I think I have a problem. I steal from the dining hall to feed this problem. I buy them in huge amounts and hoard them in my room, only to find them devoured by the end of the week as I desperately try to hide the evidence.
What is this thing that weakens me? Chocolate sprinkles. I don’t even mean with ice cream, that’s just how this got started. Now I’ve progressed to just eating handfuls of them from the container.
I justify them just like someone justifies going out for one more bite of chocolate cake, one more shot of caffeine, one more chug of beer or one more puff from a cigarette.
I’ve had a stressful week; I deserve this; it’s not too bad.
I also can’t just leave a container unfinished. I have to finish whatever I have left before I can ‘give them up.’ Then I find myself making a detour to Shaw’s after work to pick up another four containers because I only really like one brand. That’s not too bad, right?
As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, ‘this ‘addiction’ isn’t the problem.’ It’s just my solution to mask what is really bothering me. It reminds me of when I was a kid and when my mom would bring home a container of chocolate sprinkles as a reward. Soon it became a comfort and then it became a habit. The more I let my world get out of control, the more I see myself indulging in those little brown delights. I’ve given chocolate sprinkles a meaning that makes me less powerful than confectionary sugar.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and replace an addiction with something healthier like working out, or maybe I’ll replace it with something more harmful like meth. Most addictions are more emotional than they are physical, and by only treating the ‘addiction’ or the ‘symptom,’ you never really treat the cause of it.
But how can my obsession with chocolate sprinkles degrade into a meth addiction? Well, when they both meet my needs, it’s easy to trade one for the other. Anthony Robbins (yes, the tall guy), explains that we have six basic human needs; certainty, variety, connection, significance, growth and contribution. If something meets more than two of those needs, it can escalate to an addiction. For me, chocolate sprinkles meet my top need for certainty; that’s why the crazier my life gets the more I eat. They also meet my need for connection, since it gives me a little time to connect to myself.
Remember that first time you tried your indulgence. . . cigarettes, alcohol, food or whatever? Did you try it to be part of the group, or to make you look cool? Was it something new or something you felt comfortable doing? Was it something you saw, heard, felt or thought? What was the very first thing that made you decide to do it? Most likely that very first reason is the same reason that keeps you doing it; claiming an identity from it isn’t necessarily going to help.
I’m not an addict; I’m more than that. That’s just one behavioral pattern, not who I am. Just like I know you’re not an addict and that if you really wanted to you could give it up right now.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
Do you know anything about addictions, other than possibly being an addict yourself and as Freud would say “projecting?” Just curious, do you even know Ramones’s qualifications. First, she is a personal trainer and fitness instructor and she also works as a counselor and other psychological stuff (you can look it up on her website), so claiming she’s “fat and pathetic,” not quite sure that’s true, but I’m pretty sure, she’ll even say she’s far from perfect and is always open to learning more. Second, if you are so against her writing than stop reading it, just as you think she’s wasting people’s time by writing her column for reading, than you’re doing the same. I agree she can come off as a bit arrogant, but so are you writing that she knows so very little. Why don’t you email her and ask her about it, I’m sure, being one of her friends, she’ll answer honestly even if you’re criticizing her.
The reason you eat so many sprinkles is not because you have an addiction, it is because you are fat and pathetic. Please stop writing from the perspective that you can teach us some valuable about how to live life when really you know so very little about what that really means. Eating sprinkles is in no way correlative to any serious addiction and anyone who thinks that it is is quite frankly an idiot.
This is the stupidest Freep article I’ve ever read. Do honestly think you’re qualified to give people life advice? Week after week you’ve only proven to your readers that you don’t know shit about life. Chocolate sprinkles cannot lead to a meth addiction. They just can’t! The very idea is moronic. Do you even know what meth is? For Christsakes! I can’t believe they publish this crap. The reason you eat handfuls of chocolate sprinkles is because you’re fat and pathetic. If you can’t handle the stress of a life at BU, then you’re the one in need of a life manual, because if you think being stuck in this little bubble is hard, just wait until you graduate. Here’s a bit of advice for you, something I think will be a hit with your reader. Retire your column! Thank you.
This is the stupidest Freep article I’ve ever read. Do honestly think you’re qualified to give people life advice? Week after week you’ve only proven to your readers that you don’t know shit about life. Chocolate sprinkles cannot lead to a meth addiction. They just can’t! The very idea is moronic. Do you even know what meth is? For Christsakes! I can’t believe they publish this crap. The reason you eat handfuls of chocolate sprinkles is because you’re fat and pathetic. If you can’t handle the stress of a life at BU, then you’re the one in need of a life manual, because if you think being stuck in this little bubble is hard, just wait until you graduate. Here’s a bit of advice for you, something I think will be a hit with your reader. Retire your column! Thank you.
This is the stupidest Freep article I’ve ever read. Do honestly think you’re qualified to give people life advice? Week after week you’ve only proven to your readers that you don’t know shit about life. Chocolate sprinkles cannot lead to a meth addiction. They just can’t! The very idea is moronic. Do you even know what meth is? For Christsakes! I can’t believe they publish this crap. The reason you eat handfuls of chocolate sprinkles is because you’re fat and pathetic. If you can’t handle the stress of a life at BU, then you’re the one in need of a life manual, because if you think being stuck in this little bubble is hard, just wait until you graduate. Here’s a bit of advice for you, something I think will be a hit with your reader. Retire your column! Thank you.
This is the stupidest Freep article I’ve ever read. Do honestly think you’re qualified to give people life advice? Week after week you’ve only proven to your readers that you don’t know shit about life. Chocolate sprinkles cannot lead to a meth addiction. They just can’t! The very idea is moronic. Do you even know what meth is? For Christsakes! I can’t believe they publish this crap. The reason you eat handfuls of chocolate sprinkles is because you’re fat and pathetic. If you can’t handle the stress of a life at BU, then you’re the one in need of a life manual, because if you think being stuck in this little bubble is hard, just wait until you graduate. Here’s a bit of advice for you, something I think will be a hit with your reader. Retire your column! Thank you.