Drug A-Diction1

There is a method by which the subject subtracts him- or herself from the process of symbolic exchange that is the result of a decision, a choice. It is something that permits a type of experimental connection with jouissance and that produces a short circuit in relation to the Other and the Other's desire. It is a path that offers the subject a certain guidance, a more or less regulated production of separation from the effects of alienation produced by the signifier. This separation can be complete; that is, it can be an absolute refusal of the alienation produced by the signifier. It is no less paradoxical that this method is put at the disposal of the subject precisely by this Other that the subject claims to separate from. In fact, this separation is a product of industry, something that is trafficked, something that is proposed and offered by the Other in commerce, which can satisfy the demand for a radical separation and an annihilation of the “I think” in favor of an un-attenuated “I am” that is beyond all thought. As you can probably tell, I am referring to drugs and their permanent effect on the subject — namely, toxicomania, or drug addiction.

To detach oneself from the Other, from its demand, from the reconciliation of desires, is an operation that can be realized noisily through a suicidal act, which is the most radical way of slamming the door on the Other. What is produced in this instance is paradoxically an ineffaceable inscription that goes under the pretext of “no longer wanting to know anything about” the conditioning of life, and the pretext of a categorical aspiration to efface the subject in the signifying chain. This is because the act of suicide, despite the appearances of withdrawing, entails a ferocious and unrelenting contestation of the Other and its jouissance. Suicide kills; it is a “timid homicide” according to the suicide note of Caesar Pavese. He does not say; instead it throws its body like a signifier. Its tacit proposition is, “He