PUBLICAFFAIRS, MARCH 2012 (US EDITION)
I lie on my bed in the waning afternoon and I try to find a way out of this. Just a few more days, I tell myself, but I hardly care now…And as far as tonight, it’s taken care of: I can already taste it. I get up and pace, and I start to get excited. Dopamine release is narrowed by addiction, specialized, stilted, inaccessible through the ordinary pleasures and pursuits of life, but gushing suddenly when anything associated with the drug comes into awareness. Just a flicker, an image, a word echoing in memory, a rumbling in the gut, that first lurch of withdrawal symptoms, or the scent of hoisin sauce from a Chinese restaurant, eerily similar to the smell of opium bubbling. Yes, ...
