What can a firefly teach us?

How many times in your life have you had the experience where you meet someone new and they quite quickly and suddenly become an important part of your day-to-day existence? Maybe it's not happened to you in your life. Perhaps you're fortunate in only having meaningful and long lasting relationships with the people in your life - family, friend or acquaintance.

The chances are, however, that if you have lived to at least middle age then you've met more than one firefly - a person that enters your life for a brief period, has an impact on you (small or significant) and then abruptly disappears from your life, often for different reasons but usually because they don't "fit" into your way of life. I had this experience myself recently. It's certainly not the first time I encountered a firefly. While at college I met more than my fair share. I remember a guy called Stuart who was a very demonstrative individual. It always felt like he was rehearsing for some elaborate role in a play written by a Russian classicist and performed at a well trodden theatre. There was an "actor" vibe about him and his mannerisms seemed lifted almost entirely out of the film Withnail and I. He was a friend of my housemate (and close friend) Simon and one time we all dropped LSD and Stuart proceeded to start re-enacting scenes from Withnail and I, including Withnail's famous speech near the end of the movie where he was walking through the park (see below). The more Stuart got into the role, the louder he got, until he messed up one of the lines, talking about the majestic "fundament" rather than "firmament", which, for some reason, put all of us into a state of hysterical laughter. Although it was mostly drug induced.


The most challenging fireflies I dealt with in my life were when it came to female friends or lovers. I remember well a girl called Lyla who I briefly liaised with at college but decided to end it with after only a few weeks. I remember being disturbed by her recounting to me how many guys she had slept with. Despite only being 20 she had had more than 40 sexual partners. For some reason, I decided that she was "cheap" for this reason alone. I was young, naive in the ways of love and highly judgemental. Weeks after I ended it with her she drunkenly accosted me in the student union bar,accusing me of contributing towards her poor degree result. I didn't know what to say so I said very little. That was typical of the young, timid guy that I was - I was easily mortified if I offended someone or had a negative impact on their life and I was also not yet grizzled by life experiences or able to look at things holistically.

So, just recently I had a short I guess you could call "relationship" (for want of a better word) with a woman I met on PoF. In the interests of fairness, I won't name her (she knows who she is) but I felt drawn to her because, like me, she struggled with keeping her life on a straight course. She is a fellow addict and although our substances of choice differed, it was clear that we both shared some devastating consequences of the effect of our addiction on our lives. We dated a few times but unfortunately we fell out because, although I have been working on my recovery from addiction and not using any substances aside from those medically prescribed, she is still actively using. As has been well documented, addicts who are caught in the maelstrom of addiction and active using, usually attract a considerable degree of chaos into their lives. Along with this chaos is a very powerful urge to self-destruct. I know this feeling all too well because it was with me throughout my using and is something I still feel in recovery. The difference is I have worked on quelling this feeling and accepting my shortcomings. It's been a hard lesson to learn but also I have come to realise, painfully, that it is one that can only be learned by the individual going through it. I shared this notion with this firefly who came into my life briefly and who shared with me the pain of her own addiction.

I was also acutely aware that I could show her the door that leads to a place of calmness and contentment, where you don't have to be trapped in a cycle of using - where the shame, the guilt and the despair just perpetuate this state of misery..but I could not make her walk through it. She alone had to make that choice. Unfortunately, she chose to lash out at me one night after a bout of heavy drinking and I sadly knew all-too-well where that anger came from. It comes from a place of sadness and fear, low self esteem and deep insecurity.

So, as abruptly as she entered my life, she left it again. And despite sharing intimate secrets of the source of our pain and emptiness with each other, ultimately it amounted to nothing. Or that's what it seemed at first as I tried to make sense of why she was part of my existence for such a short space of time.

Then I started to think of all the other people I had met during my life who were also fireflies and followed a "here today, gone tomorrow" mantra. Each one of them taught me something about myself and my relationship with the world and with other people. Stuart taught me that within each person there is a jester archetype, the fool of the tarot cards who just wants to express his playfulness and creativity with the world. He taught me that it's ok to express your eccentricity. So many people are afraid of this but they needn't be. I was grateful to him for that gift.

And my most recent firefly, K, she taught me that there are people who share the same sense of suffering as I do. Some people feel the world so strongly that it makes them recoil, in the same way that you would flinch when touching something uncomfortably hot. She also taught me that addiction affects people from every walk of life and, even though I kind of knew this already, I felt her presence was like a mirror being held up to my soul. I had a strong urge help her and I did try for a little while but it was obvious that she was not yet at a stage where she wanted to embrace getting better. I know this from being there myself. I would tell people, "Yes I really do want to stop using" while inside I couldn't wait for them to piss off and leave me alone so I could get high.

