Are you an easy target for fads? Do you find yourself becoming obsessive about things?

I once wallpapered my room in Johnny Depp pictures, so I know obsession.

Is there something you find yourself doing over and over and you just can't seem to stop? I used to check my alarm clock seven times in a row to make sure I had set it correctly.

Do you sometimes feel like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets?

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

Answers

Yeah, this darn forum is addicting. I love reading all the responses that people write. You all crack me up (especially you, Pamie).

So, keep on writing here and support my addiction. :-)

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

I used to check my alarm clock like that too! It's odd.

I have an addiction to e-mail. I check it all day long - every 15 mins if I'm bored. It's annoying. If I don't get any mail, I get a little sad, thinking someone doesn't like me.

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

Addictions? No, not me...

Why I've been drinking coffee everyday for more than forty years and I've not gotten addicted to caffeine yet!

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

I'm addicted to getting as little sleep as possible---to keep my mind sharp and alert! Huh? Whasat? Yeah, I've FUBARed this submit twice now. Lets try again.

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

Not so much an addiction than an obsession: in An Anthropologist On Mars, Oliver Sacks (Robin Williams played him in Awakenings) writes about an artist living in Northern California, who's made a career of painting scenes of the village where he grew up in Europe, from what is commonly known as photographic memory.

He had absolutely no art training. He simply started doing sketches one day, which eventually turned into paintings. Nothing from his life after leaving his village to travel to the US. Just from his childhood.

Sack's professional explanation isn't that the brain stores memories like a computer, but that the brain reconstructs them, reconstructs them, reconstructs them, sort of like a television picture tube. That's why his autistic patients who are able to draw images from memory, when they are asked to draw the same images years later, will sometimes change the placement of a chimney, or a window, or a flagpole. They sometimes recontruct the images differently.

When the artist had made a return trip to his village in recent years, Sacks was able to comment on how astonishingly similar the paintings were to the perspectives he had painted. The village of his youth, however, had changed enough to thoroughly depress the artist, and he vowed never to return, prefering the village as he remembers it in his paintings.

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

Well, i'm with you on the cigarettes. i keep my daily addiction count in my journal because i'm pretending like i'm trying to quit.

Also. When i was little. i told my mother i wanted to be a pig when i grew up.

But i got into college with the essay i wrote about it!

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

Jack Nicholson in that movie was obsessive-compulsive, not addictive. The alarm clock thing is obsessive. I know a little boy, a friend's brother, with that disorder and it's so sad because he even annoys himself when he gets stuck on something. He will be like, "I passed that candle you had lit in the bathroom and I blew it out. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to, but I had too. Is that ok? Because if it's not, you can light it again but I will have to blow it out. I have to. I'm so weird." He's 10!

I am addicted to magazines and online journals. And chicken fingers. Big time. Honestly, I would rather be hooked on crack than chicken fingers. At least you get skinny on drugs.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/2958

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

I am addicted to infomercials. I watch them all the time. The same ones over and over again. I don't know why. I mean I know that the Ronco guy is going to smash a hammer against his Rotisserie Grill but I still get goosebumps anyway. I know that they're going to suspend a bowling ball over the hostess' head with the Vacuum Sealer but it amazes me every time.

Oh yeah and I love Entemann's (sp?) chocolate chip cookies. You know those little soft ones? Hmmm... little soft chocolate chip cookies...

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

Yes I have an additive personality, but heck it is better than not having a personality at all.

The term is OCD (obessive personality disorder).. but that is to the extreme and encompasses ritualistic behavior that you find you can not control without meds.

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

BLUSH: And I can't spell... that was addictive right?

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

I'm addicted to Starbuck's frappuccino. The real ones, that you get at the actual Starbuck's that they make on the spot - not the bottled crap. I'm so addicted that I'm affected when I don't have them. 6 Pepsis can not make up for one missed frappuccino - believe me. I've tried. It's a horrible thing to be addicted to because I have them atleast 6 days a week, and that means I spent about $20 a week just at Starbuck's!

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

I still do that alarm clock thing. I also turn my doorknob a few times to be sure it's locked.
I used to be really bad when I was little, like Jack Nicholson in As Good As it Gets. If I accidentally touches something with my right hand, I would touch it with my left.
I have to brush my teeth every single time I eat anything. If my mouth doesn't taste like toothpaste, I feel like a filthy animal.

-- Anonymous, June 05, 1999

This is more of an obession, but I'm constantly worrying about hair lost, not that I'm losing large amounts of hair (I actually have a head full of healthy locks) but I've seen one to many older Asian women with bald spots and shiny scalps to put me on edge. I can go days without brushing my hair in fear of remvoing excess amounts of hair with a comb (it's not as disgusting as it sounds I have a short messy looking hairstyle, so it doesn't really matter it I comb it or not)I do however wash my hair daily (if I didn't it would add 10 more gross me out points to the whole situation. I'm constant checking for fallen hairs, if I'm extremely bore I'll take a count of how many but I usually forgotand haven't came to a full day count yet. I realize that some hair lost is a natural and a daily occurence, I also know that hair lost is not a trait in my family. So why do I freak? Because sometimes it's fun to pick out funky wigs just in case.

-- Anonymous, June 05, 1999

ditto on the alarm clock thing.... i have to keep checking to make sure its am not pm.. then i forget and have to make sure... i get addicted to words... i'll get a new word and use it over and over again... my friends have a tendency to create new meanings for words.. like right now the 'new word' of the month is 'coma'... it means 'things are good'... like everything is coma... or 'how are things? - coma man.. just coma... lately i've been overusing 'dude'.. i sound like some kind of south park/ surfer guy wannabe reject.. but i cant help it! life is just coma....dude...

