Lately I'm addicted to olives. This isn't the first time. I craved olives during one of my pregnancies--and I always thought the craving came from my body's need for more salt. Now that this craving is back, it's clear this is not a need to absorb more salt, but a need to eat more olives.
Olives are definitely the healthiest thing I've been addicted to. And the first addiction that isn't brown (since I prefer green). Brown---as in chocolate. And although I often say I'm addicted to chocolate, the truth is that chocolate is just a deeply ingrained habit. Because I don't really have an addictive personality.
When I was in my early twenties I was a smoker. This was when I started working in television, and was sharing an office with another producer. In those days smoking was allowed everywhere--in our office, in restaurants, even on airplanes---which was lucky for me since I was smoking almost a pack a day.
One day I went to lunch and came back to our office with a carton of cigarettes. I took out a pack, opened it, and lit a cigarette. And although the other producer wasn't the complaining type, he happened to choose that particular day to complain about my smoking. In a nice way. After all, he was a nice guy. He said something like, "Why do you smoke, anyway, when you know it's bad for you? Why don't you just quit?"
Because he was a nice guy, I wanted to be nice back. So I said breezily, "Okay, I will." I was still holding the lit cigarette in my hand, with the full carton on my desk. Until the words came out of my mouth, I had no intention or dim thought or vague desire to quit smoking. But I gave away that carton of cigarettes and I never smoked another cigarette again.
30 years later... if only I could give up chocolate like that. Kicking cigarettes was so easy that I could never fully appreciate how hard it must be for other people. I've heard one theory to help smokers kick the habit is for them to smoke cigarettes to the point of complete overload. Maybe if I lived in Hershey, Pennsylvania, I'd get sick of chocolate. I have attempted to overdose on chocolate....many times...and it's never worked.
The other day I was in See's Candies ( I have to confess....) and as the lady handed me my free sample from a box filled with chocolates, I asked her if working at See's Candies takes away the attraction. No, she said, she still loves chocolate---which immediately shot down my idea of getting a part-time job.
I hope my tone doesn't indicate that I take addiction lightly. Addictions are very real and very serious and ruin lives. I admire people who successfully and heroically fight these battles every single hour, every single day for the rest of their lives. I think it might even be more difficult when people are addicted--not to things we consider bad--but to things we consider good---like exercise and sex.
Which brings up David Duchovny's announcement about his sex addiction. I don't know how they handle this in rehab, but I can only think about his family. Tea Leoni, his wife, has always seemed talented and smart and down to earth. It's gut-wrenching enough to be the wife of an addict, anywhere. But to know that your marriage is a topic of conversation and a punchline in comedy clubs all over America must be a nightmare. Challenge does build character, and I'm hopeful she will emerge even stronger. But my heart goes out to her for the challenges she faces--so much harder than olives and chocolate.
On a lighter note, still on the subject of addiction....I'm beginning to understand why so many people are hooked on Facebook. After my first excursion yesterday, I've now spent several hours exploring how it works and seeking out people... happy to discover anyone I've ever known.....but still steering clear of "friending" my rabbi.
My theory -- such as it is -- has been developed around my love of alcohol. I don't believe I'm an alcoholic, but I do recognize
that there have been times in my life when I feel I'm drinking too much. One such time, when my marriage was ending, I simply stopped
drinking for a year-and-a-half. For the last six months, I've been a little unhappy with my
drinking. It's not that it had escalated, but I wondered at how entrenched my habit was for a
drink every single night (only one). It made me
sleepy if I was by myself, thus screwing up what might have been a great night of reading, for example. Something about writing my blog, and the honesty I'm now exhibiting there (wwww.JosephineCarrWrites.blogspot.com) has had, I believe, a real impact. I'm not drinking at home anymore: I only have a drink if I'm with other people (ie. in a social setting). For the first time, it was a total cinch to stop. I don't even think about it, or yearn for it, or ANYTHING. I wonder whether the act of consciousness -- as in a blog where I'm finally coming out of the closet about being psychic -- has somehow helped. I feel instinctively that it has. I wonder what this says about the nature of addictions...
Posted by: Jody | September 02, 2008 at 07:18 AM