" I keep coming back to this - we're not particularly religious, we tossed out religious authoritarianism as a base for our culture. That's good, but we haven't replaced it with anything except materialism.
We're living in an era of emotional poverty, which is something that serious drug addicts feel most keenly. Whatever else you can say about it, drug addiction is a form of religion, albeit a bent one. An addict gives himself away to his substance utterly. He trusts it, and his love for it is more important than his place in the community, his job, or his friends. "

― David Foster Wallace , David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview and Other Conversations