Benzley 1 A Gospel of Rage by Sawyr Benzley A thesis/project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS ENGLISH WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Ogden, Utah April 23, 2021 ________________________________ (signature) Faculty Advisor, (Ryan Ridge) Committee Chair ________________________________ (signature) Second Committee member, (Rebekah Cumpsty) Committee Member ________________________________ (signature) Second Committee member, (Courtney Craggett) Committee Member Verified by PDFFiller 04/30/2021 Benzley 2 Critical Introduction Introduction Addiction and recovery texts can be delineated into several categories: self-help books, like Alcoholics Anonymous, that propose methods for recovery; medical and psychological texts that outline the science of addiction, such as Carlo DiClemente’s Addiction and Change: How Addictions Develop and Addicted People Recover; cultural and literary reviews, which examine the real-life social and political histories of substance abuse and drug policy; memoirs, often autobiographical, that detail an individual’s journey through addiction and recovery, such as Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering: Addiction and its Aftermath; and novels, like Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. Other miscellaneous text forms, such as recovery websites, billboards, laws and policy, documentaries and films, self-help lines, pamphlets and brochures, and commercials could loosely fall into the aforementioned categories. There is much overlap between these categories: AA gives its twelve steps alongside testimonial stories; self-help draws from medical and psychological science; Jamison’s memoir is told alongside a literary review; fictional novels are often, in fact, creative nonfiction drawn from autobiographical experiences; and all texts are simultaneously influenced and influencing their present societal views and political policy. The purpose of delineation is to define where my novel, A Gospel of Rage, lies in the context of genre. As a science-fiction novel grounded in medical and psychological science, it fulfils a new and unique role that draws from each of the delineated categories. It acts as a self-help novel, proposing methods of recovery. Its voice is first-person past tense—personal and grounded in reflective memory—often introspective, and focusing on one character’s journey through addiction, drawing from the memoir form, although character thinking and motivation Benzley 3 are described in the context of practical science—it is not autobiographical. It critiques current ineffective political policy and societal views, such as the link between substance use and creativity, or the increasing criminalization of addicted individuals, drawing from practical science to support its critique, but, at its, core, it is science fiction. In effect, it seeks to both educate and entertain and to be both accurate and fictional, blurring the lines between practical science, memoir, self-help, social criticism, and pure fiction. Representation Addiction studies has a complex social, political, literary, and medical/psychological history. I say complex because these histories have influenced one another in unexpected, and often damaging, ways. Societal views shape how authors view, and subsequently write about addiction and recovery, and these literary representations, in turn, increase visibility and influence societal thinking. Political policies like Prohibition and the War on Drugs are borne from, often problematic, societal thinking, and often define addicts as morally-reprehensible criminals, which, again, increases visibility and affects societal thinking, typically negatively. The ultimate consequence of this interplay between literature, political policy, and societal thinking is a failing treatment system, a mass incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders, and an ambivalence of how best to provide health and safety for the addicted community, including authors themselves. My insistence on grounding Gospel in the latest developments of practical science serves to directly counter problematic and false societal beliefs. It is a new kind of narrative, one that I hope will replace the common fairy tales, heroes’ journeys, moral lessons, and even glorification of former novels, memoirs, and testimonials. I believe this new narrative will be helpful because it will increase accurate visibility of addiction and recovery for the public, and may also help positively alter the self-concepts of Benzley 4 addicted individuals as “the inner journeys of the addict… are shaped by what the dominant culture values” (Zieger 655-656). This is achieved through consciousness raising (i.e. “gaining information that increases awareness about the current behavior… or the potential new behavior,” including how change should realistically happen (DiClemente 35)); through social liberation (i.e. “noticing social norms and increasing social alternatives that help support” recovery (35)); through an honest assessment of the pros and cons of addiction that may shift an addict’s decisional balance toward quitting the addictive behavior; through an increase in self-efficacy (i.e. “confidence about performing a specific behavior” (39)). Ambivalence Currently, views of addiction and recovery are characterized by ambivalence. This is the result of increasing medicalization and, at the same time, increasing law enforcement and harsh political policy. “What once was viewed as a shocking moral deficiency is now increasingly seen as a tragic vulnerability” (“Under the Influence” 1757); however, criminalization has become the “accepted way of managing addiction and the economic system created by the illegal sale and use of substances” (DiClemente 307). Addicts are viewed simultaneously as weak-willed, morally-reprehensible criminals, and sick patients, victims in dire need of treatment. DiClemente describes this ambivalence: In the United States the prevailing view seems to be that the range of behaviors that bring pleasure and relief of pain should be both legal and illegal, may be advertised but should be prevented from becoming problems, should be condemned as moral failures unless prescribed, should be punished if done by reprehensible people but treated if they are family members, and should be kept in the shadows of a black market unless supported by or providing taxes to the government. (306) Benzley 5 In Gospel, Stevie bears this ambivalence as a conflicting self-concept, unable to coalesce her own version of herself with how society views her: a sort of double consciousness. She asks: “What was I? A victim to be saved? A danger to be prevented? An infection to be eradicated? A tortured genius? A sick patient? A worthless product to be phased out? A thrill seeker? A black hole of grief? Which was my true self? The self-revealed, or the self-transformed? Who I was high, sober, alone, or a unit in a unity, which was the real me? What narrative summed me up? My life, my identity, was there a comprehensive story that could explain it all away? When any self is always plural, when the why can’t be answered by any singular because because every explanation was true, but none of them could satisfactorily answer the question, was the question even worth asking? Was the problem a problem at all, and, if it was, was it even my problem?” (40) She spends most of the novel trying to sort this mess out. Demographics I believe much of the ambivalence is borne from the varying demographics of substance abuse, and the origin of War on Drugs: Henry Anslinger’s fight to illegalize minority persons through criminalization of certain substances and portray these same minorities as an overwhelming menace to society. In short, white people are victims in need of treatment, and substances white people use should be legalized and managed, while minority groups are morally-reprehensible criminals whose DOCs (drug of choice) should be criminalized as severely as possible. The War on Drugs focused on criminalization and incarceration. The purpose of this was not to protect the health and safety of addicts or decrease substance use; instead, “the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races” (Anslinger). This hideous legacy thrives today. Although “there were no statistically significant differences in the rates of current Benzley 6 illicit drug use between 2012 and 2013 for any of the racial/ethnic groups” (Center for Behavioral Health Statistics), “about three-quarters of drug offenders in federal prison were either non-Hispanic black or African American (39%) or Hispanic or Latino (37%); [while] nearly a quarter (22%) were non-Hispanic white offenders” (Taxy, Sam, et al.). In conjunction with this outright racism is a subtler form of marginalization. Because individuals “who have more education, more personal and financial resources” (DiClemente 203) “and fewer problems in their current life situation, [those in higher socioeconomic classes] have a better prognosis” for recovery and are at lower risk for engaging in substance use (42). Thus, many lower income and minority individuals find recovery to be nearly impossible. Addiction does not discriminate, but DOCs do vary with socioeconomic and racial status. In John Cheever’s novels, “middle-class suburbanites are addicted to legal, prescription drugs that help them survive the boring monotony of their day-to-day lives, mind-numbing jobs, lack of personal fulfillment, failed dreams, and unsatisfying sex lives” (Johansson 3). Meanwhile, African American writer James Baldwin wrote about the bleak reality of the poorest people and the heroin users in Harlem where “drugs give them a sense of control and purpose” (3). Interestingly, “race of drug offenders varied greatly by drug type. Blacks were 88% of crack cocaine offenders, Hispanics or Latinos were 54% of powder cocaine offenders, and whites were 48% of methamphetamine offenders” (Taxy, Sam, et al.). In effect, different groups use drugs for different reasons, have different DOCs, have radically different interactions with the public and the legal system, and receive an oppressive amount of stigmatization and an underwhelming amount of help and treatment. With minority populations being attacked on all sides—portrayed as the majority of criminal offenders and simultaneously denied care and forced into high-risk situations for Benzley 7 engaging in substance use and relapse—no addiction narrative should ignore their unique struggle; however, most of the addiction narratives and memoirs I saw on the library shelves were written by white, somewhat affluent, well-educated authors who represent only a small number of addiction experiences. Although newer memoirs (e.g. Ann Marlowe's How to Stop Time: Heroin from A to Z and David Sheff 's Beautiful Boy: A Fathers Journey Through His Sons Addiction) reflect honest, lived experiences, and address relevant themes (e.g. identity, time, uncertain endings, multiplicity of causes and factors, freedom, purpose, control, and coping) they are still problematic as they address the lived realities of white people with access to resources, education, and treatment, not the larger demographic who suffer most from addiction. To try to address the intersection of racism and the marginalization of addicts, and to affect an accurate portrait of migration, I introduced