I used to think that people who were addicted to nicotine—like Jay Gatsby—were a bad kind of person. Why did I trust in them?
“Do you think anything like you will want to work with unless you can afford to kill your best friend and use him for more than chemical comfort?” (The Great Gatsby, The Great Gatsby)
I’m well aware of the toxic effects of alcohol and drugs—most people have looked at the brilliant world of an addicted individual for years—the feelings that a) smoke or b) take drugs don’t just make you feel good at first, they change how you choose to live your life, and that’s a pretty impressive feat.
And I’m not saying people should be addictive to any drugs or alcohol. That’s not right, and as you’re aware, there are lots of things that help people, like love and family and friendship. No one who likes cigarettes or alcohol should be hooked on it, and that’s certainly not true. However, why would it be great to be addicted to something? Why would it make you a good person?
“You must be a better person when you don’t smoke.”
Sometimes it’s not just one thing that makes you a good person, but many. Well, that would be my argument now: The people who are addicted to the habit of smoking or drinking are maybe an anomaly, like a unique personality type and my family does not fit into that. Some people are as addicted to nicotine as the millions of different kinds of drugs the world suffers, including those cannabis and alcohol are addicted to. This is one reason most people who are addicted to these drugs might see their addiction as a moral right.
But why should that be a good thing? People will spend their entire lives addicted to drugs or cigarettes and not see it as a good thing? I don’t think so. I will not write any article to defend drugs, but I will contribute to this with my opinion on addiction. There is nothing morally good about drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes. But then, so many negative things come with these addictive things like addiction to bad behavior and, yes, addictions for crime. We all know that these things can have deadly outcomes, but they also have dangerous effects on people’s health. The way I put it, a lot of the harms of addiction are unintentional and can happen either accidentally or deliberately.