You're Dope Sick (This Is An Intervention)

An apparently desperate internet stranger asked me, of all people, for dating and breakup advice last week. Maybe you saw it, I posted whatever was top of mind to Instagram, and was met with much acclaim:

I’ve been medicated, psychoanalyzed, therapized, hypnotized, ketamized, and electrotized, but nothing beats hands-on experience for practical cures. Break up. Block him. Be free. I suppose if you don’t have a lot of it, you must seek it from those who do. (Though I would be remiss not to acknowledge the oddly specific directives given by my Soviet-era Russian psychiatrist, like “don’t start a podcast, there are too many.”)

Yet, the heart wants what it wants! If humans were practical beings, Labubus wouldn’t exist. What’s up with this? What is the source of this drive to ruin in the name of “love”—to assign meaning to things which are at best a waste of time and resources, at worst excruciatingly painful?

To find reason in this life, some look to God. We pray that he won’t let the plane go down in rough turbulence. I tend to find more comfort in a science-backed approach—turbulence is just waves of air, and this buoyant metal vessel is meant to ride those waves. A plane hasn’t crashed due to turbulence in decades. Take one of Dmitry’s Klonopins and watch a movie you’d never pay for. May I suggest The Smile 2?

This isn’t to say that I don’t believe in the magic intangibles of life, of God, of love and peace and happiness. A pessimist is already dead in my book. Carl Sagan says it best when describing the relationship between transcendence and science:

“‘Spirit' comes from the Latin word 'to breathe'. What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin. Despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word 'spiritual' that we are talking of anything other than matter (including the matter of which the brain is made), or anything outside the realm of science. . . Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.”

Back to your shitty situationship. For my next trick, I’m going to attempt to bridge the gap between your, mine, and our tendencies to buck all practical advice and reason in the name of love, or something like it:

It’s dopamine, and we’re addicted.