a black, female character named Ada, an immigrant who was separated from her parents in France as a young girl. She is not a drug user, but, living in America, she has experienced similar—but ultimately not the same—prejudice as Stevie. To build a bridge, I had them discuss their double consciousnesses and identity questions. Stevie, as a drug user, feels marginalized and labelled as “other” in a similar way that Ada has experienced. In Gospel, Ada asks Stevie a series of questions, trying to connect with her through mutual understanding: “Have you felt like people were looking at you and seeing something that wasn’t you at all?” … “When you imagined what they thought of you, a junkie, diseased, unclean, subhuman, did you feel like a stranger to yourself?” … “Did you go back, over and over again, to something that make you unhappy? Did you draw lines in the sand where you promised you would never cross, but did anyway?” … “Do you believe that escaping to somewhere new will make your problems go away?” (60-65). These questions reflect their Benzley 8 similar experiences of double consciousness, and their difficulty dealing with life problems without adequate external resources. Unlike Ada though, Stevie as white and seemingly genetically modified—an indication of affluence—has been able to blend in, has been provided with better opportunities, and has received more help and sympathy while moving through social and political systems, while Ada has experienced the opposite without cause. Although there are similarities in their experiences— being marginalized and being women—racism and marginalization of addicts is not the same. To delineate the difference, I had them discuss control and responsibility. Stevie uses drugs as a scapegoat—among other things. She has great potential and many given opportunities to ‘make something of her life,’ but using drugs is an easy way to rewrite her narrative. If she can view herself as a victim (of a degrading society, of her stillborn child, of substance abuse), she does not have to take responsibility for her less-than-ideal life. In other words, if she never tries, she cannot fail. This is a flawed logic as her decision to do nothing has enormous impacts. Consuming drugs that likely came from the Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala supports drug cartels that make those countries violently unlivable and contribute to migration. Giving up her power—although she is poor, she is still American, and so has more influence and power than she realizes—because she is unsure or overwhelmed of how best to use it, allows the status quo to continue to harm people like Ada. In effect, she has responsibility, whether she wants it or not. Stevie’s refusal to take responsibility for her life, and instead blaming a decaying social world for her problems, mirrors a historical lack of shame in white people. A character in Kiese Laymon’s Heavy—a memoir concerning addiction in the African American community—the only shame white people have is in accepting responsibility. We say slavery happened so long Benzley 9 ago, it has nothing to do with us now, or that migrants have no right to be in our countries while ignoring the effects of our carbon emissions on other countries’ environments, and so on. Doing nothing has its own effects, primarily maintaining the status quo, and we have to accept responsibility for our action or lack of action just as Stevie has to accept her role as a participant in a society she hates. And, just as America becomes more hateful and less free the more we deny our present responsibility for our failures of the past, Stevie’s anger and unhappiness increases as she continues to view herself as a victim, without responsibility or control over her own life. In Heavy, Laymon describes his mother who, throughout his life tells him he must strive for excellence, education, and accountability and that he has to work twice as hard to get half as much. Ada story is like this. She writes her narrative and the narrative of the black community as not a history of submission, but a refusal to submit. She will not let herself be described as a victim; she is strong, powerful, determined—not an exception to her race as white people often view successful black people, but an example of it. This view is still harmful though. Laymon asks how much black people will have to give up to achieve black power. Truly, Ada has had to give up, or has lost, her family, her time, her health, and her rights to remittance and second chances. She is proud of all she has accomplished throughout so much adversity, and she is right to do so, but the American ethos glorifies her suffering and uses her story as a tool to justify not paying our debt to low socioeconomic minorities. I think both of these narratives stem from American individualism—our ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ mantra. We glorify burn-out, stress, never needing help, struggle, tragedy, and unhealthy living, and this thinking hurts both Ada and Stevie. Stevie is so overwhelmed by standards of success, she chooses not to even try, while Ada lives an impossible life that exhausts Benzley 10 and hurts her. While Ada points out that Stevie has responsibility to herself and others whether she wants to or not; Stevie tells Ada that she cannot take responsibility for everything because there are things she will never have control over, like how people view her. Ada can simultaneously be proud of herself and blame others for making her life so difficult, while Stevie can try and fail without being considered a failure. Ada’s ideas about duty and responsibility match how Laymon describes African American women. They are viewed as strong, powerful, and practically indestructible, which contributes to violence against them. It is taken for granted that they can always take it and give it right back, whether it is verbal or physical abuse. They are often envisioned as sassy, smart, and tough single mothers who do not need help. It follows that this view promotes not providing aide or assistance to low socio-economic status black women. Women are also viewed as having an enormous responsibility to their families, husbands, and children, but are shamed when this responsibility becomes overwhelming, or if they ask for help. In Gopsel, I tried to represent women as independent even if they ask for help, strong even if they get overwhelmed, and successful even if they fail. In a similar way, Americans glorify recovering addicts who have surmounted impossible circumstances, and use their narratives as tools to shame those who are still struggling. We consider relapse to be failure, when it is more of a learning experience. Also, the pressure of maintaining a perfect life with perfect sobriety can be so overwhelming, it can cause people to just stop trying. Addicts can have willpower and also ask for help, be successful even if they lapse, and be resolute even if they have doubts. A passage from Gospel: Benzley 11 “But it still hurt didn’t it. I know you won Ada, I know you fought and fought and finally won, but didn’t it hurt? You can win and still blame them for making it so hard, making it hurt so bad.” “No, it only made me stronger, everything they put me through grew my excellence, my accountability. You let them break you. I let them make me.” “And you were never scared, never unsure through the whole thing?” I asked. “No, Stevie, I won’t let you make me bitter. I won’t be angry like you… Yes, it hurt. Yes, I was scared. But no, I don’t want them to hurt, to feel what I had to feel. All I want, all I can do, is not let them make me feel how they want me to feel: angry like you, broken like you.” Anger rose in me from her insult, and that anger compounded like a tumor growing in my mind until my blood buzzed in my brain like the delirium of fever and I spat, “You never change their minds. You’ll always be just an exception to your race to them.” As always, she answered in even tones, unfazed. My inability to affect a reaction in her turned anger into visions of violence. Violence’s assurance that I could hurt, that a grasping around her throat could break that stoic visage into the weakness I wanted to see. She wasn’t divine after all, just a shitting, weeping mess like the rest of us, no matter how hard she pretended she wasn’t. “Maybe, maybe not,” she said with a shrug, “but I can be an example of my race to my own people, and that matters more. I’m not responsible for opening white eyes, for teaching them how to be human-” “So you admit you can’t control everything!” My face flushed with glee. I had her logic cornered, ready to deal the death blow, to win, to stand victorious, alone (64). Benzley 12 Accuracy Recovery methods “over the past 250 years [have] been more religious than scientific,” viewed the addict as morally-reprehensible, and implemented spiritual or religious means over medical or psychological treatment (Dorsman 43). Only recently has addiction studies become medicalized. This shift is due to an increasing prestige and trust in the biological sciences, including medicine, and the devastating HIV epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, which forced political policy to loosen paraphernalia laws, “implement needle and syringe exchanges, and make drug treatment more universally available” in an attempt to mitigate the impact of the disease (Reynolds 163). Most addiction and recovery texts1 have similar—and false—structures, themes, and tropes of fairy tales, heroes’ journeys, or moral lessons based on traditional, simplistic, and spiritual beliefs. They lack the complex interplay of factors that influence the processes of addiction and recovery and focus on generalized strategies to treat broad categories, when in fact each addict’s journey is unique and individual, and each treatment plan should be uniquely tailored. I will outline several of these issues, and describe, with examples, how I have tried to more accurately represent the realities of addiction through my research into the latest addiction and recovery psychology, primarily Carlo DiClemente’s Addiction and Change: How Addictions Develop and Addicted People Recover. Single Cause Explanations Versus Complexity Our reliance on single cause etiologies reflect a simplistic societal “understanding of addiction— as well as of the nature of choice and responsibility more generally” (Gosselin 141). Although 1 In the following sections, “texts” will refer to memoirs and novels, primarily focusing on the testimonies in Alcoholics Anonymous, which has inarguably been the strongest influence on societal thinking of addiction and recovery since its publication in 1939. Benzley 13 many narratives “begin with childhood recollections” and a single etiological factor for addiction because identifying a cause provides “emotional security,” reduces uncertainty, and enables blame (140); in reality, susceptibility to addiction involves multiple factors, which “come together in a rather unique way for each individual” (DiClemente 106). DiClemente describes the factors as fitting into primarily two categories, protective and risk. Protective factors can be, but are not limited to: • religiosity, healthy family and peer relationships, good self-control or self-regulation skills, socioeconomic stability (75). • academic achievement, prosocial attitudes and activities, and self-confidence (88). Risk factors can be, but are not limited to: • feelings of hopelessness, depression, and alienation, unhealthy relationships with family and peers, or peers with problematic behaviors, low self-esteem or self-confidence (78). • behavioral adjustment problems, antisocial tendencies, hyper-activity, school performance problems, heightened pleasure response, family disruption, parental substance use (102-103). • impulsivity, poor self-regulation skills, and poor self-control (136). To demonstrate multiplicity of factors, I used several different characters with different personalities, life experiences, coping mechanisms, DOCS, and even comorbid psychological disorders. Stevie grew up in a government home, struggles socioeconomically, has high self-confidence, and did well in school and earned a graduate degree. She also had friends with problematic behaviors, has PTSD and depression from a stillbirth, seeks out sensation/pleasure, grew up in a government home, and is violently impulsive. Em and Jen grew up in the same government home and struggle socioeconomically as well, but did not receive higher education, Benzley 14 have better self-control, lower self-confidence, and Em struggles with a sort of attachment disorder, while Jen relies on unhealthy romantic relationships. Ada, a “normie” or non-addict, also experienced family disruption, but was denied access to higher education despite excellent school performance, has poor self-control at times, limited negative feelings or behavioral problems, better peer relationships, and higher socioeconomic standing despite marginalization. There are several other characters who demonstrate multiplicity and intersectionality in unique ways, including Rickie—Stevie’s brother and a normie, Thomas—a normie, Maeve—a recovery addict, or Edith—a sober reflection of Stevie, but it would be too long to detail here. A Moment of Enlightenment Versus Decision Making According to “Literature and Addiction” AA maintains “a spiritual awakening is not acquired in a linear fashion by learning facts about alcoholism. Rather the moment of insight occurs in a nonlinear way” (13). Modern research demonstrates the opposite though: “there is no single consideration or moment of truth, but a building up of the pros for initiation and a lessening of the cons or negative considerations of the behavior” (DiClemente 83). Although a moment of enlightenment is narratively exciting, a turning point in the story, or a climax in the narrative arc, it is harmful to addicts who expect to have a moment of enlightenment that will make the process of recovery suddenly easy. Instead, the process should be comprised of a well-thought-out commitment, a weighing of the pros and cons of sobriety, detailing planning, and rigorous self-observation. Even after three or thirty years, people still come to meetings, still work the steps, and still face temptation and weakness to their DOC. Stevie attempts to synthesize a moment of enlightenment with hallucinogenic substances—a remnant of hippy counterculture, but this attempt ultimately fails. Similarly, Benzley 15 impulsive attempts to go “cold turkey” fail. Her struggle with sobriety is ongoing, difficult, and never-ending, reflecting more of a wandering slog uphill, rather than a neat narrative arc. Narrative Structure and Recycling Again, the path to recovery is not linear, not like a traditional narrative structure with a clear introduction, a build to climax, and a tidy resolution. Because of “ambivalence, procrastination, indecision, environmental barriers, compromised self-regulation, and multiple other problems” that interfere with “reflection, self-reevaluation, and cognitive processing” (DiClemente 193), “individuals can get stuck and spend significant periods of time before accomplishing the tasks [required] to move forward … they can regress as well as progress [and] … the actual path is often circuitous” (27). Many individuals experience a slip, or a lapse, on their way to recovery. If slips are considered a failure (i.e. the abstinence violation effect), individuals may abandon the entire change attempt and relapse completely. Instead relapse and re-cycling should be considered normal, an opportunity to revise the plan and correct the defects in the plan that led to the lapse through self-observation, renewed commitment, and reevaluation of the decisional balance. I tried to replicate this structure, drawing from Cormac McCarthy’s wandering narrative style in The Crossing trilogy. Professor Ridge’s craft suggestion Meander Spiral and Explode by Jane Alison was particularly useful for observing the “ways in which experience shapes itself, ways we can replicate its shape with words” (2). Addiction can be viewed as a spiraling pattern with no end, and recovery, to me, seems like a fractal pattern with repeating structures and dead ends, or a meandering path with no clear destination, but progressive movement forward. Benzley 16 Disease and Willpower models The increasingly medicalization of addiction has moved societal views away from the addict as a morally-reprehensible criminal to a patient in need of treatment; however, addiction should be considered a “chronic condition rather than a physical disease” (DiClemente 12) because “responsibility and personal choices” are vital in behavioral change (36). In effect, “addiction is a brain disease because drugs change the brain structure and how it works in ways that can be long-lasting and lead to self-destructive behaviors” (122), and it also “takes choice and commitment to continue … the addictive behavior” in the face of serious negative consequences (54). Traditional narratives often portray either the disease model or the willpower model where an addict is either a victim to an overwhelming disease, or a hero with impenetrable willpower overcoming personal weakness. This is, again, linked to the demographics of individual addicts, and, again, is a reflection of our simplistic and faulty understanding of addiction. In reality, addiction and recovery are affected by a complex interaction of factors. To an extent, addicts lack control, so scaffolding (i.e. “supportive environments, personal aids, medications, interpersonal guidance, housing, or other types of support” (200)) and stimulus control (i.e. “avoiding or removing triggers for the addictive behavior, or changing the environment in a way that helps to avoid the behavior” (201)) are necessary for recovery. On the other hand, because recovery requires commitment, counterconditioning (i.e. “changing the individual’s response to the stimulus rather than the stimulus itself”), planning, self-observation, and self-control are necessary because an addict cannot “avoid triggers and must learn to cope with them” (201). Benzley 17 To avoid describing addiction as either a lack of willpower or an inevitable disease, I described Stevie’s methods of recovery in detail. Characters discuss the merits of Antabuse, a preventative drug that mitigates the effects of opiates; Stevie relies on the support of her friends when feeling particularly vulnerable to relapse; and the three decide to flush their stashes together to avoid temptation. When her sponsor asks her, “What are you going to do next time something happens, something bad, or when something changes and you wanted it to stay the same?” Stevie is forced to confront the inevitability that she cannot avoid triggers or rely on her friends forever, and must find some way to plan against vulnerability in the future by herself (Gospel 131). Coping Repertoires and the Illusion of “No More Drugs, No More Problems” Many traditional texts support the illusion that once recovery is achieved, all other problems will disappear, or that addiction is the sole problem to be overcome. In fact, the suggested strategy of AA is to put aside all other problems and focus only on the alcohol or drug addiction until one year of sobriety. Realistically though, other life problems may need to be addressed first or concurrently for a successful recovery, as other problems may deter and distract the addict. In many cases, addiction is not the problem, but, in fact, the solution. Addiction “is closely linked to escape, a search for meaning and normality, and a sense of belonging” indicating that “lack of meaning, managing psychological pain, escaping stress, and maintaining use to feel normal” are the main underlying problems (DiClemente 302). Thus, focusing on cessation of the addictive behavior, and ignoring the causes of their engagement, will likely end in failure. At the end of most addiction literature—often educational or preaching a moral lesson— the addict dies, is institutionalized, or incarcerated, or finds sobriety and happiness through treatment. These “tidy endings” suggest a “narrative finality” that does not reflect reality, in Benzley 18 which endings are uncertain and relapse is always possible (Gosselin 142). However, cessation of the addictive behavior should not be the goal of recovery. Instead, “abstinence and improved health, wellness, and quality of life” are the desired outcomes, and these are never-ending tasks (DiClemente 22). Addicts must develop a new perception of themselves, build new lives with new relationships, learn new coping mechanisms, and renew their commitment and decisional balance throughout their lives. In retrospect “we tend to romanticize the positive and forget the negative,” so, again, renewing commitment is a life-long process in order to prevent the addiction behavior becoming idealized (244), One very important consequence of addiction is a loss of alternative coping mechanisms “for handling negative, unpleasant events, interacting with others, feeling good, and in extreme cases, feeling normal” (238). An addict’s DOC becomes their go-to coping mechanism because it works more easily, effectively, and quickly than alternative coping mechanisms. As the individual relies more on the addictive behavior to handle preexisting—and subsequent—life problems of their addictive behavior, the behavior is reinforced and any previously-utilized alternative mechanisms disappear. For successful recovery, new coping mechanisms and skills must be learned and used to replace the addictive behavior. Truly, the tidy endings of common narratives are not only grossly inaccurate, but damaging to individuals who believe that by abstaining from their addictive behavior, all other aspects of their life will somehow fall into place. The dichotomous endings of either death and prison, or fulfillment and sobriety are also problematic because recovery is unique for each individual. For example, sustained recovery, slips and relapses, complete abstinence for a particular substance or for all substances, or even “a return to controlled, socially acceptable, and nonproblematic use” are all potential and acceptable outcomes (248). Benzley 19 To reflect this reality, as Stevie and her friends struggle to remain sober, they continue to experience problems with social relationships, mental health, finance, and other issues. This is most prevalent in the opening sections, where Stevie, although over a year sober, still struggles daily to navigate a degrading world. Without access to social resources, her only coping mechanisms seem to be self-expression through violence and anger and an increasing desire to use her DOC. Although alleviated halfway through the novel of