On addiction

I just finished smoking my last sampoerna cigarette. Oh my precious one! :-) Was sad but I intentionally finished my last pack, just before I start my reunion with mr. smoke-hater tomorrow. Oh well, I could always buy local fags.. or not, when I imagine the new life I could have here with kids and real "home" (this imagination sometimes terrifies me tho). But I am not worried, cos I am not addicted to fags. I could restrain myself from smoking for over two days, sometimes a week. Although I could smoke a pack a day sometimes. Sometimes for me it is also about proving to myself that nothing external controls me, I control myself. Yeah, ego. But hey, that's good for me, right? :-)

The other thing I like, which I could easily be categorised as an addict to, is alcohol. I love drinking alcohol. But I avoid drinking alone as much as I can although we have sometimes up to 10 bottles of different types and brands of alcoholic drink in the cupboard and some cans of beer in the fridge. Because drinking alone (too much) could easily lead to addiction. I do that sometimes, not for covering sadness but when I am enjoying my writing process and cigarettes. Another one is sex. No, I don't want to elaborate on this one :-), but this one inspired this post.

I watched a movie on tv last nite. The title is "Love Sick: Secrets of a Sex Addict". It's a true story. Call me naive, but it struck me that there is such thing as "sex addict clinic" just like those sanctuaries for drug and alcohol addicts. I googled it and there are interesting articles on bbc about how David Duchovny and Michael Douglas went to such clinics.

The term is not completely new to me, but I always thought it's only a justification. I remember a friend told me that he is a sex addict so that when his wife was pregnant for the first time and refused to have sex with him because she was too careful, he had to have sex with somebody else. What a crappy reason! (and I know that the "experienced moms" would respond to this post by saying that it is safe :-) I knew it, that's why I said it's a crappy reason :-)).

I do think it is about self-control. Well, unless you are "sick" like this woman in the movie who apparently started to have sex with her dad since she was five years old and thinks that that is the only way she exists and is loved. But other than that I think that person is either a sexual pervert or just cannot control him/herself and uses the term "addict" happily.

"Addiction" is about not being able to control yourself. There are people who have dark past, true, but I am of the opinion that some people are just lazy and do not want to work hard enough and could easily spend money to go to addiction clinics. And the rest are those who just use that justification to basically say that "hey I am an addict, that means I am sick, you know, so you have to understand me that I need to smoke/drink alcohol/have sex anytime I want." Ah, what an easy excuse!

[For me the answers are quite easy: chocolate and sport ;-)]