This article proposes that sublimation and addiction be understood as complementarities, that sublimation is transcended addiction, and that addiction is either a lapsed or an aborted sublimation. Both processes are often concurrent, with oscillation and perseveration between them, when the task of sublimation is not achieved. The extension of Freud's initial conceptualization of sublimation by developments in object-relations theory is the ground for this case. Themes and pereeptions common in the work of addict authors Coleridge, De Quincy, Poe, and Gautier are noted to illustrate oscillation at the boundaries between sublimation and addiction.