Addiction persists because it supplies the only pleasure a ruined life retains.

Evidence

I urged him to give up the whisky which at present is his ruin, and his answer had the ring of a sad truth in it: “I cannot, it binds me hand and footI cannot give up the only pleasure I have.” — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 234

Categorization

• APHORISMS: The trapped logic of ‘the only pleasure I have’ is a durable insight into why people cling to what destroys them.