What has made Sonny use heroin?"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin

In the story "Sonny's Blues," Sonny
says...

...what heroin feels like sometimes-when
it's in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. And
distant. And- and sure." He sipped his beer, very deliberately not looking at me. I
watched his face. "It makes you feel-in control. Sometimes you've got to have that
feeling."

When Sonny speaks, he refers to
suffering in life. And as he tries to describe it to his brother, he says that everyone
suffers and everyone tries to find the best way to deal with it. While the narrator
believes that the drug will kill the user and that somehow that is
the user's intent, what Sonny says is that he only wants to survive
and he sees the heroin as his lifeline.

Listening to Sonny,
the reader learns that other users he knows all need the drug, but handle the addiction
in different ways: accepting that it's a part of life, or denying it
altogether.

Perhaps the control Sonny feels keeps the fear
at bay: the fear of suffering—the same fear the adults saw as the evening arrived on
Sunday afternoons in the living room. The children did not understand it, and perhaps
Sonny does not really understand it either even though he is no longer a child. Perhaps
the heroin allows him to avoid fear, and maintain a distance from the suffering that
life brings with it.

Sonny's reasons for using all seems to
revolve around suffering and surviving. Sonny's redemption is seen when he finds his way
in the music at the club, but the true sadness comes from Sonny's childhood friend who
the narrator meets leaving school as the story begins: telling the reader with chilling
clarity that no matter what may happen while Sonny is in jail—he may get cleaned up—he
will never be free of the
addiction.

And so the terrible irony is clear: Sonny takes
the heroin so that he can feel like he is in control. The truth is that the control he
feels is really a lie, an illusion. Sonny does not have the control: the drug
does. If Sonny's friend is correct, the relationship between Sonny and the
drug will never change.