Natalie Feng

Recently, in a certain book, I once again read that famous story: the Spartan army was long known for its iron will. On one occasion, a young soldier tried to secretly hide a fox in his arms while standing in formation; by the time he collapsed, his heart had already been torn out by the fox.

Spartans ate communal meals in mess halls, never used currency, and cared nothing for art. Their life trajectories circulated endlessly between killing and reproduction, simply because all their addiction was poured into “bringing honor to the state.” For people whose circumstances are not so extreme, addiction signifies an extremely pure, bone-deep fascination and surging adrenaline. It is the most concrete manifestation of life’s meaning and the sweetest moment in memory, driving you forward in pursuit of the next peak experience. Since addiction is clearly pleasure and quitting must necessarily be painful, why do we choose to quit addiction?

I once heard of a top student who could read one hundred million characters of online fiction every year. Unexpectedly, after quitting the internet in his final year of high school, his grades instead declined in a straight line; he had to binge through novels before each weekly exam to regain his former vigor.

A life without addiction has no high, and therefore no fun. Some college students lie in their dormitories all year eating snacks, and the furthest their thinking goes is asking others, “Why do you do these things?” and “What is the use of liking them?” To have no addiction, no desire, and no pursuit is certainly easy, but in terms of pleasure this is far inferior to the lonely old man squatting on the street playing chess, even inferior to the little cadre who believes everything in the textbooks is true—like the flat line on an electrocardiogram before death.

An education system indifferent to pleasure mass-produces prematurely aged, lifeless souls: omnipresent concentration-camp-style management combined with the prohibition of doing anything useless, controlling people until adulthood so that they no longer know why they are alive, nor can they experience the delirium and madness of immersion in something they love.

Some people do manage to find a world that allows total devotion; they become “addicts,” terrifying the righteous and normal. In a documentary, Louis Theroux filmed an elderly woman who, for seven years after being widowed, gambled in Las Vegas every single day. Even after losing four million dollars on mindless slot machines, she could still calmly proclaim to the camera:

“I’m never addicted to anything. I can always control myself. But why did you stop playing? You will come back and sit down again—I know you will.”

Teenagers addicted to the internet neither eat, drink, nor sleep, because in school the only ones who can truly get high are always the top students and the cool kids. But games are a utopia: there is always a game in which ordinary people like you and me can stand at the summit of the world.

Do you feel they are pitiful? You seem far happier than they are. After all, you are a nine-to-six commuter enslaved by car and mortgage, with a large stereo for audiophile discs and a huge television. The state kindly calls you the “middle class,” even though you do not know what you are living for.

I gradually began to suspect that the key to whether something is malignant does not lie in addiction itself. After all, strictly speaking, the pleasure you obtain from your stagnant life is certainly no greater than theirs. The elderly woman in the documentary possessed nothing but slot machines; without them she would dance in public squares, or might have already committed suicide. The slot machine was her form of existence. She was not addicted because slot machines existed; rather, because she needed addiction to fill emptiness, she fell passionately in love with the slot machine.

If the slot machine has any problem, it is that it makes her life monotonous until nothing remains but pressing a button—like refreshing notifications on social media. If she had gambled across all of Las Vegas, she would be a legendary gambling hero. Research shows that those great figures who truly start businesses are psychologically no different from gamblers. Boardwalk Empire spent three full seasons portraying the silent, unrestrained gambling of the tycoon Arnold Rothstein during Prohibition; by the fourth season he stands beside a staircase sighing sadly: if only that nine-year-old boy had lost everything the first time he gambled.

He and the elderly woman beside the slot machine are both playing the same game of “in and out.”

Thus, some addictions are malignant because they leave no time to enjoy addictions of a different nature. Several years ago, due to work needs, I began reading biographies of rock musicians. The rock scene, saturated with addiction culture, is crowded with addicts of every kind; yet I discovered that even when they themselves are desperate enough to steal their mother’s television to exchange for drugs, they still repeatedly tell those they cherish: although I can control it, this thing is bad—don’t touch it.

This shows that even the most intense pleasure cannot eliminate the frustration of losing control. Malignant addiction places a person in nearly eternal suffering, because the most painful moment is not after everything collapses, but the instant before collapse: I still care, yet I am already powerless.

Just as Stockholm syndrome should be dispelled as an illusion, ending an addiction in which pain and pleasure are reversed is like ending a long nightmare. Living beings have biological clocks, which means life itself should also have rhythm. Therefore, the reason healthy states—and relatively healthy people—quit addiction is perhaps in order to become addicted again after quitting. One addiction is expelled to welcome the arrival of the next: cycles, circulation, fresh stimulation, fluctuating periods, like a drama with beginning, development, turn, and conclusion. Sometimes there is climax, sometimes calm, but struggle must continue.

Locking children in internet-addiction rehabilitation camps like animals is meaningless. Without new sources of pleasure, even if quitting succeeds they will fall into severe depression. What should truly be encouraged is allowing them to find strengths beyond study: facing the sea, spring flowers blooming, being able to cook noodles, to stir-fry vegetables.

We direct ourselves, perform ourselves, and watch ourselves. Addiction is responsible for controlling the rhythm within it. All this effort is only because we do not wish to live our lives as a bad film.