The first thoughts that probably came to your mind are those of alcohol/drug/sex addicts. Try widening your sphere of thoughts, for addiction is far more. To help you do that, consider a test subject. Who should it be? None other than yourself as it'll be the easiest choice for you to judge. Now think of addictions. Shopaholic? Workaholic? Control freak? Obsession disorder? Foodie? TV junkie? Social networking? Text-a-thon champ? Avid reader? Paranoia? Perfectionist? Punctualist? (Okay, I made up that word, but you get the point!) And what not? Every individual is an addict, and this blog entry shall concern that.
When I sit down to write an entry, it is usually because I chance upon a thought which I have no one to discuss with at that particular moment. I have no idea as of yet what'll follow these words now, and am as eager as you are to get to them. (^-^) What is addiction? I do not know the textbook/dictionary definition yet, (which i shall look up immediately) but in my opinion, addiction would be something you simply can't not do irrespective of whether you like it, dislike it or are indifferent to it. (Sometime later, probably when I read this again, I'll write about like/dislike/indifference. An idea just clicked!) WordIQ says 'Addiction is an uncontrollable compulsion to repeat a behavior regardless of its negative consequences.' Something similar to what I inferred. TheFreeDictionary says addiction is 'Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance.' Put in "corporate" terms. The American Society of Addiction Medicine has this definition for Addiction: Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. (courtesy Wikipedia)
Prototype definitions apart, coming back to our interest in addiction. If you were to sit and observe, you'd notice probably a gazillion things about yourself and others around you that falls in the broad category of addiction. I can't help wonder, is it normal? Is it okay? Being Indian, I notice everyone around me is hooked onto some thing or the other, so I consider this to be normal, right? After all, there are 1.2 billion others! (I guess this would be a standard normalcy check for any person on earth) Normal or not, it's amusingly amazing as to see people around, controlled in a manner of disguise so subtle and smooth that it escapes the apparent onlooker's vision. You, me, everyone else has more than one such subconscious doing that shall fail to justify any rationale. Flawed as we are, some of them are necessary even to highlight the diamond's worth.
Enough pondering over the issue, being just an observer, it is fun to find out the buttons that activate a person. It is impossible to rationalize with the irrational. So I guess the best thing to do when you do discover a button is to stay mum and not try and be a savior if the person doesn't need saving. This may sound like an incoherent piece of crap altogether, but in my defense, I'm very confused on this issue as such. There are things like personality traits, genetic coding, psychological development, surroundings and many other blahs which are part of addiction. Life's mysteries are one too many for the mind, but again that's why they are called mysteries. The best way to hide things is said to be in plain sight, and so they are hidden. Do look around, and if realization hits you, make a post. Someone, somewhere might benefit from it..
PS: One of my addictions/obsessions/personality traits/genetic codings/blahs would be - adhering to rules of punctuation. Whatever rules I know, I follow them. I use punctuation almost everywhere - blogs, e-mails, IMs, texts, letters, sticky notes (I know!) ((This comment too!))
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