‘Addiction shrinks one’s world to a state of stark self-imprisonment. As the person-drug relationship devours everything else of value, nothing remains that cannot and will not be sacrificed. And as the drug then devours the self, what remains are only manipulative masks interchanged so quickly that any sense of “true self” remains as only a faint memory. This shell, now masquerading as a person, burns its way through the world leaving human wreckage in its wake – all wounded by addiction’s self-centeredness, dishonesty, disloyalty, depravity, and brutality.
Extreme narcissism, self-will run riot in the language of Alcoholics Anonymous, is the essence of addiction regardless of whether one sees this trait as a cause or consequence of addiction. It is a paradoxical entrapment manifested in self-absorption (self-inflation and exploitation or self-deflation and serial victimization) and deteriorating capacities for self-care. These styles of self-deception exist within a person fighting to retain and assert his or her fading humanity. These are the Janus faces of addiction – the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of addiction fame.
