American Taboo: Addiction & Self-Destruction
Definition of taboo
1a: a prohibition imposed by social custom or as a protective measure…
they may have developed a taboo against eating fish.— Jared Diamond
b: something that is not acceptable to say, mention, or do : something that is taboo…
the tacticians in a conservative Republican Administration now deem membership in the club a taboo.— Peter J. Boyer
Three obituaries of people I grew up with who died of addiction read similarly to the following: They died ‘peacefully’ or ‘suddenly’. That’s it. These statements of their deaths which are supposed to communicate the true nature of their extinguishment of life do not reflect any further detail than these mere vague, nearly meaningless, terms. These are people whom I personally knew quite closely. The substances were of alcohol and two of opioids related overdoses, respectively.
Obituaries are supposed to give those close to the deceased an understanding of the loss of sudden life. Each death is a tear in the societal fabric. Obituaries are supposedly there to enable the grieving process of everyone and in order to have the intended effect, one needs to know the full truth. The truth enables the mending of the torn fabric.
With due respect to family privacy, it is important that people know the levels of suffering present in their community. This, like finding truth in many other realms of sensitive topics, is shrouded in clouds of misunderstanding; a swirl of emotions (guilt, shame, anger, disappointment, haunting, etc.) & gut reactions to protect ‘privacy’. Yet, this is very different than the natural boundaries that need to be respected in order for the bereaved family to chart its own grieving course successfully. It is a ‘privacy’ that is based out of a fear of judgement, inadequacy and insecurity that is an immature reaction to the complicated, deep pain that is presented in moments where addiction has fully taken a destructive course.
So how should we think of these deaths that are striking at the heart of American suburbia? I was not raised in an inner city or a third world country, where the ‘real’ problems are. Yet one of my childhood best friends, one of my best friends’ mothers, a bright and intelligent peer who was in nearly the exact same social milieu that I was, all died directly out of severe battles with addiction. I found out this week that another childhood friend whom I lived with in college has also been battling with a heroin addiction and is in a half way home.
While respect for the sanctity of the grieving family is paramount, it is beyond reasonable now to expect that we can go on pretending that the issues do not exist. With the Opioid epidemic (already bad before the pandemic but exasperated further by it) still in full swing (https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates) we can no longer afford to ignore this problem.
This is a nationwide issue. The perverse incentives and downright corruption of big Pharma is most surely a primary culprit (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43982793-crisis-of-conscience), however there is the other side of the coin.
What would be prompting people who have ‘made it’, who lead lives of ‘privilege’, who ‘have it all’ in the land of opportunity, to embrace self-destructive drug habits? This question cuts to the core of the category of the deepest spiritual ilk.
All the more provocative is the fact that three of four people in my life who has battled significantly with addiction have been young men. I myself have dealt with years of internal struggles, battling my own demons and feel only just lucky enough to have escaped an untimely end through a beast like addiction.
Yet this is exactly in line with the statistics regarding the underbelly of our society – suicide and addiction. Men are represented 4:1 in suicide statistics compared to women. Affluent young men in their 20’s are some of the most likely to commit suicide among the general population. The same goes for males of Caucasian and Native American in terms of race demographics.
If we consider addiction more broadly as a form of slow, drawn out suicide; a kind of high-tinged self-destruction, then it is no wonder that the demographics reflect the issue of male self-destruction clearly (https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/100833/err-287.pdf?v=1708, page 10). This is also fitting of geographic data, as the Opioid epidemic has hit the northeast the hardest, dramatically so as compared to other states, while simultaneously also effecting those of rural habitation as well.
To further refine the earlier question; why would the Opioid epidemic find such a receptive audience in the northeast, and in particularly with affluent young men, in conjunction with the problem of suicide? (We shall refer to both these phenomena together broadly as ‘self-destructive behavior’, when I use this term, I mean it in the ultimate sense. We will proceed with this definition of self-destruction as teleologically aiming towards death through one means or another.). We need to look at the sociological patterns that pervade this milieu – suburbia.
