Chapter 36
36
NOW
I’M AN ADDICT.
I admit it, okay?
My name is Eliot Beck and I’m an a-d-d-i-c-t.
—
DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN be addicted to nothing? To the sensation of nothing? You can crave the ability to look inside yourself and find nothing, no guilt, no sadness. No anxiety or terror or unfounded doom. No memories threatening to eat you alive from the inside out.
That’s what obsessive work gave me. That was its blissful result. It cleared everything out, leaving only space for the next task and the next and the next.
As soon as you first achieve that feeling, it’s over. You’re toast. To look inside yourself and find nothing, nothing at all, just silence, just emptiness—it feels good. Fuck, it feels so good. Better than sex. Better than any pill or bottle or puff of smoke pulled into your lungs and pushed out, way out, gathering into a delicate cloud before disappearing altogether.