-- Anonymous, June 05, 1999

Every time I gargle, I have to do it in a certain number of sounds or things get out of whack. Then when I rinse my mouth after brushing my teeth, I do it exactly four times. I get up every couple hours at night to make sure the alarm clock is working and the door knob is locked. When somebody crossed over my legs, I make the person cross back so my growth would not be stunted. When somebody patted me on the head, I hit my chin upward for the same reason. I wake up everyday at 3:00 am to surf the Net because I was absolutely sure I was missing out on something...

After rereading this, I just realized how dumb I sound. :)

-- Anonymous, June 05, 1999

Nicolas Cage, Tim Robbins, and Heath Ledger are obsessions as far as the "lusting-after-men-that-I-have-absolutely-zero-chance-with" persuasion goes.

I am constantly worried about the house catching on fire. I have gotten up out of bed numerous times to make sure all the candles in the house are blown out.

I am obsessed with Stove Top Stuffing, ham sandwiches with swiss cheese and dijon mustard on rye bread, ham-pineapple-barbecue-sauce- cheddar cheese pizza, turkey-grape-A1-sauce-taco cheese pizza, Captain Crunch Berries cereal, chicken cordon bleu sandwiches from Arby's, chicken noodle soup, Goldfish crackers, tangerines, beef burgundy with noodles, orange breakfast rolls, onion rings, seasoned french fries, mashed potatoes, sweet and sour meatballs, and pizza rolls.

Wow.

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Lights/9506/index.html <--- If you visit, go sign the galdurn guestbook.

-- Anonymous, June 05, 1999

Heath Ledger..*sigh*
By the way, are you kidding about the turkey-grape-A1-sauce-taco cheese pizza?

-- Anonymous, June 06, 1999

Nope, no joke. It's really good. But don't put the grapes on until you take it out of the oven because they tend to get a little nasty if you cook them. And the A1 sauce is better if it's the Tangy Blend or something like that -- it's more like barbecue sauce, but has the A1 brand name on it. :)

Disgusting Sounding Recipes that Taste Really Good -- next on H & G TV.

-- Anonymous, June 06, 1999

Yes I have an addictive personality. My dad has an addictive personality. What ever we do we do it to the extreme. If I get into reading books, I have to read every book on the ny times best seller list.If I get into listening to a group or a cd I have to have every cd the group ever made.My dad plays those little poker hand held games all the time. When he gets home from work he goes straight to his game.I am addictied to saying "fuck"

-- Anonymous, June 06, 1999

I used to do the alarm clock thing too. I always made sure that it wasn't too early and it wasn't too late. Sometimes I change the times around just for the hell of it.

Another addiction that I just recently got into to was online journal reading. Don't ask me why, but it's interesting reading other people's lives. And no... I'm not a 30 year-old stalker...

-- Anonymous, June 06, 1999

Maggie A, word on Tim Robbins. He's dreamy.

Hi. My name is Carly, and I'm a chocoholic, make-upaholic, CDaholic, chocolate-chip-muffins-from-the-health-food-storeaholic, clothingaholic, and TVaholic. There. I feel much better.

I'm also a bad one for the alarm clock. I'm also petrified of losing my wallet, so when I'm out and about I make periodic check stops to make sure it's safely in my bag. My last wacko thing is that before I turn the TV off, I have to run down all the channels from largest to smallest until I get to three, then I turn it off. I read in Howard Stern's "Miss America" that he does the same thing. He says it's like he has to "conquer the TV" before he goes to bed. I think my thing is more of a superstition.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 1999

Wow! I thought that I was the only one who deemed Tim Robbins as simply adorable. In case y'all aren't real sure on who Timothy is, here's a picture of the Blue-Eyed One:



((sigh))

I have a credit-card check obsession quite the same as the wallet obsession. I don't carry a purse because I would leave it wherever I set it down, so I put everything in my pockets. However, I have this horrible fear that my credit card is going to fall out of my pocket somehow and someone's going to pick it up and charge hundreds of thousands of dollars and I'm going to have to pay for it because the credit card people won't believe me when I tell them it isn't my fault.

So while shopping, I will gasp loudly at random intervals and feel around my pocket so I can make sure the plastic is still there. It scares the people I'm with and makes me look very paranoid.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 1999

"Addiction" is one of those 12-step/psychobabble buzzwords I've come to hate. All the psychobabble/talk-show types seem to be using it to refer to any repeatable, pleasurable experience. It have a medical meaning, and I wish people wouldn't use it so loosely.

There are things I'll just keep doing, however. Buying books and CDs even when I can't pay my credit card bills. Books are far more important than paying some bank. I'll sit at the terminal for hours rather than study-- e-mail is more fun than law school.

I will keep looking for a relationship and hate being alone-- but that's desperate and pathetic, not addictive. And I refuse to completely break with an ex, just because I refuse to let her have the last word or think that she can make me stop.

-- Anonymous, August 21, 1999

I'm with Maggie...the thing about the house catching on fire...since I live in an apartment(and without renter's insurance, mind you!)I have this fear about fires...I'm sure there's a name for this sort of phobia..pyrophobia, maybe? I always check the stove to make sure it's turned off after cooking anything. I also double-check the lock on my front door before I leave the apartment.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 1999