ADDICTIONS: WITHIN US ALL LURKS THE POTENTIAL TO HURT OURSELVES

In the throes of the most all-consuming pain I could remember, this
summer I understood how a toothache could drive a person mad.

Antibiotics helped with the infection, ibuprofen with the pain, but
both took a toll on my stomach. Coffee, long one of my favourite
indulgences, seemed to make the roiling irritation worse so, much as
I loved it, I had to give it up. And that was that.

Friends had spoken of intractable headaches when they'd tried to wean
themselves from coffee. And here I went from drinking a bath-sized
mug of espresso each morning and a double shot of espresso in the
afternoon to camomile tea, or mint tea -- or nothing at all. And from
Day One I was perfectly fine with it.

I might have missed the idea of coffee, the ritual, the rich
smoothness of the aroma in the kitchen in the morning. But the
caffeine? No. The buzz, not at all.

Years before, I had ended a 15-year smoking habit in much the same
way. A case of strep throat diagnosed one day, cigarettes out with
the garbage the next.

I remember telling myself I would not smoke that day. And the next
day I said I would not smoke that day. And so on. And more than 20
years later, I call myself a smoker who is currently not smoking.

It is not because I am disciplined in any true measure. I am not. If
tomorrow it was discovered that I could smoke without increasing the
risk I would develop emphysema or cancer related to the habit, I
might start again.

Friends have struggled for years, used patches and gum and hypnosis;
some have quit successfully; others have gone back to the habit. I
wonder, sometimes, whether we have different personalities, whether
theirs are addictive and mine is not, but I am not convinced that is
true. I do not believe we are all that different from each other. I
believe that, just as we have the power to hurt others, there is also
in us the potential to hurt ourselves.

"Many people believe addicts are weak, that their suffering stems
from a lack of willpower, that an addiction or a dependency can be
overcome by strength of character alone," Evelyn Lau wrote in her
contribution to Addicted: Notes from the Belly of the Beast, essays
by writers and poets sharing tales of their battles with addictions
- -- to alcohol, heroin, smoking, gambling, sex.

Intellectually, she leans toward the belief; emotionally, it is a
different story. Lau says she has lived with uncontrollable impulses
all her life. She doesn't like the word addiction, for how it
"conjures up dismal pictures of sober or lapsed strangers sitting
together talking about their dependencies week after week, year after
year," she writes. "And yet the emotions they cycle through, the
force that dictates their behaviour, must not be so different from mine."

Addicted, edited by Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane, renowned Canadian
poets who contributed essays of their own to the collection, was
first published in 2001. A second edition has just come out, with
three new offerings, including one by Susan Cheever on how an
addiction to seduction and to sex caused her to ruin two marriages.
Molly Jong-Fast, on being a junkie, writes: "I have been sober longer
than not, but that's meaningless. I could drink a bottle or snort a
line tomorrow."

Two of the original contributors have lost the battle to the beast,
including the beloved broadcaster Peter Gzowski, who died in 2002 of
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease -- two years after quitting
what had been a lifetime of smoking. I liked his essay best, for how
unblinking it was. "Whatever pleasure had once been there had long
since gone," he wrote. "I smoked, as always, because I smoked."

In early 2000, he'd entered an addiction treatment facility: The
Slammer, he called it. "Gradually, and with a lot of help, I realized
that I really did want to quit."

And quit he did, although it was too late for him. Something else
about the Slammer: A coffee drinker for as long as he'd been a
smoker, "I knew I was addicted to caffeine, that I couldn't possibly
start the day without a jolt."

When the shaking stopped long enough for him to put a cup of coffee
to his lips, "all I could say was, 'Thank God, now I feel human again.' "

Not until he was heading out the door did someone tell him it was
decaf all along.