some of his key choices thus far have been determined by his predisposition to addiction, there still remains available to him the capacity to choose differently the next time. [3]

Ah, but that’s the rub, isn’t it? How does the addict go about making choices that will change the orbit of his suicidal comet? In a word, influence. He has to be able to be influenced by people and events. It’s certainly not easy, even for someone “addicted” to chocolate, much less heroin. But it’s possible. Psychological gravity’s a bitch, and it’s not going away; but, just like with the physical world where we can achieve escape velocity of our planet’s gravitational pull, we can achieve escape velocity from the gravitational fields that populate our psychology. It takes conscious effort on the part of the addict and, yes, some luck; but even the smallest effort may have substantial repercussions, strong enough to jostle him onto a different path. 

In her post about Hoffman, Bayer says that it’s “time for all of us who got through unscathed to stop patting ourselves on the back for our genetic good luck, and it is time to stop judging those who were not born with the same good genes as defective.” I couldn’t agree more. Our American culture needs more of this kind of sensibility, which jibes nicely with the consequences that can be derived from Worldview Naturalism. So I would just add one thing: knowing what we know about the power of genetics and the causal web in which each of us is ensconced, those with better genetic good luck should make an extra effort to share responsibility with those who are struggling with the gravity of their hazardous situations. When we see their comet getting caught in a dangerous gravitational field, we should offer our best help and not fall victim ourselves to the fallacy of fatalism, the idea that no matter what we do the outcome will be the same. 

We can find strength and maybe even solace in the knowledge that, even though the future is fixed, we don’t know what that future will be, and only in the unfolding of our own choices does the future take shape. So it behooves us to make the best choices we can, for ourselves and others.

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[1] My nod to Christopher Hitchens.

[2] Yes, this “surely” marks a weak spot in my argument — release the Hounds of Dennett!

[3] When I say that the addict can “choose differently,” I don’t mean to say that he can choose to do other than he did in the exact same circumstances. That’s why I added the “next time.”