Addict Nation Read Free Page A

the last bite. If they leave half the plate, they feel even more refined. It’s part of the mentality that you can never be too rich or too thin. As I watch the waiter take away a plate of barely eaten food, along with the rolls of untouched bread in the basket, all destined for the garbage bin, I think of a recent study. It says America could feed over 200 million adults every year, just with the food that ends up in our garbage cans. As we speak, 1 billion people are going hungry worldwide, according to the United Nations. 2 While my more successful friends certainly feign concern over that jaw-dropping imbalance, they actually seem more disturbed by my newest quirk. Now, when I go out to a restaurant, I take all the uneaten bread from the basket in the center of the table with me when I leave. I either give it to a homeless person or feed it to the hungry birds I’m always passing on the street. Apparently, this makes me a freak.
    Maybe they’re not so smart after all. This wastefulness is part and parcel of the addiction of overconsumption. We’re hoarding for ourselves more than we can ever possibly consume, while others starve. It’s obscene. But nobody is addressing the addictive nature of this behavior.
    The Most Dangerous Addictions Are the Ones
We Fail to Even Diagnose as Addictive Behavior
    If you have an undiagnosed addiction, it’s like not knowing you have a fatal cancer growing inside you. You’re flying blind. You can’t combat a problem until you correctly diagnose it. Right now, America is misdiagnosing some of its biggest problems, like obesity, materialism, and crime. It’s no wonder they’re just getting worse!
    One thing we know about addicts: they don’t listen to reason. A craving is a very powerful thing that has a force of its own like a hurricane or a tsunami. Have you ever tried to get a friend to stop smoking by telling them they’re liable to get cancer? Ha! Reason is no match for a full-blown addiction. This is why addicts are known for being stubborn and defiant when somebody tries to stop them. When you scold a drunk for drinking too much, they’re apt to storm out of the house and head toward the nearest bar. Well, the same thing applies to our social addictions like crime, materialism, excessive cleanliness, and gluttony. This is precisely why Americans keep getting fatter as we lecture everyone about the dangers of junk and fast food.
    When It Comes to Combating Addictive Behavior,
We Are Wasting Taxpayer Dollars Trying to Engineer Strictly Political Solutions
    Politics is tone deaf to the psychological and emotional underpinnings of America’s worst problems, even as it throws billions of dollars at them. If you give a heroin junkie a wad of cash, it’s not going to help him kick his habit. Au contraire.
    Our healthcare debate is a perfect example. We keep talking about getting everybody insured. How about tackling the root cause of so much of the illness in America? Addiction! Overconsumption of alcohol is tied to an increased risk of breast cancer. The addiction there is alcoholism. Smoking has long been the nation’s number-one preventable killer. Smoking is an addiction. And now obesity is creeping up and could ultimately surpass smoking as the country’s leading preventable killer. Obesity is the result of food addiction.
    Nobody’s talking about this. If the government took better aim at those preventable killers, we might all be willing to embrace universal health insurance because it wouldn’t be so damn expensive!
    The same concept applies to America’s other big issues, like prescription drug abuse, sexual exploitation, pollution, poverty, overpopulation, even crime and war. We must recognize that addiction is at the heart of these problems. We—as a culture—are hooked on these malignancies.
    Addicts Have the Ultimate Sense of Entitlement—
Nothing Will Stop Them From Getting Their Drug
of Choice! That’s the Addict Mind-Set
    We can define addiction.