Addictions

When you talk about addiction, most people automatically think about drugs. Certainly drug addiction is a serious problem, but there are other addictions. Some people don't think of alcohol as a drug, but it is, and so alcoholism is just another drug addiction. Nicotine is also a drug, but it is generally more habit-forming than addicting. Part of the problem is that different people are susceptible to different things. One person may be able to smoke for awhile, and then stop for awhile, and then pick it up again, while another person may suffer withdrawal symptoms within hours after putting out a cigarette; for one, it's a habit, for the other, it's an addiction.

But drugs are not the only thing. For some people, gambling is an addiction. Granted, there is a certain amount of thinking that they just need one quick win to get ahead, and then they will stop; but the more they gamble, the more they lose, and the bigger the win needed to get out of the hole, and then, on the rare occasion that they actually get that big win, then they develop the attitude that they can afford to gamble now, they have money, and end up losing everything anyway. Casinos don't exist to make their customers rich--they exist to make their owners rich.

Some people find pornography addicting. Psychologists say that the appeal of pornography is that one can engage in sexual activity without actual having to go through the social activity that normally leads to the emotional closeness that should lead to, well, I'll say marriage, even though most psychologists probably don't consider marriage to be a mandatory precursor to sexual activity... The problem, of course, is that God has given us a desire to procreate: We, being the basically simple-minded people that we are, have turned that into a simple desire for sex, at least on the surface. Below the surface, though, there is a desire to see our genes, our DNA, in the children that will eventually grow up and, either take care of us in our declining years, or choose our nursing homes. No matter how much pornography one views, that basic need is never met: It's sort of like painting over rotting wood to cover the problem instead of replacing the wood and fixing the problem.

There is a statement commonly attributed to John D. Rockefeller (although I can't find anything to directly link him to the quote), that, when asked "How much money does it take to make a man happy?" he replied, "Just a little bit more." In the book of Ecclesiastes, God tells us that we will never be satisfied with increase; this doesn't just apply to money. Whatever action that makes one feel better, if it is not of God, will snowball; it will take more and more to achieve that same feeling, and, even then, it's a temporary feel-good type of thing, it is not satisfaction. Mick Jagger was right about that...