I am grateful to K. She opened a curtain for me. She showed me that those parts of myself that hurt also hurt the same places in others. She tested my patience, my compassion, my humility and, most importantly, my recovery.

And I will be forever grateful to her for the brief time she was a part of my life.

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can; 

and wisdom to know the difference.

Repetitive Same Injury - How I fell out of love with video games and then learned to love them again

My so called MMO life

If you're a gamer, like me and you've been playing games for most of your youth and adult life, then chances are you have at one point suffered from wrist, finger or elbow pain caused by RSI (Repetitive Strain or Stress Injury). I had it so bad in 2005/2006 that I had to have intensive physiotherapy in an attempt to improve the mobility in my right hand. (And no it wasn't caused by you know what!) The problem was, I had a job that involved using a computer all day - I was a web designer - and when I used to go home in the evening, after 8 hours work, I would carry on using a computer while playing an MMO called Final Fantasy XI for another 5-6 hours. This was, as you can easily imagine, a recipe for disaster when it came to managing my physical health.

Any of you who have played MMO's for any length of time know just how strongly they rely on what I call cyclical mechanics. This basically means that you once you've levelled your character or avatar to a certain point and unlocked his or her main abilities you simply cycle through a set number of abilities which translate into key presses or controller button sequences. And you repeat this process. Over and over...and over..

In FFXI I would try to make things easier for myself by exploiting the game's very clever and efficient macro system which 'chained' all the component parts of my character's attacks or spells into one or two simple buttons on the controller. I would use a PS2 controller for FFXI and all my macros were stored on the L1 and R1 buttons which simply meant I pressed two or three buttons to access and execute them; either of the shoulder buttons to bring the list up and left or right on the D-pad then X to select them.

When I graduated from FFXI, I felt a sense of relief. The game had sucked me in for the best part of two years and I felt some regret about how much time I had dedicated to it. Regret and disappointment that I had lost the ability to recognise how much I had let it intrude and effectively dictate my leisure time. I used to chuckle at the warning the game displayed before it loaded up:

A Word to Our Players

Exploring Vana'diel is a thrilling experience.
During your time here, you will be able to talk, join,
and adventure with many other individuals in an experience
that is unique to online games.

That being said, we have no desire to see your real life
suffer as a consequence.
Don't forget your family, your friends, your school,
or your work.

And yet, I happily let it take over. I acquiesced to the game's horribly outdated design ethos - a leftover from Sony's popular MMO Everquest. This design ethos forced players to cooperate for long periods of time to achieve anything of note. In Everquest, you could spend 24 real life hours (yes real life hours) camping a remote spot on the game world map on the off chance that a rare dragon would spawn and on the even rarer chance that if it did appear and your group managed to claim it and beat it, you might have a 1% chance of getting some cool pixel based item to enhance your character. It was as if FFXI, looked to Everquest, adopted its difficulty and ludicrous time sinks and then took to punishing you for your mistakes. Everything in FFXI seemed to require a group of 5 or 6 players to traverse through dangerous areas where a wrong turn could mean death. And in the first few years of FFXI, death meant you lost experience points and, sometimes, your character could lose a level. And they had the cheek to put that warning on screen before loading up the game!

Instead of questioning whether it was right to invest all my spare time just so I could watch my virtual avatar grow just a little more attractive than the week before, I happily skipped through the tulips singing the praises of the game vigorously on internet forums. FFXI had this strange ability to garner fierce loyalty amongst its advocates. Probably because they knew how much time it demanded of them and they felt determined to justify to themselves why it was all worth it. I

So what does all that have to do with RSI and video games? Well, it's partly to give you some background as to what it was like playing an MMO that had such very demanding requirements. Often the game would create a lot of tension in me which probably caused me to grip my controller way too hard. I have heard people say that they felt that their relationship with FFXI was a complicated one. Some would even go as far as to say it was like a relationship with an abusive spouse. I don't know about that but so much of the game was incredibly tense, mostly because it required such a fine balance of mechanics for you to progress. Every party member had to be on the ball and know their job (as classes were known in the game) as well as possible. Useless, inexperienced members could be kicked out of groups and get a bad reputation on their server. This could sometimes mean they would struggle to get groups in the future although the nicer parties would stop and help less experienced players get better with advice and suggestions.

FFXI did have a very strong community because everything required such close cooperation. There was a sharing mentality. It has to be said, that of all the online games I have played over the years, FFXI had easily the best community of players I had come across. Square Enix, the game's publishers, built the foundations of the game on a strong sense of community. Players would help each other out, discover new mechanics or secrets and then share them with everyone else. It was something rare and of its time. Sure, there were 'difficult' players who didn't want to play ball but they were quickly weeded out. In general FFXI had a kind of 'pay it forward' mentality that meant people leaving the game would often happily give their high value gear away to friends or, sometimes, random players that they happened upon in the game's many starting areas.

