back to addictions for a minute

Disclaimer - i think stephanie's post posted while i was typing, so i'll do a separate post for this week later.

hi all.
i missed my day - at least i think i did. i finally got jane's email about posting order a few minutes ago. not that i don't have internet, but my dialup at home has been downloading some accounting software for two days and then some personal training software for some more days... i had about a billion spam emails to delete. it was great.
i guess that proves that the internet is not an addiction for me- i didn't cry, and i didn't go to the neighbor's house and ask to use theirs (our neighbor is actually pretty cool and probably would have let me, but i didn't NEED to).
i think i'm addicted to chai lattes with soy milk. i give them up every so often, but then i just gotta have one and whoops, they're a daily thing again. i got into them because i was trying to get off the white mocha (which i'd used to get me off caramel frappuccinos). i think i see a vicious cycle. it's weird how the addiction transferrs though - i've tried decaf, and they satisfy the craving, so it's not that. i'm sure the beverages serve as some kind of comfort food (okay, drink). i just feel better when i'm sipping one. mmmmmmm. good.
i'm also seriously addicted to sleep. i was insomniac for YEARS!! and then normal for a while, then i got insomniac again, and this time i over-recovered and need about 10 hours a night. if i don't get that much sleep, i'll fall asleep anywhere, any time until i fill the quota. shoot, i fell asleep at the beach yesterday - people who know me will know that i just don't do that. the beach usually gets me all hyper and i play in the water... and then one day at lunch i crawled under my desk so nobody would see me snoozing. i woke up snuggled to the computer connector thingy because it was warm. so yeah, addiction if not disorder. again, i think it's a comfort thing.
so now that i've gone off on tangents about my two biggest addictions, i get to go off about addictions in general, right? different people get involved with different things: by choice, or chance, or whatever. my husband is addicted to running. he got teased into training for a marathon, and now he can't stop even if he wanted to. he gets all jittery and grumpy (ish) until he goes out and runs about a billion miles.
i can't imagine wanting to do that. then again, i can't imagine wanting to snort weird stuff that would most likely eventually kill me, but some people do that too...
i think our brains respond to what we usually do by deciding that's the way things ought to be. i slept too little for a while, so my body decides that's enough. then i sleep a lot, and my brain changes its mind.
some people have a special blanky, some shop all the time, and some have annoying habits like sticking their hands in their armpits and then smelling them. the point is that if you do a certain thing enough times, you're addicted. if your brain decides it's the "right" thing. i also think that different people have either learned or genetic tendencies to easily addict themselves to certain things (i know that's been pretty much proven with alcoholism...). my husband's family have cigarette and alcohol tendencies. one of either and they're hooked. numerous times one brother or the other has tried to quit something, but it just ain't happening. i, on the other hand, did the cigarettes until i noticed that soccer wasn't as easy, and stopped immediately. since that day i've taken one puff -just for shock value (i somehow always get this goody-two-shoes reputation, so i had to refute it). similarly, i've tried multiple kinds of booze, but i hate them all. i can't imagine wanting to drink it enough to become comfortable with the situation.
i think it would be cool if scientists figured out a way to trigger the addiction centers in our brains so we could addict or un-addict ourselves at will. it would probably be good for me if i were addicted to some form of exercise for a while, or maybe i'd want to cancel my sleep addiction so i could be more productive. i wonder if anyone is studying that.
so that's my fifty-two cents. i didn't quote anyone cuz i'm too lazy to look stuff up, but hey, now you'll get my own thoughts, and not what i read that someone else thinks. yay.
i'll try to post in the right order next time.