English 1100
Today more and more people are getting the feeling that they are living a draft, and someday later, their life will be transmitted onto a clean copy. Trying to fill in the void inside, they still get no satisfaction. It leads to various outcomes, some better, and some worse. What people eventually want is a piece of happiness – an abstract term that everybody interprets individually. Elizabeth Renzetti and Gabor Mate each describe the factors that contribute to and symptoms that arise from loneliness and substance abuse, respectively. Mate claims that some people find chemical substances give them what they need, while Renzetti describes others who take up the route of solitude in order to stay within their comfort zone. One way or another, both issues have a very negative impact on human health and in order to resist this, people have to make a decision that is not so easy to take. It is also not so easy to take because the key problem for both issues is solitude and for now there is no pill for that, so everyone has to fight it individually and it is not always successful. Elizabeth Renzetti's “The Trouble of Solitude” and Gabor Mate's “Embraced by the needles” both demonstrate that people who suffer from addictions and loneliness have similar feelings of isolation and issues with self-worth.
According to Renzetti and Mate, loneliness and addiction are caused by isolation and poor self-worth; however, they disagree about other feelings that may be involved. In comparing the two essays, one can begin by comparing the circumstances of each of its subject groups: those who are lonely and those who are addicts. Both of these groups share a common trait of unhappiness; although drug addicts have come to their state because of unhappiness, and the unsociable or lonely people experience unhappiness due to their state, it makes both groups miserable. To understand better the origin of the problem we have to understand the chronology of the sequence. Here, despite the evident similarity in the overall state, the essays are presented differently. “Embraced by the needle” analyzes how feelings of incompletion and low self-esteem originate in drug addicts, while Renzetti’s essay about “Trouble with Solitude” pays more attention to what this problem leads to. In the essay “Embraced by the needle” the author gives examples of scientific researches, where tests on animals close to human behavioral constitution show that mistreatment in early childhood leads to a desire to get love and empathy from somewhere in the adult life. In addition, questioning drug addicts reveals that the tests are truthful in the human world (Mate). A psychologically challenging start in life, then, might lead to the irresistible desire to fill in that gap with something similar. Another finding brought up Renzetti’s essay shows that for any drug to work in the brain, it has to have the same chemicals that are already present in our brains. When people grow up in an unhappy or insufficiently happy environment we are trying to find the substitute to these chemicals in adult life. Unluckily, it happens that drugs possess just what we need. Even of for a short period they fill people’s lives with significance and make life’s drafts look life possibly clean copy. However, there is always a downside, always a payback.
While drug addiction has been researched and shown to have roots in childhood experiences and other contributing factors, no such research explains the factors that lead to loneliness, but loneliness does seem to have its roots in history. It has not been shown that childhood experiences necessarily lead to loneliness, though the overall concept of modern society being guilty of the lifestyle people are leading today. Throughout history, people have avoided loneliness and isolation. It was impossible to kill a mammoth alone, to fight off enemies, or to conquer new lands. Lonely people were chased by fears and incomprehensible natural phenomena, which were inevitably frightening. From ancient times, people united in clans, communities, creating common rituals, shared duties, and responsibilities inside their groups. The sense of security and confidence in the future seemed to be available only in the society of their own kind (Hari). The essay “Loneliness: The Trouble with Solitude,” indicates that today’s society is experiencing what may be a global-scale problem. People are becoming so unsociable that it may lead to some sort of catastrophe.
