A Lifetime of Habits

How many of you are living with obsessive brains? I’d be keen to know how closely it’s linked to addiction. I bet the crossover into both is very high, amongst addicts and obsessives. I get cultural obsessions quite often, where I will discover a new writer or a musician, or even a TV show and then I will think of little else for weeks or maybe months afterwards. I will firstly devour every book or album or episode that’s available, then I’ll move onto books about the albums, or documentaries about the artist. I’ll watch interviews with them, I’ll seek out random demos of early recording sessions, I’ll read polemics about them or their material to gauge reactions on both sides. And then once I’m satisfied - even though there is no real marker for this, it’s just a feeling I get - I will not go near them or their work for months. It even stretches to different foods and drinks, where I’ll find something I enjoy and then suddenly I’m buying it everyday, until the point where I realise I’m not enjoying it anymore. It happened with drugs too, not these days, but in my twenties I consumed a ridiculous amount of certain drugs until a time when I was literally sick or bored of them. Culturally the ones that stand out are Hunter S Thompson, JG Ballard, billy woods, Raymond Chandler, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix… I had a mad time with Twin Peaks, where everything in my mind was occupied by thoughts of that show. It’s a blessing because I love learning about new things, but it’s also something of a curse because it often veers into unhealthy areas. So basically I was wondering how prevalent that sort of mindset is, do many of you deal with similar stages in your life? I know that we are creatures of habit but I know plenty of people who get obsessive about things but don’t fall into addiction, as well as people who never seem to fall into those sorts of fixations. It’s a very interesting area