First things first, what does the word addiction mean? According to dictionary.com (which is one of the most useful and awesome websites ever), it defines addiction as:
"The state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma."
Now, I was discussing with one of my best friends about this word. We eventually came to the conclusion that addiction was basically overusing (and abusing) a hobby so much, that you become emotionally attached to it. When I looked at the dictionary definition, it wasn't much different to my surprise! But the point is that, the Bible points out many times that we become enslaved to many worldly things (1 John 2:16), and often forget about what we need to put our focus on.
Now this is the part of the blog where it gets personal (and that I am partially scared but excited to share as a testimony). As of summer 2010, I was constantly getting asked by my friends, "did you have a great summer?, how was your summer?, etc". Now for those who have seen me during the summer, I may have acted normal. But during the summer, a few major turns happened down my road of life. I do openly admit I was for the first time in a while really depressed and angry.
Let me stop for a minute. How the heck does this relate to addiction?
Well, here's my personal take on this. Whenever someone feels as if they are sad, down, depressed, angry, or anything like that, they tend to go to something that will make them forget about what is happening in their lives. Sooner or later, this thing will become a primary factor in their life so much that they become addicted to that one thing and try to forget about everything else. To some people, this may seem the easy way out. I was one of those people during the summer. But as June went to July then to August, I was realizing that this didn't fix anything (one of the things I was addicted to was video games, for example). What I had to do was go up and address my problem right in the face. If I didn't start fixing the problem, I would keep going back to what I was addicted to. Now in this time of life, I am slowly starting to back away from my addiction and address my problem of depression and anger with the help of people like my parents, and also with God and His word.
What I just said above, is one of the many types of addiction that can happen to people. I will address more of those in later posts when I can (hint hint my next post will be on "the good addiction", yes there is such thing :D).
Well, please comment if you will, I'd love to see your personal opinion on what you think addiction is!
-Andres Avocado
(Also special thanks to Jonathan Hsia, who helped me discuss this issue for some unknown reason)
