Wacky Tacky Addictions

The first love of addicted beings has gained calories and bizarre categories. Jasmine
Chabria tells you about wacky addictions – you need not fall in love with them

Taking puffs, turning into a Devdas, getting high on weed – these are some life threatening habits that have made their mark in the addiction industry. With stress levels elevating, bizarre addictions are also rising in sync. The addicted person is psychologically dependent on his source of addiction and is cob-webbed like a victim. Self-harm is present in every addiction, ranging from mild restlessness to death.

Addiction to Gaming
There is no P for Pause here. Daynight-homework-office-toiletwherever-anywhere gaming is what the gaming addict wants to pursue. The gamer is overwhelmed with thoughts of gaming while engaging in non-gaming activities. The gamer lies about time spent gaming and feels anxious or irritable when not gaming. Most addicted gamers are male and under the age of 30. The act of gaming elevates dopamine levels, a feel-good, mood altering chemical.

Addiction to Cosmetic Surgery
Who said ban plastic? It’s the love of plastics. Cosmetic surgery addicts are never satisfied with the procedures they get done. They want ‘just one more procedure’, then another and another to make them look perfect (or scary). This saga never ends and they consistently do different procedures or keep on going under the knife for the same body part, say, the nose.
In several case, this addiction is the result of Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which is an unhealthy and excessive preoccupation with one’s entire physical appearance or specific body part.

Top Plastic Freaks

A famous addict is New York socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein who has spent over $4,000,000 on cosmetic surgery over the years. Jocelyn and her hubby underwent a “scandalous” divorce and it is claimed that she thereafter had infinite surgeries performed on her to look beautiful and please him.

Michael Jackson’s mother admitted to Oprah Winfrey that her son was addicted to plastic surgery. The actual cause of his addiction isn’t known – whether it was to not look like his abusive father, to not want his skin condition Vitiligo to leave him like a “spotted cow”, or to not have his ethnicity affect his booming career.

Hang Mioku was once a beautiful South Korean woman. Post countless surgeries, the surgeons refused working further on her. She began injecting silicone into her skin. After silicone became expensive, she injected cooking oil into her face.

Trichotillomania:Compulsive Hair Pulling
These addicts pull out their own facial, body and scalp hair and derive a sense of pleasure. Despite getting bruised or developing rashes, the addict doesn’t cease. If the urge is intense, they may also resort to pulling their pet’s hair, someone else’s hair or carpet strands. The illness is diagnosed only when the addict goes to the doctor to seek treatment for another ailment. The doctor notices the hair strands aren’t being shed from the roots but broken midway, thus guessing the person has trichotillomania.

Hair Clicks and Flicks

A little butterfly puttering on the ankle with a cob web adorning your shoulder doesn’t mean you are addicted. But if it replaces your normal skin colour, you are addicted. The adrenaline hormone is released in response to pain. Tattoo/ body piercing addicts are adrenalin junkies. Their relentless pursuit of an adrenaline rush leads them to get tattoos/piercings. Endorphins, natural pain relievers, flood the body in response to the pain. They create a natural high, like orgasms, and the addiction persists in order to repeat the experience. Psychological selfmutilation is another intoxicating element that draws an individual time and again. Loss of identification and a lack of self esteem in oneself or the human race also lead many to become addicted to body modifications as extreme as changing their face. Excruciatingly painful acts follow and these addicts obtain pleasure from the pain involved in tattoo/body piercings. Their intent is to get rid of their face, probably in an attempt to not look remotely human any more.

Oniomania: Addiction to Shopping

Shopaholics are ready with their reason – “But it was on sale!” When a person’s concept of retail therapy goes way beyond what is constituted as normal, it leads to compulsive shopping. This involves excessive time and money spent shopping, lying about or hiding the purchases and short periods of euphoria followed by long spells of feeling empty – even after shopping loads and purchasing luxuries and things one can’t afford. Such people fall into debt traps because of lack of self-control. Many of their purchases remain unopened or unused.

Live to Spend Dress to Kill!

• A 22-year-old Mumbai-ite says that shopping is her primary social activity and source of entertainment. Though she works full-time, she shops four or more times a week, cruising expensive stores and discount outlets every evening.
• A lady from the Middle- East has dedicated the entire bedroom in her 1bhk to store her clothes, shoes and accessories. She, her hubby and two-year-old kid sleep in the hall.

This is a desi-specific addiction. In India, it is common practice to eat paan masala after food. It is also considered an aphrodisiac. It is a custom to offer paan masala to a newly married couple before they retire to bed. It is believed that it adds to love making. However, overeating paan masala mitgates the digestion and sexual factors and becomes a harmful addiction. In several cases, people who experimented with a wee bit of paan masala got hooked on to it instantly for life. The modalities to ban paan masala are currently being worked out in several states of India.

Killing Masala Tales

• An addict who has developed oral cancer still continues to consume paan masala in the morning before going to the toilet, after breakfast, while travelling to the office, after lunch, during tea breaks, after dinner at home and before going to sleep.
• For one addict, paan masala had caused genotoxicity, the deletion of genetic material from his cells. Doctors informed him that if he would have a child, it would affect the infant.

The Human Tiger Bags the Award!

Dennis Avner – or Stalking Cat, as he prefers to call himself – has gone as far as to file his teeth into fangs, have his top lip surgically split, embed several piercings on the interiors as well as exteriors of his body and undergo extensive facial surgery to turn himself into a human tiger. A former navy sonar technician, he began these intense modifications to his person after a discussion with a native chief who told him that he should “ follow the ways of the tiger”. Avner has attached his whiskers to the facial piercings on either side of his nose. He has touched the zenith of bizarre acts wherein his diet has also altered. Avner enjoys climbing trees and makes it a priority to eat meat every day, just as a tiger would. The meat should be as close to raw as possible or at the temperature the animal would be if it was just killed. Avner says “I’m seeing a few women at the moment. They understand that being a tiger is more important to me than humanity, which is difficult for many women to cope with.”

What’s on the Next Level

LEVEL 1 A 15-year-old skipped school to play games for over 16 hours a day, over full three weeks.

LEVEL 2 A boy lost himself in the game World of Warcraft. Acting like a game player, he set his classmate on fire.

LEVEL 3 After a 50-hour Starcraft session, a South Korean man died due to exhaustion.

LEVEL4 Xioyi left a suicide note saying he wanted “to join the heroes of the game he worshipped.” The 13-year-old then jumped off a tall building after playing World of Warcraft for 36 hours straight.

LEVEL 5  A three-year-old Korean girl died of neglect when her parents spent more time raising a virtual girl than raising her.

Top 6 Wackier than Wacky

• Addiction to eat nails (those metallic ones!)
• Addiction to inhalants (the volatile vapours of liquids like cleaning solutions; fumes emitted from glue are also inhalants)
• Addiction to hoard waste and debris
• Addiction to collect coupons to such an extent that they occupy maximum residential space
• Addiction to hairdryers to the point of inability to sleep without them
• The desi addiction to drink chai more than 25 times a day

Volume 2 Issue 5