Goblins of Addiction, Dr. Jana Burson

Time for some whimsy…

Misery and Deceit, two goblins who worked for the Emperor of Wretchedness, were talking in a dark alley. Hopeless, another goblin, had just left them and was shuffling down the street, trailing the stench of sulfur.

“Idiot,” said Misery, speaking about Hopeless. “He couldn’t stop his human from getting help for addiction. What an incompetent. Doesn’t he realize that addiction must continue so we can make these humans miserable? Addiction is a key method to keep people in our Kingdom of Wretchedness”

The other goblin, Deceit, fancied himself a guru to the younger and less experienced dark spirits like Misery, Despair, and Hopeless. He smiled as he thought about how much wiser he was than the others. After all, he had been the original dark spirit to help lead most humans to addiction. He promised these humans that drugs would allow them feel good all of the time. He promised freedom from the usual ups and downs of a normal human life. Many times, they believed him.

“Well, now, Misery, when you’ve been around as long as I have…” Deceit started.

“Yeah yeah. Whatever. But what advice can we give the poor fellow?” Misery really didn’t feel like listening to the bombastic Deceit blather on again, and cut him off with a question.

“There are things to be done. After all, his human, Joe, entered treatment at a methadone clinic. As you know, in his part of the country, many people have bad opinions about that kind of treatment. Especially if they know nothing about it.”

Deceit began laughing, but the laugh ended with a phlegm-producing cough. Ironically, Deceit was strongly addicted to cigarettes, though he kept saying he could quit when he wanted.

“I’ll call on poor Hopeless, and give him some advice. That would be gracious of me.” Deceit said. In his mind, Deceit finished the sentence with, “And he would owe me a big favor.” The dark spirits kept careful tallies of who owed a favor to whom, and often fought bitterly about this.

“All right, great. I’ve gotta go.” Misery was sick of this conversation, and wanted to get away. Misery was never happy with where he was, and always wanted to be somewhere else, which made it difficult to have a conversation with him.

Later that week, Deceit knocked on Hopeless’s door. It was smudged with some dirty substance. Hopeless believed cleaning house was hopeless, as it only got dirty again. Deceit’s knuckles were black with the stuff. As he was wiping the filth off his hand, Hopeless answered the door. It looked as if he’d been crying, as his eyes were red and there was mucus sliding from his nose. “Hello Deceit.

Come on it. I’ve been feeling down this week after my failure with my human, Joe. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never get anything right. And of course I’ll be blamed for it all.” Hopeless sighed dramatically as he said this last part, feeling very sorry for himself. “I’ve come to help you. I have much sound advice to give you, so let’s sit and talk for a while.”

“OK. But I doubt it will work.”

Deceit ground his teeth at Hopeless’s predictable self-pity. Of all the dark spirits, Deceit thought Hopeless was the least pleasant to be around.

“It will work,” Deceit said more emphatically than he felt.

“The key is to use the people around your human to discourage him in his recovery.”

“For example, Joe’s wife is happy that Joe is no longer spending $100 a day for pain pills off the street, and she’s happy he’s no longer snorting them. But she won’t be happy if you can convince her that methadone is a dangerous drug. Suggest she look on the internet. She’s sure to find negative and untrue information. But keep her off legitimate websites. You don’t want her to learn any of the benefits of methadone. Keep her on the more emotional sites, where people write about their beliefs, and not actual facts. And be careful she doesn’t understand the distinction between methadone bought on the street and methadone dosed each day as prescribed by a doctor. Try to get her to hysterically demand of Joe that he “get off that stuff.”

“Or you can use his friends. Have them call him a weakling for wanting to quit drugs, and how foolish he is to go to the clinic. Tell him that the clinic only wants his money. Be careful not to remind Joe that all medical treatments cost money. Convince him his addiction treatment should be free. After all, he is giving up drugs. Maybe you can even get him to thinking people should pay him to give up his drugs.”

Hopeless began to mewl about the impossibility of such things, but Deceit cut him off again.

“You can get an addict to believe all kinds of outrageous nonsense. Oh, and keep him from remembering that some of these same so-called friends have sold him pain pills. We don’t want Joe to perceive that these people want to keep a good customer.”
“Get him to go to a family doctor who’s uneducated about methadone treatment. Even if he’s seen for an unrelated medical problem, these docs sometimes will give deadly advice to such patients. Some of these doctors tell their patients to get off methadone as soon as possible.”

“What, his doctor wants him dead? Surely not.”

“Oh no, but many of them aren’t well-educated about the treatment of addiction. So if you can get Joe in with one of these doctors, we have the delight of watching a medical professional, who should know better, give bad advice to one of our humans. If Joe follows that advice, it will be easier for us to steer him back into addiction again. And then if Joe relapses, and tells his doctor about it, the doc is likely to shame him for relapsing. You see how funny it gets to be? He wouldn’t have relapsed but for the doctor’s bad advice….”

Deceit trailed off, smiling at fond memories of previously amusing times.

“I don’t know. Joe doesn’t seem to be listening to me, or his old friends. He used to be easy to lead with a suggestion or two. Now he wants to stand up for himself. He says he feels good and isn’t using drugs for the first time in years. It feels hopeless to try to convince him he’s doing a bad thing.”

Hopeless shook his head and squinted at the floor.

Again, Deceit felt a great surge of annoyance at Hopeless’s attitude. “Then you must undermine his confidence. Have you had no training in that sort of interference? Tell lies, and plenty of them, before he gains even more confidence. His mind must be turned against him. I’ll get one of my friends to come and help you. His name is Denial, and he’s an expert at convincing such humans that their lives in addiction really weren’t that bad. How about I send him over here later today so you two can make a plan?”

“You can send your friend Denial, but I doubt there’s much that can be done…”

Shortly after this somewhat unsatisfying end of their conversation, Deceit waddled home. (He was very fat, having fed on the misery of humans for millennia). He knew this was not a hopeless situation, because he’d seen many recovering addicts, patients of methadone clinics, who had been shamed into stopping their treatment.

It was entertaining to watch a person, leading a normal life but for dosing each day with methadone, slide back down into the darkness of active addiction once he left treatment. Quite often, goblins of the underworld used the twisted fears and inaccurate beliefs of the people who said they loved the addict to aid in the addict’s downfall.

Entertainment in the underworld didn’t get any better than this!
(…inspired by The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis)

Thanks to Dr. Jana Burson