How do I know I'm an "addict?" I take hits of everything I like.

There are different ways to enjoy things. There's a standard enjoyment, where something is pleasurable in itself. The flavour of a good meal, the thrill of a good story, or the comfort of a soft blanket are intrinsically rewarding. It’s like…they’re enjoyable for true reasons. They feed pleasure-centres built into us.

I picture it like filling colour-coded tanks in us with matching fuel. (The fuel itself I picture as neon-coloured sodas—like Jones’ or Chubbies.)

We have dozens of tanks—for connection, beauty, excitement, etc.—and we fill them with stimulation from all our senses. Maybe some of the tanks and their corresponding fuels are higher- or lower-calorie—maybe a CGI-filled Marvel flick is less filling than a critically-acclaimed novel. And maybe we’ll find ourselves guilty of over-indulging on highly-processed and insubstantial pleasures. Maybe we kick ourselves for not reading enough, when we know a book rewards us more than reality TV—or for ordering McDonalds instead of cooking something fresh. To me, those choices still fall into a comparatively innocent camp of reward prioritization—we feel a little lazy, so we go for the easy pleasure: all good.

There’s a different sort of pleasure-seeking that raises my own red flags.

I first noticed this other thing (which I’ve mentioned before) when drinking: I loved the first sip of a new beer. Distinct from remaining 95% of a pint, that first pull of a freshly-poured draught flooded a completely different type of tank—one that’s always been hard to describe.

It’s like…an oh, here we go! feeling, or an ooh, that’s new! It’s a reward for a change occurring, or the excitement of where it’ll take us. It’s like…indulging on more/different stuff solely because it’s more/different. And…you have a specific itch you’re trying to scratch, but you don’t know where it is, so you endlessly try new things to see if you can be satiated.

But you can’t ever be satiated, because the act of searching for the cure is in itself the itch you’re trying to scratch. It’s like feeling starved, but instead of eating, you just keep shopping for food.

You know what I mean if you’ve ever found yourself scrolling through social media for so long that you can’t even remember the clip you watched thirty-seconds ago. In those “doom scrolls” (I hate that phrase, by the way, but that’s what people call it), you stop filling the normal pleasure-tanks. You might get a splash of comedy, hear a good song, or see an impressive feat of athleticism, but you’re mostly just rapid-tapping the refresh button on something new. You might as well be opening a new beer every twenty seconds solely to take that first sip. You’re not even enjoying the beer at that point—you aren’t doing it for the taste, refreshment, or buzz—you just want that ahhh new beer feeling.

That’s what I mean by taking hits; I chase that first-sip feeling with everything.

My latest (very specific) example is eating Jolly Ranchers at night. I’ve been tossing low-investment content on TV, then popping candy for about an hour every night. Since it takes a few minutes to finish a piece, I’m luckily not downing a thousand calories in straight sugar. (It’s closer to 300). Thing is: when I get about halfway through one piece, I already crave the next one. It’s like I want more of what is already an intensely sweet flavour. Except: the second piece doesn’t even add anything. I’m pretty sure my tastebuds are fully-stimulated with one piece, but something about having more is impossibly alluring. Hell, I’d simultaneously eat one of each flavour (five in total) if it wasn’t sure to choke and wouldn’t just crave six immediately after.

Another example is with work. Lots of people are addicted to work, where they constantly need task-completion-wins to fuel a productivity tank. That’s tricky for its own reasons, but my thing is a little different. I just want the high from a new email. Seriously: if I open my Gmail app on my phone and see bolded font from an unread client email, a little juice gets added to my new-thing tank. I don’t need to run and fix anything, or even respond most of the time. I got my fix already just knowing something happened. Maybe you’ve gotten a similar feeling from someone you’ve dated, where all it takes is a red notification dot to perk you up. The content of their message is irrelevant, you’re high just from the alert.

I’ve heard this type of behaviour linked to a hijacked dopamine system. (Forgive me in advance for writing on this with a fully-uneducated understanding of neurochemistry. I have read two books on addiction though, so I’m going for it.)

Dopamine is a feel-good chemical your brain releases as you fill your pleasure tanks—like a little green light going off to say yaaaah that’s what we need. It’s also part of a basic cycle of craving and relief, though: you want something (and feel bad for as long as you don’t have it); then you get it (and dopamine makes you feel good).

That cycle is the red-flag part. Instead of pursuing pleasure by filling your tanks, you just run around alleviating cravings.

I crave stimulation, so I endlessly chase new sounds and bright colours. I don’t care about the quality of entertainment because I’m not seeking to learn, be thrilled, or empathize with characters. Hell, I’m not really looking to be entertained at all; I just want to not be bored—I want the pain of needing entertainment to go away.

So I can get stuck in unproductive loops where I not only fail to grow or make stuff, I fail to properly enjoy life. To say I get lost chasing highs isn’t quite right, and the idea of chasing the dragon is similarly off. For me, at least, it’s more like chasing my own tail—spinning in place, running away from an insubstantial longing to find a few seconds of relief.

And that’s why I’m now on drugs. I don’t know all the ways ADHD and addiction are linked, but from my own experience: my medication curbs the tail-chasing. I don’t suffer as viscerally from my cravings, meaning I don’t have to run to my phone to alleviate my boredom. I’m not desperately hungry to fill the new thing tank, meaning I can more consciously decide which of the truer, healthier, and more productive tanks I should address. Today, for example: instead of bouncing between video games and YouTube videos, I went to the gym and now I’m writing—both of which I genuinely enjoy more than the TV-time.

When the need to fill one tank is less overwhelming, I now feel free to choose which pleasures to indulge. It’s almost like: when food and shelter are a constant concern, you don’t have space to think about anything else; only when those basic needs are met can you focus elsewhere. I (with the help of drugs, therapy, and journalling) have removed—or at least shrunk—a bullshit block from my hierarchy of needs, and now have much more fuel to put into other tanks.

So…what does this mean for you? Why even write this?

I don’t know. I think…the concept of addiction or being an addict is more of a dial than a switch. My craving-dial gets turned up enough where it becomes a distinct issue. I wasn’t doing the work I wanted to do, nor was I experiencing the things that make me genuinely happy. I was filling one tank to the point of overflowing, while the others were running empty—and that’s not how I wanted to live my life.

So while maybe your dial isn’t as cranked and your tank-filling is more balanced than mine, maybe you’re still putting more into the new-thing tank than you’d like, and maybe this metaphor empowers your to be a bit more selective with your fuel.

Or maybe it doesn’t—but now you have a different way of looking at addiction.

Or maybe you don’t have that either, but at the very least, you know a bit more about me. Maybe that’s worth the five minutes it took to read this—if not: woops, too late to take it back now! Sorry?