Help me become an addict

When the White Queen told Alice she had sometimes believed as many as six contradictory things before breakfast, she spoke for us all. But our irrationality goes further than a simple after-the-event report. Even while we’re believing it, we can know that something we’re believing contradicts something else we believe.

Take, in my case, addiction. I believe that addicts lack self-discipline and willpower. Yet I know that this cannot really be the explanation. I feel a faint but ineradicable disapproval of people who can’t stop eating, smoking, drinking or injecting themselves with heroin, while knowing that this reaction is not only harsh, but must be ignorant.

I half suspect people just need to get a grip; yet half accept this cannot be the problem, because we all know addicts who don’t lack willpower. My late father, for instance, an entirely self-disciplined man, exhibited the classic symptoms of cold turkey when deprived of cigarettes: depression, distraction, pallor and shaking hands.