The bite of RSI

FFXI contributed to my RSI because its long, demanding play sessions and cyclical mechanics would take its toll on me. One morning I woke up in a lot of pain and had to call in sick to work. My right elbow was sore and inflamed and there was intermittent shooting pains that extended from the middle of the ligaments on the top of my hand, up my forearm and could sometimes be felt past my elbow and behind the shoulder. I likened it at the time to feeling like I was a victim of a poisonous snake bite that was paralysing my arm. That’s what it really felt like.

I went to the doctor who signed me off work for a week and referred me to an excellent physiotherapist who gave me 5 free sessions that worked on massaging my arm, fingers and elbow, trying to loosen the two years of accumulated MMO tension! It helped a lot. As did careful management of both how long I used a computer for in a given day and stepping away from video games for a while.

MMO's I feel are a real problem for gamers. They start out as such a fun experience but can quite easily shift their perception in a gamer's head and suddenly they become too much like busy work. The strangely patronising design blueprints of the games don't help themselves at times because they will send players off on these ridiculous quests to fetch x amount of something arbitrary for the umpteenth time. When I moved from FFXI to World of Warcraft (WoW) I found myself both marvelling at the freedom - 'My God, you can actually do stuff in this game solo and progress! Not only that, you can travel everywhere and anywhere without some artificial quest related barrier to unlock first.' - but also drooling into my jumper and falling asleep at some of the banal, uninspired quests that gave scant regard to story and lore. I quickly realised this was a necessary evil and a result of Blizzard, the game’s creator, attempting to make the game appeal to as wide a demographic as possible, including those who didn’t really play many video games.

While it took a long time to work your way through FFXI's demanding main story or class related quests, when you did complete them you were rewarded with some truly stunning exposition cutscenes (Chains of Promathia anyone?). WoW was seriously lacking in this but it made up for it in lots of other ways. WoW, as I have said, was pure freedom. The problem with that was that this freedom meant I would play the game just as obssessively.

Even though I had taken a break from gaming, on medical advice for 6 weeks after the crippling attack that rendered my right arm useless, I soon found my way back. I began working my way through WoW with a female troll priest called Saraya. I also fell in love with PvP, especially battlegrounds and it was while grinding my way through the PvP ranks in Battlegrounds and the game's larger 40 v 40 zerg fests of modes like Alterac Valley that I felt the creeping doom of RSI clawing its way back in. You see, WoW wasn't a friendly game for RSI sufferers. It too relied on a cyclical series of standard attacks and key presses, only there were no real macros to help you - well, none that could easily be implemented. No, WoW relied on people taking advantage of its highly customisable UI instead, although its core mechanics boiled down to, in essence, either click an attack button with your mouse or press an assigned ability button on the keyboard. On the surface, this was a more simplified version of FFXI's interface. That required numerous button presses because it was hampered by a UI that was tied to the Playstation 2 version of the game. WoW was first and foremost a PC/Mac game so it was built around a mouse and keyboard. So, yes, on the surface WoW was easier to manage but there was something in me that found it difficult to adjust to just mechanically pressing keys on my keyboard. I seemed to masochistically and nonsensically like clicking abilities directly, which put just as much strain on my wrist as it meant 4-5 more hours a day of clicking a mouse. From web design to gaming.

How game design could help RSI sufferers

When I finally walked away from MMO's in 2007 after a second, ill fated return to FFXI, I did so having grudgingly accepted that I just couldn't really play games effectively anymore and still do my day job. I felt my gaming days were pretty much done. They weren't but I just couldn't see that at the time. Unfortunately, playing MMO's had systematically removed my enthusiasm for video games and flushed it down the toilet. What felt especially sad about this state of affairs was that I didn't really even see MMO's as proper video games anyway. They have some of the mechanics and design aesthetics of games but they are so watered down and simplified that they effectively become little more than glorified 3d chat rooms after a short while of playing and getting used to them.

RSI had provided the impetus to stop gaming and MMO's stripped my love for gaming away. Thankfully, this wasn't a permanent thing. Experience and management of my condition meant that I eventually returned to gaming properly in 2014, picked up a PS3 and a copy of The Last of Us and wondered why I had stayed away so long. Oh yeah, I remembered. It was because I couldn't do my job as a web developer and play games. My poor battered wrist couldn't manage it. Also, I was with a partner who didn't like games or see their value as entertainment. When I decided I could no longer work in the IT industry and my relationship fell by the wayside, I found a way back to games. But I have to be careful because I know, from experience, that I can only play for so long each day without feeling the consequences.

