What Is Hell?

Is it a fiery pit, eternal separation from God's love, or perhaps just insight into the true nature of things?

I have spoke with the tongue of angels

I have held the hand of a devil

It was warm in the night

I was cold as a stone.

- “I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For” by U2

Some Christians believe in the quintessential, fire-and-brimstone conception of Hell as a place of endless, gory, imaginative suffering. Because I was raised by parents who had attended Catholic universities, I grew up with a less flashy, more theologically sophisticated, but ultimately no less terrifying notion: Hell, I discovered, was simply a state of complete, permanent disconnection of the soul from God.

Sometimes I think that Hell is a type of insight into the nature of things. There is a 2000-ish movie starring Ryan Gosling called The United States of Leland. In it, his character murders a developmentally disabled boy after noticing the sadness that fills the young man’s eyes while he interacts with a young woman; the implication is that the disabled young man desires this girl romantically, whereas she views him simply as someone to be aided and pitied. Despite the fact that the disabled young man recognizes this, he can neither articulate nor change it. There is a darkness to this world, Ryan Gosling’s protagonist realizes, and once you’re awakened to it, it becomes a part of you forever. 

Addiction opened my eyes to much that I wish I had never seen. The festering abscesses resulting from missed shots and dirty needles, some of which ate all the way down to the bone; the angry pink patches of skin caused by stimulant-induced “picking” with tweezers, razors, and knives; the robberies and beatings, sometimes senseless and sometimes chillingly calculated; the please-God-take-me-now wails of fellow patients in detox (or were they my own?). The funerals of a dozen electric, potential-filled twenty-somethings, their relatives weeping with wild abandon – giving themselves over to a keening that bears witness to the fact that their lives are irreversibly diminished. Then, of course, there is also the interminable, inexorable decay of those who somehow survived until nothing but diminished, glued-back-together-shells remained; reaching a point at which, frankly, it would’ve been much kinder to them and everyone who loved them if they were already gone. 

There is yet another level to this addictive blackness. Once you have injected a speedball and experienced that Dionysian splendor, nothing – and I mean nothing – can compare to that paradise. Not porn-star-orgy sex with your soulmate. Not your Grandma watching you thank her as you win an Oscar. Not even, perhaps, the birth of your first child. Nothing “normal” will ever measure up, and at that point, restoring yourself to spiritual health is as futile as trying to resurrect frostbitten flesh. 

My friend John D. (June 1985 - January 2021). I met John in inpatient treatment, during which his dry & pessimistic humor, his perspicacity regarding other people's characters, and his in-demand culinary skills distinguished him. Before his addiction derailed his life and he ended up serving time for an armed robbery conviction (for stealing from a drug dealer), John worked for a prestigious caterer in New York City. Shortly after we left treatment, infectious endocarditis from a reused needle damaged the valves of his heart, rendering him unable to work and restricting his lifespan to three to four additional years.

I visited John several times at the nursing home where he was recuperating, only to discover that he had befriended and / or seduced most of the female staff; he never failed to pressure me to smuggle in contraband dip (chewing tobacco).

Out of our cohort of eight patients who shared a bathroom with a single shower and toilet, at least five have passed away of OD's or suicides; in terms of the three who shared a bedroom with me at one point, I am the lone survivor. Rest in peace, John. I will miss your despite-yourself smile - as well as the safe, I-belong-to-someone feeling that came over me when you used to sling your arm around my shoulder - every single day until I can shed my earthly worries and join you somewhere better.