THIS LITTLE JUNKIE WENT TO REHAB, THIS LITTLE JUNKIE SAID NO!

 

I am a bonafide, self-prescribed addict. I might as well have a belt or nearest shoe lace I can find, tied tightly around my bicep, just above my elbow, producing a raised and enlarged road map of throbbing green veins, that are more than ready to invite the sharp jab of a cold and filthy heroine needle. Okay, so I don’t use drugs nor have a tried to shoot anything in my tiny veins, unless you count the time I honestly considered pumping my veins intravenously with Dreyer’s Limited Edition-Slow Churned-Mud Pie ice cream.   Mmmmmmm… (drool). I’m no drug addict, but I almost know how such an addict feels!

My addiction or obsession, some may say, is absolutely and without a doubt ridiculous. But don’t be quick to judge me until you’ve been in my size 9’s. I bet sometime in your earthly existence that you have also had an obscure or radical obsession. You may think I’m talking about food since I’ve mentioned by weight issue, and it more or less deals with food, but I’m not the one consuming. I am ashamed to say this, but I am addicted to Cafe World hosted on Face Book! 

It all began, when I started a Face Book account at the impatient requests and snide remarks of my friends. I was still involved with My Space like the rest of my friends, which is more known for appealing to the much younger crowd as of late. I was getting tired of the overall dealings of the My Space site and eventually weaned away from it and all the incessant friend requests from utter strangers. I wasn’t about to get myself caught up in a similar site just to find long lost peers one week, only to never hear from them again the next. Well, my husband and I, together, joined the Face Book world and reconnected with long distant friends we had communicated with using My Space.

After I familiarized myself with the ins and outs of this new site, I began getting quite comfortable and actually liked it a whole hell of a lot better than that whack-ass-teeny-bopper-spam-filled My Space crap. Browsing through my “wall”, I came across a brightly colored Cafe World notification from a friend, mentioning they had learned to cook French food and she needed friends to try some of her newly crafted French onion soup. Hmmm…. this perked my food-loving interest, so you know I had to see what this was really all about! No sooner had a designed my cafe the first day, had I been hooked and trapped in this endless charade.

This crap had me so damn involved to the point that I would get up in the middle of the night, between nightly feedings and grab my husband’s laptop, hide in our closet and make sure my cafe was running smoothly. That meant making sure my food hadn’t spoiled, serving a variety of dishes to hungry and waiting customers and preparing more mouth-watering meals from the available choices in the virtual cookbook. Sounds a little overboard, I know, but this horrid little “game” slowly started to take over my already hectic life!

Now some addicts, whether it’s alcohol, drugs, porn, or food, may like to suck other people into their compulsive hell so they don’t feel alone in their self-destructing habits. It’s almost a buddy system, if you will. That old saying is definitely true; Misery loves company! So you know I recruited my husband to join me in this new found addiction. It was almost as if I was the drug dealer and he, some loner, junior high kid looking for an edge over his peers. My conniving, smooth-talking “dealer” ass sucked this fool right in – hook, line and sinker! His immediate thought was that he could prove to me that he could run a cafe successfully and much better than me, his little old wife. Oh hell no! Who did this fool think he was?! I am extremely competitive by nature, but even more so when it comes to this man and I will stop at nothing to beat him at whatever sport, board game or contest we participate in together. So by him challenging me, it only pushed me further and deeper into a chronic abyss, making it that much harder for me to ever return to the “sober” world.

This thing I have with Cafe World is a got-dang compulsion and a sick one at that. At work, I would periodically desert  my desk in a *clandestine manner, with my net book in its perfectly concealed black carrying case gripped tight by my cold, lifeless grip and escape to my secret hideout in order to dull my equally satisfying and unrelenting craving. Sounds like some poor, itchy crack-head, fien’ing frantically for a much needed hit of a delicious, taupe colored, juicy-nugget-shaped crack rock, doesn’t it? Picture me in some cold and dimly lit stairwell, trying to find a decent wi-fi connection, scrambling to find, in a brief amount of time, Face  Book’s, Cafe World. Once I prepared the necessary cuisine and served it to my waiting customers, my longing, itchy craving was put to rest and I was well enough to return to work, or at least until that freakin’ craving resurfaced. 

My husband was, and still is a lot smarter than me when it came down to this sad situation. He realized that Cafe World became too much for him, that it became too high maintenance and definitely too damn time consuming. He no longer liked the fact that he got up at two, three and four in the morning just to take food off the stove and prepare more meals  for the day. He also felt that if he were going to put a considerable amount of time into this “game” that he should at least get paid for it! My husband is smart because he understands that he joined Face Book to reconnect with out of touch friends and that Cafe World has no end and it will continue as long as you invest the time. Am I am idiot for not seeing this? This Cafe World crap is not a game! A game has an end and a winner is declared, even in that long-ass, seemingly never ending game known as Monopoly! Games are not classified as having an infinite amount of levels! But this sh*t? This is more of a psychotic hobby, which is a bit of an understatement. Calling it an obsession is simply too nice for words. I have become obsessive and compulsive with finding more neighbors, expanding my walls to make my cafe larger, holding more patrons, making more money,  getting to the next level to unlock another menu item, counter or stove, and leveling up quicker than my fellow Cafe World junkies.

I’ve mellowed out a bit. I used to ask my husband to check my cafe, which I have named “T-Licious”, while he was at work because I was no longer able to find that wi-fi connection that had worked so well before. I would call him in the middle of the day and tell him before he left for work, “If you get the chance, can you please check my cafe at 11:52 am. My Spitfire Roasted Chicken will be ready by then.” It finally got to the point, where my husband looked at me with this slightly annoyed pity in his eyes, shaking his head as if to say, “Hey dummy, when are you going to learn? Just give it up and get out while you still can! This isn’t what you signed up for, remember?” Almost everyday, he asks me what my goal is and what I’m trying to accomplish with this so-called “game”. I think it’s just my extremely competitive nature and the strong desire to continue because apparently, I’m not too tired of it, just yet. As my dad always told me growing up, “Never give up!”, although I’m sure my dad wouldn’t apply this motto to this particular situation!

So why do drug, alcohol, food, sex, and Cafe World addicts continue their respective over-indulgent patterns? It’s a vicious cycle: the need to feel good and comforted during the perfect or attainable high, only to hit the bottom and have that strong urge creep back to the surface and suck our weak minds back into the compulsive hell.

My advice to you, is to stay away from Cafe World or anything like it!! Don’t even try it, whether you think you can handle it or not, for fear you will be sucked into the meal prepping nightmare! You will dream about it, think about it 24/7, you’ll be calling your available spouse to go online for you to check your cafe, you’ll devote all of your free time and your not-so-free time to this horrid obsession! I should really follow my own advice, by checking into the same “rehab” my husband checked into and re-establish my Face Book priorities, but… Nah!  It’s always easier said, than done.

*Thanks Dad, for introducing me to that $10 word!