their poor socio-economic burden, they must confront many other social and psychological problems before recovery can be attempted, and at the end of Gospel, Stevie still does not have all the answers: “And after that, what? Did I have to fake it ‘til you make it, pretend to be whatever I thought “better” was, to live whatever I thought a “full life” was until I suddenly found I wasn’t pretending anymore? Or did I need I need to dig deep, to allow my compulsions to fill me up until I could locate their source and rip them from their poisoned soil? Was it transformation of self, or a revealing of self, that would grant me freedom? Was it my own willpower that would save me, or my own careful planning, that would allow me to take both responsibility and control? Or did I need to give that all away to a higher power that would grant me the strength I couldn’t summon on my own? Was it community that could save me—Rickie and Ada and Thomas and Misha, helping others to help myself, repairing the damage I had done, and taking pride in my own good work? Or was it a singular rebirth in a fresh life, far away from everything I’d ever known that was required to reinvent myself?” (160) Downward Spiral There is one thing that most narratives do capture accurately: the downward spiral where “life problems promote engagement in the addictive behavior [as a coping mechanism] which in turn Benzley 20 increases the number and intensity of life’s problems, which promotes engagement in the addictive behavior” and so on (DiClemente 61); and where tolerance (i.e. brain adaptation that requires more of a substance to produce an affect) and withdrawal (i.e. “the absence of the substance [disrupting] neurotransmitter and physiological systems [creating] negative physical and emotional consequences”) (123) create a “vicious cycle where use and engagement become less satisfying, more predictable, and harder to control” (123). However, the end of the downward spiral is not always “rock bottom” (i.e. where negative feeling and understanding of the link between the addiction and its negative consequences are obvious to the individual) as is portrayed in many narratives. In fact, despite severe negative consequences of their addictive behavior, addicts often do not recognize a need for change because they believe they could quit if they wanted to (i.e. self-efficacy)—they just don’t want to right now; because they have such low self-efficacy they don’t believe it’s worth trying; because they resent anyone telling them what to do; or because they have rationalized why the addictive behavior is not connected to their life’s problems. Societal views—that recovery can only be achieved after an addict has hit rock bottom— has led to people cutting support from an addict in need. Without helping relationships, especially in creating a decisional balance that favors recovery, many addicts live and die in rock bottom, increasing substance use to relieve their hopelessness and isolation. Stevie remarks that “There’s no such thing as rock bottom. If you look hard enough, you’ll always find a way to go deeper” (62). In the midst of their hardest binge, the three women lose teeth, overdose with increasing frequency as their tolerances build, have psychological breaks as substance effects and loss of time and identity degrade their minds and bodies, but they have no desire to quit despite the overwhelming negative consequences of their usage, and cycle Benzley 21 through rationalizing, resentment, and hopelessness. Although the reality of the downward spiral is present in the novel, unlike other addiction narratives, the characters never hit “rock bottom” and only move toward recovery through honest feedback and understanding from others, careful planning, and rationalized commitment. When the three get sober for the first time they do so not because they hit rock bottom, and not because of confrontation (i.e. intervention), fear of negative consequences, or hope for positive reward, but because Ada asks them, “Why do you do this to yourselves?” This question is unique for each of the three because recovery is based on a decisional balance (i.e. an honest evaluation of the pros and cons of the addictive behavior). This balance is highly personal and individualized and should focus on the addict’s perspective, values, and beliefs. Broadly, Jen’s desire to get sober is based on a desire for healthy relationships with others, Em’s is focused on her own physical health, and Stevie wants self-actualization through self-discovery. Glorification The addict is generally considered “other,” and addicts have often broken from society’s majority to form their own countercultures and write their own literature, which often portrays substance use as inspiring or adventurous. The literary movement of the Beats—naming themselves after Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road—defined themselves as people “exiled … from the mainstream culture. To be Beat was to be open to all experience, to be an artist and philosopher” (Johansson 2). The hippies, who followed the Beats, used psychedelic drugs as a path to enlightenment. In The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley describes “his experience on the drug mescaline,” which induces hallucinations that Huxley “found opened his mind and inspired him” (Townsend). Benzley 22 One flawed societal view I confronted in Gospel was the supposed link between artists’ creativity and genius to substance use. Many writers have been addicted, or have written about intoxication or recovery, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aldous Huxley, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, William Burroughs, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, and Jean Rhys. The loss of control while inebriated is considered a strategy to some writers, and some believe that perceiving addiction as “bad” is a false societal construct. For example, in The Diary of a Drug Fiend, Aleister Crowley says we must learn to use drugs like our ancestors learned to use lightning” (Literature and Addiction 5). From Prohibition to current epidemic of heroin overdoses, restrictive political policy typically results, not in a lowering of substance use, but in a shift in demographics where users turn from doctor’s offices to the streets where dilution of illicit drugs to make a larger profit forces addicts to use more of the substance or find more effective ways to administer it (e.g. injection drug use). Restricting and resisting drugs then often makes them more powerful, pervasive, and dangerous, so is accepting them and using them a potential answer? Related to this is the idea that an artist’s genius is borne of tragedy, or their genius is both a blessing and a curse. In either case, tragic, cursed genius must be tempered with intoxication in order to reduce the suffering of the artist. “Rather than seeing drugs and alcohol as doorways to pleasure or stimulate seeking, or as self-destructive agents, we might view them as means by which addicts self-medicate in order to control or reduce suffering” (Martin 87). Leslie Jamison, in her novel, The Recovering, confronts this thinking and her own glorification of inebriated literary idols, and concludes that even if intoxication and creativity were linked, the negative consequences of her own alcoholism were too high a price to pay. In any case, it seems, so far, in the study of intoxication and literature, there is no “essential Benzley 23 connectedness between the two that is not merely biographical and incidental” (DiClemente 9). I view this rationale as artists’ personal justification for continuing substance abuse that has become romanticized by society; however, the history of drug criminalization seems arbitrary and prejudiced enough to support a view that drugs may not be inherently evil, but rather a tool for political policy to attack certain minority groups. My plot point, the vanishing, serves to explore this idea. When societal constructs disappear along with all the normies, the characters must explore why either substance abuse or sobriety is important to them and define what “a full life” or “better” means to them personally. Stevie is writing this novel, perceives herself as an artist of sorts, and glorifies her own suffering. Eventually, she must determine whether substance use is profitable or detrimental to her work, and if it is profitable, whether it is worth the negative consequences. Although she uses heroin to reduce suffering, she has to balance long-term and short-term effects, and wonder if there are not better coping strategies that would support a healthier vision of her life, relationships, and self-concept. Conclusion In the 1930s, with the publication of Alcoholics Anonymous, AA challenged the accepted view that addiction was a character flaw or a moral defect. Their text spread a narrative, which most Americans take as gospel truth, that addiction is not a “moral failure but an illness, a disease which can be arrested but never cured” (Literature and Addiction 11). This shows the power of a narrative to change societal understanding and perception. These societal views and subsequent cultural constructs, in turn, affect addiction treatment, policy, and the self-concept of addicts themselves. Benzley 24 I hope Gospel will act in a similar way: increasing visibility, promoting more accurate societal views, and even changing public policy and how we treat addiction. I also hope readers, especially marginalized minority readers, will see themselves and their stories reflected in the text, and that Gospel will act as a helping relationship, give them hope or inspiration, or restructure their self-concepts so they can view themselves and their own stories more positively and accurately. Benzley 25 Excerpt from A Gospel of Rage This book is documentation of the time before and after the normies left. I don’t think there’s much information about what life was like before, not any that was printed on actual paper, not any that you could access without a Wi-Fi connection, and I know there’s no documentation of the time after. I’m not writing this book for your enjoyment. I haven’t seen anyone read anything for pleasure since before the normies disappeared anyway. I’m writing it for me, and for far future generations or the new race of humanoids that might come after me. It’s not a novel to be sold or made into a film adaptation to be watched on a screen; it’s an account of these dark ages after the year of our dear lord 2040, and it’s the only account as far as I know. So, you’re fucking welcome. You could call this an addiction narrative, a story of redemption or punishment, or maybe it’s my fearless moral inventory, or just an overblown description of my longing and my fear that may look a lot like your own, or a parable pushing humility or accountability, or maybe it’s a story of self-reclamation or, no, self-transformation. I wish I could ask you what you think, so I could tell you that you’re wrong. Every story is unique, just like every other story, but in every story ever written or spoken or smeared in shit on a cave wall, there is a space between words and intention, between language and feeling. I can tell you my story, but how to make you understand? A prisoner taps on her wall to send messages to the man on the other side, and their separation becomes their