Heroes and heroines with addictions

I was browsing K. J. Charles’s blog (highly recommended!) and came across a post where she mentioned that her heroes don’t smoke, and that she could write an entire book where no one smokes, unlikely though that would have been in Victorian times. Her main reason was that she doesn’t want the heroes to die of lung cancer twenty years after the story ends, which is understandable. I’m personally very much not in favor of smoking IRL because of the health risks and because I find it difficult to breathe when there’s smoke in the air.

But it’s different in fiction. Rhett Butler’s cigar is iconic and does not detract in the least from his appeal, even though I would never want to kiss a man who’d just had tobacco in his mouth. Sherlock Holmes, Gandalf, Django… would they be the same without their nicotine-delivery-methods-of-choice? Well, Holmes would probably ramp up his other addiction, but I’ll get to that later. And although I’ve never so much as tried a cigarette, I’ve written a romance with a hero who smoked frequently, though this was in a dystopian world where people didn’t know about the health risks.

Smoking has enough of a presence in fiction to be a sign of a character’s coolness, as long as it doesn’t get too realistic. You don’t see Gomez Addams coughing his lungs up or flashing his yellow teeth in a smile. The only thing I really dislike when heroes smoke is any disregard of other people’s preferences, from smoking indoors without asking permission from anyone sharing the immediate space, to blowing smoke in the heroine’s face to intimidate her (yes, this happens in an Anne Stuart romance).

Heroes who drink to excess are much more common in historical romances, mostly because this contributes to their rakishness and gives them an opportunity to bump gracelessly into a heroine who they’d avoid like the plague if they were sober. Of course, the vast majority of heroes aren’t alcoholics (a brilliant exception is Reggie in Mary Jo Putney’s The Rake) and you know they will never, ever have one too many after their HEA. Likewise, they don’t have cirrhosis or puffiness of the face, and any irritability, mood swings, insomnia, etc. is due to their unresolved feels for the heroine rather than the booze.

My personal preference when it comes to drinking in fiction is social drinking that doesn’t go beyond a couple of glasses, unless there’s a good reason for the character to drink to excess. And even if the ability to drink someone under the table was prized as a sign of manliness, it’s not something I want to read about in a romance. Finally, if a hero gets so drunk he passes out in front of the heroine, I’d rather she didn’t react as though she’s read the book and knows this will never happen again, because that’s too reminiscent of how people in real life dismiss problematic behavior. By the way, I haven’t yet read a romance where a heroine struggled with alcohol abuse, though if anyone knows of one, please feel free to share!

Speaking of heroines with addictions, no blog post about this would be complete without a mention of the heroine of Stacia Kane’s urban fantasy Downside series, whose drug habit often lands her in serious trouble. Not only is this an unusual quality in a heroine, but Ms. Kane doesn’t shy away from the reality of drug addiction, and the scene in the second book depicting withdrawal in all its glory is horrific. That said, these books aren’t romances, and I’ve never come across a romance where the heroine pops pills and snorts lines (or even where she’s a recovering addict). And the Downside series stopped working for me eventually, because I binge-read all the books and felt dissatisfied that the heroine was as addicted and self-loathing at the end as she was at the beginning. I also kept thinking that her tolerance levels must be through the roof by now, though since these are fantasy drugs, she doesn’t have any of the health problems I’d expect to see in cocaine or heroin addicts.

Heroes with drug addiction are similarly thin on the ground. Even Sherlock Holmes only shot up with his seven per cent solution in one book. It’s interesting how even the bored-with-the-world rakes and the bad, bad billionaires don’t touch drugs, especially since cocaine and heroin use was once perfectly acceptable. Heroin was actually hailed as a cure for morphine addiction back in the day. But now, even in fiction where the hero keeps it under control and purely recreational, I’d worry that this balance wouldn’t last. There are some contemporary romances with heroes recovering from drug addiction (such as Carian Cole’s No Tomorrow), but heroes addicted in the here-and-now seem to be between rare and nonexistent.

How about you? What are your thoughts on addiction in romance?