Addiction In Sonny's Blues

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Addiction’s Grip on Sonny It was the emptiness. It wasn’t that I needed it to make me better at something, it wasn’t that it calmed me down, or that it made think better, it was the emptiness that made me go back, the need to fill a void with something, anything. My struggle with depression and mental illness is what led me to my addiction, just as it was for Sonny. There was an undying need to feel something more, to stop the depression, the anxiety. I took that first pill at 16, and it still hasn’t left my body. It is forever a companion to me. In James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” the character of Sonny also faces the suffering of drug addiction and clearly depicts the slippery slope into addiction. The first pill wasn’t where the problem …show more content…

There is always one focal point, whether big or small, in an addict’s life that leads to breaking the viscous cycle. In Sonny’s life, it was getting sent to prison that made him experience the regret that knocked him to the end of a dark tunnel. He had hit his rock bottom. Even when an addict hits rock bottom and realizes their own mental instability, climbing back up from the bottom is extremely hard. Sonny objectifies his addiction into a “stink” saying, “And I smelled it, you know? My stink, and I thought I’d die if I never got away from it, yet, all the same, I knew everything I was doing was locking me in with it.” Sonny is describing the dilemma that all addicts face: wanting to stop, but not being in control, not being able to, being trapped and feeling like there is no way out..
But even after all the suffering, the soul searching, the agonizing days of withdrawals, the constant emptiness that finally gets solved, addiction never ends, and “Sonny’s Blues” shows the dark truth that lingers behind the happy ending of Sonny recovering. Even as a recovered addict, I still have a constant fear of one day returning to my old habits. It is a fear that walks with me every day, a thought that always lingers over my shoulders. The same fear that Sonny admits to his brother. “It can come again, I just wanted you to know that,” he says, warning his brother that he may again lose the endless

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