link. Tap, tap, tap. *** Benzley 26 I projected images of what I would do into the darkness. Over and over again, I watched myself lean over his bed, hold him down if he struggled, muffle any sound with a pillow or the back of my hand, if it came to that, and do what had to be done. I had laid here all night, matching the slight vibrations and air currents of Em’s breathing, and watching myself murder Leo again and again. Time passed, although I did not mark its passage. The stars in the east began to sputter out and the mountains emerged as a black silhouette against the skyline, hailing the arrival of our frozen sun. The first commuters sped on the freeway that cut over our neighborhood. A transport truck boomed overhead, shaking the glass in the windowpanes, as I pulled myself away from Em like untying a knot. She twitched and her eyes seemed to flicker in search of some invisible thing behind her dreaming eyelids. The thunder subsided. Em settled deeper into the blankets. I had to hurry now. Deep winter seeped into me as it had seeped into the house despite our best efforts to seal it out. The snow had piled up against the sides of the house, an unprecedented snowfall—but unprecedent was the new normal—and seemed determined to bury us alive. From the rough hardwood floor, it crept into the soles of my feet, erupting a rash of gooseflesh across my body and convulsive shivers along my spine. I fought the urge to climb back under the covers, so warm from Em and my combined body-heat. But the dry wheezing from the room next to ours was too loud, too fast. Leo was awake, and Leo was only ever awake when he was in too much pain to stay under the substance fueled coma we tried so hard to keep him in. There was no money for a doctor, so illicit syringes of cheap street heroin, the black kind, boiled hot on a spoon, were the best we could do. Benzley 27 From lack of sleep, my eyes were dry and bloodshot; my mind in a fog or a trance. I wondered if the decision I had made was right, or if my mind was even working clearly enough to make a decision like this. They had asked us in the homes, funded by the state, run by the church, “What would Jesus do?” to help us make these decisions. Well, Jesus would have healed the sick through a miracle, but miracles weren’t given these days, only purchased, and I had no money to make a miracle happen. Instead, I thought of my favorite verse, the only verse I remembered from primary days of memorization and recitation: “For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” This was an act of love. The door to Leo, Callie, and Mike’s room scraped against the rough hardwood left bare after we had ripped out the ancient, molding carpet. Tiny staples and nails still stuck out in corners and hidden cracks we had missed. My body convulsed, fighting itself or fighting the cold. Callie and Mike, two of our roommates, were long gone to work, or had never come home from work last night, cooking in illegal kitchens, stirring and stirring acrid chemical mixtures of cleaners and cough medicines, recipes I didn’t know. The door stopped halfway, blocked by a pile of soiled clothes—crusted with frost. One shirt sat stiff and upright, as if an invisible watcher sat atop the pile. The wheezing quickened. Benzley 28 “Come on little girl,” Leo rasped. His voice, which had once commanded platoons in some not-so-faraway desert, was now the whisper of dry leaves rustling over frosted concrete. I hesitated one last time, then entered the dark room where Leo lay, his limp head propped up on old, discolored sofa cushions. I think they used to be patterned black and white, but now were mottled gray with deep stains of red and brown. The exertion of his four words broke his fast shallow breaths into a fit of dry coughing. We didn’t know what was wrong with him. We had tried to search his condition on the net: pneumonia, cancer, but what did it matter? We couldn’t fix him even if we had a solid diagnosis. We could only manage pain, and this—I could do this, at last. I pulled a Tupperware from under the bed, and sat at his feet, trying not to let my face pinch against the smell of his sickness. Bedridden, he had developed sores. After this morning, we would no longer have to wash him, turn him over and over again trying to find a side that was fresh to lay against the bare mattress, administer these shots that I still desperately wanted for myself, or worry if he was going to get better or worse, I felt relief. I blinked. Was this selfishness then that had made this decision? Not for Leo, but for me? He saw my hesitation. “Please” was all he could say to make me refocus my eyes on the Tupperware in my hands. Water, fire, black tar, and a needle were my trade tools, and my hands steadied as I set my mind to the old familiar routine. My mind wandered, not outside the room, but to a different time. Because Leo couldn’t console me now that this was what he wanted, I remembered the times before where he had begged the others, Mike, Callie, Jen, Bugs, even poor Em. Why had he asked me last? My mind answered before it couldn’t even finish the question: because he knew I would do it. He knew the others wouldn’t cross this blurry line, but I would. What did that mean, about me? Benzley 29 I’d like to say I cried, but I didn’t. I thanked Leo for asking the others first. Maybe it would help them understand. Maybe they would be grateful, not angry, or horrified, that I had done it and not them. Likely, they would never know. If I lied and said he died in his sleep, no one could question it. “I love you” I said, “We all love you.” The cold air hit my throat, and I choked. Leo’s hand trembled, and I imagined he wanted to put it on my shoulder to comfort me. “You deserve better,” I said. There should have been more to say, a whole lifetime of words, Leo’s lifetime that I was about to silence forever. Instead, we would each pay a few dollars to have him carted away, hazardous waste to be burned along with the other forgotten deceased, strays, medical waste, and whatever else. No grave to pay our respects, no headstone to commemorate his long life as father, brother, friend, soldier, and one of the last of his kind, a kind of endangered species or a fragment of the past like the last book on earth burned away. All the history, the life, that was about to be erased by my hand—remembrance—it seemed important. I thought I would write something for him, a story borne from conversations stolen in quiet voices in this room. I would write about Leo as a Native American who refused to be relegated to the past; a soldier who blew apart his own body to escape a morality he couldn’t stomach; a deserter and wanderer of the world; the father of an irradiated daughter in the South Pacific; brother and son of addiction. How could I put the weight of his life in symbols? The needle was ready. “I hope you don’t mind,” I said with a weak laugh as I turned the needle first to my own arm. I had given up the stuff for good months ago, but I needed it. I convinced myself that I needed it. And better that I go first—no danger in Leo contracting Hep or HIV at this point. Benzley 30 A flood of warm feeling, the rush, better than I could ever describe, especially after taking such a long tolerance break, washed over me, steadied my hands to turn the syringe back to the spoon and fill it. Leo’s tolerance was astonishing considering his tiny frame; I might give him another after this, just to be sure. A small sound like a frightened rabbit escaped his lips as the needle entered the thin skin on his neck. The veins on his arms, hands, foot were all collapsed at this point. Finding a strong vein anywhere on his ancient body was a challenge, and I had to dig a little to find something. Causing him any more pain than he already had made me flush. I felt it, maybe more than he did. His breathing slowed, but placing the spoon against his nose, I saw condensation and knew it wasn’t over. As I loaded a second syringe, I felt eyes on my back. I turned and saw Em peaking around the doorframe like a child, eyes wide with fright at the monster she saw there in the dark. She wouldn’t do anything, I knew. Probably this incident would make her go nonverbal again. I hated when she was like that, a walking ghost. Anger swelled now, and I finished my dirty business with harsh movements. Leo wouldn’t feel a thing, wouldn’t feel if I stabbed a knife into his chest let alone a little prick of a needle. When the spoon stayed a spoon, reflecting clearly my sallow face and my constricted pupils, I looked back. Em had left. I would have to bear this alone, again. Anger, self-pity, clouded by pure chemical relaxation, swirled around in my brain. I felt like a dog chasing cars, trying to pin just one of them down. I looked at the spoon again, greasy black on one side, reflecting the two tiny pin pricks of my pupils on the other. The eyes were the windows to the soul, I mused, as my head began to nod. My pupils seemed to disappear into the flecks of hazel in my brown eyes, closed windows. Benzley 31 And what happens to a soul in darkness, when the windows are all shut and bolted to the outside? What happens to a person with a light-starved soul? What will happen to me? *** “Are there any birthdays today?” asked a heavy bald man with a leather vest, the leader for today’s meeting. The vest was covered in patches of skulls and snakes and hammers, and Sober Riders was stitched across the back in tattoo-style lettering. In the circle of plastic chairs, under the shifting light of the church’s stained-glass windows where Jesus’s face on the cross looked like most of us felt, partly hidden by the wafting smoke of unfiltered cigarettes, we sat: a housewife in a lime green pantsuit, a shamed boy with his cross-armed father, a biker, a sunken man twitching and sweating, a businessman with a knitted scarf he clenched as if holding the hand of the one who made it, a woman whose eyes were red and swollen from crying, and other odds and ends. All of us, strangers, together in this church basement, telling stories that reflected one another like fun house mirrors. I raised my hand. He gestured for me to stand up. My best friend, Em, stood up next to me in the circle of plastic chairs, pushing her poorly-fitted glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Hi, my name’s Marjory Stanton, and I’m an addict.” Em’s voice was so quiet, I doubted if the people on the far side of the circle could hear her. No one seemed to mind, and a couple low voices mumbled, “Hi Marjory.” A couple hands clapped. She pushed her glasses up again, a nervous tick or unconscious habit. “I’ve been sober for one year,” she continued. A few more half-hearted claps, and the sweating man whooped in congratulations. “I met Stevie in the homes. I’m sure most of you Benzley 32 know, but you don’t make a lot of friends there. You get bounced around so much, after a while, you stop trying. You sleep next to kids, and sometimes you don’t even know their names… But when Stevie and I met, it was different, you know.” Em’s voice was starting to waver. I told her before coming into the meeting that she didn’t have to speak—she was so shy—but she insisted. I grabbed her hand, and tried not to let my face show surprise at how sweaty her palm was. A bead of her sweat trickled onto my forearm, and I smiled up at her, trying to ignore the tickle. She cleared her throat and looked to