LIFE JUNKIE

I keep wanting to write on the topic of addiction and how it 
relates to obsession. The trouble is that whenever I think deeply 
about it I come back to the fundamental question of individual 
motivation, which is one that I can't quite figure out an answer 
to. Really for years now I've been unsure of why I try to achieve 
anything.

Addiction, speaking here of chemical addiction, has always been 
something that I've feared. It's not primarily a fear of the 
physical consequences, but the idea that a substance could 
permanently change my motivations, as they are all that really 
define me as a conscious being. This extends to all drugs, in my 
teens while most kids were getting curious about drinking and 
smoking I started refusing to take Paracetamol from my parents when 
I had pain. A bit later I stopped taking any form of caffinated 
drinks, and although I did start drinking alcohol it was with a 
strict rule that it would only be on one day per year (which for 
all social intents and purposes basically means I don't drink).

The rule with alcohol works pretty well. I mean I do get completely 
sozzled on that one day, I think last time I was walking bare-foot 
on the sharp gravel and howling at the moon at one point, but I 
heal and nobody's around to judge out here. For days or weeks, 
maybe even months, afterwards I think about drinking again but by 
the time a year's passed that addictive desire has passed 
completely. I could probably drop it down to one day every six 
months, maybe every quarter, but the only way this sort of thing 
can work is to pick a rule and stick with it so I'm stuck with the 
rule I came up with first. I'm pretty good at being hard at myself 
like that - it annoys me actually when most people aren't, but then 
they do probably encounter a lot more social influence, which I'm 
not entirely immune to either, except just by rarely ever hanging 
out with anyone.

What I am left with are what I'll call "soft addictions", which are 
basically so socially acceptable that it's a little flippant to 
talk about them as addictions at all. The main one is sugar, which 
isn't to say that I consume a great amount of the stuff, but that I 
keep consuming it regularly, and keep thinking about consuming it. 
The main manifestation of this is my little 250g pack of 
budget-brand shortbread biscuits, $1.29 at the supermarket (the 
fact that I didn't give them up when the price unreasonably lept up 
from $0.89 a few years ago is a sure sign of my addiction). If I 
don't get two biscuits straight after breakfast then I'm doomed to 
be thinking "I could do with a biscuit" for the rest of the damned 
day! Worse, when things go wrong, or I'm just feeling depressed by 
some reminder of how misplaced some of my other motivations are in 
life, I turn to those poorly baked biccies and clean up some 
portion of the rest of the weeks' supply. Then if I'm really weak, 
I even give in and buy an extra pack if I'm in town again before 
the next shopping day (thankfully all the virus restrictions have 
made this too much trouble these days).

The biscuits aren't all that nice (though the exact taste and 
consistency seems to mysteriously vary to a large degree between 
packs - probably due to inadequate mixing of the ingredients), 
which does limit their addictive effect compared to name-brand 
treats. For the latter I allow myself a strict $2 budget per weekly 
supermarket visit (pick-up, these days), which is about half of 
what the good stuff sells for so I have to hang out for the 
half-price specials. Unfortunately now that I don't go in myself I 
can't pick through the expired-goods bin anymore so they're 
becoming very rare treats and as such I no longer think of them in 
a compulsive way, the same as alcohol, unless I've had some 
recently.

These physical intakes mainly defined my idea of additction for 
some time, but I've also started paying more attention to 
experiences and how they can be equally addictive. People usually 
talk about obsession in relation to experiences, and addiction 
related to physical intake of chemicals, but I'm sure they are two 
means to the same end. Certain experiences induce a chemical state 
just as chemical intake would force the issue. The most common 
example if the 'adrenalin junkie', where adrenalin is a very potent 
example that I usually experience from fire brigade turn-outs, but 
it's not something I find addictive myself. Again my examples are 
'softer', and I'd point first at my period some years ago of 
watching two movies every night. I know this is nothing for many 
people, in fact the idea of binge watching TV series suggests a 
much greater commitment. But for me I think it was too much, both 
in terms of physical inactivity and wasted time. The point is that 
I felt a need to chase a certain experience every night, first a 
lighter story and then something very dark. I came to need this 
experience, and the thought of what movies to pick from my inbox of 
old second-hand VHS tapes and DVDs whirred in the back of my head 
all through the working day.