What are the specific attitudes that predisposes it’s young men to be so susceptible to highly addictive drugs? All three of my friends and peers were athletes. They came from middle to upper middle-class families. They had access to all the material amenities that would entail as well as attended one of the best schools in the area that is in the top 15% of nationally ranked high schools. One would think, especially if one is prone to any sort of leftist socio-political understanding of the world, that these young men would be ushered into success without any issue. In fact, one would think that an opioid crisis wouldn’t exist. Yet so it does.
In suburbia it is often seen as negative to have any sort of problem outside of the superficial, ordinary ones (finding good help, choosing which school to go to, wearing the right brand of clothes). Anything deeper is dealt with in an altogether suspect manner, especially among men. You're not allowed to have problems if you're a young man. IF you are, there are pills for that and it'll be kept quiet.
There's also a highly prevalent belief in the inherent evil of being white and wealthier than middle class promulgated by neo-Marxist intelligentsia pervading popular culture. This seeps into the suburban collective consciousness because the domain of the intelligentsia is seen as the penultimate objective for the suburban parent & children alike - the Ivy League. So in order to please the priestly caste, one must know by heart the proper dogma.
When these two attitudes are internalized a deep denial of one’s own suffering occurs, which then causes the internal attitudes of being ashamed of and thereby denying, any form of suffering in extant.
Creating further pain and confusion, there is a clear, golden brick laid road for everyone in suburban American towards the path to happiness, mirage -like, ever off in the distance.
It goes like this: be the best you can be with your talents (preferably athletics & academics, but there are consolation prizes), get the best grades you can, attend the best school you can and be as popular as you can. This will naturally parlay you into the best college possible, which is the Ivies and then in descending order the other prestigious state and private institutions.
From there you will find the most profitable career you can , which will hopefully come with some form of meaning and derived happiness intrinsically from the work, but this is not necessary. Once this career is secured, one may then go about recreating the suburban dream nest one has been nudged out of after high school for oneself. Only this time, bigger and better than one’s parents. Then you get married, have kids, they have kids, you live happily ever after and you die eventually in the top-rated star nursing home you saved up for since you were a freshman in college.
Yet there is a dark side to this rosy picture. Failing to achieve this idyllic vision brings with it the cost of feeling deep shame, anger and isolation. It comes with restrictive peer pressure. It does not account for creative personalities, deeply evolved drives of male physical and sexual aggression and so tries to harness these powerful, natural forces with classic Protestant sexual sublimation into work through denial and repression.
Those who do not tag along on this, bleary, ever-smiling parade of prosperity are left with a feeling of deeply internalized defectiveness for realizing, while everyone else seemingly does not, that there is much more to life than this standard path.
This way of life is especially detrimental to the sensitive, artistically temperamental young man. He is raised in the archetypal all-American manhood of Don Draper; eschewing anything feminine in favor of hard work, conscientiousness, aggression and bravado. All potent and important qualities in their own right, but as with any qualities, limited and incomplete on their own, unintegrated into a broader personality. Man in suburbia is ultimately simply a breadwinner, not a full human being.
For the young, sensitive ones who sense this stifling trap coming and wants to get off the ride, they do so by going into the wilderness. They abandon a great deal of the connection and support they were getting from the community via their participation in the main progenitors of enculturation like sports and academia. Should one want to be a carpenter, write or go travel, then one is highly suspect, certainly ‘weird’ to say the least. Disinterest in the local professional football team is a striking indicator of the individual’s strangeness and thus unlikeliness of success.
This is the hallmark taboo of suburbia. The families that sire such ugly ducklings are deeply embarrassed, stupefied and shocked that their way of life could not lead to lasting happiness and so shroud the true roots of the tragedy in mystery through tepid, vague obituaries.
It is only through a deepening appreciation of the suffering of those who lose connection to the suburban way of life, & thus the American Dream, that we may in the future be able to prevent the deaths of young men and others who exhibit self-destructive behavior out of not fitting the mold.