the ceiling for a moment before continuing. “God, she was such a fucking weirdo,” she laughed thickly, “The first night we spent together, she woke me up, hanging out the window, shaking a bag of cat food, trying to feed the raccoons. I’m pretty sure the nanny ended up giving you a cold shower for that one, right?” I nodded my head. I had gotten a lot of cold showers in the homes. “But Stevie didn’t care. She did whatever she wanted, and she just didn’t care… Sorry I said that twice.” Em cleared her throat again, “Anyway, Stevie was nice to me, and not a lot of kids were because I was so shy, and she was nice to Jennifer too, my little sister, even though she was really… uh.” Em paused while she thought of the right word, then shrugged and said, “fat.” “When we got transferred to different homes, Stevie would vidchat me. You know, the nannies don’t want to hear your bitching, and the other kids would rag on you for being a crybaby, but Stevie just… talked about it, talked to me.” She paused again. “Five years ago, I tried meth for the first time. It was—” Her eyes looked to some far memory. Her mouth curved like the cradle of a pleasant dream, and biker man cleared his throat. We weren’t supposed to glorify the high. Only remember the bad parts to strengthen resolve. Benzley 33 “Yeah, um, when I saw Stevie again, I was living in a camp with my sister, you know. Walking in there… well you’d walk down this path in the canyon, so there’s forest and it’s shady mostly, dark, and the closer you got, the more garbage and freaking lurkers, and there were kids because we were mostly girls and mostly didn’t have implants and well, you know, who here hasn’t… well, you know, for a shot.” A few people grimaced, men included, nodding in complicity and looking to their own memories weaving into the carpet. “It was hell, worse than that because you could leave at any time, but you didn’t. It was like living the same day over and over, like you’re stuck in a timeloop.” Em rubbed her face as if she were trying to scrub away a smear of dirt. “Fuck. That’s where Stevie found me, and we stayed like that for three years. I don’t know how much Narcan she shoved up my nose, how much she stole to keep us well, how many people she—” A few people frowned or readjusted in their seats. My plaster smile cracked, but did not break. “She saved my life, I mean. I don’t know how many times, and I’d probably still be in that tent, or worse, if she didn’t help me—and Jen too—get clean. And now, I get to give her this one-year chip.” She reached down to give me an awkward hug that bent my neck back and gave me the chip. My turn to stand. “Hey, I’m Stevie. I don’t have a last name. Last names are family names, and I guess my parents didn’t want me looking them up when I got older, so they didn’t give me one.” I looked down at the chip. It was plastic and white with a keyring and the words: Clean and Serene for One Year printed in gold, and, I knew, it would glow in the dark. I smiled, remembering Em say, “it glows in the dark so you don’t have to.” “And I’m an addict.” A few mumbled voices said, “Hi Stevie.” Benzley 34 “I’ve been saying those words every day for a year now, in court-mandated treatment for 3 months, and then at these meetings… I’m not a good person, not like Em makes me seem. I’m 25 now. I’m a gofer. $180,000 debt for school, and my field isn’t hiring. I’m trying… I’m trying to stay positive, you know. Keep my head up and keep climbing.” Jesus, I should have practiced, or just thought about what I wanted to say. Now my face was flushing as I paused to think, wondering if I could just say thank you and sit down. A birthday speech was supposed to be hopeful and positive. I was supposed to be happy, elated even, at my wonderful achievement, but my mind was wandering to dark places. I’m a gofer, I thought. I’ll always be a gofer. I’ll always be climbing, digging out of a never-ending hole. Bitter tears welled up in my eyelids, and now I was looking at the ceiling to try to blink them away. I knew what I wanted to say to this circle of strangers, what I was supposed to say: the truth, that thinking about staying sober was like a growing insanity, walking through the same bleak, endless terrain, exhausted and trapped, every day without change, just shades of grey and flat, cracked earth; but thinking about relapsing and maintaining a high with its endless apologizing, justifying, and crashes wasn’t any better, still exhausted and trapped; that I understood why so many of my friends had just ended it; that I needed help. “I’m just so happy,” I said, “Sobriety, living clean and sober, it’s such a gift.” I gave a few more lines about the wholesome, hopeful life I was now living, then stopped abruptly and sat down. I picked up my Styrofoam cup of bitter coffee and sipped. Biker man said, “Let’s give it up for Stevie,” and began clapping. The others joined him, and the twitching man starting whooping his congratulations again. Biker man introduced the topic: gratitude. Almost every other meeting’s topic was gratitude. If you’re feeling grateful, you can’t feel any negative emotion, we had all heard Benzley 35 countless times. I tuned out after: “We give and we receive and we lose. Gratitude is accepting and loving whatever life remains after the losses, knowing that that will go away too.” When he finally finished and opened the floor for others to share, the woman who looked as if she had been crying raised her hand and introduced herself. The words exploded out of her; she had been saving them for us, strangers with unconditional love and immeasurable patience who would nod our understanding like bobbleheads and clap to celebrate her sharing no matter how long, boring, or depressing it was. Being heard was a means as its own end, supposedly. We tried to make sense of ourselves and our sorrows by telling our stories. Like looking at a static screen and finding a face staring back at us, we made order out of chaos, forced closure in an open wound. We would know that sharing our stories was useful to others, that we were useful, purposeful. Hearing a story similar to ours—and our stories all overlapped in complicated little circles—that ended with the desired outcome of sobriety and sanity, rebirth and reclamation of lives, gave us hope that the impossible task of recovery was possible somehow. To know we’re not alone, to know that the woman in the lime pantsuit had struggled with pills in the same way I had wrestled with a needle, to know the businessman with his scarf was hiding a weakness similar to my own, to know this red-eyed girl had a hole of grief about the same size as mine, it was supposed to help. It did help, some people, but I couldn’t understand how being in hell with others was better than being alone; it was still hell. NA was supposed to give us community, a support system to lean on when we were feeling weak, but, beside Em, I couldn’t see one person I’d care to chat with about the weather, let alone swap intimacies. Just the idea of being a part of something bigger than myself, a worldwide community all dedicated to the same cause—which was supposed to give me the same uplifting feeling of being Benzley 36 in a concert stadium, singing the same song with a thousand other voices—was laughable. I mean, shit, look at this place: this frayed church basement with its cheap chairs and cheaper coffee, stale cigarettes that smelled like wasted lives and settling, this was supposed to make me feel a part of something great? The girl was talking about her friend who had enlisted in the forces, had vidchatted her every week, had deteriorated like a time lapse of a flower dying, and had finally stopped calling altogether. Not being family, she couldn’t get information from the forces for privacy reasons. He had no blood relatives and nannies weren’t considered blood relatives, so the homes would be denied the information as well. No one would ever know what happened to her friend. Maybe some man in a dark office, filling out paperwork, would type his name among a dozen others, and know for a moment. Maybe some man in a waste transfer station, a stranger and the last man to ever see his face, would file his paperwork to request payment. There would never be closure. My brother, Rickie, was in the forces too, flying choppers. He was wicked smart, and was probably going to rank up and have a really decent life, not like me, not a gofer. But he had stopped calling when I was disconnected in the camp, and trying to find him now was a series of transferring calls and impossible stacks of paperwork; he was lost to me. Why would it help to know this girl had lost her own Rickie? To force closure on my hope, to kill him for good; I was supposed to be happy because I wasn’t alone? Bullshit. I leaned over to Em, “Let go and let god, or live life on life’s terms?” Em shushed me, but biker man’s attention was already caught. “Did you have something to share?” “Just let go and let God,” I said in all seriousness, “You know, just we gotta live life on life’s terms and just keep working the program because faith chases away fear.” Benzley 37 It would have been better if they hated me for what I said, if someone had yelled at me for poking fun at their precious 12 steps—I could have felt superior for seeing through the cliches while no one else could—but they just looked disgusted. Em especially, looking like she couldn’t get farther away from me in her seat or she’d fall off. That hurt. I spent the rest of the meeting trying not to look at anyone because I thought I might cry if I did, and distracted myself with thoughts of wilting flowers, locked doors, instant coffee, tokens, and Jesus’s face, anything to keep away the rot of Rickie’s face and the branded image of the circle looking at me like I was diseased. What was wrong with me? *** Our drive home was silent until I saw one of Justine’s kids in the street chasing cars like a dog. “Oh, that dumb cunt,” I said, tightening my fists on the wheel. “Hey,” Em said, frowning. “Well, she is. If the feds get called, we’re all fucked,” I said, pulling over while the kid, Jessie or Jersey or whatever her name was, blew dirty raspberries on my window. “Yeah, but don’t say that word. It’s gross,” Em said. I opened my door, knocking the kid onto her ass and smiling a little at the surprise on her face, but then her silent bewilderment exploded into an ear-splitting wail. Did you know children’s screams are evolutionarily designed to be as annoying as possible? The more annoying, the more attention they get, the higher chance of survival. Not hard to imagine, is it? I grabbed her arm and lifted her to her feet, but she went boneless and screamed louder. I screamed back and pulled harder, trying to drag her limp body towards the house. Her eyes were bugging out of her scarlet face with the exertion of her screaming, and I thought her shoulder Benzley 38 might dislocate at the angle I was pulling. When would she inhale? Her face kept darkening into shades of purple. I’m not great with kids. Justine came flying out of the house, fastening her fleecy bathrobe, tripping over her once-pink slippers, and bouncing against the broken railing like a pinball. Her eyes rolled until they found me dropping the kid on her face because she fucking bit me. “She fucking bit me!” I told Em who came to examine, pushing down laughter. A car slowed down as it passed our white trash