I also feel that game designers could do a lot more to help people with RSI who still want to play their games. Of course, not all games will be suitable anyway because they demand quick reactions as well as make you perform repetitive actions. Multiplayer shooters are a prime example of this and from my 2 months or so of playing Star Wars Battlefront, I realised that I couldn't kid myself about how effective I could be at that type of game. As much as I enjoyed it, I had to step away and realise that if I was to carry on gaming then I had to consciously manage my condition and play games that were a lot more suitable.

How I learned to love games all over again

The PS3 and games such as The Last of Us really reinvigorated my love of gaming. I saw how much the industry had evolved in terms of storytelling, narrative and mechanics. It was like my eyes had been opened all over again about the possibilities of gaming. Not only that, I found myself carving out a niche of games I knew I could manage and play in short spurts. The pause button became my new favourite way of saying stop, take a breather. Be mindful.

Maybe in future we will see games that are more mindful of RSI sufferers. There are heart warming stories of game companies such as Sony adapting controllers to accommodate people with certain disabilities, allowing them to play their favourite games that otherwise might be out of reach. So it is certainly not out of the realms of possibility that games might incorporate a simplified or adjusted set of mechanics or control systems into the heart of their games to aid RSI sufferers. Arguably some mobile games do this now by being very simple in nature to begin with and not requiring the mechanical press of a key or the click of a mouse.

In the meantime, there is a way to play your favourite games if you are an RSI sufferer. Be mindful. Manage and limit how often you use a computer or anything else that requires repetitive hand, wrist and elbow movements in a day. If you find it helps, use a gel support on a mousepad or a wrist support to cushion your ligaments.

And don't play MMO's. Really. Don't play them. Not only can they suck away your love of proper video games but they can chisel away at the raw edifice of your ability to do even the simplest tasks in life if you disregard how their droolingly stupifying mechanics can draw you in.

Video games are quite amazing really. You can genuinely fall in love with their worlds, their stories and the sheer satisfaction of getting to grips with their mechanics. You can do this by playing them, enjoying them and creating memorable moments with them. If you only play MMO's then, in my experience, you are in danger of arguing for the limitations of video games. And that doesn't help anyone in the long term.

Are video games finally starting to grow up?

If, like me, you've been playing video games for a long time then no doubt you have seen how impressively the industry has evolved from its very basic and rudimentary beginnings to the global, multi billion dollar behemoth industry it is today. Video games have become impressive, expensive spectacles and today's AAA titles cost many millions of dollars to develop, outstripping the budgets of some top Hollywood movie releases.

Whilst the technology involved in both playing and developing games has improved exponentially, for a long time gaming, as a leisure past time, was not 'mature' in terms of how willing it was to explore more universal themes that affect a lot of us in our everyday lives. The narrative structure and plot of many video games (if they even had a plot!), was usually incredibly basic and closely aligned to that of many popular fairy tales or children's stories. The reason for this is because, in the first 20-25 years of video gaming, children (between the ages of 7 and 16) were the primary consumers of games both in the Arcade and at home. Home games consoles such as the Nintendo NES and Sega Master System were popular in the 8 bit era and the Nintendo SNES and Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) ruled the roost in the 16 bit era. As is now commonly known, it wasn't until the release of Sony's PlayStation console in the West before gaming as a hobby started to be seen as 'cool' and 'acceptable' amongst older gamers (16-35 age group).

Interestingly enough, it seems that the popularity of gaming as a hobby in recent years is now most dominant in older adults. A 2014 study confirms this:

"The average age of someone who plays games is 31 years old. In fact, more gamers are over the age of 36 than between the ages of 18 to 35 or under the age of 18"
(Entertainment Software Association)

That is a surprising statistic - namely that there are more gamers over the age of 36 than under the age of 18. However, this may well be connected to the fact that games consoles are now more sophisticated and, subsequently, more expensive than they've ever been, so adults with a higher disposable income are more likely to own them.

Because of this trend in console gaming - something that is also somewhat true for the PC gaming market - there is an argument that this demographic are starting to demand something beyond the more traditional video game plot and narrative. In the video at the top of the page, I present the argument that gaming as a medium is starting to grow up and offer the older gamer a lot more. There is a willingness to go beyond the surface of character motivations and relationships in games, as well as a desire to expand the arena of subjects not normally covered in games. It is now not uncommon to find games that explore disability, discrimination, terminal illness, bullying, the list goes on. Whereas previously you would normally have to rely on television, cinema and literature to find these topics, it is arguably a welcome sign of maturity that we are now given the opportunity to explore these subjects in games as well.

