It’s not an addiction as long as you can manage without it.
Sherlock is always able to go without, careful as he is not to fall into the pitfall of actual addiction.
John might consider Sherlock to be careless with his own health, but there are aspects of himself that Sherlock is constantly monitoring, watchful for signs that any of his little vices are getting out of hand.
That’s what it comes down to, after all. Control. It can hardly be called ‘vices’, and it’s most certainly not addiction; no, it’s simply carefully taken measures he uses in order to maintain control.
These days, Sherlock isn’t prone to unintentional emotional outbursts of any kind. It’s a weakness, and so he’s learnt how to prevent anything as pointless and human as moods to get the best of him.
This hasn’t always been the case. There had used to be…quite a temper. ‘Emotional lability’, Mycroft had once called it. For Sherlock, it had felt more like having his own brain overtaken by some malignant force of nature; clouds gathering up at the horizon, and before he knew it, the storm would break out and desolate everything in its vicinity.
Since then, Sherlock’s recreated himself, and now there’s a carefully constructed balance keeping all elements that are too volatile and too illogical from surfacing. It’s nothing but the simple truth; nothing has made him. He’s created a new self, a self that is devoid of such weakness, and he has no intention of letting all that work go to waste.
It’s a plate armor, and it’s heavy to carry around at times.
And so he allows himself a bit of leeway. A few small vices, just a safety measure in order to keep the plates from drifting apart.
Caffeine. Nicotine. Adrenaline. Masturbation. Pain. Sleeping pills.
There had used to be more on that list, but then there was that thing about… addiction. It had proven to be the opposite of helpful in terms of keeping the storms contained. After some unfortunate events, a few things on the initial list had had to go.
He can’t afford such foibles.
Therefore, the remaining… vices are under strict control. Too much of anything, and he’ll have to decrease it, instead allowing himself more of something else for the time being.
The sum of your vices is still constant.
A cigarette when you start to feel something trickling in your throat. A wank in order to distract from the tension that is slowly creeping up his spine. Coffee to make it possible to stay awake. Sleeping pills to enable him to finally collapse into bed when his own thoughts have turned into shapes that casts shadows on the walls. More coffee to wake himself up after the haze from the pills. Pain to ground himself when everything threatens to fall apart. And finally there’s what makes it all worthwhile: adrenaline.
Perhaps the most apt way of looking at it is to see it for what it is: it’s what’s holding the edges together. The frayed edges that want nothing more than to come apart.
