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At the beginning of His Last Vow, John finds Sherlock strung out on drugs. Just what is going on in this first scene? Fans discussing the show seem divided between two common theories, some arguing his drug use is a relapse brought on by desperation or loneliness or rejection by John at the end of The Sign of Three, while others view it as part of his strategy for the Magnussen case. I’d like to propose a third option. It’s not a relapse in my opinion; the behavior pattern throughout the episode doesn’t seem to match someone dealing with addiction. But it’s also not the kind of trick a mentally healthy Sherlock would pull. Rather, it’s a symptom of the rather bad case of combat stress Sherlock picked up rooting out Team Moriarty after The Reichenbach Fall.
Let’s start with Theory A, the idea that this really is a relapse. I’ve seen this a lot in fanfic and it definitely makes for good drama. Sherlock’s pretty well-established as a drug addict but one in recovery, and John is equally well-established as the person who “keeps him right” in that regard. John’s the one that cancels his date when Irene seemingly dies, after all, who searches his flat and even hounds him about giving up cigarettes. The end of The Sign of Three is as big a danger night as we’ve ever seen, and by its very nature its one John can’t help him through.
There’s also a kind of canonical precedent in the Doyle stories. Take this bit from the tail end of The Sign of the Four (so minor spoilers for that book):
"By the way, apropos of this Norwood business, you see that they had, as I surmised, a confederate in the house, who could be none other than Lal Rao, the butler: so Jones actually has the undivided honour of having caught one fish in his great haul."
“The division seems rather unfair,” I remarked. “You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?”
“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it.
Watson and Holmes face a fork in the road here, a dividing point in their lives. Watson gets the wife and the family, and Holmes gets the Work. More specifically, he gets the distraction or, if we’re being charitable, something to engage his brain and give him a sense of peace – and, in the absence of suitable work, Holmes is driven to its chemical equivalent. (He says as much at the very beginning of The Sign of the Four: “Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants.”) So I think fanfic writers who choose to see this as the moment where John gets the healthy family life (or shoots for it, at least) and Sherlock chooses a more self-focused mental stimulation by whatever means necessary aren’t going too far out on a limb. I’ve certainly enjoyed stories that made a convincing case of this.
The problem is, this approach makes too tidy a picture of things. If Sherlock was using cocaine as a (bad!) coping mechanism for being abandoned by John, that’s one thing. But Sherlock’s an addict. He seems to know he’s an addict – if there’s any question of self-denial, I suspect his conversation with the cabbie in A Study in Pink proved that for him – and he’s smart enough to know this is a disastrously self-destructive way of coping for someone with an addictive past. What’s more, his behavior pattern, the way he bounces right back once the drugs clear his system, even turning down the morphine at the hospital so he can think clearly – these aren’t the actions of someone relapsing into addictive behaviors. You don’t even get the physical effects of withdrawal. And while I could buy the show not really wanting to sink the whole episode dealing with this issue in great depth, even with that stuff happening offscreen, we’re just not given any indication Sherlock was dealing with this kind of thing. He’s not painted like an addict.
Which leads to Theory B: Sherlock took drugs for the case. Again, there are scenes in the Doyle canon that point to this. gloriascott93 and probably a few other people (I really struggle to work out just who says what in these posts – sorry) discussed a rather interesting scene from “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” where Holmes impersonates a drug user for a case. The beginning of that scene (read the whole exchange at the link):
In a very short time a decrepit figure had emerged from the opium den, and I was walking down the street with Sherlock Holmes. For two streets he shuffled along with a bent back and an uncertain foot. Then, glancing quickly round, he straightened himself out and burst into a hearty fit of laughter.
"I suppose, Watson," said he, "that you imagine that I have added opium-smoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical views. […] I am in the midst of a very remarkable inquiry, and I have hoped to find a clue in the incoherent ramblings of these sots, as I have done before now."
Shades of Sherlock’s protestations in His Last Vow that he’s undercover, that. And a lot of people read Sherlock’s actions here along those lines. This is his usual throwing caution to the wind in pursuit of a case, perhaps driven to a new extreme because John’s not there to moderate him anymore but still, his actions in HLV are a detective without restraint trying to solve a case rather than an addict looking for an excuse to justify his next fix.
