The thing I love best about “My Strange Addiction” is how normal it makes me feel.
Until I realize that, in a way, these people are kinda… just like me. Sure, I prefer to go after the usual suspects (used to be drinking or benzo’s, but now it’s caffeine, figs, and probably too much internet), but aren’t we all the same? Yes? Right? I mean… some of these interviews with the oddly obsessive made me kinda question myself. And I tend to wonder if the same techniques I’ve employed to manage my ritualistic proclivities would help people who’d rather cross the line than do lines. Because, admittedly, I watched the following four couple minute videos, slack jawed and cringing. Watch and try not to do the same.
1.) CRAVING PAINT
Highlight: First, I want to give props to the title-makers whose clear intention it was to make me think I was about to see a woman obsessed with semen-drinking. The highlight here is that title combined with her commentary upon opening a white tube of paint: “So I’ll suck this off and put it in my mouth…”
And who doesn’t wanna have something yummy with their “warm milk”?
Like… maybe… a fresh and warm slice of bed?
2.) BED DIGESTION
Highlight: Her reason for not snacking her own sleep furniture: “The reason I’m not eating my own mattress is ‘cause I ate my mattress already.” And also the nonchalant manner in which she admits to picking foam outta her feces to eat all over again. Shit mining for snacks aside, at least it’s soft and goes down (and out) easy.
I can’t imagine the lady in this next one can say the same…
3.) ROCK NOMMING
Highlight: She lives in a town called Bedford. Which sounds like “Bedrock”. Which is where the Flintstones (also igneous addicts) live. Oh, and then there’s the fantastic fact that she noms on these while she’s out in public from a pharmacy bottle like it’s prescription Pez. Funny how any strangers witnessing this probably think she’s getting stoned.
Funny how, in a way, they’re not wrong.
Or maybe you want the crunch, but big rocks ain’t your thing.
So you go for sand instead:
4.) SAND SNACKING:
Highlight: That she’s the first “I eat weird shit” addict I’ve seen yet who doesn’t fall somewhere on the spectral range of “sorta fat” to “holy fcuk”. I genuinely wonder if fellow addicts who log on to see like minded weirdos think to themselves “maybe I should switch over and try out her addiction for a while. Just till I drop a couple pounds.”
You know, I think that’s the biggie here (pardon the portly pun.)
People who have one detrimental obsession (even if it’s not “that” weird) usually have at least a handful of others. It doesn’t take much to notice that almost all of the people here clearly – at the very least – also have one additional addiction to their odd ones. And that’s obviously food. You don’t get fat off’a beddng or paint alone. These are folk who go through their days maxing out on the edibles before proceeding to that next level oral high. For me, I’ve noticed that all my addictions – large n’ small – tend to be linked. I enter the same mindset when I’m craving dates as when I’m craving chemicals, obsessing over a dude I like, fixated on a chick I want to look like, or repeatedly taking the same snap of the setting sun – a photo doomed to not meet my approval by the time it disappears behind the horizon. And when I mentally let myself hone in on any one obsession, everything’s downhill from there. Because if I get what I want, the satisfaction’s fleeting, and I’m left with the same craving renewed. If I don’t get what I want, then my mind hops into other seats on this same cognitive carnival ferris wheel of obsessions. “No sugary fruits? How about sex? Why not do a photo shoot till my fully charged phone dies? Hey, let’s look at pictures of celebrities and wallow! Let’s keep putting makeup on my face until I look like Nicki Minaj!” I suppose if I indulged that cyclical ride, it’d not be long before a new seat would open up for things like tucking into savory kitchen sponges (arguably the same as tofu, really). Or sipping cocktails of powdered Cascade… which, admittedly, smells intoxicatingly wonderful when it steamily emerges on a fog of freshly finished clean dishes…
But here we look for solutions.
Calm down, darling. I don’t mean “solutions” with high dish soap molarity.
And my solution’s become this: The only way I can escape my compulsions is to nix-n-switch my smaller, more manageable obsessions first. Starting with the thoughts that build into cravings. You “nix” ‘em by “switching” them with new ones. Redirect focus. Find that one healthy thing you like and force yourself to do it any time the thought that precedes indulging so much as peeks its beady red eyes into your brain. Don’t like anything healthy? Try a bunch of new things out and pick one anyway. Because part of the obsesh-ferris wheel’s power is all the seats you’ve put on it (half the time, without even noticing). The good news? If you neglect those seats for long enough while you’re off playing other games at the fair, they’ll rust and fall off like a syphilitic dick. Before long, the super-big, shittier seats on the wheel won’t have any other seats to balance it out. Eventually, it’ll just fall to the bottom. And that metaphor only has to mean “rock bottom” if you choose to stay in that heavy seat.
Or, ya know, literally… if you’ve eaten too many rocks.
So, get out there and at least try the other games at the fair. Because… why not?
(Does this mean I hafta start going to Dunkin Donuts instead’a Starbucks?)