Quick Overview: The vampire’s insatiable “hunger” serves as a metaphor for the escalating, compulsive nature of addiction — how the craving builds until nothing can hold it back. The vampyre also embodies avoiding the light of day: hiding the addiction. A vivid opener for addiction counseling conversations about craving, denial and relapse.
The vampyre is an example par excellence of addiction: to be specific, what is known as “the hunger.” It is said that a vampyre, once sated on the blood of a victim (human or otherwise) goes back into its coffin and lies there until the hunger starts to grow again. There may be a stone covering on the coffin weighing 3,000 pounds. However, when the hunger becomes strong enough, the vampyre can move that stone aside and emerge to go hunting. This is why many addicts think their addiction is gone when it is simply temporarily sated, but nonetheless providing an excuse to not seek help.
For exploration of addiction and compulsion, I would recommend the following
1- PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS With Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, University of Vienna, published in 1886. It contains many stories of extreme compulsion and addiction that provide a wide scope of afflictions and how extreme things can become. It is hard to imagine people being this extremely addicted, but also important to imagine it. Many horrible things in history were not attended to or stopped because people could not imagine them, and thus did not act against it. Partners and family of addicts sometimes fall into that category, but it can also happen on a grand historical scale as well.
2-The 1976 psychological horror thriller The Tenant (also known as Le Locataire), in which Roman Polanski directed and starred as the main character, Trelkovsky. In the film, Trelkovsky rents a Parisian apartment where the previous tenant, a woman named Simone, had jumped out of the window in an attempt to commit suicide. As he obsessively identifies with the dead woman, Trelkovsky ends up throwing himself out the window repeatedly, crawling back up the stairs to do it again and again, regardless of his injuries. He is clearly driven to extremes by extreme needs and beliefs. The film provides a portrait of compulsion
Quick Overview: The vampire’s insatiable “hunger” serves as a metaphor for the escalating, compulsive nature of addiction — how the craving builds until nothing can hold it back. The vampyre also embodies avoiding the light of day: hiding the addiction. A vivid opener for addiction counseling conversations about craving, denial and relapse.
The vampyre is an example par excellence of addiction: to be specific, what is known as “the hunger.” It is said that a vampyre, once sated on the blood of a victim (human or otherwise) goes back into its coffin and lies there until the hunger starts to grow again. There may be a stone covering on the coffin weighing 3,000 pounds. However, when the hunger becomes strong enough, the vampyre can move that stone aside and emerge to go hunting. This is why many addicts think their addiction is gone when it is simply temporarily sated, but nonetheless providing an excuse to not seek help.
For exploration of addiction and compulsion, I would recommend the following
1- PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS With Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, University of Vienna, published in 1886. It contains many stories of extreme compulsion and addiction that provide a wide scope of afflictions and how extreme things can become. It is hard to imagine people being this extremely addicted, but also important to imagine it. Many horrible things in history were not attended to or stopped because people could not imagine them, and thus did not act against it. Partners and family of addicts sometimes fall into that category, but it can also happen on a grand historical scale as well.
2-The 1976 psychological horror thriller The Tenant (also known as Le Locataire), in which Roman Polanski directed and starred as the main character, Trelkovsky. In the film, Trelkovsky rents a Parisian apartment where the previous tenant, a woman named Simone, had jumped out of the window in an attempt to commit suicide. As he obsessively identifies with the dead woman, Trelkovsky ends up throwing himself out the window repeatedly, crawling back up the stairs to do it again and again, regardless of his injuries. He is clearly driven to extremes by extreme needs and beliefs. The film provides a portrait of compulsion