Male Suicide: Why Men Need to Talk More about their Feelings

I find myself becoming increasingly upset with each story I read ,or that is relayed to me, regarding another male suicide victim. A couple of months ago, a good friend of mine told me how his step brother committed suicide out of the blue at the age of 45. On the surface, he seemed to have a life of abundance and happiness. He was financially secure with a good job, a wife and family that loved him and plenty of holidays abroad each year. Basically, he sounded like he had a lot in common with many men who have reached middle age in the west. Sadly, though, it wasn't just these surface things that he had in common with these men of a similar age. Just from speaking to my friend, it was clear that he was keeping a lot of his internal angst, strife and pain bottled up inside of him, not letting enough of it out to relieve the deep hurt and pain that was clearly eating away at him. While I do not pretend to have known him in any meaningful way - we met at my friend's wedding and shared a cab ride back to the hotel together - I can say that he was clearly in a lot of pain. Nobody commits suicide unless they are in a high degree of emotional (and sometimes physical) pain. What troubles me, is that this pain can be dealt with. But it requires the person to put their hand up and admit they need help in the first place. This is something I believe that men find especially hard to do.

So why is that? Why do men find it so difficult to ask for help? Well, we as a culture in the west seem to see it as a sign of weakness. I am not saying this idea is endemic in all parts of society but, when you consider how much of our values as individuals is handed down to us by generations of family members, then you can see why, for some vulnerable individuals, this can be a real problem. First of all, there is a culture in the UK that still persists to this day that used to be called "the stiff upper lip". It is the stupid, ingrained idea that men should put up and shut up. If you've got personal problems, are depressed or are struggling with how to express or handle the intense emotional difficulties you're experiencing, then the answer in this case seems to be - suck it up. Which basically equates to, stop complaining and get on with your life. This pathetic and deeply damaging attitude is synonymous with that hopelessly patronising platitude "Cheer Up! It might never happen". I don't know about you but anyone who has ever said that to me I have always wanted to universally punch into next week.

And that's coming from someone who is pretty much a pacifist.

This "Stiff Upper Lip" mentality is one of those that seems to have been accepted by large swathes of families who have passed it on as a key life value to their children, effectively damaging them by proxy emotionally. Why? Well, because you don't need to be a scientist or a doctor to know that if you constantly bottle up your emotions, especially feelings of sadness and anger, they are known to be contributing factors to crippling emotional and (sometimes) physical illnesses. Some cancers, for instance, are increasingly thought to be a product of repressed anger or emotional pain in more enlightened medical circles.

We are, each of us, different as individuals. While some may be able to cope with emotional difficulty because they have a strong, resilient character and the ability to switch off emotionally when they need to, others of us are not made this way and will be affected by their life experiences in a decidedly profound manner.

I think one of the saddest aspects of suicide that I hear with regards to male victims is this idea that they don't share how they are really feeling inside because they don't think they will be properly listened to or understood. If you join this together with the above mentioned cultural and generational aspects, as well as the often prevailing notion that men should always be the strong ones, then we are left with a depressingly dark picture of why so many men commit suicide. However, it really doesn't have to be this way.

When I was facing profound difficulty in my own life because of problems relating to addiction, I remember feeling that I didn't really want to reach out and ask for help - partly because I felt I was being a burden due to the nature of my own problem feeling self inflicted, but also because I was acutely aware of how I shouldn't have to ask for help as a man. Fortunately, I chose to listen to those people around me who showed me that I did deserve to receive help. We sometimes trip up as human beings and, when we do, we are fortunate that, in the wealthier western countries, there is a lot of (sometimes free) help out there. And it's out there precisely for that reason. I think the problem is that there is a big gap between the help that is available and convincing especially men that it is actually a sign of strength to reach out and ask for help, not weakness. While I am aware that the help available is often adequately advertised, the trick comes in convincing men, especially, to grasp it.

Let's think about that for a moment because it helps to deconstruct this very old, inaccurate view that men asking for help are eroding a sense of their own masculinity. If we try and look at ourselves holistically we realise that we are not robots as men. We are much more than the singular idea of masculinity that dominates certain cultural viewpoints of men. Human beings in general are physical, mental and emotional beings. And yet the emotional aspect of our make up is often overlooked and, at worse, sometimes ridiculed. I think this is slowly changing but unfortunately it's not changing enough to have permeated into the heart of society so men can feel more comfortable with the idea of themselves as emotional beings who can express themselves emotionally.

If men can accept the importance - or at least - relevance of the emotional aspect of their characters then they are much more likely to reach out and ask for help and, therefore, talk about the fact that they are struggling emotionally. I know from experience that when you do acknowledge how important it is to talk about your own, personal emotional strife and can share it with another, empathic person - professional or otherwise - it helps you at least come to terms with it. Sure, it may not necessarily make it easier to deal with in the short term but it can help put it into perspective more. That perspective can sometimes make a real difference because sometimes, our problems seem so insurmountable that they are like the Sword of Damocles, hanging by a thread over us and always a fraction away from completely overwhelming us.

