We have understood that the inner most kernel of all that exists and is thus manifest Thingin-Itself, which for us is the Wille, is groundless and consequently, indestructible. The Wille is in itself a mere blind impulse which strives to no end, yet endlessly repeats its willing as all of the countless luminous spheres and the life produced by a mouldy film on the hard cold crust of a smaller illuminated one called Earth rapidly arise and pass away in beginning-less and endless time. Brahmanism teaches man to regard himself as the original being to whom all of phenomena is essentially foreign, yet no where else but in India can one find a contempt for death of which Europe has no conception.

This is not to digress in any consequential way; for what occurs if and when we introduce Addiction in the subject matter hitherto contemplated? We have all ready made a just presupposition in our introduction and can thus take Addiction as phenomenon. But what place does such an alien, but nevertheless real, occurrence have in a system which has accounted for and explained every sober yet radical phenomenon possible? In fact, Addiction is problematic because it has had no role to play at all.

We shall give the benefit of doubt and try to consider it quite plainly. Addiction turns the explanation of the functioning of self-consciousness on its head. Whereas previously Intellect, and thus the self-consciousness which it manufactures, was geared for the maintenance of the Wille, under the dictates of Addiction, turns rogue towards its appointed duties. The original self-consciousness, like the senile and frail king who grows increasingly despondent and turns out of character, is at once usurped by a Prince, the Addiction, which bears the promise of unearthly rewards. It orients to God, which is but itself, and leads to a false awakening whereby the Idea of the individual, far still from being realised, leads into a pitiful slumber in which the only bliss is his ignorance.

Whereas Nature has through simple egoism deeply supplanted a quality in all of individuality that in order to rouse the activity of an individual being, egotistical ends are the only ones on which we can count with certainty, it is in fact true for the species, to make a claim to the individual than has the perishable individuality itself; for the individual to be active, even to make sacrifices for the sake of the continuance and constitution of the species, the importance of this matter cannot be made so comprehensible to the Intellect, calculated as this is with the matter. It has therefore implanted a delusion to fit its ends, by virtue of which, the good of the species seems to man a good thing for himself, so that he really serves the species under the guise of serving himself, which is in his instinct. It is the sense of the species which presents to the Wille what is useful to it. Where it imagines to pursue individual ends, in truth, it chases merely general ends. This external phenomena is seen most clearly in animals where its role is of the singular importance.

The Hegemonikon of Addiction, instead, assumes direct control of all mental, and consequently, bodily functions. The overthrow is swift and brutal, with the overall objective of life perverted to accommodate not the sustenance of it, rather its utter and absolute destruction. The Wille, in turn, wills a return to non-life by supplanting a delusion on top of the pre-existing one forthwith described as instinct, and thus negates its main motive which is the careful and serious selection of the individual's pressing need, for namely that which is to be produced. The resulting Self-consciousness badly tricks the Wille by taking on a mask of objective admiration. All of the willing then devolves to a disgusting need. There arises the even greater conflict of the individual's need vis-à-vis that of the species, with the former taking the edge; for by this point Addiction has displaced Instinct in its Will-to-Live.

Let us highlight what has just been said with an example. Two individuals holding hands amidst a maelstrom of love desire for nothing more but the utmost possession of each other. The aesthetic in the experience is felt in the sensations brought upon by a rush of blood entering into the brain. This otherwise natural process for one enslaved by Addiction can merely create an artificial feeling of the sublime because experience of the aesthetic is not desired but only wanted. Under such a context, even the superfluidity of Genius is powerless to become a pure subject of knowing, because an experience can only be super-individual so long as Addiction permits it.

Intoxication can be a means for some to experience the otherwise hard to attain sublime moment of knowing. Yet Addiction ensures that through it one gets closer only to the experience of mania sine delirio, the inability to correlate memories chronologically, and as things have happened, than does one of grasping beauty in the objective perception of things as they appear to be. Regardless, one is free to affirm a disgruntled Wille and push fate inexorably to the extreme, in which case he is assigned a fitting end. It is equally possible for another to play part of the detached observer who thus aims to achieve ataraxiathrough ascetic self-renunciation. This latter possibility has more in common with the Buddhist ideal of practicing boundless Compassion for all living beings.

That one carrying the yoke of Addiction can delude himself into believing he works towards the very same ideal despite mounting opposition to the contrary, thus easily resign utterly and frequently to a desired state of unhinged intoxication. To this Addiction will have robbed him of objectivity. In the end, he will merely have created a subjective hell of his own design.

Schopenhauer has developed a phenomenology not by looking at thought, but by the way one lives bodily. The body as object of study is not the lived body. The lived-body is one's conscious bodily experience. Experience of the lived-body is consciousness of being bodily.

This can equally accommodate Addiction. A thorough investigation how is recommended.