It’s said that everyone has some kind of addiction.
There are those who’ll cloak it as a ‘guilty pleasure’, like, say, ice cream or Mountain Dew (the soft, not the hard one), and while I don’t necessarily believe that all people are addicted to something, I don’t know many people who, in the words of B.J. Thomas or Blue Swede, aren’t “hooked on a feeling.”
Some are obvious and most often debilitating: tobacco, alcohol, drugs. I’ve known people who’ve both drunk and smoked themselves to death, and I’ll never fully understand clinging to a crutch all the way to the grave.
Look at the people who have destroyed what otherwise seemed to be idyllic lives because of substance abuse. Philip Seymour Hoffman comes to mind, ‘Glee’ actor Cory Monteith, perhaps indirectly Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley.
People have made careers out of embracing, studying or practicing the psychology of addiction and few have found any answer to overcoming it. Former First Lady Betty Ford helped implement significant therapies with the clinic she launched, and scores of similar centers dot the landscape pretty much around the globe.
“If it feels good, do it” is a mantra of sorts for people who embrace certain addictions, good or bad, and makes sense up to a point. Trouble is, when it stops feeling good, lots of people still do it again and again. I have a friend who has exercised to the point that she’s practically handicapped, can hardly walk and frequently complains about aches, pains, etc., yet can’t sit still because, she feels, she has to keep exercising, no matter what.
You want to feel sorry for addicts, though sometimes it’s difficult because most of us don’t understand what drives them. For those of us not hooked, it would seem only logical to simply quit whatever’s messing you up. “Cold turkey,” they call it.
Maybe, some day, someone will find that ‘magic bullet’ and addictions will become a curiosity of the past. Until then, we can only offer sympathy or some other psychological support – without being an ‘enabler’ – and hope for the best, I suppose.
And do whatever we can to make them understand that, when it stops feeling good, don’t do it anymore.
Suggested movie(s) of the week: If you’re a superhero freak, “Guardians of the Galaxy” might just be your ticket. The action film, directed and co-written by James Gunn, stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel as a living tree and Bradley Cooper as a feisty raccoon, a Marvel hero lineup that, right out of the gate, tells you this is going to be an off-beat parody. Everybody lives up to that billing, it’s riddled as much with humor as violence and makes for an entertaining escape into a bizarre fantasy world. Also this week, fans of the ‘Godfather of Soul’, James Brown, will be treated to a dead-on performance by Chadwick Boseman in Tate Taylor’s (“The Help”) biopic of the often-controversial soul singer.
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