My journey has led me to stuggle with this quite a bit. Am I an addict? If so, to what? Well, dopamine. I just want to feel good when I’m hurting and struggling. Who doesn’t? Thing is it’s not all the weed I consume, the pills I took, the powders I occasionally put up my nose or the copious amount of booze I drank that’s finally convincing me.

It’s online shopping.

Last night my wife gave me a sticky note with all the credit card and paypal charges I have racked up in March alone and it’s double what I thought I had spent over the last 2 months. Now, I obviously love my music and treasure my collection but everything has limits and I have mindlessly spent an obscene amount of money lately buying new stuff to appease my anxiety over my wife’s upcoming surgery and my intensifying exposure therapies and return-to-work process. It’s emberrassing and I’m ashamed in the sense that’s she has worked hard to fix our finances after what I did to them getting intoxicated and here I go again.

Today I want to change the narrative. My wife had the courage to embrace growth and approach me with the problem so the least I can do in return is stop lying to everyone else and myself and take responsibility by changing my behaviour.

I am an addict and I will do whatever makes me feel good with increasing frequency the more my anxiety worsens. Does’t make a difference if it’s drugs or records or food. I have a problem I need to acknowledge and face truthfully with all that it encompasses.

All I ever wanted was to feel good and make the people around me happy so that they wouldn’t have to know pain. A “useful” phony addict is still an addict just as much as the angry drunk is. It still causes hurt and damages trust and pretending it’s okay with comparisons is dishonest to all involved. I used to tell myself I didn’t have a booze problem because I wasn’t homeless, covered in bugs and shitting my pants. Now I tell myself it’s okay because at least the money isn’t for booze. But when I buy so much stuff at once that I don’t even have the time to realistically absorb it all and enjoy it like I normally would it’s not. It’s really not.

That sticky is now on the back of my phone. But it’s not to shame myself this time like I have done in the past in situations like this. It’s a reminder that I can be stronger than this and that balance isn’t unobtainable. It just requires honesty and openness. The more I learn and realize the more tired I get of our habit to shame ourselves and hide for simply being human.