Maybe some of us are meant to be addicted to something in order to function. A window out of everyday, the means to pause, or to actually be interested in stuff. I even wonder if everything that people does with any degree of enthusiasm could actually be an addiction: exercise, sex, work, religion. The fact that those things are meaningful for the person means that he/she gets an endorphin/adrenaline/dopamine rush every time he/she does whatever is included under that particular interest. Anyway, the chemicals part is just wild especulation, I am sure that Dr. Harmon could explain in detail if and how misleading my idea is.



But I still think that if you are one of those addiction prone people the only thing you can do is to choose an addiction wisely. You find that some things just doesn´t do it for you and that some others are way to risky, because is far too clear that they´ll be interfering with your life because they´ll probably become your life, the meaningful bits of your life in any given day, anyway, and you can´t have that. Really you can´t. You wish you could.

So, I cut to the chase: I was addicted to message boards once. It was ugly. I sailed through the day like a zombie, awfully sleep deprived and composing that ass-kicking point-by-point forum response in my head. And at night I posted and read, dutifully. I found that I had strong opinions on everything and that I had a taste for sarcasm. And I made sure I witnessed closely every event of drama going on at the forum: so and so just got banned, de-admined, called names, and I was invited to the secret forums that were just build in order to bitch against so and so and/or in favor of him/her. People cried, people got drunk, people dissapeared, people worried about suicide. Then a bunch of people left the board and go create another "a very friendly one, unlike that other". The cycle started again. I was hypnotized and up to my neck in the details. It felt like the sinking of the Titanic.
So after several of these exhausting and harrowing cycles I quitted message boards altogether, cold turkey. Awful withdrawal symptoms, plus all my friends were there. Anyway, this is relevant because it was in the middle of withdrawal symptoms that Trickster Tao directed me to SFØ. I ´ll never be too grateful.
SFØ shook the tree in the direction that it was good to go and do things out there, that it was needed, that there were an awful lot of ways for that to be actually awesome and even good. I got completely in love with the game. But I also got thoroughly addicted to the site. SFØ.org was promptly set as the homepage in every computer I ever touched, I seriously plotted how to move to San Francisco (an ex-boss in Sunnyvale! yay!), my day revolved around checking updates every half an hour, even through my cell phone. And I made sure I read everything that ever hit the praxis. And that I read every single one of the comments.
That was the bad turn for me, it was going to be forum addiction all over again, if I started getting into the discussions and it wouldn´t take much to get me there. And if/when a friend (or a foe, mind you) replied i was going to be doomed forever.
So, I´m quitting SFØ. After I post this text I won´t be logging in. Ever. It feels like the sight from the plane when you´re next on that parachute jump.
Who knows what is really going on when you decide to kick up an addiction? It might be just fear of the known consequences, as stated. (Or perhaps what happens is that you´ve just habituated yourself to the neurotransmitter boost and you need novelty thrown in to pass the threshold?). But maybe you drift away because you don´t need it anymore, because you´ve been made stronger by the experiences had while high on that particular drug, and your brain is in a better place now, balance-speaking.
I´m betting on the later, but really, what do I know.

It was such a ride, guys, all over. I don´t think I could ever get rid of the drive, anyway, now that it has a name, and I will forever keep the SFØ way to look at public transportation, songs, clothes or suggestion boxes. And so much more.

SSI will have good karma for several reincarnations.

I don´t have much money but, boy, if I did, I´d buy several years of server fees where we all could live.