That’s what they all say, but even the most certain, most self-righteous cry of “I am not an Addict!!!” will elicit laughter from anyone with the knowledge of what addiction really is., Because most addicts are unaware of their addictions. Actually, no matter who you are, what you do, where you come from or what you believe, you are addicted to something, and if you’ll give me your ear, I’ll bend it with a few facts…
To begin with, what exactly is an addict? Well, to get to the heart of that truth, we need to beforehand define the word. What does it actually mean, do we really know???
I’ll bet you think it’s about heavy drugs, but you’d be wrong. It’s not even about prescription drugs or booze or ciggies or beer.
Actually, it’s more about the pretzels than the beer.
Addiction is a strange beast that masquerades as many things. Almost anything can become an addiction, but some addictions are more harmful than others. Others may look harmless but really be quite destructive.
One obvious and clear example of a destructive addiction is an obsessive relationship with an abusive partner. But equally miserable is an obsession with toy battleships, or getting hooked on daytime television or celebrity gossip. The photos above were taken at a Star Trek Con with about 22,000 attendees. Addiction? Sure it is.
Addiction can be to absolutely anything; you can be addicted to hearing the news or weather; listening to the news once a night is considered normal, but by whose standards? When you keep the news on and listen to it every five minutes during a crisis such as the Gulf War or the Missile Crisis, does that count as an addiction???
Well, gosh, anything that you can’t stop doing … well, heck, who am I to say what addiction is? Let’s let Mr. Webster tell it like it is:
“Compulsive behavior or use of substances” — that’s about it for any of the modern dictionaries; clearly they haven’t been consulting the Life Coaches and other folks who pick up the pieces and help people patch themselves back together to forge ahead into the rest of their wretched time on Earth…oh, don’t get me started.
Addiction is here. Addiction is real. Addiction is part of your life and the life of everyone you’ve ever known. We all have addictions; some are easier to admit to, some are no big deal or apparently so, and others can drag us down heavily into the mud.
We all know at least a little something about the horrors of drug addiction, but other addictions can be just as deadly.
Addiction to danger is one of them. Skydiving is deliberately putting yourself at risk of death, defying the odds. So is car racing, boat racing and downhill skiing — just ask my old buddy, Sonny Buono. And he was addicted, truly addicted, to skiing. It killed him.
Another friend, actor Jack Cassidy, father of Patrick and Shaun Cassidy, died in a fire caused by smoking in bed. He was a chain smoker, and it killed him.
Yet another friend, David Carradine, with whom I worked in 1969 at Universal Studios, was a substance abuser, but that’s not what killed him. He died of accidental asphyxiation in a sex-act — it was to this type of sex act that he was fatally addicted.
Wild, erotic zany and drugged-out addictions are a heck of a lot easier to spot than the secretly fatal ones, like social networking and blatting every little secret about yourself in uncharted and unsupervised online chat rooms.
Can’t stop drooling over cheap porn on “porn-free” youtube? Can’t stop checking out that booty shake thing just one more time? Want just one little peek at the video that goes with the teaser thumbnail of a girl with her bum right in your face? Say no more! You may be a victim of PDS, Porn Download Syndrome.
Ping pong can get so heavy that a person sells everything they own and buys a ping pong table and sets out to become world champ at the age of 46. This seems on the surface to be a totally wholesome and completely wonderful hobby, but watch out should the ping pong addict ever become thwarted!
You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Murders have been committed over ping pong.
And sometimes over much less. See, that’s a kind of addiction, too. Being too attached to something. Fussing too much over the pudding or the cupcakes can indicated a powerful and potentially deadly addiction to something, usually perfection.
Oh, yes, the Ultimate Hell of Dr. Luther — Perfection.
If you have not achieved Perfection, tarry not, achieve it now or suffer the torments of Hell. Gosh, well, another addiction revealed, and there are lots more up everyone’s sleeve, not the least of which is Grampa’s Salt.
Remember how Grampa used to shake and shake and shake the salt over his food, without ever tasting it first?
Maybe your Nana did the same thing mine did to teach him a lesson; salt the food down so heavily that one more grain would kill a horse. He ate the whole thing, stoic Russian Pole that he was, and swallowed a great deal more hot lemon water than he usually might, but never did he admit he’d oversalted food, not ever.
Addiction to french fries. I’ll admit to that, and if you’re smart, you will too, because you don’t have to live in America anymore to be addicted to side after side of french fries.
Deep fried anything. Yep, that stuff can be horrendously addictive and just as deadly as any other addiction.
You might know some folks who are addicted to sad Country Music. Or to verbal abuse. Or to heavy perfume. Or to a laptop. Or to strawberry ice cream sodas with whipped cream, crushed nuts and maraschino cherry. Doesn’t sound awfully deadly, does it? But how about a compulsive fascination with a nasty-tempered, foul-mouthed negative soul-buster who can’t stop ragging on you?
Sure, the compulsions there are shared and mutually rewarding, so the relationship, whether business, family or intimate or all three, goes on.
You might be harmlessly addicted to cowboy films, puppet shows, dare-devil flyers, lost comic book editions, Magic cards, bingo, Monopoly, chocolate cake, fudge brownies, marshmallows, sunflower seeds, or even hemp, which you can now buy at most grocery outlets, at least the seeds.
Do you spend every weekend watching a large plasma screen filled with garishly costumed boys smashing each other in the face, groin and knees?
Is your life built around your favorite soap-opera?
Do you have polite, highly controlled and emotionless conversations with your family because you think Ozzie & Harriet was a reality show?
There are so many kinds of addictions, it would occupy me for many months just listing them all, and to describe each one would take even longer. Let me just indicate that there is an area that needs examination, the area of addiction, and that there are addictions unsuspected all around us, and we have a lot of them.
Just how many, I leave to your self-study and observation. You might want to take the Addiction Test:
1. Is there anything you do a lot of, but can’t explain to others why you do it?
That’s it. Simple test, fast results. You want more of a test, go to college.
You might try making a list of those things that seem to you might be personal addictions, in the sense that they are to some degree not in your control, and that they seem to exercise themselves upon you at fairly frequent intervals.
In short, a habit of any kind, a habit you can’t seem to break. Make a list of all your habits, no matter how seemingly harmless they may be, in your view. You might be surprised to learn that those little harmless habits were more dangerous to your spiritual well-being than you thought.
One addiction I’ll bet you didn’t always know you had, although you may know it now, is to food, period. Just plain food, no special kind of food, just anything to eat, and lots of it. We call this a “harmless” addiction, because it helps keep us alive to eat and drink, but that doesn’t make it any less of an addiction, see?
Oxygen.
If you’re alive and breathing, you have an oxygen addiction. Oxygen was first called “Phlogiston” and meant “that thing that encourages things to burn”. Oxygen is not necessarily a Good Thing.
Too much oxygen can kill you, burn your lungs up, destroy tissue faster than an acid bath; you wouldn’t want too much oxygen. Yet there are oxygen bars where folks casually stagger in and swagger out, pumped up with oxygen, the latest legal turn-on.
Oxygen is a drug.
Not only is oxygen a drug, but it’s peddled by drug dealers operating in plain sight in hospitals and clinics. You can even get a refill without a prescription. It’s obvious that oxygen addiction is a medical conspiracy, but I can prove that the doctors are in on it. First thing a doctor does with a newborn is what? Right. Spank it, get it to cry, to suck oxygen into the lungs, and from that moment on, the kid is hooked.
Think you’re not Hooked on Oxygen? Just try to get off the stuff.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby