Is Writing an Addiction?

[Paul Whybrow]

I have my own experience of addiction, having been an alcoholic for 27 years. It took suffering a minor stroke in 1995, to make me see the error of my ways. It's said that an addict has to reach rock bottom before they wise-up, and watching four alcoholics die in surrounding hospital beds the day I was admitted certainly helped me to straighten up and fly right.

I kicked booze out of my life, and haven't come close to falling off the waggon. I don't miss it at all, and it's 20 years since I imbibed alcohol.

I've never been tempted by any other addictions—tobacco, drugs, gambling or overindulging in food or sex.

All the same, I notice that I get a real high out of writing. There's something about creating a story that stimulates the reward system in my brain. I derive great pleasure from the act of writing, coming alive while doing so and feeling happier than I do in other day-to-day activities.

I don't feel the same way about editing, which feels like a tedious form of going cold turkey. As for querying literary agents, that might be a version of religious supplication—petitioning the Gatekeeper Lords with the prayers of my submission!

Do any of you get high from writing?

 

[David Newrick]

Amazing life story Paul - don't forget to use it to manipulate the brain cells of agents when you query them.

As for getting a high? I do in a way. It is a strange high though. An intellectual one. Rather than the type of highs I have had in the past from alcohol, nicotine, salt, caffeine or sex - all of which I have given up in the name of staying healthy and aiming to live to about 150 years old pmsl.

What always troubles me is how many times I have read of authors who abuse/use drugs alcohol for their writing. They also tend to die early. No matter how good a career move that might be I prefer to enjoy living, grow old disgracefully and criticise whomever I choose to so there!

 

[Carol Rose]

I suppose it's in how you define "addiction." Does writing produce chemical changes in our brains? I'm sure it does, the same as exercise does, or listening to a favorite song, hearing a favorite verse, hugging someone, and countless other stimuli produce changes. I can only speak for myself.

I only have two "addictions." Caffeine, and writing. If I try to stop drinking coffee, I get withdrawal headaches which is common. I only did it once voluntarily - when I was pregnant with my daughter. The thinking of the day was that it was bad during pregnancy. But once I had her, I went right back to it. I need my coffee in the morning. I don't normally drink it later in the day although even when I do, it does not interfere with my sleep. I think by now it's in my veins.

My other addiction is writing. I HAVE to write. I've always been this way, though, since I was 8 years old. So is this a true addiction, as defined by the medical definition, or is it simply my passion? And does it matter whether we label our need to write, as long as it makes us happy? The problem, IMHO, comes when it's no longer fun. Then it's time to take a step back and re-evaluate what it is about the process that's making us unhappy, or has turned it from a passion into a chore.

 

[Peggy Lou]

Nice to come across one more coffee addict, Carol. I too cannot function without my morning coffee.

All in all, I have three addictions - coffee, reading and writing. I put coffee first, because without that cannot read or write.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Coffee, I like a lot. But if I don't have it in the morning, I don't notice, particularly. Alcohol--I enjoy my wine with dinner, but I'm too much of a control freak to want to be drunk (and there are more than enough alcoholics in my family...no need for any more). Sex and drugs--meh. Writing? I enjoy it a great deal, and it makes me happy. But an addiction? No. Not in the sense that it interferes with the rest of my life.

I'm afraid my only addiction is to weeding. I cannot pass by a weed and not stop to pull it. I'll show up late to meals, parties, whatever, because I can't help but pull weeds. Just yesterday I passed up popcorn and a beer with my husband, because I was busy weeding. Weeding has destroyed my body and my social life--definitely an addiction. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a local chapter of Weeders Anonymous around here. And what can I do, when I live on a property full of weeds? It's like setting an alcoholic loose in a liquor store.

 

[Marc Joan]

Coffee, I like a lot. But if I don't have it in the morning, I don't notice, particularly. Alcohol--I enjoy my wine with dinner, but I'm too much of a control freak to want to be drunk (and there are more than enough alcoholics in my family...no need for any more). Sex and drugs--meh. Writing? I enjoy it a great deal, and it makes me happy. But an addiction? No. Not in the sense that it interferes with the rest of my life.

I'm afraid my only addiction is to weeding. I cannot pass by a weed and not stop to pull it. I'll show up late to meals, parties, whatever, because I can't help but pull weeds. Just yesterday I passed up popcorn and a beer with my husband, because I was busy weeding. Weeding has destroyed my body and my social life--definitely an addiction. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a local chapter of Weeders Anonymous around here. And what can I do, when I live on a property full of weeds? It's like setting an alcoholic loose in a liquor store.

People like you are why other people throw gardening parties in the summer.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I'm afraid my only addiction is to weeding.

