Three Modes of Distorted Temporal Experience in Addiction: Daily Life, Drug Ecstasy, and Recovery. A Phenomenological Perspective

Marcin Moskalewicz

The article examines distortions of lived time in addiction from a phenomenological perspective and presents their three ideal-typical qualities concerning: (1) daily life, (2) drug ecstasy, and (3) recovery. Regarding the first dimension, the following experiences are being discussed: the highly constricted present, lack of relationship with the future, collapse of being toward possibilities, repetitiveness of behavior and desynchronization with others. Regarding the second dimension, it is argued that drug ecstasy consists in the condensed experience of infi nite future possibilities. Regarding the third dimension, the transformation of lived time in recovery is reinterpreted in terms of sublime aesthetic experience in the sense that the paradoxical nature of the sublime exemplifi es the phenomenon of double identity of recovering addict in regard to time.

61s-moskalewicz

Keywords: Lived time · temporal experience · circular time · temporal horizons · sublime