She and Rick are both married, but neither can resist the lure of their meetings. “For months, like a mantra, my therapist has told me, ‘These men are kidding you.’ I don’t know if he means emotionally, spiritually or physically. I don’t ask,” Silverman writes.
“He explains that I confuse sex with love, compulsively repeating this destruction pattern with one man after another. I do this because as a girl I learned that sex is love from my father, the first dangerous man who sexually misloved me.
“‘I thought the intensity with Rick must be love,’ I say.
“‘The intensity is an addict’s high,’ my therapist says. ‘Not love.’”
Those who are hurt by addiction are often scornful of the way an addict describes being taken over by the addiction, and who can blame them? “I don’t know what I was doing,” doesn’t sound like much of an excuse. But this almost otherworldly suspension of the will and the reason is actually a symptom of addiction.
An addict is someone who comes to, who regains normal consciousness—either in the morning or at another time of day—and asks what happened, not to evade responsibility but because the things that happened really seem to have happened to someone else. In a way, this is one of the principal problems of getting addiction the attention it needs. Normal people find it hard to believe in the addictive trance.
“I didn’t know what I was doing” isn’t much comfort to a woman whose husband has been unfaithful or a parent whose child has been killed by a drunk driver, or even a headmaster who discovers a student in the bathroom with a six-pack of beer. Not only does the truthful description of the addictive experience—and it isn’t easy for addicts to tell the truth—sound phony, but it also sounds as if the addict is trying to avoid responsibility.
It is hard for an addict to tell the truth, and the addict is rarely rewarded for the attempt. Early on, addicts learn to lie, and there is something about the protection of lies, the slippery, easily acceptable surface of saying what people want to hear, that is extremely seductive. Addicts often become adept at lying and reluctant to tell the truth even when there is no harm in the truth.
The addict leads a secret life. This is both one of the thrills and one of the symptoms of addiction. When addicts find each other, and they seem to have some secret way of knowing who they are, they often bond over a shared lie. After all, there is something exciting about learning to lie, something exciting about knowing that even those closest to you don’t really know you.
Our world is filled with lies; addicts find a way to use those lies to separate themselves from other people and to protect their addictions.
© Susan Cheever 2008. Reprinted by permission of Inkwell Management.
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Alexandra Penney is an artist, best-selling author, former editor-in-chief of Self magazine, and originator, with Evelyn Lauder, of the Pink Ribbon for breast cancer awareness. She had a one-person show at Galerie in Berlin in April and her work was shown at Miami’s Art Basel. She lives in New York, has one treasured son in Los Angeles and more amazing friends than could ever be imagined.
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The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
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Susan Cheever is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including American Bloomsbury, My Name is Bill, Note Found in a Bottle, As Good as I Could Be, Home Before Dark, and Treetops. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a director of the Corporation of Yaddo, and a member of the Author’s Guild. Cheever teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars and at the New School.
Susan Cheever is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including American Bloomsbury, My Name is Bill, Note Found in a Bottle, As Good as I Could Be, Home Before Dark, and Treetops. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a director of the Corporation of Yaddo, and a member of the Author’s Guild. Cheever teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars and at the New School.
Susan Cheever is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including American Bloomsbury, My Name is Bill, Note Found in a Bottle, As Good as I Could Be, Home Before Dark, and Treetops. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a director of the Corporation of Yaddo, and a member of the Author’s Guild. Cheever teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars and at the New School.
Susan Cheever is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including American Bloomsbury, My Name is Bill, Note Found in a Bottle, As Good as I Could Be, Home Before Dark, and Treetops. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a director of the Corporation of Yaddo, and a member of the Author’s Guild. Cheever teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars and at the New School.
Susan Cheever is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including American Bloomsbury, My Name is Bill, Note Found in a Bottle, As Good as I Could Be, Home Before Dark, and Treetops. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a director of the Corporation of Yaddo, and a member of the Author’s Guild. Cheever teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars and at the New School.
this article is well writen and some may say "Wow, I never thought of it like that, Im an addict"
In short this article is soooooo childish.
Is this blog for 13 year olds? PLEASEEEEE!!!!
eeeewwww.... she had sex with Warren Hinckle?
not even the skank junk addicted strippers at Mitchell Bros where he used to hang out would ever do that...
you must not be an addict
Trance is right.
You're drawn in, you think, you avoid, you stumble, your drawn, you give in.
You're shopping, you're drinking.
You know you shouldn't be, but you are.
You're in a trance.
I, too, spent decades confusing sex with love, intensity with intimacy, and thinking I was experiencing grand passion when it was really just drama and distraction. Without knowing it (because you're not only in a trance, your perception of the world is off), I was using people. I was getting high. There was no intimacy in my compulsive pattern of destructive relationships. This addiction has cost me in time, energy, and lost dreams. Luckily almost four years ago I wandered into a meeting for people who also have these issues, and instantly I realized I was an addict. The change in perspective woke me up, and launched me on a path toward recovery, and true connection with others. I applaud Susan Cheever for writing this elegant, comprehensive, brave book,and Sue Silverman too, for her courage and honesty. The time seems fertile
for people to learn about this complex, elusive, pervasive addiction. After all, aren't we a culture that is in love with obsessive "love"? I wrote a very personal narrative about all this that's coming out in a month with Bloomsbury. It's called LOVE JUNKIE: A MEMOIR. I hope it adds to the discourse, and that people who're skeptical open their minds and hearts -- and maybe even see themselves reflected.
Warren Hinckle, you've got to be kidding! That's like metamphedamine to an addict...soon you're a toothless skank.