Even if, by talking to someone about your problems you don't feel much relief in the short term, it can be an important first step in the process of healing. The more you share, the easier it becomes to sometimes find solutions that you might not have considered; something that can appear impossible if you are just running the same, damaging thoughts round and around inside your own head.

One of the most valuable growing experiences I have had, as a man, is by facing up to my own vulnerability and accepting it, I could be free to not only ask for help but also realise the importance of acknowledging both my feelings and my emotional side.

Give a voice to your anger and sadness as a man. Let this voice be heard by those that are able to really hear it empathically and reflect it back to you. In this process we are able to heal ourselves and, most importantly, this process can help prevent men who are suffering from thinking that the only way out of their pain is in suicide. Suicide is a permanent answer to a temporary problem. It may be a well worn phrase but it is also a very true one. We go through a lot of different phases of our lives as human beings, but our pain does not have to be a permanent truth, if we can learn the benefits of how to accept it and heal it.

The truth of addiction and co-dependence - Elliott Smith's lyrics (Part 3)

It's a lot easier to tell the truth usually.
Elliott Smith

While there are many different themes present in Elliott Smith's music, the one overriding thing which dominates his lyrics is a sense of wanting to present the truth of a situation, no matter how grim or difficult to look at it may be. In a way, I think he wants us - the listener - to play the role of the uncomfortable voyeur. In Needle in the Hay from his self-titled second album, we are most definitely in that role. But we are seeing the truth in a desperate person's situation.

He's wearing your clothes
Head down to toes, a reaction to you
You say you know what he did
But you idiot kid, you don't have a clue

This can be interpreted in different ways but essentially it seems to be saying that an addict, a desperate person, can look like you or me 'he's wearing your clothes'. Or it's also saying that the addict in this scenario is mimicking his/her naive partner who doesn't really know or understand how manipulative this person they are with is being. Hence, the 'you idiot kid, you don't have a clue'. Non drug users are sometimes ignorant of the world that the addict inhabits. It is a world of continually spinning lies and half truths so as to represent themselves as normal or the same as you or me. This stops them being discovered, or so they think. However, as I have said above, Elliott Smith wants us to see the truth of this situation and so we are taken on a journey with the addict as he goes to 'score' and, in his fevered brain - 'get well'.

Now on the bus
Nearly touching this dirty retreat
Falling out 6th and powell, a dead sweat in my teeth
Gonna walk walk walk
Four more blocks, plus the one in my brain

The addict is in the throes of withdrawal but knows that he just needs to make it to his dealers house. The line that stands out here is the mental, extra mile he has to go to overcome that psychological barrier, 'Four more blocks, plus the one in my brain' - this is the block that tells him he really shouldn't be doing this but he can't help himself because the addiction is controlling his behaviour. When he is able to finally use, the sense of relief pervades him and he almost turns on those who might criticise his behaviour:

And I don't want to talk
I'm taking the cure
So I can be quiet whenever I want
So leave me alone
You ought to be proud that I'm getting good marks

We can almost believe that he's talking to a parent here as the play on words of 'getting good marks' suggests a double meaning of marks as in school grades but also the needle marks from IV injection. He is mocking society's sense of competition and achievement as a contributing factor to why he is like this himself. Again, this is the truth of how a sub culture sees themselves. Smith is trying to shine a light into this area and allow us to see the truth of what is in there. No it isn't pretty but are addicts less valid or somehow less important because of the choices they make? Some might say this is the case but others might argue there is a certain hypocrisy in criticising their lifestyle choices when addiction is so prominent in so called 'mainstream' society. It's just better hidden there and less obvious because it's not concentrated in an alienated, sub culture of downtown Portland.

Needle in the Hay, is a good example of a Smith lyric which appears to not say much on the surface but reveals a lot when you delve into the motivations surrounding it. Also, it is as much a song about addiction as it is a song about codependence because the addict is with a person who either wilfully or naively does not see the issues with their behaviour. They are too wrapped up in the relationship to notice the huge elephant in the room which is sucking the life out of both of them.

The most obvious parallel to this song is The White Lady Loves You More which comes at the issue of addiction and codependence from a slightly different perspective. This time the partner of the addict knows about their behaviour but it powerless to stop it. They believe they are being sidelined by the power and hold that the 'White Lady' has over their partner:

You just want her to do anything for you
There ain't nothing that you won't allow

The barriers are gone, as are all inhibitions but the song poses a question as to why does the partner choose to stay with the person? They know they will always be second to the drug. And it doesn't seem to matter that the addict knows that their partner is aware of their addiction:

It's a long time since you cared enough for me to even be discrete
I know what this metal is for

The song switches perspectives rapidly, going from the partner to the addict and back again. It seems to end with the conclusion that the addict is a willing slave to the white lady. He wakes up from a disturbing dream where his addiction will be uncovered by the law, hence the policeman flashing the light but deals with this disturbance by running into the comforting arms of the drug.