I have a certain sympathy for this view, though again I’m not 100% convinced by it. I think Mycroft, John, even Anderson behaved in a pretty rotten way to Sherlock when they didn’t even listen to his reasons for why he’d used the drugs. He did have a reason, even if it was a pretty bad one; not even trusting him enough to ask what was going on, after all he’d been through, is pretty insulting. An army doctor who would be familiar with substance abuse and the brother of a recovering addict should be able to see the difference between a temporary high and a relapse. Molly’s in a bit of a different category, I think; her reaction seems to be that even if his reason was good it was still an unjustifiably big risk to take, and she’s right. But I wouldn’t put it past Sherlock Holmes to put himself in at least moderate danger if he thinks it would serve a case.
Here’s the thing, though. As I said, Molly’s right: it’s ridiculously destructive behavior, and if Sherlock is at all smart about his addiction, he’d know this is what it means to be an addict. An alcoholic can’t just have a glass of champagne at his daughter’s wedding because the normal thought process that moderates alcohol use for most people simply doesn’t work in his case. Ditto for drug addictions. If Sherlock’s truly an addict, he knows he can’t take the occasional hit of heroin because his motives are pure, even if someone else could. If Sherlock wanted to make Magnussen under-rate him, he has to find another way, and I think a psychologically health Sherlock knows he has to find another way. He gets himself arrested for some minor, embarrassing crimes. He leaks a falsified suicide attempt. Heck, he gets drug use in the papers without actually doing drugs. (Hanging out in drug dens and acting high, perhaps, without actually doing the drugs?) Something like that.
So I’ll give Sherlock the benefit of the doubt and agree that at some level he probably thinks this was all about Magnussen. There may have been a part of him that longed for the oblivion the drug gave him, but I think for him that was an added benefit, not the main cause. At least on a conscious level. The thing is, I honestly don’t think this is the kind risk Sherlock would have taken before Reichenbach. Because, let’s admit it, Sherlock’s a first-class wreck. He’s withdrawing from the things that give him pleasure (casework, obviously, and even experiments seem infused with a sense of ennui in The Sign of Three). His two closest friendships, with John and Molly, are both being radically altered as they move toward marriage and Sherlock is in screaming denial about this reality until he deduces the baby. He’s been on a two-year-long solo undercover mission killing people and rather than debriefing him and sending him to a shrink, his confidante and brother calls it a holiday, belittles Sherlock as the stupid one, and generally doesn’t consider what he’s been through.
And, you know, there’s a reason that twenty-odd American veterans commit suicide every day. Vets face a well-defined cluster of psychological symptoms, and Sherlock seems to be affected by that same cluster of problems.
Which leads me to Theory C: Sherlock’s in an emotional and psychological tail spin after his return, and he simply doesn’t see returning to his old life as a realistic option. He’s trying to return but failing at it, and probably dealing with more than a touch of depression or PTSD or both. And because of this he’s in more or less the same mental state as John was at the beginning of A Study in Pink, where that apple would sit on the desk all but taunting him and John couldn’t be bothered to eat it. It’s not that he’s suicidal, but he doesn’t have the energy or hope or whatever else it might be to actually cling to life.
So he overinvests himself in John’s wedding to have something to do, and to show he’s still capable of being a useful, good friend. He takes the Magnussen case and actually revives a little; he’s functional with Janine and downright excited describing it to John. But I think at some level he’s trying to pull a crash-landing out of a tail-spin. I think at the beginning of His Last Vow Sherlock’s beginning to realize just how irreparable his life is. Going back to the life he dreamed of when he was in Eastern Europe hunting Moriarty’s network seems increasingly impossible. And it’s not that Sherlock’s suicidal in the proper sense, but he simply doesn’t have the will to do what it takes to make himself safe.
All of which makes me think, getting back to the drugs that this isn’t about coping or addiction half as much as it’s about the fall-out from a very stressful, unacknowledged case of combat stress. Sherlock takes drugs not because he’s addicted but because he just can’t be bothered to do what he knows is good for him long-term, much as he can’t be bothered to solve cases in The Sign of Three or even really be Sherlock Holmes with the media in The Empty Hearse. John says at the tail end of TEH that he loves being Sherlock Holmes, but look at his face. He doesn’t seem to.
For my money, Sherlock Holmes isn’t falling back into drug use or even addiction because John Watson abandoned him. I think on a conscious level he’s telling the truth: this drug use is for a case. But it’s a damned short-sighted approach to take, and it really only makes sense because he doesn’t have the discipline he needs to stay sober, he just doesn’t care anymore – because I’m not sure he thinks it matters. Taking the Magnussen case is in some ways an act of hope on his part that he could return to the kind of casework that really matters and maybe even get John back by his side. But using the drugs is a mark of a man driven so far beyond endurance. He’s more than a bit frayed around the edges. Splintered, even. While he knows the drugs are a major risk, I’m not entirely sure he’s capable of caring at that point.