all that you have of home

if you could take a potion to erase your most desperate fixation on whatever most obsessive addiction, would you?

i don't mean vicodin or alcohol, no heroin junkie stories tonight; i refer to chemical dependence. the University Of Virginia Health System Website declares that chemical dependence is a term "used to describe the compulsive use of chemicals (drugs or alcohol) and the inability to stop using them despite all the problems caused by their use. used to describe the compulsive use of chemicals (drugs or alcohol) and the inability to stop using them despite all the problems caused by their use." in that context, the question i pose may be moot, because the whole point of the term is that one literally cannot find it within oneself to unlock the shackles that bind them to the substance that haunts one.

what i propose, however, is a psychological question: if those shackles fell off, if one could with a word remove that mental block that made it impossible to even dream of a life outside one's dependency, would one suddenly find oneself equpped with all the weapons needed to stage a revolt, and sieze back control of one's life? would all things immediately seem brighter, more vibrant, more focused, and no obstacle too fantastic to sidestep? or would one shrink back into the fold of that addiction, seeking its familiarity, its double-bladed protection and whimsical promises?

what is it that would be stripped away, assuming only one thing is the major force exerting its pull upon a person; how would the other factors of one's livelihood and temperment pick up the slack of the newly vanished? is there but a sole component buried in the entanglement of yearning and desperation, the merger between reckless extravagence and self-made prophecies of worthlessness?

could a formula be concocted to errode that which ties one most suffocatingly to one's acursed weakness? for how long would it work, and in what manner; would a person have to direct the flow of the cleansing liquid, like a guru guiding a soul through the unblocking of wretched chakras?

would it matter? would the thing that plagues deepest be conscious, a compulsion, not a circumstance; a choice? it is said that chemical dependence is the worst form of addiction, because the psychological need is near indistinguishable from the physical. what if one could flood clean all traces of the latter, obliterate the rembrance of peace coming from relieved muscles, but the taste of necessity still lingered, glutinous and firm as plaque?

what if, in the end, one would glance between the steep, shadowed ridge to rigoured recovery and the smooth silver slide back to old standbys, and flee to find solace in the ever-familar ghost of cold nails scarring skin and synapses?

the answer may just be that one Occam could never gleen, for its sheer obviousness; one's addiction is to submit, to sink one's soul into the chemical embrace with all due abandon. all is hopeless when that erstwhile paramour's love was never the strived-for goal, but simple scenery on the path to oblivion.