Not to contradict you entirely Robinne, but isn't a simple definition of a weed 'a wild plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants.'

One of my favourite poems is by Norman Nicholson, who was rather fond of weeds:

Norman Nicholson (1914 - 1987)
WEEDS

Some people are flower lovers.
I'm a weed lover.

Weeds don't need planting in well-drained soil;
They don't ask for fertilizer or bits of rag to scare away birds.
They come without invitation;
And they don't take the hint when you want them to go.
Weeds are nobody's guests;
More like squatters.

Coltsfoot laying claim to every new-dug clump of clay;
Pearlwort scraping up a living from a ha'porth of mortar;
Dandelions you daren't pick or you know what will happen;
Sour docks that make a first-rate poultice for nettle-stings;
And flat-foot plantain in the back street,
gathering more dust than the dustmen.

Even the names are a folk-song:
Fat hen, rat's tail, cat's ear, old men's baccy and Stinking Billy
Ring a prettier chime for me than honeysuckle or jasmine,
And Sweet Cicely smells cleaner than Sweet William
though she's barred from the garden.

And they have their uses, weeds.
Think of the old, worked-out mines -
Quarries and tunnels, earth scorched and scruffy,
torn up railways, splintered sleepers,
And a whole Sahara of grit and smother and cinders.

But go in summer and where is all the clutter?
For a new town has risen of a thousand towers,
Sparkling like granite, swaying like larches,
And every spiky belfry humming with a peal of bees.
Rosebay willowherb:
Only a weed!

Flowers are for wrapping in cellophane to present as a bouquet;
Flowers are for prize-arrangements in vases and silver tea-pots;
Flowers are for plaiting into funeral wreaths.
You can keep your flowers.
Give me weeds!

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I totally agree, Paul. I've actually been traveling around NZ teaching kids about weeds recently, because there are some serious economic and environmental weeds here--not the sort of weeds you find in your vegetable garden, but large, woody things that take over entire mountainsides. But I always talk about how those weeds were brought here because they're actually really useful plants. Many of them were important food, shelter, medicine, or firewood, but our values that have changed, and now we consider them weeds. Indeed, I regularly eat the weeds in my garden--sheep sorrel, dandelion, lambs quarters, and others--they're delicious. Others go to the livestock--mallow, chickweed, plantain, sow thistle, vetch. And some end up in the flower vases--yarrow, catsear, the occasional daisy.

Truth is, my addiction is as much to plants as it is to weeding...

 

[Emurelda]

My name is Emu and I am addicted to coffee. I am trying to build better writing habits..like actually writing every day. I aspire to be an addicted writer on par with my coffee addiction. At least.

 

[Matnov]

Not sure it is addiction. More of a compulsion really. And you do need something that cannot be defined inside of you to drive on with it because in many ways, the process does not make any real logical sense in terms of the conventional risk/reward scenario that seems to underpin much of what we do, especially in the conventional sense of wanting to earn a few sovereigns. For me, the most pleasurable part is when my Muse kicks in and offers up a plot twist or turn that fires me up in a way that very little else does and that is the real buzz, making the slog worth it. Just for those few seconds when it all falls into place, the world is a calm and serene place and I walking on the clouds. It does not last long and soon reality kicks as you try and move on but for those few precious moments, it is a glorious feeling. I have tried to convince myself that for me writing is what golf is for many of my friends but that has never sat comfortably. Escapism? Perhaps. But that seems to be a regular feature of most peoples lives and the truth is that sitting down to write is always a gamble in terms of how you will feel when that particular session comes to an end.

I write because I like writing but I am not sure why. And perhaps, and this is the notion that nags away at me, that is for the best.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

As a fully qualified Nurseryman, the definition of a weed is, 'a plant out of place.'
Writing, also starts with a wubbl-u but there the similarity ends! I can get a high from writing when something magically falls into place. As for quering.... it's tedious in the extreme at times, but oddly, extremely important, yet also the most frustrating part as you know. How many hundreds have we sent out? Don't count!!

 

[Patricia D]

I don't think I'n addicted to writing, but I'd sure hate to try to give it up

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Okay, I ran across this wee poem, written by me (by candlelight at my little table in Panama, no doubt) back in 1995. It made me chuckle. I suppose I'm more addicted to writing than I thought...

Writing is a flood.
The dam holds it
For just so long.
Then it bursts forth
Full of chunks of cement
And wood splinters
To inundate
Small villages.

 

[Lawal]

What I know is I just love and I want to write anyway. This is a poem on how a writer should sing himself or herself. I wrote this not quite long, A Writer's Life:

A Writer's life is old
In music singing tales
A tale reveals a fold
In secret lives for sales

— Lawal Jimoh