Turning Addictions into Superpowers

Some people just have addictive personalities. For me it started with cigarettes, music, then drugs, women, alcohol, sex, drugs, rock n' roll... the American way. Your all-American Toxic Boy. Then, slowly, I quit. First, the drugs, then the cigarettes, then the rock n' roll (immediately followed by a cessation of dating multiple partners). Then I picked up Jane, then the cigarettes again. But I fully intend to quit. Cigarettes, not Jane. And then we'll get married and I'll be free of all the addictions, 'cause, well, bye-bye sex. Or so I'm told.

I'd better hang onto the alcohol for awhile.

These cigarettes, though, they're a bitch. Cigarettes, not Jane. I successfully quit for five years. I set up a rewards program: every week without a cigarette, I'd buy myself a new CD. Turned out to be every day. Now I have a small record shop in my basement.

But then the food addiction kicked-in, oh-so-subtly. I liked it better when I was solely addicted to buying music. Maybe I could get addicted to buying new pants. It's certainly easier than doing a situp. Or maybe I could be a fat-assed superhero, roaming the seedy city streets after dark. My super power could be my ability to inhale anything not nailed down within a 50-yard radius, and my special weapon could be a studded belt that launched a spray of metal spikes every time I squatted down. I could sit on my enemies and squeeze them into submission. In times of serious trouble, Max could release a noxious gas that seizes the nerve center of any living organizm within 100 feet. I could give myself a catchy superhero name, like "Fatman," and come up with a catchy phrase like, "Eat me, punk." And the only thing that could stop Fatman would be Brussel sprouts -- my kryptonite. I can work out the details later, I suppose.