Half-life. Interesting expression. Multi-faceted. Technically, it’s the length of time your body needs to dispose of a given drug in a predictable cycle – therefore a measure of addictiveness. The same term is used for elemental decay on a cosmological scale. It’s how carbon-dating works, and how we can estimate the age of the universe. Reverse alchemy: everything precious or powerful turns inexorably to lead or coal.
Half-life, la demi-vie, also describes pretty accurately a junkie’s mode of existence. Days dictated by an eight-hour elimination cycle, you’re never truly alive, and always one miscalculation from death. Trapped in the half-life, the only constants are alternating degradation, pain and oblivion.
It’s no coincidence that so many artists, poets and writers have been addicts of one kind or another. Addiction, la demi-vie and the associated plunge into le demi-monde are their own metaphors. The metaphor is the only thing that makes the experience worthwhile. And you needn’t be a writer – or a junkie – to make use of it.
The Con
Half-life is also the con they sell you when you move from junk to methadone. Heroin has a half-life of eight hours; methadone three-times that. You’ll be able, they say, to break out of the thrice-daily scoring pattern and constant search for cash for your next fix. You’ll be more stable, they say. You’ll be more free.
In truth, you’ve just chained an anchor to your waist and dived deeper into la demi-vie. Whatever its drawbacks, the heroin cycle at least kept you on your toes. That eight-hourly itch dragged you closer to life. Three times a day, you had a chance to think about changing. Methadone doesn’t make you more stable, just more complacent. Semi-comatose, you lose touch with reality. You gradually lose the ability to hope for something better.
Like all such swindles, you’ve already signed-on to the con before you realise its true cost. That cost, again, is half-life.
Your body eliminates half its store of heroin in eight hours. The next eight hours, half the remainder, and so on. You’re ten cycles or three days in before the worst withdrawals hit. Ten more cycles – three more days – and most of the drug is gone; your body can begin repairing. Ten or twelve days and you’re beginning to feel better. Six weeks or so and you’re “cured”.
Now, multiply all that by three and you can see the favour methadone has done you. It’s kept you alive – half alive, anyway – and given you time to think. All good cons seem to pay-off big at first. A steadily reducing dose brings moments of clarity, and you start making plans. You rediscover that most precious of things, hope. You feel well, you feel strong, and you take the big step.
A week in, you think you’re doing okay. Ten days and you’re starting to wonder. A fortnight brings the crash. After five weeks you can’t help feeling hope has turned to coal in your hands. C’est la demi-vie; on ne la peut pas échapper.
Control
We all surrender control to something. We do it out of love, or because it’s the least-worst alternative. We always grow to hate the thing we surrender to – and to hate ourselves for doing it. William Burroughs called it the algebra of need: the less you have, the more you need, and the more you need, the less you have. And everything decays.
It doesn’t have to be a drug. We elect governments then hate them because we elected them. We project our hatreds outward, because they’re unbearable to hold on to. We fall in love then grow to hate the very qualities that attracted us in the first place; not because we hate the loved-one, but because we hate our surrender. We hate our need, but we love to be needed. So we stay, in our drug, in hate. Or we try oblivion.
The metaphor at the heart of addiction and recovery may be translated thus: you can’t remain breathing and opt-out of being. Happiness can exist only when its opposite is acknowledged. Even pain can be precious. Everything is, and nothing and no-one is of itself. Everything decays, but only after it finishes growing. Nurture prolongs growth. Some surrender is necessary. So is the odd fight.
Die. Or, stay alive and stay awake.
Half-life is no life at all.
