The console that wasn't there.

Here's the funny thing about addiction.

Well, there's more than one, and it's not really all that funny, if you stop to think about it. Human beings are born to want, after all. Night and day, just unthinking, unfeeling wanting machines. And it's entirely encouraged to accrue certain addictions, provided that they are the socially acceptable ones. I'd even go so far as to say that addictions come and go like fads, masquerading under the name of "goals," or "values."

The fact of the matter is that no one cares what you do with yourself as long as it's not getting in the way of the March of Progress.

That's one side of the story. Then there are the other, private addictions.

It is trendy to quit these habits, or to pretend as if you are interested in quitting these habits -- it generates the impression that you, although fallen, are taking an active interest in reforming your life for the better. And the repentant sinner is a very sexy role to play, particularly when said role is accompanied by a lot of swaggering and posturing and backed by the moral dictates of the masses. But, let's face it, everyone knows it's a farce. And even if you're actually interested in quitting, even if you know that a habit is truly bad for you and that you'd be doing yourself a favor by ridding yourself of it -- it simply doesn't work that way.

You think that the need will go away if you replace it with something else. You think that you'd be alright if you can just make it through this one night, week, month, year, life. But it's never that simple. Sometimes doing damage is the only way to feel better.

And we all know that addictions of the body are childlike compared to addictions of the mind...

"But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo,
and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the
dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands
clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fin-
gers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there."

-William Gibson, Neuromancer