You wake up in the middle of the night
From a dream you won't remember flashing on like a cop's light
You say she's waiting and I know what for

Again, however, it is important to stress that we shouldn't take literally everything Smith is saying or depicting. In his songs, metaphor is important. Both Needle in the Hay and The White Lady Loves You More are songs that highlight issues of addiction, codependence, truth, relationships, secrecy and lies. The songs are not autobiographical. Smith stated in several interviews that he wrote what he saw whilst living in different places. At the times these songs were written, he was living in Portland, Oregon. He was prominent in the musician community of the time (mid 1990s) and saw a lot of these issues in people around him. Later on, his songs take on a distinctly more autobiographical slant but his early days were all about the metaphor and the characters he liked to paint into the background of his songs.

Bioshock: No Gods or Kings, Only Man

“A man chooses

A slave obeys”

Andrew Ryan

The story of Bioshock is one of several overarching metaphors, reaching out across the infinite space of video game lore and culture. One such metaphor is the idea of the player and the creator: where does the creator’s role end and the players begin? Who is the true slave? The player who has to abide by the rules set down by the creator? Or is the creator enslaved by his own creations? Sander Cohen, one of Bioshock’s more elaborate villains, could certainly be labelled in this way, victim as he is to his own explosive ego. The elaborate death scene he creates for Fitzpatrick, all for the sake of his art, tells the tale of a man driven mad by something which motivates and inspires many other much more sane people.

For those of you not in the know (and I doubt there are many who don’t know the big story “twist” of Bioshock) I suggest you look away now but the essence of the trick in Bioshock is that you have been controlled all along to do the bidding of a character called Frank Fontaine, masking himself as the mysterious insurgent - Atlas, no doubt a reference to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a novel which explores the “role of man’s mind in existence” Is he truly free if he is at the whim of society? A man chooses. A slave obeys. In Atlas Shrugged, top Industrialists have chosen not to be a part of the hyprocrisy anymore and leave the nation behind, causing things to collapse behind them. In Bioshock the player moves through the crumbling dystopia of Rapture, an underwater city created by Andrew Ryan to act as a haven for the intellectual elite to pursue their own ends, away from the corrupting influence of government and commerce. The broken edifice of Rapture is the metaphor for Ryan’s idea coming apart and breaking down. You cannot exist in isolation from the creative source: the world.

At the entrance to Rapture lies a giant statue of Ryan holding aloft a banner with the words: No Gods or Kings, Only Man (See Below). A quote that is further explained by Ryan himself during the game:

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.

Of course, the truth is that by leaving only man as the creator and driver of his own fate, he is still compelled to share his vision with other men and if you fill a city with only selfishly motivated people, you shouldn’t be surprised when they no longer choose to cooperate and all start fighting each other. Although society relies on certain roles and conventions to work, human greed is endemic, according to Bioshock and creating an artificial society makes it harder for those conventions to be applied anyway. And don’t expect intellect to save. If anything, it manages to make things a hell of a lot worse especially in the cases of Dr Steinman and Sander Cohen.

So, the player, upon discovering he is the slave of Atlas’ bidding, desperately tries to free himself from the bond created. Although this proves painful, he is able to do it and wake up to the true knowledge of his fate and his existence. Bioshock presents an interesting moral choice to the player. Be the saviour of the little sisters who you encounter in the game, harvesters of the material called Adam which makes plasmids work, or kill them to harvest more Adam for yourself, making yourself more powerful in defeating the big Daddies (machines that protect the little sisters), and also for the ultimate showdown with Fontaine himself. The choice is yours and the creator is the moral guardian of this choice. What’s interesting is that although Ryan’s idea of Rapture does not abide by any imagined morality or moral necessitude, the fate of the player is tied to the moral choices he makes as someone who comes from outside of Rapture. He is of the world and the world has moral constructs that are unavoidable. A man cannot isolate himself from his own morals which brings mockery to Ryan and Rand’s central idea. No matter how utopian a world may seem where man lives and works only amongst his intellectual peers, such a world would be cold, hard, rational and free of the guiding morality of societal structures such as religion. As controversial as ideas of religion and faith may be, they do offer a way of keeping peace. A man chooses a religion, a slave obeys this religion? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on your world view.

