Presenter(s): Shane Cooney
Faculty Mentor(s): Steven Brence & Caroline Lundquist
Oral Session 2 SW
Today, the opioid epidemic pervades every corner of society. Accordingly, drug use and addiction have been dealt with extensively as social phenomena, with the latter also being studied by psychologists and other medical professionals. Neither, however, has been thoroughly examined as an existential phenomenon. The scale of this crisis is symptomatic of a much deeper problem, viz., the problem of meaninglessness. What consequences follow from the realization that life has no inherent or absolute meaning; that life is, as Albert Camus describes in The Myth of Sisyphus, absurd? In this essay, I argue that drug use and abuse can be seen as problematic responses to the meaninglessness consequent of the absurd. Exploring Camus’ notion of absurdity and drawing on my experiences with addiction, I situate drug use within the context of the absurd, highlighting how the use of psychoactive substances is, either consciously or unconsciously, an attempt to escape the absurdity of existence. I then discuss the limitations of Camus’ account of the human need for meaning and propose potential alternatives, which can be found in Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning and in Camus’ novel The Plague. The aim of my project is to analyze drug use vis-à-vis meaning, so that we may gain insight into why some people begin and continue to use drugs, which, as I suggest, is the starting point for understanding addiction. Without answering this principal question, our attempts to mitigate the problem of addiction will always remain somewhat tangential.