It is just a reinforcement for us. He has probably never had more than the ever-elusive 'fleeting high'. He's in a skinner box, where he has already maxed out the ill effects of one of our more powerful tools (money). He has to go to ever further extents to quiet the demons that most of us had to cope with since adolescence.

To drive the point home, he'll never be able to make any new authentic connections in his life (if he ever could in the past). While it is a bit copium, and I am as frothy in the mouth about his antics as any well-meaning individual, I do find it one of the constant, if smallest, wins.