Downward Spiral of Desire

It is painful to watch as friends we know, family members, or even strangers on television struggle with drug addiction. The amount of time, energy, and money spent keeping up drug habits is unbelievable. Quite often however, we walk away with a hand wave of dismissal, thinking, “How can someone do that? It looks so painful and miserable, just stop.” Obviously, and quite evidently, it is not that simple. A reply to this might be, “Well we all have free will, so he just has to want to quit badly enough – if he really wanted to kick the habit.” Some of this is true, but there are powerful interactions in the brain taking place on the chemical level – a discussion for another class. But there is substance to this notion of free will and desire. Humans do have freedom of action and desires to do certain things, but what separates us from animals is moral responsibility, a notion that Frankfurt touches on in the latter part of his essay.  

Requiem for a Dream is a telling, though very painful and often times gruesome, story of four individuals plagued by their addictions to opiates and other drugs. We watch while each person’s lifestyle, relationships, and health are tossed from side to side as simple actions are dominated by the desire to maintain a high. Although the specific drugs or desires vary in some ways for each character in the film, all of them struggle with desires of craving a high from a drug and also the desire to have something better in life.

            Discussion of free will and desire can be complex. Just because an individual wants to do something (assuming he has the free will to make the decision to do so –which he does), there may be other factors in his or her way that channel a desire to do something else. As Frankfurt says, it may be true that “A wants to X even when his desire to X is only one among his desires and when it is far from being paramount among them” (542).

Put another way, even though someone may be steadfast in the intention of doing something, he may just as well do something else because “his desire to do X proves to be weaker or less effective than some conflicting desire” (543). Harry and Marion have a wonderful dream of really being a worthy couple one day. They love each other, and though they don’t say it in the film, we can assume that they desire to grow up together and have a family and settle in a house. They plan to be on the right track soon and have all of their old habits and problems put aside. But when the couple decides to try one hit before embarking on their planned adventure, it ends in failure. The one hit is only the beginning of an intense desire to satisfy an unquenchable thirst of chasing that dragon.

Another similar situation occurs between Harry and his friend Tyrone. The two plan for their big deal to make them lots of money. But soon, their addictions turn the “one little taste” into a downward spiral of hopelessness and pain.

Clearly their desire for the rich life was put on hold to feed the desire to get high. The free will that each had in the beginning and the desire for a promising life only got in the way of the stronger desire for drugs and drug money. Harry and Tyrone travel hundreds of miles from home seeking more drugs, while Marion prostitutes herself for more drug money.

Harry has conflicting “first-order desires,” as Frankfurt would put it. He craves the drug AND he wants to refrain from taking it. So back to this question at the beginning of how can some quit and others can’t? Are their desires stronger? Perhaps. Frankfurt might say that the enjoyment of freedom “comes easily to some [and not others]” (547). I have not elaborated too much on freedom. What say you about it?

In this discussion I have also intentionally left out Harry’s mother. Although her long-term desire to be on TV and for Harry to be happy with a family of his own is soon shadowed by her addiction to pills, I somehow felt that her free will was not on par with the other characters’. For some reason I thought of her as having insecurity problems (or perhaps greater insecurity problems…) that got in the way of a our theme of free will. She was so focused on what people on TV thought of her and wanted so badly to let everyone know she had an awesome son. I didn’t buy it. I believe our conversations on free will and desire may be better had with Harry, Marion, and Tyrone.

But I could be wrong. What do you think? Is Sarah Goldfarm’s addiction (which of course counters her intention of being “somebody” – whomever that is…) has the same themes within it as the other younger characters? Do arguments about her situation carry the same weight as the others’?