Anyone who has admitted to having an addiction of any kind, or who knows someone who has one, probably is aware of several ways to cure these. Food addictions come quickly to mind for me. Chocolate! Ice Cream! Cheese puffs! I could go on, but I won’t.
Anyhow, there are two frequently used ways to deal with these. One is cold turkey. You make up your mind you’re not going to imbibe any more and you stop just like that. Sounds easy enough, but in reality, cold turkey is one of the most difficult ways to purge yourself of an unwanted behavior. You need to have a very strong will and be extremely disciplined. Although many of you may see me that way, when it comes to things I love to eat or do, my willpower is MIA.
The second method sometimes employed can often be effective with food. That’s the overstuff approach. In theory, you just eat so much of the food you want to avoid and in such a short period of time that you never want to look at it again, much less ingest it. I can’t imagine ever reaching that point with chocolate. When I was growing up, parents sometimes used this method to cure little kids of a sugar habit and teenagers of smoking or drinking beer. I doubt that would work anymore, especially since savvy teens would claim bad parenting and sue for emotional trauma.
Then there’s always the path of professional help with your problem. I’ll include support networks under this umbrella. That type of help is undoubtedly best for serious addictions that involve substance abuse. If you don’t have adequate insurance, you can probably forget having a therapist talk you out of your wayward behavior. That’s not likely to happen in just a few sessions. Hypnosis helps some folks control unwanted habits. Support groups are great for a lot of these, and they’re everywhere now. There are also meds and therapeutics, like transdermal patches to help kick smoking.
The addiction that prompted me to write this column was none of the above. I was a shopaholic. I worked in Manhattan for over 20 years, most of that time within 2 blocks of Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store. I remember going to their shoe department at lunch one day and returning with five pairs of heels. That’s right… five. Two each of two styles and one of a third. I can still picture them. Mary Jane style patent leather heels in black and in red. Smooth leather heels with cross straps across the instep in yellow and also in white. I almost bought the hot pink ones, too, but then the lime green ones would have wondered what was wrong with them. The fifth pair was a classic navy t-strap.
My idea of entertainment was to wander the aisles in just about any interesting store, ogling and sometimes fondling the merchandise. I’d even tidy up the racks. And by interesting, I mean just about anything. My father used to get lost in the tool department in Sears. That didn’t hold any attraction for me, but some other specialized places did. In recent years, I became addicted to Home Goods. I’d look through their clearance sections first. It wouldn’t matter if I needed an item or not. It might be a good gift for someone, and I certainly didn’t have to know who would wind up with it. I still have shelves of these “finds” in our basement.
Well, I’m pleased to report that one of the few bright spots of this COVID pandemic is that I’m finally cured of my shopping addiction. The specialty pet store where I get cat food is in the same strip mall as a Marshalls/Home Goods store. I sometimes look up the sidewalk to their building, just to see if there’s a six-feet distancing line outside. But I’m not even remotely tempted to go in. Nothing I could find there now is worth the risk of exposing myself to COVID.
It probably helps that I’m at that stage of life where I should be getting rid of things in our household and not adding to it. But I’ve been at that stage for several years, and it never kept me out of Home Goods until now. No. It’s definitely the pandemic that has put an end to my shopping addiction. I guess every cloud does have a silver lining.
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