Addiction and Perception

By conveying Don’s inner thoughts, the novel portrays how addiction perpetuates itself and preys on a person by altering that person’s perception. Addiction, on one hand, is a physical disease that causes a person to uncontrollably crave a specific substance. However, as the novel illustrates, addiction also affects a person’s perceptions and thought patterns in order to compel the person to continuously feed the addiction. One major aspect of these dynamics s the fact that the addiction often deludes the person in question to believe that they do not have a problem and are not actually addicted. For example, despite the fact that all of Don’s actions are in service of his addiction, he reputedly convinces himself that he actually has control of his drinking: “When the drink was set before him, he felt better. He did not drink it...