Betäubung und Sucht

Betäubung und Sucht describes Harry Hole’s attempt to manage alcoholism by using opium as an alternative source of intoxication and numbness. The arrangement offers him a measure of control, but the narrative makes that control visibly unstable: he distinguishes wanting from needing, monitors his use, and has gone without opium, even as his body and mind respond to the promise of relief. The concept is neither a simple story of recovery nor a claim that one substance cleanly replaces another; it is a portrait of self-medication whose short-term calm carries its own risk.

Naming the Need

The conversation with Kaja Solness begins around a volcano, whose repeated eruptions provide an image of pressure building and breaking through. When Harry asks what has happened to her, she redirects the question to him. He admits that he has relapsed: he began drinking spirits on a plane and was asked to leave in Hong Kong. He considers Manila, but concludes that it is not better than Hong Kong, apart from its volcanoes. The exchange places his relapse in the immediate context of displacement and a failed attempt to get away, rather than presenting it as an isolated lapse.

Kaja then asks whether he smokes opium regularly. Harry calls his use irregular. Asked why he takes it, he explains that it is to avoid drinking and identifies himself as an alcoholic. His answer makes the substitution explicit: opium is not presented as a cure for alcohol dependence, but as a way to keep alcohol at bay. He also introduces a practical comparison between Hong Kong and Manila, noting the lower drug penalties and cleaner prisons in Hong Kong. The dry practicality of that comparison sits beside the seriousness of what he has just disclosed.

When Kaja asks whether he is drug-dependent, Harry resists the category and asks what dependence means. Her more concrete question is whether he needs the drug. He says no, but that he wants it. The distinction is revealing without being conclusive: he recognizes desire while refusing to equate it with necessity. Asked why he wants it, he answers that it provides numbness. The exchange gives his use a stated emotional function, while leaving open how securely he can separate wanting from needing.

Harry also turns the conversation toward opium’s history. He recalls the British importation of opium from India to improve trade, the resulting addiction in China, and the war Britain waged after Chinese authorities banned the drug. His comparison with a hypothetical American response to cocaine confiscations in New York shifts the subject from individual appetite to political power and the unequal consequences of drug markets. That history does not excuse or explain away his own use; it does show him framing opium as part of a larger system of commerce, prohibition, and harm.

A Substitute Built Around Control

Alone in his apartment, Harry’s stated purpose becomes action. He puts on Deep Purple, with “Speed King” identified as a favorite, and sits pressing his fingertips to his temples. The dogs tearing at their leashes, howling and pulling at his insides, are the narrative’s image for the pressure of his craving. Earlier, there had been reasons to stop drinking: Rakel, Oleg, work, and perhaps his father. Now he feels that none of those reasons remains. He insists that drinking must not happen and concludes that he needs an alternative high he can control. He credits Kaja, then feels ashamed of relying on the idea. His thought that pride is a luxury captures the compromised terms of the choice: preventing one form of harm matters more to him at that moment than preserving self-respect.

The opium has been concealed in a cigarette pack whose broken seal is difficult to notice. Harry opens the pack, removes the foil, and examines the brown lump. The account then gives the preparation unusual specificity. He knows several ways of smoking opium, from elaborate rituals in opium houses to the crude expedient of holding a straw to a burning lump. His own method is measured: he attaches a metal spoon to the edge of a table, warms a piece no larger than a match head with a lighter, collects the smoke beneath an ordinary glass, and inhales through a straw from McDonald’s. The smallness of the dose and the deliberate sequence make control tangible, but do not make the practice safe.

Harry notes that his fingers work without trembling. In Hong Kong, he has periodically checked the degree of his dependence, and he regards himself as unusually disciplined. He also believes he can decide in advance how much alcohol to drink and then stop, even when already drunk. This self-assessment is important because it shows the standard by which he measures control: keeping to a limit, not abstaining altogether. The precision of his routine offers evidence of planning, but his need to demonstrate that precision also keeps the question of dependence alive.

Wanting, Abstaining, and the Dogs

Harry recalls periods in Hong Kong when he stopped using opium for a week or fourteen days and took Paralgin forte instead. He says the tablets did not affect withdrawal symptoms; their value was psychological, because he knew they contained small amounts of morphine. This distinction complicates his claim that he is not dependent. He describes the tablets not as an effective physical remedy but as reassurance, a substitute that mattered because of what he believed it contained.

He maintains that he is not addicted to intoxication in general and probably not to opium. Yet he is fully aware that the boundaries are blurred. The narrative immediately puts pressure on those qualifications: as soon as he fixes the spoon to the table, the dogs calm down because they know they will soon receive something. Their temporary quiet lasts only until the next day. The image turns his careful preparation into a promise made to craving; what looks like mastery also renews expectation.

The lighter burns Harry’s fingers while the straws lie on the table. A minute later, he takes his first inhalation, and the effect arrives immediately. Pain vanishes, including pain he did not know he had, and gives way to associations and images. He expects to sleep at last. The passage links the drug not only to avoiding alcohol but to broad relief from discomfort and wakefulness. Its effectiveness is unmistakable in the moment, which is precisely what makes the bargain compelling; the account does not mistake immediate relief for a lasting resolution.

Relief Amid Grief and Pressure

Later, Harry sits beside his father’s bed and watches the rise and fall of his thin chest beneath the pajamas. After an hour he leaves. At home, he switches on his phone, plays one of his father’s old Duke Ellington records, and takes out the brown lump. The quiet sequence connects opium use with proximity to his father’s illness and with the private aftermath of watching him breathe. The scene does not state that grief alone causes the use, but it places the return to the drug beside an intimate encounter with decline and loss.

Gunnar Hagen has left a voice message. Harry does not listen, believing he already knows its subject: Mikael Bellman is pressing Hagen to keep Harry and the others away from the murder investigation, and Harry is being told to return to ordinary duty if he wants to remain a police officer. Harry doubts that the last condition matters to him. He says his journey will begin that evening, takes out his lighter, and scrolls through his messages. One is from Øystein; another, from an unknown number, says that Elias Skog spoke before he was glued into the bathtub and offers help. The passage leaves Harry at the threshold of that journey, with the brown lump and the investigation occupying the same night. In this recurrence, numbness is not separate from the pressures he faces: it offers immediate quiet while the demands of family, police work, and the murder case remain unresolved.