Our Strange Addictions: Revealed

Addictions. Regardless of how perfect one comes off as, we always have something strange about us. Relax—it’s completely normal, everyone has a little bit of a freakish nature within them. Maybe it’s my new fondness for procrastination, or the current people-watching extravaganza I’m currently embarking on, but look around any public place and you’ll spot some kind of addict.

Now I’m not talking about addict in the necessarily negative sense. I am neither condoning nor observing the addiction of potentially dangerous behaviors, but simply the everyday ones; the somewhat strange, typically unnoticed behaviors that we engage in on a daily basis.

Before I continue, I must acknowledge a warning statement. By reading the rest of this article, you may be prone to some new extremely distracting observations. Once you’ve come to identify the odd-jobs of those around you—the girl next to you in your lecture hall or the man you’ve made awkward eye contact with a few too many times at Starbucks within the last three minutes—it’s hard to ignore them. And so, the words below may provide class distractions, hibernation from humans, and failure of completion of assignments in public areas. Proceed at your own risk—and don’t hold a grudge against the messenger.

Picking Hair: If picking split ends paid money, I’d be Bill Gates. There is no time of day not suited for picking hair—and look around you, I guarantee someone is right now. It’s addicting, even thrilling when I find a great split. Is that sad to admit? Very. And although it may deem distracting for those around me—and especially to myself when I am more concerned with splitting the ends of my hair to their maximum potential rather than listening to the current lecture—it’s not necessarily looked at as weird. Individuals don’t look at others in disgustwhen observing another pick their split ends. It’s pretty “normal,” but thinking about it, ultimately a strange concept.

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Biting Nails: We would never lick the bathroom floor (unless money was involved, then possibly), and we wouldn’t lick the dirt off of a sidewalk, but some will stick their hands in their mouth at any place and time. Do we have to even discuss the amount of dirt accumulating under those fingernails? The number of unsanitary objects that our hands innocently come in contact with, without being washed? And you wonder why vaccines exist. The idea of biting off technically parts of our body, and then spitting it out like a sunflower seed—please don’t tell me people swallow their fingernails? I may be naïve—is baffling. But again, we see it on the streets, and it’s accepted. Not practiced by all, but accepted (aside from mothers who will typically swat those hands away with debatable force).

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Internet Stalking: Now this category may be the odd one of the list, as it is not something actually attached to our body, but in this day in age, it practically is—wow that sounded old of me. We don’t go anywhere without some sort of technology, and if we accidentally do, it typically results in a minor panic. But Internet stalking has becoming somewhat of a normality. We cyber-stalk the hot guy in our class, casually scoping his name out from the sign-in sheet (all hail lazy professors and self sign-in sheets), or even check out our professor’s online presence. We stalk those from high school who constantly show up in our newsfeed, if not only to investigate their newest relationship status, or as a refresher to the face of the number you now have in your phone from last night. We have a question about someone? We look them up. Is that weird? Definitely. Is it now accepted? Widely—we’re in the new age of background checks.

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Compulsively Shaking Legs: Sometimes our body shakes when we’re scared. Sometimes it shakes when were anxious. And sometimes, it shakes while were gossiping with a friend, drifting off in a lecture, or eating a sandwich. Right now, I find myself shaking my foot as I type. Why? I don’t believe I am qualified to answer that question, yet it’s happening all around us. Are we living in a world where individuals constantly have to use the bathroom, and their legs are somehow draining that fluid? Unlikely—and disturbing. The compulsive shaking is so common now, it barely acts as a distraction but instead, more of a soothing mechanism. Expect for my dad, who will call you out on your shaking from across the kitchen table—apparently the strange addiction still rattles him. 

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Cracking Knuckles: It seems unnatural for our knuckles to make popping sounds. To an individual never exposed to the noise before, it may seem worthy of a hospital visit—too far? Yet, we hear it all the time, even incorporate a quick cracking-sesh into our morning ritual. The pops of knuckles, fingers, even necks and backs. It’s become a noise assimilated into society as not that strange after all. No longer worthy of strange stares from strangers (alliteration at its finest and a minor tongue twister), but casually incorporated into a conversation or engaged in during a job interview—on second thought, try to refrain from the cracking on job interviews.

 I think it’s safe to say that we, as a society, have adopted some strange habits. And believe me, the list could go on, but word length really scares people off these days. It’s like one of those weird revelations, when you repeat a word over numerous times and it suddenly sounds foreign. We continue to adapt to these strange addictions, and don’t necessarily realize until they’re brought to the surface. And so, I challenge you now: how many strange addictions do you have?