But that was, and is, a two-part soft addiction, because from 
buying them all second-hand from junk shops I started valuing the 
rarer 80s rental tapes, appreciating the cover art and the 
evolution of VHS cassette construction, and overall started 
thinking of them as a collection. So they became another focus of 
my collecting, which is easily another addiction that has already 
had me amass numbers of cameras and vintage computers beyond my 
real capacity to use or even appreciate them individually. In my 
teens I picked up a couple of Doctor Who VHS tapes at an Op-Shop, 
back when I was only really looking for movies or shows that I was 
already aware of liking (The full original run of Doctor Who was 
repeated on Australian TV by the ABC while I was a kid, so I knew I 
liked it even though I'd already forgotten most of the specific 
stories). Although I only ever managed to find one more Doctor Who 
tape 'in the wild', I later started buying bulk lots which (then) 
were selling for next to nothing on Ebay. For individual tapes I 
set a strict budget of $15 including postage and spent many years 
trawling through search results trying to find cheap listings for 
tapes to fill the gaps in the collection I'd amassed from the bulk 
buys. It also gave my mother an easy answer for what to buy me for 
Christmas, so in the end she usually got me the ones that were only 
ever up at the mighty $20 heights. I've now got the complete set of 
over 100 Doctor Who stories released on VHS (plus I picked up DVDs 
of the couple where the films were only more recently rediscovered).

Now, with the Who tapes all bought, and me way too cheap to pay $9 
postage on other VHS tapes listed online even though the Op-Shop 
where I was getting most of them before burnt down, I've ended up 
collecting radiation detectors (Geiger counters etc.). Finding them 
in Australia at a reasonable price ($50 max budget for a nice one) 
is so hard that the pace of that collection is pretty limited, 
though I do still waste a lot of time looking for them.

But the time aspect is interesting because I'm really weighing this 
against how I could be creating something in that time. Yet 
creating things is also a sort of addiction, what I'd call the 
tinkerer's addiction. You come up with an idea for something and 
start chasing the unique thrill of realising it. The trill is all 
the greater if it's something on the edge of your capabilities, 
something more remarkable (to you, at least) than anything you've 
done before. As such you run into issues, and invest more and more 
time, and with a bit of luck you end up with your little thrill of 
success. But does it achieve anything? In my case I often hope I'll 
be able to make money from it, but I usually fail with that and 
that idea only costs me more time and money. Maybe others 
appreciate it, but they've already got plenty to appreciate, and 
people out there make their living providing it to them, maybe you 
already do so yourself in some small part. So why the preference 
for creating something ahead of just passively consuming the 
entertainment fed to us from so many sources? Creating something 
usually comes at a much greater a cost, but it's just another 
little soft addiction the same as me watching movies.

And here I'm creating this very long rambly post, wasting a nice, 
well kind-of dreery actually, Saturday morning. But for this I'm 
also feeding into another addiction - socialising. As cut-off and 
one-directional as it is, I'm feeding into my own unusually weak 
addiction to people. It's not all that weak really - I waste up to 
an hour each morning going through Usenet and on rare occasions 
non-business email discussions, which I do justify as expanding my 
knowledge but it's often really just the interaction that I seek. 
At the same time I'm usually pretty well satisfied reading posts 
for 1/2hr and maybe replying to one with a sentence or two, as my 
main social interaction for the day. With much more socialising 
than that I find I've had enough of it pretty soon. Interacting 
with women that I'm attracted to is definately addictive 
specifically though, and maybe I notice that more than most given 
that I don't do it much. It lasts pretty strongly for a few weeks, 
and skews my judgement a lot even if I'm not "in love" or anything. 
Just wanting to be around girls, even if excepting the opportunity 
for sex, and in spite of a dislike for the social sort of lifestyle 
enabling that. Probably as a consequence of my age, it's much more 
strongly addictive than most other things I toy with.

So if you don't create anything, don't talk to anyone, don't go 
near people you're attracted to, don't eat things you enjoy, never 
consume any substances that affect your thinking, and never buy 
anything non-essential, then according to me you're not an addict. 
You see the problem that I kept coming to when thinking about this 
post. I've basically categorised all the normal motivations of life 
as negative addictions. Some I indulge in daily, some I strictly 
restrain myself from, and others I just sort-of fade in and out 
from by way of circumstance. What I'm really uncertain about is 
what motivates me one way or the other, or to put it another way 
why do I choose some addictions over others? They can all 
individually make me happier for some moment of time, all come with 
some risks, and all can go too far and dominate my life. It's not a 
conscious balance, it's the same conflict between loving and hating 
everything simultaneously that I've talked about before. I choose 
to indulge in some addictions and not others, because my addictions 
are what I am. To live, regardless of how you do it, is basically 
to be a life junkie.

 - The Free Thinker