Excerpt: Addiction from "The Makings..."

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I read somewhere addictions are thoughts, substances, behaviors and preferences that cause imbalance in your spirit, soul or body, ultimately affecting how you treat others.  Some people do become addicted to drugs or alcohol, and others maybe to a desire to smoke cigarettes.  Some get engulfed with the fascination of tattoos or lifting weights.  

I’m not just speaking about being passionate about something or loyal to obtaining a goal.  It goes way beyond just wanting to improve what you look like or show an expression of love to a lost one.  In most instances you will find it’s not the physical act that drives these people and their actions, but the desire to obtain a sensation they once had or felt before.  It goes way beyond wanting to do something just to say you’ve done it or a feeling you receive while doing the act.

I realized much later in life my addiction manifested itself in other ways.  It’s difficult to ignore a determined spirit.  The best way to deal with an evil spirit is to face it head on.  Identify it and fight it head on.  I know that now.  I didn’t know that when I was young, so at the weakest moment of my life, my addiction became sex.  And over time, it began to rule my life.

You see, it has never been about the physical act itself with me.  If that were all it took, then the satisfaction of having a woman next to me would be more than enough to fight back the urge which continued to build within me.  I think for me, though I’m not entirely certain, it became more about the chase, or the thrill the chase sometimes brought about. 

There were times when it became a necessity for me to pursue a woman just because she had the “can’t have” attitude.  Those who said my words, or more readily referred to as “lines”, would never allow me to sleep with a woman like them.  They were classy and sophisticated and couldn’t be charmed or fooled into sharing themselves with me.  Oh really?  In those instances it was definitely a must, not even because I wanted to, but because there was a point to be made.  Not certain what point that was, but there was no better feeling than to have a girl like that end up wanting you more than anything.

Not all pursuits came about like this of course.  There were plenty of times when I had options to sleep with a number of different women, yet I turned them all down.  Usually this was a case of having identified another female and so the pursuit of the identified woman was far more important and challenging than just finding a place to have an orgasm. 

In either case, whatever the explanation was, whatever the sensation I sought, the more women I got close to and slept with, the more souls I consumed.  And the more souls I devoured the closer I came to the brink of insanity.  I was messing around with emotions, physical attractions, and forces of nature that opposed the good and kindhearted nature of people.  And all the while, I was becoming progressively more ignorant of the things I was doing, the people I was hurting, or the control I held over my own emotions and myself.