"You will find out that once MA's Dept. of Social Services has taken a mother's children away for any period of time, they can always take them away again, D.S.S., like at will" (200).
"Chronic alcoholics' hearts are -- for reasons no M.D. has been able to explain -- swollen to nearly twice the size of civilians' human hearts, and they never again return to normal size" (200).
"Ewell decides this is what gives profundity to the tattoo-impulse's profound irrevocability: Having a tatt removed means just exchanging one kind of disfigurement for another" (208).
Over and over, DFW reminds us of the permanent affliction of addiction. The rehabilitation and recovery process only helps stave off the further progression of the disease, but can never erase or return affairs to their original proper state. Even more troubling, the battle continues after rehab; the slide back into addiction, like having the state take the children away, is so much easier than managing to keep hold. Moreover as stated on page 201, the addicts remain in permanent want of Substance even after quitting use. There seems to be no "health," only a new disease. Saving one's physical life, does not entirely improve their mental outlook.
So my question is, how does this view of addiction translate to the other characters outside Ennet House, especially the characters who have an attachment to both a way of life and chemical dependence (James O. Incandenza: film and alcohol, his father:tennis, alcohol, Pemulis and most of the other ETA students)? how does this extend to entertainment? how does a society recover from this? can it?
I thought it was telling that the ETA students had a six term "Entertainment Requirement...because students hoping to prepare for careers as professional athletes are by intension training also to be entertainers, albeit of a deep and special sort" (188). Since tennis is supposed to be an addiction, they live and breath tennis at ETA, addiction seems to be inextricably tied to entertainment. Each character seems to have addictions that make him/her both a manufacturer and consumer of entertainment. Maybe it's that duality that makes the world keep spinning. Someone has to have an addiction that produces entertainment and someone has to have an addiction that drives them to consume that entertainment, it works if everyone has both tendencies. Maybe society needs this to function, it's so entrenched?
On page 149 the text reads, "The social anxieties surrounding the phenomenon psych-consultatnts termed Optimistically Misrepresentational Masking (or OMM) intensified steaddily as the tiny crude first-generation videpohone cameras' technology improved..." The idea here is that for every new device invented there are hundreds of accessories for it and even diseases as a result of it. Every new invention seems to be making life better, but we keep having to invent new diseases to explain our problems with new technology.