Personal Narrative: The Illusion Of Love

As I scroll through Twitter I come across numerous posts about a boy in my grade. All of the posts feature some sort of derogatory comment and “#free”. Confused by this influx of posts, I ask my friend what is going on and she hushly informs me that this student has been expelled and sent to a boarding school rehab facility, for possession of narcotics. I am very alarmed that someone I know has made such a negative decision. As the buzz around school continues to spread, I begin to question this boy’s values. I wonder what could have possessed him to positively ruin his chances at going to a good college let alone ever having a successful career. He must have an overwhelming love for the effects of drug use, to potentially destroy his …show more content…
Addiction falsely creates the illusion of love. They can not be labeled as one because love is used to justify one’s attention to something, addiction is also commonly accompanied by negative emotions, and addiction can potentially be stopped while love cannot.
Addiction may be perceived as a love for inanimate objects because it is a way to justify one’s constant attention to something. It can be thought that because one feels a craving for a certain object or substance at all times, they must love it. This recognition of a persistent consciousness of that need, makes someone think that the desire is rooted to something deeper than an addiction, thus love is hypothesized. This is illustrated in a letter written by soldier Sullivan Ballou to his wife explaining his immense love for his country. He explains that despite all of the monstrosities of war he continues to think only of the service he completes for his country. This is significant in that it shows how one’s constant attention needs to be distinct between love and addiction. Ballou felt motivated and patriotic causing him to focus most of his attention on the …show more content…
It is a stigma in our society to associate addiction as something bad and love as something good. This can be seen in the national holiday of Valentine’s day. A day characterized by chocolate hearts and flower bouquets does not seem like something that can also be aligned with addiction. The reliance one feels for the thing to which they are addicted, does not spur positive emotions that generate a national holiday. The stark contrast between the Valentine’s day emotions and things like withdrawal symptoms demonstrate the difference between the two implying that they are not necessarily intertwined. Conclusively, one of the seemingly positive aspects of addiction brought on to resemble love, does not constitute a direct relationship between love and addiction. A current trend called “dabbing” is a way to ingest marijuana so that the high lasts longer. This lengthened high is a characteristic of addicts, demonstrating that they search for the thing that they are addicted to, in order to experience a feeling resembling love. However, the fact that this sensation is followed by an extreme low and potential side-effects, differentiates it from a real feeling of adoration. The supposedly positive emotions associated with addiction cannot be labeled as positive because of the negative effects that may follow. This contrasts with the feelings of love because