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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Three
Spring 2004
Momentary Expression through Addiction - Page 4
by Sarah Pacella
In the end, one can conclude that it is the ability of Wurtzel’s protean self to be resilient and her ability to learn from her mistakes that will eventually enable her to maintain a lifestyle of sobriety. According to Tom Decorte:
Self-regulation is usually seen as a cycle of processes, which includes the observation of one’s own behavior and its consequences, the comparison with an internal standard, the search for alternative, effective realistic possibilities, the selection of goals, the development of a behavioral plan, the execution of behavior, and the observation of its consequences and relation of goals. (Decorte 20)
In order for someone to fully recover from addiction they need to regain their multiple life roles through self-regulation and self-reflection; a person has to gain life goals in order to be satisfied with life away from drugs. This poses a problem in Elizabeth Wurtzel’s case because she could only sometimes see her performativity, although she claims that she was aware of what she was doing the entire time. Recalling the concern of her family and friends when they were made aware of her addiction, Wurtzel relates:
Drugs put the fear of God into people the way a bad mood, even one that goes on for a decade, just does not. You can always wake up feeling better; that’s always the hope with a depressive. But no one around me harbors that hope any longer. They are petrified. They are disgusted. At long last, my pain is a serious matter. I’ve won. (154)
She uses drugs as a way of making people worry about her, to prove to herself that people actually do care about her. This continues to show her performative nature because, although she is really suffering, she uses the addiction to say that she has won. It is as if she wants the reader to believe that she intentionally became addicted to drugs, knowing that once people saw how desperate she was they would not leave her alone, but the whole time the audience can observe that Wurtzel is completely distraught in her solitude and is not purposely becoming addicted.
Although drug addiction tormented Wurtzel mentally, she did turn to drugs in order to get attention (even though this is not the main reason for her addiction) and she was well aware of her behavior and its consequences. Her original problem was that the expectations that she had of herself had become overbearing and drugs were a way to relieve that tansion. As she regains these expectations of herself (as suggested by Decorte’s “comparison with internal standards”), she may feel the pressure once again, and then the cycle of addiction would restart. In order to r eally recover, it is necessary for her to be less dependent upon other people as well as less self-judgmental Once she can stop evaluating herself according to what she believes are social expectations, she will be able to function more self-expressively, even though performatively, in her life roles. Despite Sidonie Smith’s profuse denial of the possibility of self-expression, she merely deals with a person’s performative roles. When a person is alone, however, he has no social influences to react to, and these moments can signal an interiority of the self. When people become too dependent on their normative selves, they feel overwhelmed by pressure and some are forced, as Wurtzel was, to addiction. Therefore, it is necessary to find a middle ground between performativity and self-expression. If Wurtzel no longer places as much emphasis on her normative selves while she is alone, she will be able to gain more self-expressive momentary selves and will be able to be alone without feeling rejection. Then she will be able to regain her “stake in daily life” because she will have a balance between her performative and self-expressive moments.
The autobiography of Elizabeth Wurtzel teaches the audience of memoir that a self is more than just a reflection of society; but the autobiography also recognizes that social norms can be transformed from external to internal pressures on the individual that can lead someone to addiction. Wurtzel saw drugs as an escape from the pressures of society and she believed that they relieved her of the anxiety to perform as a group of normative selves. Each moment of her autobiography portrays a momentary, protean self, which combines with the other momentary selves to create a whole, unique group of selves that expresses the person that Wurtzel was during the time of her addiction and recovery. Although the self that she portrays throughout her narrative is mostly performative in her actions and thoughts (because of external expectations being internalized), the selves that she created can be seen as unique because once they are all connected together, the compilation of momentary selves is something different from any other. The protean self allows the creation of the momentary self because it enables a person to change easily from one moment to the next, therefore changing her self. Smith would argue that there is no expression of a unique self in Wurtzel’s account because she is defined through her performativity throughout the autobiography, and even in writing it. However, Wurtzel as a narrator can be seen as the final momentary self of the memoir as a whole, the unique expression of momentary selves giving her the final autobiographical authority.
Works Cited
Becker, Gary S. and Murphy, Kevin M., “A Theory of Rational Addiction.” Journal of Political Economy 96. (1988). 675-699.
Botella, Luis. “Qualitative Analysis of Self-Narratives: A Constructivist Approach to the Storied Nature of Identity.” Ramon Llull. University Cister: Seattle, Washington. July 1997.
Decorte, Tom. “Drug Users’ Perceptions of ‘Controlled’ and ‘Uncontrolled’ Use.” International Journal of Drug Policy. 12.4 (2001). 297-320.
Lifton, Robert Jay. The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
Smith, Sidonie. “Performativity, Autobiographical Practice, Resistance.” Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.
Wurtzel, Elizabeth. More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.
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