Isolation is stoking our addictions

Rarely has the public imagination been so injected with the notion of a drug as the way out. AstraZeneca, Pfizer, BioNtech; these names have seeped into our discourse with such ease that it seems hard to imagine the shadowy time before them when vaccines were something routinely administered to children and the elderly. A time before we were bombarded with images of syringes and phials of medicine on conveyor belts, a time before a drug meant liberation. 

For addicts living through the pandemic, the idea of a drug as liberation is a well-worn pathway. But there is no vaccine to return them to any sort of freedom or to offset the damage caused by nearly a year of isolation. Because for addicts, to be alone is to suffer.

Like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, the present-day addict is condemned to the margins, the bearer of a dark truth of which they can never be unburdened.