The Usual Definition of Addiction - Essay Example

What Is Addiction? Addiction is a condition usually associated with the dependence on prohibited or regulated drugs. An addict is usually perceived as a person who seeks, under a physiological compulsion, artificially-induced euphoria by ingesting these prohibited or regulated drugs. He or she is usually pictured as a troubled youth who has difficulty dealing with internal conflicts. The condition of addiction comes about after a person has habitually taken these drugs, during which the addict has difficulty shaking off the habit. The story The Enormous Radio and Sonny’s Blues present facets of the term that both reinforce and augment the usual definition of addiction. The Enormous Radio The Enormous Radio shows addiction as dependence not so much upon an extraneous substance but originating from a type of personality that is prone to compulsion and obsession. The story revolves around a suburban couple who purchased a mysterious radio which eavesdropped on other people’s lives. Instead of sending out radio signals from radio stations, the radio emits conversations from out of the living rooms and bedrooms of the couple’s neighbors. The couple reacts to this strange development differently. While the husband went on with his life, performing his day-to-day routine as usual, the wife became preoccupied with listening to the radio the whole day, making the goings-on in her neighbors’ lives the focus of her attention. The once peaceful family life of the couple turned topsy-turvy as the wife underwent a personality change. As she became engrossed in the secret lives of her neighbors she became neurotic about their own lives. Although, the short story The Enormous Radio has other major themes like the chaos of urban life, it nevertheless reflects addiction of some form common in the mid-1900s like radio listening to radio dramas. The story’s use of the magical power of the radio to eavesdrop on neighbors’ conversations merely highlighted and dramatized this fact. The wife’s obsession with the lives of their neighbors through the radio to the point of neglecting and ignoring their own problems represented the obsession and preoccupation of the urban Americans with the lives of others to forget the emptiness of their own. The Enormous Radio therefore mirrors a different kind of addiction – addiction to voyeurism. And addiction here is reflected as having a deeper significance, which is to escape from one’s problems in real life. This is emphatically shown at the ending of the story when the husband, agitated and distressed by the their dwindling income due to the hard times confronted his wife with what he perceived to be her extravagant and profligate spending of his hard earned money. Instead of facing up to this confrontation, the wife went to the living room to seek solace and escape in the radio, which now ceases to broadcast the neighbors’ conversation but reverted to the usual programming of radio stations. The significance of this story vis-à-vis addiction, therefore, is two-fold: one, that addiction need not be confined to dependence on prohibited or regulated substances, and; two, addiction has deeper psychological reasons. As stated earlier, the wife’s addiction is centered on her listening to the radio and not on any of the said substances. Secondly, the story illustrates that not all people are prone to addiction. The husband has not taken to radio listening in the same manner as the wife was in this story. The reason could be that the husband’s mind is busy with other preoccupations like earning a living for the family and therefore less prone to obsessing about other people’s lives while the wife has too much time at hand with which to entertain less important things in her mind. Another possible reason is the inherent weakness of personalities that make them prone to addiction and compulsive-obsessive personalities. Aside from the difference in the object of addiction, the addiction of the wife to the voyeuristic listening to the magical radio illustrates all the other classic symptoms of addiction. First, the wife initially disliked and was even appalled at what she heard over the radio which can be compared to the regular user’s first taste of the prohibited or regulated substance. However, her curiosity got the better of her even though she knew that it was wrong to eavesdrop on her neighbors’ lives until she became a habitual listener. Eventually, the habit of eavesdropping has intruded into her life that she has become dependent on it, and her personality undergoes a change. She became rude even in social events, and lost control of herself. Later on, she became depressed listening to so much sad stories of her neighbors over the radio, yet she continued listening to the radio. Sonny’s Blues In the short story Sonny’s Blues, addiction is much more near to the common conception which is drug dependence. In addition, the story also provides a deeper understanding of the probable reasons why people become addicted. While in the story The Enormous Radio, the housewife succumbed to addiction in eavesdropping through the magical radio of her neighbors; lives because of too much time at hand couple with curiosity and probably weakness of character, the Sonny’s Blues justify the main character’s addiction because of the pain and anguish of being a black man in white America. Racial discrimination and the inability to find his own place in the sun served as a driving force behind the character’s addiction to heroin. In Sonny’s Blues, addiction was used by the character as his outlet for his internal pain and angst. The treatment of addiction in this story is not very far from what is commonly known of drug addiction and does not really add more to the common conception of the term as drug addiction is commonly attached to troubled youths who are having difficulties dealing with their lives. This is a stereotypical illustration of a drug addict’s profile. Drug addiction is also typically attached to artists, with many actors, actresses, singers, music artists and the like known to have succumbed to drug addiction primarily because of their artistic temperament which makes them susceptible and sensitive to emotional roller coater. However, in this story addiction has a redeeming value because it was used in the end by the character as a means to further and deepen his art. Conclusion The stories The Enormous Radio and Sonny’s Blues both reinforce and add to the usual and common definition of the term addiction. The Enormous Radio reinforces the usual definition of addiction because it shows the different stages of the dependence from the time of the initial introduction to the dependence to the time it becomes a habit, and the addict manifests personality changes. The story also adds to the usual definition in that it veers away from the association of the addiction to drugs signifying that addiction can also be attached to other habits such as listening to radio or voyeurism. Moreover, the character who succumbed to the habit is not necessarily troubled bit more like bored with insignificance of her life. The story Sonny’s Blues is a typical story of addiction because it involves a troubled youth not only experiencing being a social outcast because of his color but also possessed with the temperament of an artist. However, heroin addiction is shown here to have a good influence on the art of the character, as his playing has become more meaningful. Read More