Both novels offer insight into how the characters describe their experience while on drugs. However, it is also valuable to analyze the character’s commentary about their addictions. In Requiem for a Dream, Sara Goldfarb, a television addict, relays her internal monologue as she sits watching an infomercial. Unlike the rest of the characters, she has a behavioral addiction which is a a form of addiction that involves a compulsion to repeatedly perform a rewarding non-drug-related behavior: “She gradually became aware of how dumb the damn show was she was watching and she stared at it, wondering how in the hell they could put anything so absurdly infantile and intellectually and esthetically insulting on television…and she continued to …show more content…
By definition, denial is a refusal to admit the truth or reality and in psychology refers to a type of defense mechanism where people subconsciously reject aspects of life that they are uncomfortable with. Denial is used in order to protect an addict’s ego; however, Renton is being both vulnerable and honest as he states that addiction is a balance of the good and the bad. He discusses the common misconceptions about why people succumb to drug use: “misery and desperation and death.” All of these words have a very negative and hopeless connotation. Yet, he states that the pleasure makes the suffering worth it. He states that addicts “are not that fucking stupid” meaning that most drug users fail to accept the fact that they are selfishly using only for the pleasure. Addicts convince people they do it for the “misery and desperation and death” because it is safer and easier than admitting and accepting. Renton’s ability to be vulnerable to his audience about his addiction to pleasure proves that he has power over his addiction. Goldfarb, on the other hand, is conscious of her addiction’s stupidity, yet does not realize that she is succumbing to its