Addiction and the Slow Death of Dopamine

By Caleb J. Dundas

An unidentified person wakes up in an alternative reality, a reality created from the sources of the person’s addictions. It is bleak, dark and lonely and an unwilling decision is made, to walk through it until an exit is found. The protagonist wanders through the realm and experiences many serious physical and mental trials that would normally break a person, even kill them. The protagonist’s determination for life alongside desired answers about the world and why they’re there keeps them alive and walking until something’s discovered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Aug 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781504322355

Caleb J. Dundas

Caleb J. Dundas is a young aspiring author from Gosford, NSW Australia. During a period of unemployment, Caleb worked on his craft in writing, producing a series of many poems and streams of consciousness as well as a few fiction projects including his novella ‘Addiction and the Slow Death of Dopamine’. Caleb found art and writing soothing as it gave him the opportunity and the ability to express himself; his depression and his values. Caleb has a great love for literature; poetry and fiction which influence his passion. Some of his literary influences include writers such as Leonard Cohen, Dante Alighieri, H.G Wells & Oscar Wilde as well as many other great authors. The poetic language of the bible has also shaped his writing.

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Copyright © 2020 Caleb J. Dundas.

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Interior Image Credit: Caleb J. Dundas

ISBN: 978-1-5043-2233-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-2235-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 08/28/2020

Contents

EXCERPS

repulsive

uninspired

lackadaisical

deplorable

harakiri

bloodbath

EXCERPS

Truman Copote: Other Voices Other Rooms (1948)

‘But was it possible for a whole house to disappear? Yes, he’d heard of such things. All Mr. Mystery had to do was snap his fingers, and whatever was there went whisk’ ‘This was the place folks came when they went off the face of the earth, when they died but were not dead’

***

Inferno: Canto XIII, lines 31-39

Then stretched I forth my hand a little forward,

And plucked a branchlet off from a great horn;

And the trunk cried, Why dost thou mangle me?

After it had become embrowned with blood

It recommenced its cry: "Why dost thou rend me?

Hast thou no spirit of pity whatsoever?

Men once we were, and now are changed to trees;

Indeed, thy hand should be more pitiful,

Even if the souls of serpents we had been."

REPULSIVE

repulsive

26917.png

One look at the forbidden sun and I was blind.

The world became black and the noises became louder. They became screams and incoherent nonsense.

I sought that which I did not need.

Desire took my sight and replaced it with madness.

I could no longer see myself, but I knew I must have looked hideous.

All I heard were screams and inaudible tones.

Over time the black became a cold blue and I began to see the world once more but not like it once was. No, the world was then abandoned and covered in ice.

I felt that I was the only thing living or… dead? For all I knew, this could’ve been Hades or an infinite madness my mind had manufactured.

For a great deal of unknown time, there had I been and there had I slept and sat and cried and screamed and laughed and begged and hoped and drowned.

I had not dared to wander through the world of ice and interact with my madness.

There had I been, a lone man in his room. I had not moved, eaten, drank or even relieved my bowels and yet I was alive?

It had been a great deal of unknown time… was I dead? Or was I mad and what seemed like a great deal of unknown time had only been a mere few minutes or perhaps even seconds. I do not know, I don’t, I don’t.

What was this?