In my completely unprofessional opinion, there are few people in the world without some kind of compulsion. It occurred to me when I was out to dinner with an acquaintance who was spewing angry words about her alcoholic father; saying things like "He made the CHOICE to drink." Well, while that kind of sounds right, I looked at this broken adult daughter of addiction, carrying at least 50, maybe 70 pounds of extra weight. I blurted out that overweight people CHOOSE to put too much food in their mouth every day, right?
I told her, I think you can't really control an addiction. If so, she would no doubt weigh 110 pounds instead of 180. Think of smokers, a clear addiction, that you need patches and gum and white knuckling to get through your days. Ask a reformed smoker, ten or twenty years out, if they ever crave cigarettes, and you will hear, "Everyday".
So while the Big Three are obvious, there are plenty of other addictions that torture.
Shopping, QVC, Cleaning, Ironing, Running, Going to the Gym, Chewing Nails, Brushing Hair,
most OCD complaints. The mere diagnosis of OCD means you are addicted to something.
Maybe it's surfing the Internet for hours at a time. Most certainly it's looking at your iPhone every 11 seconds. Sex? Porn? Ignoring your house and family and watching Netflix ten hours a day?
I know I'm missing a boatload of addictions or compulsions people have. Eating something weird every day? Twisting your long hair? Washing your hair five times in a row in the shower?
There is no such thing as normal so remember this: Some addictions aren't obvious. Some addictions will ruin lives fast - like drugs and alcohol - but other addictions will take longer to show the devastation - years of smoking before the lung cancer diagnosis, or your house going into foreclosure because you ran up too much debt or got fired from your job for surfing the Internet all day long.
MY POINT? DON'T BE SO JUDGEY. You know you have something wrong with you too.
#ADDICTION