JOSEPH O'CONNOR,
Sir, - I was intrigued by John Waters' categorical statement (August 12th) that "people who abuse drink or drugs invariably do so because they are seeking to fill what Salman Rushdie has called the 'God-shaped hole' in their psyches". Invariably? Where is John Waters's evidence for this?
It seems to suggest that religious people are by definition not capable of alcohol abuse, a contention which is obviously absurd. (One of the most deeply religious people I have known was a devout Catholic priest whose love of the spirit extended to several bottles of it a day. I can assure Mr Waters that his hole was remarkably well filled by the Lord, but he could have drunk Brendan Behan under the table.)
It also implies that those who seem, at least to themselves, to be contented unbelievers are, in fact, meaning-starved addicts waiting to happen. Furthermore, it ignores such surely important factors in heroin addiction as poverty, exclusion and relative ease of availability. If lack of God in one's life is the "invariable" qualification for addiction, then how is it that the children of Ireland's wealthy class, not always noted for wild excess of piety, so rarely become heroin addicts? Are they filling their own God-shaped holes with something else, and, if so, with what?
It is good to see writers of Mr Waters's intelligence try to address this phenomenon which has blighted too many Irish lives. But, on this occasion, at least, he is well wide of the mark. Drug addiction may sometimes be "a disease of the spirit", but it would take a truly spectacular disengagement from reality to argue that this is "invariably" what it is. Our understanding of the many complexities of addictive behaviour is not helped by the further stuffing of the journalism-shaped hole which sometimes yawns on the opposite page of this newspaper with hunches masked as insights. - Yours, etc.,
JOSEPH O'CONNOR, Dalkey, Co. Dublin.