Addicted to Fantasy – Fuel for Dreams

People love stories. It's a vital need inside us that must be fulfilled somehow and it's a most fantastic experience, every single time. You hear talk about sex or drugs (I would say rock'n'roll, but I enjoy that addiction, too.) fulfilling something, a desire, an emptiness inside the human being. That's how addiction is born.

Drugs, from nicotine to heroin, release a particularly powerful surge of dopamine (the pleasure hormone) in our brains, with varying speed (something that then affects your chances of addiction, apparently). But the thing about all these bad things that cause addiction is that they offer us a jolt, a instant hit of happiness, they shake us out of our boots and we don't have to exist in this limbo, for a while.
We don't have to wait for pleasure to strike. So, from what I understand, it's not the drug itself, but the dopamine it releases. We're addicted to pleasure.

Repeated exposure to an addictive substance or behavior causes nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain involved in planning and executing tasks) to communicate in a way that couples liking something with wanting it, in turn driving us to go after it. That is, this process motivates us to take action to seek out the source of pleasure.
source

Well then, following the logic of the above sentences, I have determined I am addicted to stories. To fantasizing. We talk of all these bad addictions, but no one ever focuses on the good. I know it seems like a cute euphemism, some poetic non-sense that a writer might come up with and while sweet isn't really accurate.

But I've seen this in myself, the signs of addiction. Every time I read a story, I get a thrill, a rush of pleasure. I've been spending a lot of late nights lately (well, most of the night, really) tucked up in bed, reading, just going through books. Why? Because they're interesting. I would rather go without sleep, despite being tired, than not know what happens in the story. I'd read from midnight to four in the morning, wake up and pick up right where I left off. I just couldn't be out of the story. You know the feeling, I hope, when you're reading a very good book. It's just so alive in your head, like it's happening to you, not to some character in a book. You have suddenly become brothers and knowing what follows is crucial. It's a must. Something that cannot be abandoned or let go of. Now, to me, this seems like addicted behavior. Gravitating towards that source of pleasure.

It's not just books. Well, sort of. I used to spend nights re-watching over and over Shakespeare adaptations, because I was in love with the language. And I would sit down around midnight and finish around dawn, watching the same things over and over again. Night in, night out. The language, the way he spins the words was just fascinating to me.

It's a behavior that I've repeated throughout my life, be it with a book, a film, a play, even a fanvid.
And yet, it's not all of them. In-between good books, I found myself lulling around with a book that was boring me senseless and I would fall asleep after 10 pages.

I couldn't help but wonder why. And then it hit me.

It did not allow me to dream and that's what I was looking for. I found myself “cheating” on the book with a favorite adaptation of Under Milk Wood, something I've always considered to be naked poetry. Fuel for dreams, in other words.

Good books, movies, stories in general, allow us to dream, they give us the words or the looks or the feelings to create worlds in our own heads, they convince us anything is possible, that time travel is possible and they make us believe alternate universes are not only possible, but very probable. They alter our brains and our thinking in such a way that I'm sorry, but heroin doesn't stand a chance.

I've realized I'm addicted to dreams, to fantasizing about people, about characters in stories. And most of all, to creating stories in my own mind. I think a lot of us are. I wouldn't go as far as saying all of us, because I see an alarming number of people not...dreaming.

But we are here, we exist and dream and we willingly subject ourselves to the rush, the thrill that shakes through our bodies whenever we find a really good dealer story. Besides using, we also engage in other “addict” behavior, such as:

• We gravitate towards others like us

We hang out in packs, although not really, 'cause the dreamer has always been more of a lone wolf. But we seek each other out, we're drawn to people who share our dreams, who might have common fantasies or at least appreciate ours.

• We'd much rather be indoors, engaging in our addiction then go outside and socialize.

Reading about addiction, I found the following questions with the warning that if you answer 'yes' to at least one of them, then you might have a problem with addiction:

Do you use more of the substance or engage in the behavior more often than in the past?

Hard to say, I've always been a heavy fantasizer.

Do you have withdrawal symptoms when you don’t have the substance or engage in the behavior?

Yes, horrible ones.

Have you ever lied to anyone about your use of the substance or extent of your behavior?

Sometimes. It's weird to say 'I'm dreaming' when people ask what you're doing. Although it shouldn't be.

So, by this count, I'm addicted to dreaming, to stories, to fantasy. And I love it. It's an addiction I hope I never kick.

Thank you for reading,