Issues with health also unite the separate issues of loneliness and addiction; the stigma of merely being lonely means that many are not treated seriously, while those suffering from addiction are often encouraged to seek out additional/outside help. People might typically think that drug abuse leads to health problems while loneliness is a solely psychological problem that is easily treated. As we see in the essays, this assumption is not correct. Although drug addicts have many health issues, lonely people also suffer from physical problems as well. Even though they start their journey with a psychological problem, the lonely might end up with symptoms that “suppress the immune system and cardiovascular function and increase the amount of stress hormone the body produces. It causes wear and tear on a cellular level and impairs sleep” (Renzetti). The difference between the drug addiction and solitude is that the first one can be easily detected and is usually more discussed, while the latter – is usually hidden for years because it is perceived even more shameful. This is another factor why solitude is a risky state for a person. As the brain needs to have a specific connection with the addiction material, which is not always the case, the number of vulnerable people who are predisposed to addictive tendencies varies from 8 to 15 percent (Mate). It is not that much in terms of general beliefs. This lessens the scale of fear related to the drug addiction. Loneliness has a larger impact on our mental and physical health than many imagine, and drug addictions are not as devastatingly scary as are initially imagined and were brought up to believe (Harris). What remains certain is that both issues are truly harmful to human nature.
If we peel off all the layers of researches, stigmas, beliefs and interpretations of the two problems that are being discussed, we will be left with the same residue – loneliness. This key issue is the underlying reason why people turn to substances and obviously the reason why people feel lonely and sociably unwanted or unsuitable. When talking about the drug addiction we are dealing with all different sorts of loneliness; lack of friends, family, people who can support during the withdrawal period, people who can motivate to change the path. The feeling of uncertainty in tomorrow and own powers is a devastating feeling that is easily substituted for a better one with the help of drugs. It is much more comforting to be lonely while being high. Unfortunately, despite the moments of happiness, drug substances do not substitute negativity in one’s life. Loneliness does not go away, but it rather increases, making drug addicts loose even those few people they have in their environment. A vicious circle gets only harder to break.
The feeling of social incarceration is also a result of loneliness that for some reason has been taken to a greater level from which it is very hard to escape. Loneliness became an inevitable companion of civilization and a payback for its progress. Even when talking about expats like Shaheen Shivji, who live away from their natural society; she has not managed to search for people or communities of Afghan people in the US. She does not feel like she belongs to the US where she spent most of her life, still she does not take any actions (Renzetti). Having caught loneliness, it is very hard to get out by yourself. People are burdened by their loneliness that burdens them; still they can do nothing in order to heal from this. Loneliness is not considered to be a disease. It has no remedies, no magic pill. Only another human who will not be afraid of all the mental work, could slowly, step-by-step, take down the wall of alienation, which cuts off a lonely person from the rest of the world. It reminds a “Sleeping beauty” fairy tale in this regard. The essay about loneliness also stresses the importance of people “coming out” with their problem, since it is such a taboo subject. It gives an example of an actor who has been suffering extreme loneliness despite the fame and glory and who eventually decided to take off the mask and show his “real” face to the world in the hope that it will help people in similar situations (Renzetti). Unfortunately, there are many of those. Having caught loneliness that led to drug addiction may be even more devastating. Because there is this constant feeling of loneliness that is replaced by moments of happiness and then back to the initial state. For the physically dependent people, the presence of another human who can build a bridge to them and establish relations with them is vital.
Summing up the statements mentioned above, it is amazing how connected we are with our ancestors that walked this planet thousands of years ago. Despite the technical, intellectual and other revolutions, we still long to be a part of that group we once were meant to be part of. We need our tribe. When we are left outside the tribe, we feel bad, we feel out of place and eventually we feel lonely. As a result, we often turn to things that supplant this sense of tribe even if for an instance. We are constantly searching for happiness and believe that it lies somewhere when in reality happiness lies in all of us and what we need to do is step outside our comfort zone and reach for it.
Works Cited
Renzetti, Elizabeth. “Loneliness: The trouble with solitude” from “Essay writing for
Canadian students with Readings” by Davis Roger, Davis K. Laura.
Mate, Gabor. “Embraced by the needle” from “Essay writing for
Canadian students with Readings” by Davis Roger, Davis K. Laura.
Harris Rebecca. “The loneliness epidemic: We're more connected than ever - but are we feeling more alone?”. Independent (online). 30 March 2015. Web.
Hari, Johann. “The likely cause of Addiction has been discovered and it is not what you think”. Huffington Post (online). 20 January 2015. Web.
