I used to discuss with friends how I
was very happy that I didn’t understand addiction. I know some people do have
addictive personalities. One of my best friends and our leader Fred were
admitted alcoholics. I’ve never done an illegal drug in my life and I have
never smoked a cigarette. I watched my mother struggle with her nicotine
addiction her whole life. I have always had the mindset of if I tried to quit
something and failed, that would just inspire me to quit even more.
I say that. But yet I am overweight. I
guess because it was so easy to just swing into a McDonalds. It was easy to
just grab a Little Debbie. It was easy to indulge that lifestyle. And the
justification was always, “It is my body. Why can’t I have a roast beef from
Arby’s.”
Well, after the ZomPoc hit, things
like fast food just were not an option any more. Those Little Debbie snackie
cakes and all the good candy? That stuff went the fastest. One of my big
indulgences was the Monster energy drinks. But I was not the only one that
liked them and those things did not last as long as you hoped.
Removing that temptation was clearly
the first step towards improvements. Thankfully, there are not a lot of smokers
amongst us. I don’t know if smokers have brands they prefer or if any smoke in
a pinch will do. I guess if they really want a smoke, they don’t have much of a
choice.
Thank God that none of us are drug
addicts. Or if someone is a drug addict they hide it really well. You see
things in all those Lifetime movies and such where the person quits cold turkey
and they sit on a cot in some rehab center shaking and sweating. I guess it is
possible to die from withdraws. Thankfully, that wasn’t an issue for any of us.
(I swear I am going somewhere with this.)
Now, they say that the less you have
something, the less you crave it. I just pop out of my diet when I was about
25. I was drinking three 20 oz. Mountain Dews a day. I stopped drinking it and
replaced it with water. The bad side was that my bladder was like that of a
woman that was nine months pregnant. The good side is that after a while, if I
tried to go back, I found it too sweet and just couldn’t drink it.
Joseph is a big pop drinker. He loves
the stuff. And he has mentioned before that every couple a months he would just
quit drinking it and replace it with flavored water, tea, or juice. For him,
stopping was no big deal. (I guess that shows you are not an addict.) But then,
after being away for so long, when you take that first drink… It was like
swimming in paradise. Sometimes, he said he would quit just to get the rush of
that first precious drink.
I have found that physical contact is the same way. The
less you have access to it, the less that you find that you need it. But that
first brush of fingers, that first romantic touch… It is like fireworks.