In many countries we are free to pursue certain interests and just as fictional industrialists such as Andrew Ryan are free to create their own utopian world of industry and commerce, we are free to watch it tear itself apart as the man who chooses his destiny can also be an unwitting slave to it as well. That is the beautiful contradiction which is so elegantly explored in the Bioshock series. I wholly recommend you take a trip back to Rapture. Not so long ago, I did so myself. Sure, the paint was peeling off the walls a bit more and the damp smell had gotten worse but there’s still the same sense of dark foreboding to keep you wondering if that’s really a splicer waiting around the corner or just the flickering shadow of another broken promise.

A Distorted Reality: Understanding Addiction

“A distorted reality is now a necessity to be free”

- Elliott Smith

In Sam Quinones’ recent book Dream Land about the opiate epidemic in America he touches on this idea that heroin turns individuals into a hyper-consumer. This is because, once you become addicted, your only focus is on consuming the drug and getting money to purchase it. The addict has gone beyond the average consumer, who spreads their habit amongst many different items or objects of desire. The addict is single minded and driven beyond a mere need to consume. Maintaining their reliance on the drug becomes the very single minded essence of their existence.

So why does an addicts life become like this? It may seem obvious on the surface and the average person on the street may well say “Well it’s because they come from a poor, deprived background. They haven’t known anything else apart from poverty and misery.” Yet as Sam points out in his book, this simply isn’t true in the case of the American opiate epidemic where a lot of white, middle class, affluent communities are becoming and have become hooked on heroin. Mostly as a result of an initial addiction to pain pills becoming too expensive to maintain so they end up switching to a cheaper, more effective drug that is abundantly available: heroin.

Heroin is an escape from misery. Well, that is the illusion it sells. The truth is somewhat different. But, initially, it works very well as a temporary relief mechanism from whatever difficult situation you find in life. Yes, a lot of heroin addicts are from poor, deprived backgrounds and areas but there are also a lot of affluent, seemingly comfortable middle class people who succumb to its grip. This is because the roots of addiction can stem from emotional trauma, often experienced in very early childhood. This trauma can take many forms, and in those with a genetic predisposition to addiction, it can plant a seed that develops into the chaos of the drug using lifestyle in adolescence or adulthood.

I use the word ‘seemingly’ there because, ultimately, addiction is no respecter of class or status. You can appear on the surface to have everything: a loving family, a good job, a home, a car. Symbols of middle class success. But if there is an emptiness that gnaws away at the centre of your being then addiction can attempt to fill the hole. Addiction does not care who you are or where you come from. It is there to try and control you and pull your strings. It is up to you how far or how deep you let it take you. Also, I have met many addicts who have experienced no emotional trauma, physical abuse or difficult upbringing but they all shared a common theme: an absence of emotional contact or hands on parenting while growing up. This is crucial. We all need love, whether we think we do or not. This is especially important when it comes to a child’s development. Without love and contact, a child grows up emotionally stunted, confused and disorientated by adult life. Often, they will not know how to handle their emotional responses - they become distorted. Pain dissolves into anger, frustration, rage and other extreme responses to difficult life situations. It takes intervention, learning and gentle coaxing to attempt to repair this damage. Often, it cannot be completely repaired, only managed - much like addiction itself. Those who follow a 12 step recovery programme will know that a central tenet of their philosophy is that active addiction can be arrested and transformed into recovery but the addict remains an addict for life, managing their recovery on a daily basis using spiritual tools of the programme to stay clean.

So, again, we go back to the central question: why do addicts become addicts? Why does heroin take such a grip? This is a simple question with a complex answer. There is no one size fits all response that would suffice. However, as I have outlined above, the common theme is a need to escape, to rise above earthly problems, to provide a temporary relief. For some, addiction is also a romantic notion. Some will look on history’s great artists, musicians, writers and philosophers and seen that they were copious consumers of narcotics; they then elevate this use into a spiritual realm, believing that they were carving their own, distorted reality out of a necessity to be and feel free in the material world. The only problem with this notion is it conveniently neglects to consider the consequences of addiction and the effects on not only the life of the addict but those who love and surround them. Addiction unravels lives, pulls families and relationships apart and causes isolation and misery. The tragic irony is that by attempting to escape misery, neglect or trauma in the first place, the addict actually ends up creating more and more misery, neglect and trauma through the consequences of their addicted lifestyle.

Addiction is an insatiable need or lust. Gabor Mate likens it to the Buddhist idea of living in the realm of hungry ghosts. These beings eat and eat and eat but they are never satisfied because, being non corporeal they cannot properly consume food but they are constantly driven to attempt to feel satisfied. This mirrors a lot of western society you could argue. We are compelled by a need to consume, yet advertising and marketing promotes the idea that we can never be satisfied because there is always something better to purchase that can improve our lives or our social status. When the very nature of our being is exposed as inadequate on a relentless, daily basis then it is not hard to see why addiction is so prevalent in our society.