Addiction - a villanelle (and a little context)

 

A Hellmouth Structure from the "The Hours of Catherine of Cleves" (illuminated manuscript)

It is the hell within, the gaping jaw
That wears the face of heaven in disguise;
Mechanical desire, a mindless maw,

A beast that begs and whines and pins with claw 
The mind and will, its prey to paralyze;
This is the hell within, the gaping jaw.

This is the wound that never heals, raw
And weeping, always itching, that drives
Mechanical desire, a mindless maw

Gulping, licking, biting, gnaw gnaw gnaw
And never ceasing, "More! More! More!" it cries;
It is the hell within, the gaping jaw

That never shuts or stops stuffing its craw
Because it cannot; nothing satisfies
Mechanical desire. A mindless maw

Swallows because it must, its only law
is "Eat!" and swallow all until it dies;
It is the hell within; the gaping jaw, 
Mechanical desire, the mindless maw.

---

The hell of caring for someone - God help you if you love someone - with addiction issues is a hell of silence and long endurance. Silence because it is not your demon you are wrestling; you are on the sidelines, helping (or longing to help). You can’t talk about it in the same way that you could if the addiction were your personal demon. Long endurance because addiction wasn’t built in a day. It is often a well-worn rut of thinking/feeling/living in obedience to this insatiable hunger, and even if the person is miserable and even if they know it is killing them, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Sobriety is the devil they don’t know.

Years of observation and interaction with addicts have left me with the impression that addiction is like grief; it’s always there. It will never really go away. Even when it hasn’t been active for years, it’s still sitting in the corner, watching, ready for an opportunity to jump back in the limelight. Sometimes it gets squirrely and needs a firm hand to restrain its energy. The addict knows better than anyone how hard and how never-ending the task will be. They’re exhausted before they start.

It doesn’t have to be drugs or alcohol. We humans have the wonderful capacity to addict ourselves to almost anything. But in my case, it is an alcoholic and this week, while we were going through the same infernal spiral (intentional Dante reference) we’ve travelled over and over, I couldn’t get this image of Hellmouth out of my head. This picture of hell swallowing everything is the image of addiction. Don’t agree with me? Love an addict and find out.

I don’t want this to turn into a personal pity-party blog-type post (I guess if I have to say that, it’s dangerously close to becoming one). Literature and the life of self-education is still the main focus of this space. But I wanted to give context for anyone who reads this who might be in a similar situation or knows someone who loves an addict. If you don’t know the pain, the frustration, the moments of overwhelming anger and resentment, the fear, the constant cycle of betrayal and disappointment that comes with walking this road alongside someone actively consuming themselves, if you don’t know the way hopes rise only to be stabbed and dismembered and swallowed by that giant, gaping maw of addiction, then give thanks.

Yesterday, I was reading some essays on Paradise Lost by Northrop Frye (See? It’s still a literature Substack) and his explanation of Milton’s portrayal of what happens in the Fall is relevant here:

"After the Fall, the hierarchy implanted by God in the human soul is not merely upset, but reversed. Appetite now moves into the top place in the human soul, and by doing so it ceases to be appetite and is transformed into passion, the drive toward death. The appetites are a part of the creation, and like every other part of the creation they are an energy which seeks its fulfilment in form. Hunger is specifically satisfied with food, and the sexual desire by sexual intercourse. When appetite is perverted into passion, the drives of sex and hunger are perverted into lust and greed. Passion operates in the mind as though it were an external force, compelling the soul to obey against its own best interests, and the passions of greed and lust have two qualities that the appetites do not have: excess and mechanical energy. Hunger can be satisfied by food, but greed cannot be satisfied by anything: it seeks an excess of food and when it runs out of food, it will seek to acquire other things out of mechanical habit. … The distinction between lust and greed is that lust is a vice turned outward and affecting other people; greed is a vice that turns inward and affects oneself." (emphasis mine)

You can probably see how this informed the poem. Mechanical energy was a new way of thinking about the passions for me, but as soon as I read it, I recognized the truth of it. A machine has no fear of death. The addict may know that death exists, but worse than death is the idea of not feeding the greedy mouth within.

The villanelle felt like the right form for this poem; the repetition, the verbal spiraling, starting where you began... My goodness, bang on. 

This is a downer of a piece, so let me end with context that is larger than present circumstances. While my own situation has not seen an upward swing, I trust the God of second, third, four-hundredth chances, the God who is the resurrection and the life. As long as we live, there is hope. As long as they live, there is hope. And who knows what God can do for our loved ones in spite of the monster that is consuming them? He entered the mouth of Hell, He let Death swallow him up, and He stabbed that dragon from within the belly, brought the monster down. He can do all things. Hell cannot stand before Him. He saved us. He is able. May God deliver our loved ones from the mouths of their dragons and from the Hell within them. 

"Done is a battle on the dragon black,
Our champion Christ has confounded his force;
The gates of hell are broken with a crack,
The sign triumphal raisèd is the cross,
The devils tremble with hideous voice,
The souls are redeemed and to the bliss can go,
Christ with his blood our ransom does endorse:
Surrexit dominus de sepulchro."