Addiction is described as the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma. In the play, Long Day’s Journey into Night, written by Eugene O’neill, the destructive power of addictions is a major theme. The main characters in the play are James Tyrone, Mary Tyrone, Jamie Tyrone, and Edmund Tyrone. Each of these characters have failures that correlate to each other in the sense of addiction. All of the Tyrones use drugs to hope that it will help them escape from their issues. James, Jamie, and Edmund rely on alcohol for their problems and Mary relies on morphine. All of them believe that these drugs will be the answers to their problems, but instead it only makes them worse.…show more content… It all started when James took her to a cheap hospital when she gave birth to Edmund. To relieve her pain, the doctor gave her morphine. Mary then inadvertently became addicted. Mary describes morphine as a special kind of medicine. “I have to take it because there is no other that can stop the pain-all the pain-I mean, in my hands” (O’neill 889). Mary uses her addiction as a way to forget all of her pain. She claims there have only been a few moments where she had been happy. Mary had two dreams. “To be a nun… To become a concert pianist, that was the other “ (O’neill 889). These dreams are in which she gave up when she married James. Mary believes that because she married James there is no hope in rekindling her religious faith in which she regrets. Mary also puts part of the blame of her addiction to morphine on Edmund. She claims that if she never had him she would have never got it in the first