Drug Addiction, Liberty, and Natural Law

Requiem for a Dream captures and displays the lives (if you could even call them that) and ultimate demise of four drug addicts. Depicted with sharp, jarring shots and dark imagery, Darren Arronofsky's film certainly gives a good case as to why no one should ever even touch heroin. While I definitely came to care and sympathize for Harry, Marion, Tyrone, and Sara, I felt myself becoming increasingly frustrated and weary of their drug fueled benders and seemingly brainless choices. Requiem for a Dream certainly begs the question of whether or not drug addicts are in control of their will, and thus also examines the state of a drug addict's humanity.

In David Hume's Of Liberty and Necessity, the relationship between liberty and necessity are examined. According to Hume, like the phenomenon of the physical world, human beings act in accordance to a set of natural laws which govern our actions. If we were to look at the entirety of human existence and analyze how human beings behaved, it would be fairly obvious that mankind has behaved relatively the same throughout all of human history--"the same uniformity and regular operation of natural principles are discernable." This, according to Hume, indicates that there are some natural laws which guide individuals to make choices and live in a way which not only benefits his or herself, but benefits society as well, which Hume stresses is not only an important aspect of human life, but is actually a necessity.

It would be nice to say that the life of a human is clear cut and predetermined--we must simply live and listen to our intuition, for it is in line with natural law. This would make for a very happy world as well. However, it is clear that mankind seems to err...a lot. Requiem for a Dream highlights a very severe result of human error: drug addiction. So how is it that if there is a set of laws which should guide an individual to the most prime life possible, someone can make a choice that literally erodes at his or her humanity? Hume would blame this on liberty, on the freedom to choose whether or not to follow those natural laws or not.

Heroin is not the most addictive drug someone can use. In fact, for many people, it takes a few uses to develop an addiction. Because of this, an individual's will (the internal impression we feel and are conscious of when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or our new perception of the mind) has lead him or her to make a clear, conscious, and free choice to use heroin. Of course, overtime, this freedom is eliminated once addiction takes over. It appears that drug addicts (when they get to the point that the four individuals in the movie got to) are not only not in line with natural human law, but have also lost their liberty--these are two aspects of humanity that Hume emphasizes as being true and real for every individual.

Are drug addicts less human than individuals with the ability to exercise freedom and adhere to natural law? I think this is an interesting concept when analyzing our country's current approach to drug addicts. In my opinion, the difference between a drug addict and a murderer is that a murderer has clearly and concisely (for the most part, I suppose) exercised his or her freedom and made the choice to murder. A drug addict, on the other hand, has lost all ability to clearly and concisely choose the action that would be best. Regardless, according to the law, they are criminals who deserve punishment. Harry and Tyrone's fates land them in a god awful prison. When Harry's arm becomes infected, the doctor's treat him with disgust and curse him for being an addict. Although it was Harry's choice to use drugs in the beginning of his time as a drug user, his liberty was so depleted that it nearly became impossible for him to make a decision that would help him and not hurt him. What can you say about an individual who is not only acting in opposition to human law, but has also lost their freedom?

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’?

Finite Choices with Drugs

Requiem for a Dream is a movie about four people who become enslaved to the effects of drugs. The movie centers around a young man named Harry who is already an active user at the start of the movie. He and his friend Tyrone take drugs on a daily basis, normally just as a way to kill time and have fun. Later into the movie we see that Harry has a girlfriend named Marion who also uses, and eventually in an attempt to lose weight Harry’s mother, Sara Goldfarb, begins to take diet pills. Harry and Tyrone decide to become dealers so that they can make money and eventually have as much supply as they could ever want. At the same time, Harry and Marion decide to open a store for Marion to design clothes in using the money that they earn in the streets. They become successful at first, but then are brought down to where they were to begin with. Meanwhile Sara is enjoying the pleasant effects of the pills along with the weight loss, but soon becomes ever more desperate and begins taking more pills than prescribed. The movie sends a clear message that drugs lead to nothing but misery. The four characters end up with tragic ends: Harry loses an arm due to a serious infection from injections, Tyrone is sent to prison (for the second time) after taking Harry to the hospital, Marion has sold her body for drugs in return for sexual favors, and Sara has been sent to an insane asylum due to her mental breakdown. 

One thing to consider after watching this movie is if this was an inevitable ending for the four characters. Were they subject to a deterministic system of events, or was it their freely chosen choice? Before I discuss this I just want to suggest that in a world of determinism choices are still made; however, choices tend to become very finite if a certain combination of events occurs. In the case of humans, our will is guided and influenced by our social contexts so that under certain circumstances we can only will ourselves to do a certain number of actions. For example in J. R. Lucas’s Determinism, he states that “Undetermined actions are random actions. But a man’s random actions are not those we can usefully ask him his reasons for undertaking, or hold him responsible for” (535). Humans have the will to freely choose among a certain number of possibilities, but without some degree of determinism our actions become quite random. There are some things about us that cannot be controlled, one example being emotions. If one’s mother dies that person cannot freely choose to be happy or sad. They can, however, make certain choices that will either cause them to feel sad or cause them to feel happy. 

Getting back to the movie, are the actions that these characters chose a product of free will or determinism? I inquire about this specifically due to the presence of drugs. There is plenty of evidence that supports that drugs affect people’s behavior, and so the question is if the choices made by the characters were determined or freely chosen. This is a hard question to answer because another potent question about drugs is if we are truly ourselves when we use them. If the answer is yes, then we can say that the choices the characters made were their own. If the answer is no, then we must turn to the movie for a solution. 

Harry, Tyrone, and Marion were each addicted to the different substances that they used. If they had had an infinite supply, then Harry and Tyrone would have never sold drugs since getting more was their reason for selling in the first place. Marion would have never sold her body and most likely would have stayed with Harry. Harry would have never left the city and maybe Sara would have made a recovery with her son around to help her. Of course there are other possibilities that could occur from such a change, but my point is to try and show that the actual events of the movie unfolded due to a combination of preceding conditions. Another minor change could have been if Harry’s arm wasn’t infected. The hospital scene would never have happened and the two would have had another set of choices to choose from. To address my first question about if the characters feely choose their ends or not, I say that initially they did choose a certain path to take by using drugs. By taking this path some possibilities closed while others opened. I do not think it would have been possible for any of the characters to have stopped everything they were doing and choose something else. Maybe they could have desired it, but because of the decision to take drugs they were too late to choose a differing path.