What is your addiction?

​Watching Dopesick starring Michael Keaton on Hulu got me to thinking. I’ve felt the pangs of addiction at one time or another during my life. Haven’t you? No, not nearly as compelling as addiction to drugs or alcohol. Honestly, I've avoided those for fear of becoming addicted. Sadly, Dopesick tells the story of addiction promoted by a pharmaceutical manufacturers aided and abetted by doctors and the federal government.

​For example, I love the shooting sports. How can that compare with a real addiction? Well, be patient while I tell you a story.

Shooting is the one athletic endeavor at which I excel. I began shooting clay targets in my youth and, like most people, blasted away with a 12 or 16 gauge shotgun. However, there was one elderly gentleman whom I observed shooting trap and skeet with a .410. (For the uninitiated, the .410 shotgun shoots a significantly smaller load of pellets than other shotguns making it extremely more difficult to hit a moving target.) When I asked why he chose the smaller caliber, he replied simply, “I enjoy the challenge.” Well, almost 79 years of age, I would now like to be him.
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While shopping for a .410 shotgun I was presented with the option of an Italian beauty, a Barretta .410 over and under double barrel costing $2,700. Yes, that’s out of my price range but I can’t get it out of my mind, and my mind keeps making excuses to purchase it. "But," I hear you cry, "that's not an addiction. Purchasing expensive firearms isn't destructive." (It is if my wife finds out.)

We live in a golfing community. We are surrounded by three excellent 9-hole courses. Our homeowner dues give us “free” access to play any and all as often as we like, and I’ve been tempted to take up the sport again. I placed free in quotes (air quotes) because golf isn’t really free. A set of clubs, countless balls to be lost, and lessons are just the beginning. I’d need a golf cart. Have you ever shopped for one of those? The cost of that Barretta shotgun wouldn’t begin to cover it. So, when I see a neighbor driving to the first tee, my mind reminds me, “The shotgun of your dreams is a fraction of that cost.” See, it’s become an addiction.

Admittedly, my addiction isn’t a true addiction. It isn’t destructive. That’s the lesson of Dopesick. Addictions to drugs and alcohol are very destructive. Also, I don’t have a trusted advisor, such as a doctor, pushing me to buy into it. That’s the sad but true revelation of Dopesick, the story of doctor's prescribing oxycontin. And no government agency is reassuring me that purchasing an expensive shotgun is good for me. Yes, that’s another shocking aspect of the Dopesick story. The FDA approved labeling claiming that oxycontin wasn't addicting.

Now ask yourself: What is your addiction? Who’s pushing it?

I know one that is sweeping the nation. Fear. As strange as it sounds, fear is being peddled like an opiate and the masses are succumbing to it. And like many drugs, when we’ve indulged in one and become inured to it, the purveyors of fear push another, stronger fear. Climate Change and pandemic are just the two most recent examples.

Who are the pushers of fear? Those who want to take control of your lives, and they have enlisted their minions to occupy every street corner of your community. Some, like journalists, seem respectable. Others are simply thugs, rioting and looting to keep up the pressure.

Like addictions to drugs and alcohol, fear is destructive. It is tearing apart the social fabric of our nation. It is destroying relationships, even family relationships, just as do drugs and alcohol.
Ultimately, it seems that Franklin Roosevelt was correct.
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“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”