spectacle, then sped away when my eyes met the driver’s and I took a step toward him. I couldn’t kick the kid while she was down; I knew that, but I could beat some guy for not minding his own business. “Get away from her!” Justine screamed, pointing a finger as close as she could focus in my direction, which wasn’t close. The kid ran to her mom, gripping her robe, still screaming. “You think I want to pick this little freak out of the street?” I said, my anger mounting because Justine was as high as I wanted to be. Shameless. “Take her to a fucking home before the feds do it for you.” “Don’t you dare tell me how—” Justine reached out to stabilize herself against the porch railing, but missed and fell back on the steps. Her surprise, an aged reflection of the kid’s, made me smile. Em helped them both inside, and the screaming stopped. I took a few minutes to cool down before I followed them inside. I know I didn’t have great self-control, so avoiding triggers was one of my only tools. Avoiding the kids because they upset me, avoiding Justine because she always made me want to get as high as she was, avoiding old friends, old neighborhoods, and the screens although they seemed to be everywhere. Avoiding my urges because I couldn’t control them. Benzley 39 Inside, the screen was playing for an audience of no one: “…cutting edge. Browse our selection of new models and feel the difference,” a sexy British voice was saying while 360° views of sleek AIs flashed across the screen before cutting to a handsome guy in a white lab coat, “Our new designs are both more precise and more multi-functional than ever before. There is no other company with as many models or with half of the functional capacity as ours. Our models are programming spacetech and writing symphonies, but you can get someone to chat with you about your day after work, or more if you really need to take a load off.” His smile flashed a wicked if you know what I mean. “The versatility. It’s incredible how we can personalize—” I found the remote and switched it off. In the backyard, in the rare nice weather, on the sparse patches of green lawn, among the little landmines of dog shit, Em and I sat, relaxing and smoking in the few hours we had before sleep and work the next day. Jen arrived an hour or so later. I don’t know where she had been, or why she had missed my birthday, but she seemed relieved I didn’t ask, and we fell into easy conversation. “I heard in Chicago that the sewers aren’t treating the water anymore?” she said, looking up from her watch screen. I had taken my first rip from the pen, and my eyes were watering, my head pounding. An anxiety gripped me. Was this laced? My pulse seemed so fast. Or was it just a really bad THC cartridge that was making me cough and freak out? “Who told you that?” I grunted before another coughing fit shook my chest. “Isn’t that what happened in Flint and Phili?” Em asked. “No, that was just old pipes, or lead, or something,” I answered. Benzley 40 “Just lead? I thought lead was toxic?” Em asked. I passed her the pen, and she sucked at it, looking worried. Her brows were always upturned in this worried, sad look, magnified behind her glasses, even when she laughed, like her eyes had just frozen in place like that. “Would you rather get lead poisoning or shit poisoning?” I pulled a cigarette from a fresh pack I had swiped from the minute mart, lit it, inhaled and exhaled with an audible sigh. Em was holding her breath with a lungful of harsh vapor. Jen was picking at the grass. Neither answered. “Do you think that could happen here?” Jen asked. I started to say, “Anything could happen, and you can bet your ass they won’t fix it if it does. The sewer treatment plant is probably older than us and with the same budget.” Instead, I cleared my throat. “Of course not. Chicago is a big city. We don’t have the riots like they do, and we wouldn’t have other problems like that.” All three of our watches dinged in unison. ‘BREAKING NEWS’ flashed across the screen. Jen enabled the volume on hers and we all heard a smooth female AI voice breaking the news to us, “A carbon storage container explosion in France’s direct air capture center, located on the outskirts on Antibes, has sent Europe into a panic. The death toll is still rising as new bodies are being discovered in the wreckage. Authorities say the massive amount of carbon dioxide released will have devastating effects along the Mediterranean coastline and surrounding areas that may domino to our own ports here at home. A radius of 20 miles around the blast zone—” “Bullshit,” I interrupted. Jen scowled. “They’re just trying to make France look bad.” “Five containers is a lot though, right?” Em said. She said most things like she was asking a question, always unsure. Benzley 41 “Yeah, it’s not good, but we’ve had way worse in the Keys.” My voice picked up. “Remember last year in the Keys? The whole fucking facility burned to the ground, and they didn’t even report on it.” It almost made me feel good, those reports of unprecedented natural disasters, degraded soil, air and water contamination, global uprising, and the increasing threats of nuclear war. The world was on the brink of collapse. It was as hopeless as my life, and it felt good to know everyone would lose as much as me. The militarized feds shooting protestors, politicians with their grubby hands in every pot, the beautiful and the rich on the screen; my desire to see them burn was enough to make me smile while I was on fire myself. The AI voice was still running in the background. Jen shut it off with an irritated swipe. “Whatever, pass me the pen,” she said to Em. I looked at Jen while she sipped on the plastic tip and stared her hard, unblinking eyes into the ground. I didn’t want to fight with her, but I wanted to ask what she was thinking. Probably something cynical along the lines of, “Whatever, who fucking cares.” I wondered if her acceptance was like mine—a gleeful retribution, or angry like the protestors who hadn’t given up yet, or sad like the people in front of the screens who pulled entertainment over their eyes like a weighted blanket. A fed helicopter buzzed by overhead. I watched it. Rickie. When Rickie and I were graduating from high school, we knew what our options were: work for the corpocractics and be at the mercy of wage decreases and cost-of-living increases— there weren’t unions or code regulations like there used to be; or, continue with school and be a debt peon, a gofer, with a socially acceptable career; or, enlist in the forces; or, live high on crime until we got caught and sent to Pelican. Benzley 42 I considered the forces. I could travel and see glimpses, maybe, of how the other states in the world lived, and with no debt, guaranteed meals, and a bed every night. It seemed like a good deal. That’s the pitch the slippery recruiters in their clean white uniforms gave to Rickie, and me, and every other senior in every other graduating class in every other city in mid-America. If only I didn’t have this body, these needs, this hunger, and thirst, and want of a locked door to sleep behind. But I am a slave to my needs, and my needs are granted only when I kneel, and when I pick a door from four doors that are colored differently, but behind each is the exact same room where I will be trapped. And I am never given enough to satisfy my needs, only enough to take the edge off my hunger, and the bite from my thirst, never enough to fully quench— “You thinking about Rickie?” Em said. “I’m sure he’s fine,” Jen said, “He’s so smart.” “If he’s not dead, he might as well be,” I said, “We’ll never see him again.” “Hey.” Em looked angry. Sometimes I felt like I had to tiptoe around her, around everyone. I couldn’t blame anyone for hating my attitude, but it would have been nice to let it out sometimes, whatever it was. Em said, “He could be on some secret mission or something. That’s why he hasn’t vidchatted you.” “For two years, Em? He could also be in a shallow, unmarked grave, or a POW camp getting his nuts strapped to—” “Fuck off Steve,” Jen said, looking hard at me and then Em. Em was staring into her lap, trying not to let me see her cry. “I’m sorry.” I moved closer to her. “I’m just… it’s hard. I just want to make peace with reality, you know?” Em’s gaze snapped up, her eyes red and wet and hateful. I blinked. Benzley 43 “Yes, you’re so practical.” Em scoffed. “So at peace with reality. So at peace with—” A transport truck roared over the freeway, and we clapped our hands over our ears until it passed. “Em.” I reached out to her, and she slapped my hand away, wincing—it hurt her more than me. And then she was really crying, hard sobs that made her slurp and gasp for breath. “Would you put me down too?” she snapped. I froze. “If it was practical, would you fucking put me down too?” Jen was behind Em, wrapping her arms around her, letting Em bury her head into her like a burrowing animal, and staring at me like this was my fault—because it was my fault. “Is she talking about Leo?” Jen asked. “Did you—Steve, come on. There’s no way, yeah?” “He was in pain, Jen. He asked for it, literally asked every one of you. There wasn’t anything we could do for him.” Standing, Jen put her hand up to silence me. She grabbed Em’s arm and tried to lift her to her feet, but Em shook her off too, trying to curl deeper into herself. “I’m sorry,” Em sobbed, “I’m sorry Steve.” “You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” Jen and I said together. She glared at me. Justice came out the back door with a cigarette in hand, scanned the scene, and said, “I’ll just smoke inside.” “Come on. We’re leaving,” Jen pulled on Em’s arm some more, but she just curled up tighter into herself and sobbed harder. “Where are you gonna go?” I asked, standing. “Anywhere. We’re obviously not safe here and—” “Oh fucking please. You’re not safe? You think I’m going to kill you or Em?” Benzley 44 “You killed Leo.” She took a step toward me. “That was different.” I matched her step. “Only you, Steve, only you could see fucking murder as different, as good. You’re fucking sick, and we won’t stay here. We’ll go to Barlow’s.” I scoffed. “Barlow’s. Is that his name? Great. How long have you known him cause I’ve never even heard of him?” “This!” Jen and I were screaming into each other’s faces, sending flecks of spittle at the other, and hovering just before the first strike. We had fought before, hard, in the homes and in all the years since. Sometimes it felt good, to beat the shit out of someone and have someone beat the shit out of you, but not this time. This time it just hurt. “This is exactly why I never introduced you!” she screamed. “Oh never? Like you guys have been fucking each other for so long, I’m sure.” “Five months! Is that long enough for you? You don’t listen. You don’t pay attention. You don’t fucking care about anyone but—” “Don’t you lie,” I said. Jen stopped with her cheeks flushed and splotchy, breathing raggedly. “We’re leaving.” She tugged on Em again, who shook and sobbed and pushed her head into the dirt like she could crawl inside the silent ground and escape from us. “Fine.” Jen walked away, slamming the chain link gate behind her. I watched her until she disappeared behind the neighboring house; she didn’t look back. Kneeling down to touch Em’s head, I asked, “Do you want to go? Go with Jen?” She shook her head. Benzley 45 “I’m sorry Stevie.” The words were long and quiet like a whispered song. Standing up, looking around, I realized how stoned I was. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry.” *** That night, Bugs was in my bed. His real name was Clayborne, but everyone called him Bugs. When he was a kid in the government home, he kept getting scabies, lice, and other fun microscopic insect infestations. He missed so much school, the other kids started calling him Bugs, and like you have to in a home, he didn’t let on that it bothered him—show no weakness— so he adopted the nickname. After a half hour or so of sweat and moaning between the sheets, with Justice banging on the wall for us to “shut the fuck up,” I had taken a shower that had turned cold after the first five minutes, and was now sitting in front of a full-length mirror on the floor, rubbing scented synthetic oils through my hair. “Why don’t you have a screen,” Bugs asked, “I hate coming over here sometimes.” “Why don’t you leave then,” I answered, looking at his reflection through the mirror. He was scrolling through his watch, and sudden sound blasted through the tinny speakers. “Turn it off!” I yelled, more startled by the abrupt sound than angry. “What? You don’t like music now either?” He said, but turned it down to a low background melody. The song was new, catchy and repetitive, a perfectly-pitched female AI voice, singing about love and lust. “Sure I like music,” I said, but Bugs didn’t answer, being too distracted by whatever was on his watch screen. We all had watches. The company had gotten a subsidy to distribute them to Benzley 46 anyone who applied for a free one on the basis that modern living was untenable without a smart device. You couldn’t get a job without a contact number. It made sense, but it still pissed me off. I lit a cigarette and leaned back, watching myself exhale smoke through the mirror. The smoke swirled and hit the glass, wafting around the edges. Bugs suddenly looked up with an excited smile and hopped off the bed. He was still naked, and I tried not to laugh at his flaccid member thrashing around—men hate to be laughed at, in my experience. He gathered his clothes. “Leaving then?” I asked with an arched, questioning eyebrow. “What?” Bugs froze and stared at me through the mirror in confusion, although I thought the question had been pretty straightforward. “Are you leav—” I began again, but he cut me over, unfreezing and rummaging through his pockets. “No, I actually have something,” he said, “for you.” The arches of my brows rose further. A present? The only person to ever give me a present was Em. “I know it’s your birthday, your sobriety birthday.” He extracted a small, thin, plastic wrapped package with a triumphant grin. “And I wanted to get you something.” You, reader, and I, and Em know, that today was not my sobriety birthday. Only a few short months ago it had been winter, morning, and I had taken a shot of H to steady my nerves before performing assisted suicide on my friend, Leo. It had only been a one-time lapse though, not a relapse, so we moved on. Em never told, until today. I never told. Everyone else assumed, as I had hoped, that Leo had died in his sleep, or maybe there were other reasons they never asked. Benzley 47 “Wow, Bugs,” I said, clearing those thoughts from my mind and the pained expression from my face, “That’s… unexpected.” I hadn’t been surprised in a really long time, and I wasn’t sure how to react. Squatting down, he handed me the tiny package and stared at me in anticipation. When I saw what it was, I sprang to my feet. “Choc—!” I exclaimed, but caught myself in time to whisper, “Real chocolate, are you serious? Where did you even get this?” There were about eight other people in the house, and I knew there wasn’t enough of the thin bar to go around, so no exclamations. This was our little secret, and I felt the weightless package grow heavy with value in my hands. “At the store.” He smirked. “There’s no choc—” I began. “Not at our store.” His smile was splitting his face. Bugs was always positive, always in a good mood; no matter how dark the waters were, his ship went on floating with full sails, but now, he seemed giddy with anticipation. His excitement was infectious. I felt conspiratorial. It was a diamond of a moment. “Contraband?” I whispered. “No.” He waved away the idea as ludicrous, as if he hadn’t shot contraband into the veins of his arms for seven years after dropping out of school. “I got it from the actual store,” he said. “Bullshit!” I shoved his shoulder, “The feds wouldn’t let you above Washington, let alone inside the store.” Washington was a borderland, like 110th street in Manhattan, separating Harlem from Central Park, the rich from the poor, the pushers and prostitutes from the bankers and businessmen. Benzley 48 “I can clean up nice if I want to.” He was tapping his foot now, fidgeting, impatient for me to open the chocolate. I thought, “and the feds can swipe your chip, pull up your record, your nonexistent bank statements, and threw you back in the gutter on the other side of Washington.” But I didn’t want to argue, not now, not to ruin this moment. I began to open the wrapper with careful, almost shaking, fingers. The bedroom door swung open behind me. I gripped the thin bar to my chest and collapsed forward, praying the bar was hidden from sight. “Eh! Knock much?” Bugs screamed, jumping to his feet. His limp, swinging member was enough to scare whoever had opened the door into slamming it back closed again. “Who was that?” I asked, adding, “I’m sorry. I should have locked the door.” “Emma,” he said, pulling his jeans right-side-in, “And she looked like shit.” “Well, she’s home a little early, but she just got done working an overnight.” “An overnight? It’s midnight right now,” he said. I was dressed and now helped Bugs pull his shirt over his head, kissing him and smiling on the other side. “An overnight last night,” I explained, “She still had to work her normal shift today… Em! It’s safe now. Come on.” “How can they do that?” he asked, looking stupid with his mouth open. I shifted away and frowned at him; was he living under a rock? Before I could ask him, Em walked in, and she did look like shit. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and her eyes were red and swollen from crying, her makeup smeared in chunky black streaks down her thin cheeks. I stood up and guided her to the edge of her lower bunk. I had upper bunk because I was oldest; I had always had upper bunk. Not that it mattered. I slept with her on the lower bunk almost every night anyway. Benzley 49 “What happened?” I crooned, “Bad shift? I know the overnight was bad, but you can sleep now. It’s over.” Em shook her head, but was sobbing too hard to speak. “That guy didn’t fuck with you again, did he?” Bugs asked. There had been a homeless man, loitering outside Em’s work. When she closed the store alone at night, he’d hassle her and follow her to her car. It seemed he got braver and closer each time. The last time he had actually grabbed her arm and called her some nasty profanities that Em didn’t want to repeat to us. Em shook her head again and was able to choke out, “N-new AI. I got f-fired.” I sat down on the bunk next to her and put my arm awkwardly around her. Physical touch—unrelated to sex—always made me agitated, and kind of itchy, but I knew she liked it, and probably needed it right now. “It’s okay. We’ll go to the unemployment office tomorrow. We’ll find you something.” Em shook her head again, and new waves of tears made her cough and splutter. A pounding came from the wall. My mirror rattled. Justice and her shitty kids were trying to sleep, I guess, and we were being too loud. “We have a surprise for you,” Bugs said, grinning at me. And now I had been surprised twice in one day, so I just stared at him with my jaw slack and stupid. Sharing chocolate with the girl you’re fucking on her birthday was a nice thing, but sharing with her friend just because she had gotten fired was angelic. Everyone had gotten fired at least once. All the time, AI was getting smarter and simpler, and the tech companies that made them were getting richer and more expansive. Humans had limitations. AI did not. AI didn’t get tired, or hungry, or thirsty. It didn’t need breaks. It didn’t slow down. It approached each task with a plan of maximum efficiency. It was sexier than a Benzley 50 human, if that’s what its design called for. It could dance, and sing, and speak any language. It could think creatively, and even make art better than any human artist. So, everyone had gotten fired because after a while, a design team had invented an AI that could replace them. And after a while, the AI would replace the design team. I hoped they knew that, or better, I hoped they didn’t know so they could be taken by surprise, have their whole lives uprooted just like ours. The AI workforce made the our economy one of the best in the world: the national average salary and the national GDP were reported as one of the highest. In fact, 98.89 percent of jobs were currently filled in mid-America, by AI. I felt like a product being phased off the shelves to make way for the new order of the store, but I let it happen along with everyone else. Believing a consumer economy couldn’t subsist without consumers, we underestimated people’s need. How could I ever spend a million dollars when I had learned to survive on pennies a day? But our self-loathing is deep; our desire to transform and our belief that a product could do it for us is sycophantic. The corpocratics could fill a hundred leaking buckets or just one with the same amount of stuff for the same amount of money, you know. We could take Em to the unemployment office tomorrow, but she wouldn’t get something. She would be put on a waiting list, like the transplant lists they had in hospitals. Your name had about the same chance of being called, which is to say: no chance at all. After that we could take her to the social services office, where she could wade through a bureaucratic nightmare swamp of paperwork, rejection, and referral for the next three days until she either gave up or received her one-month food stipend. It was Kafka’s Process, a process designed so that you are destined to fail, a labyrinth designed with only dead ends. Benzley 51 I beckoned Bugs to sit on the bunk next to me, and together we watched Em open the thin plastic packaging that I had begun to tear open. He kissed my cheek, and I felt very maternal, holding my baby sister, and having a man with worn and callused hands hold me. I felt as if the three of us were in a bubble of time and space, giggling and whispering over our clandestine joy, but I knew that after we had sucked on the smooth chocolate, making the sweet, rich flavor last as long as we possibly could, and after we had fallen asleep, the bubble would fade and float away. The perfect diamond of a moment was not mine to keep, but just to look at and admire like a diamond I might see in a shop window uptown. Benzley 52 Works Cited “Literature & Addiction: Critical & Ideological Issues: A Symposium.” Dionysos: The Literature and Addiction TriQuarterly, vol. 5, no. 3, 1994, pp. 3—15. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=1994000931&site=ehost-live. “Under the Influence” (Book).” Kirkus Reviews, vol. 70, no. 23, Dec. 2002, p. 1757. 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