The emptiness within

Ben Wildsmith

I spend the majority of my working life working with addicts and, for full disclosure, have been one myself.

Addiction remains a misunderstood facet of life. Media distortion of the issue means that general perception of it is wildly at odds with the reality known to addicts, those who love them, and professionals in the field.

In particular, the media often frames addiction as the cause of a person’s ills when, in 100% of cases I have known, it is a pernicious symptom of them.

For people in the orbit of addiction, the most frustrating aspect of it is dishonesty. The substance is never to blame, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, an addict will twist and turn in contradiction so that continued use is not threatened.

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Immorality

If you are around this sort of behaviour a lot, it ceases to look like immorality. The ethical choices we all make from moment to moment are overridden by the warping, insistent need that an addict experiences. You learn when to make allowances and when to draw a line.

The patterns of addictive behaviour are depressingly predictable. They permeate the systems of a person’s life like a weed, relentlessly strangling each one.

Every day, the addiction advances and the person retreats before it, continuing to deny the obvious. In the short-term, immediate risks can be managed but long-term prospects are a zero-sum trade-off between stopping and premature death.

When I read about Liz Saville Roberts’ plea that Rishi Sunak sign Full Fact’s pledge to campaign honestly, I could well imagine the despair she feels. During the abortive SNP debate on Gaza the other week, her principled distress at what she was witnessing shone through on a day that shamed the UK.

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Magical thinking

In asking for honesty from the Tory Party, however, she’s underestimating the mess it is in. This, potentially final, version of it is gripped by an addiction to magical thinking that means dishonesty is an essential component of its day-to-day survival.

One could mount a case that this is the final unfolding of the Thatcherite delusion, but that’s for another time.

This 2019-2024 term of Torydom had unique impossibilities baked into it from the off.

It is no longer controversial to accept that Brexit was, at best, a reckless pipe dream, and at worst a deliberate confidence trick. The relentless flow of disinformation and contradictory nonsense that has been inflicted on the UK to conceal the idiocy of attempting to revive island state sensibilities in a world that works globally has distorted politics.

Jingoistic

Those who wanted it to work have indulged jingoistic, wishful thinking without scrutiny, and that has offered lightweight politicians the temptation they can’t resist: impunity.

So, direct from arguing this visibly impoverished island is basking in sunlit opportunity, elements in the Tory Party went on to downplay Covid, minimise climate change, and pretend that the pensions of an ageing society can be paid without immigrant labour.

They have invoked phantom ‘woke’ threats to distract from their deficiencies, and agitated at every societal faultline to displace anger.

This government was founded on a lie, has survived by lies, and is now drowning in them.

Rishi Sunak might as well sign Ms Saville Roberts’ pledge, nobody would believe him anyway.

Behind the bluster, evasion, theft, and brass-necked audacity of this regime lies the uncomfortable truth that every addict must face: the emptiness within.