Ex-Treme

Addiction is a crafty bugger. It changes expression: from booze to chocolate, to overspending, grandiose greed and ambition, cake, Ben & Jerry's vanilla pints in front of the tv, being in a bad mood, being in any mood. The latest is Treme, the tv series about life in New Orleans three months after Katrina. Thanks to a popup ad across the bottom of my tv screen, I discovered I'd missed the start date of the series a whopping 8 weeks into it. In true addict fashion I decided to make up for lost time by zoning out for 5 whole hours. I wasn't honest or open about it either - the key to deciding whether a behavior is an addiction or not is the impulse to keep it a secret, and I didn't let anyone know I'd succumbed because I felt ashamed of wasting so much time on being a spectator to other people's drama and not actively participating in my own life. Some of you may think I'm being a bit hard on myself, but the recovered addicts among you, if any, will recognize the symptoms of a fellow sufferer.

What do I get out of the addictive behavior? It starts with a rush of pleasure, followed by a period of dreamy numbness, which I am compelled to repeat despite the potential negative side effects. Side effects include debt, poor health, social isolation, depression, guilt and more social isolation and the distorted thinking that somehow I'm special and the "rules" don't apply to me.

Which means I will go to any length to indulge my addiction to pleasure and fantasy. Addiction being the cunning foe it is, has a great talent for justification of the behavior: "everyone" does it, it's not such a bad thing, it's "normal", I "deserve" this special time because my life is full of enough stress so I need a little something to make it sweeter, etc.

The idea of small reasonable amounts of anything just doesn't appeal to an addict. For me the most painful part of addiction is the power struggle that goes on between my ears. It's like the bitch slap scene from the movie Chinatown where Faye Dunaway's character goes back and forth with the famous "my mother - my daughter" script line. My impulses, instincts and compulsions somehow collide and I'm hurt in ways I don't realize at the time. I've had to learn to change this weakness in my character, let's call it the inability to follow sensible directions, which no longer serves me in any constructive way whatsoever, except to keep me humble when I recognize I am not the Almighty in charge of the Universe. And that's a good thing. I have a Treme hangover today and I hope to feel better after this confession and a good walk.