Chasing The Dragon - The Addiction Merry-go-Round by Janus Kane

The story, ‘The Little Insanity’ follows the lives of six 30-something people who are struggling with relationship and addiction issues. It is not that uncommon a dynamic. One of the reasons why people relate to this story is because it is familiar. Although it is exaggerated, these stories mirror the events in many peoples’ lives.

Admittedly, this story takes some of these issues to their extremes, extremes that most of us don’t experience in our own lives. This is another reason why people find the book appealing. It is comforting for us to be able to look at these characters and think, ’see, my life is not that screwed up’.

Some readers may look at these characters and think, ‘I’m nothing like these people. I’m not an alcoholic, I don’t participate in risky sex and I don’t abuse drugs’. For those people, I might say, you are missing the point.

I believe that ‘The Little Insanity’ speaks more to our similarities than to our differences. Addictions are common to more of us than we would like to admit. Addictions are as varied as the people who cultivate them. They are not all as lethal as alcohol or drugs, but they can all rule our lives in ways we might not like to admit.

As different as addictions can be, they all share one common theme: all addictions spring from ‘The Pleasure Principle’. The most common human goal is the pursuit of pleasure, or conversely, the avoidance or pain. For some of us, that equates to suppressing bad memories, for others it means avoiding boredom and for the most extreme cases it means just feeling something. We are all bombarded with these feelings every day, the most common and debilitating of them is the recognition of our own mortality.

The only question that remains is how we will deal with those feelings. Will we go to the liquor cabinet or the refrigerator? Will we flop onto a mattress in a downtown crack house or onto a featherbed with your best friend’s spouse? Will we run our family into debt with credit card purchases or drive them crazy with our need to insinuate ourselves into their lives? Perhaps we will just numb our minds with hours in front of the television or computer.

Heroin addicts have used the term ‘chasing the dragon’ to mean their pursuit of the perfect high. I believe that we are all chasing the dragon. We are all in search of that one thing that will give our lives meaning, that will make us feel, that will define our place in this imperfect world. Some of us find a healthy anchor to hold onto while others of us continue to chase the dragon. The unlucky ones among us catch the dragon, only to find out that he is mean and he has razor sharp teeth.

Until we realize that our lives are not perfect and they are not supposed to be perfect, we will constantly be in search of something to make us feel better about ourselves and our lives. Only when we stop pointing fingers at ‘those addicts’ will we be able to recognize our commonalities and become closer in our shared frailties.

Our Dirty Little Secret - Janus Kane

People have asked me about my inspiration for 'The Little Insanity'. What was it that caused me to breathe life into six such confused characters? The simple answer is that I am a voyeur - a voyeur of life. I believe that the average reader will find the characters in 'The Little Insanity' to be all too recognizable. You may see yourself or your loved ones or perhaps just the out-of-luck guy on the corner, but you should see someone you know within these pages. There is a reason for that. Addictions are an inescapable aspect of the human condition, or maybe they are just a symptom.


Most of us, if we are being honest with ourselves, will have to plead guilty to some addiction or other. Not everyone suffers from the hardcore addictions that the characters in 'The Little Insanity' battle with and hopefully our addictions will not shorten our lifespan, but it bears mentioning that we all have them. Surely the girl with the heroin monkey on her back is at a much greater risk than the stay-at-home Mom who is addicted to buying things on the Home Shopping Network. The 300 pound food addict is much easier to pick out of a crowd than the rageaholic and the promiscuous sexual addict is more easily shunned than the parents who are addicted to living vicariously through their children's lives.


At the end of the day though, it really just comes down to a matter of degrees. That young mother may be no more able to resist the call of chocolate in her pantry than the crack addict is able to resist the dealer on the corner. The businessman who is addicted to his work may be no more able to stay out of the office than the alcoholic is able to stay out of the local bar. Once you scratch the surface, how many of us can truly deny any and all driving forces in our lives, destructive or otherwise?


Is that because we are all weak? Perhaps - we are human beings who face all manner of temptations every day. The fact that one person finds it easier to resist a chocolate bar than a baccarat table or a bottle of Jim Beam does not make them better or worse. It is just another bit of evidence supporting the fact that we are all more alike than we would care to admit.
What binds us together most closely is that we are all caught up in the eternal search for meaning in our lives. None of us are sure of where to find that meaning. Some look for it in religion, others in work and still others in the bed of numerous sexual partners. Some of us find temporary relief in carbohydrates, drugs or alcohol. Unless we have given up and fallen into depression or worse, we are probably still searching for the elusive secret - the thing that will make us feel, the thing that will get us up in the morning with the conviction that 'yes, our lives actually do have meaning', something that will carry on even after we are gone.


Some might think that I have stretched the term addiction to the point of breaking...I'll address that in a future post.