I'm DixieGal and I'm a readaholic too.
(Hi DixieGal)
I have been addicted for a long time. It all started at age 7 with my first book,
Black Beauty. It had a beautiful black horse running through autumn leaves on the cover. I slept with it beside my pillow. That was my gateway book. I moved on to
The Aristocats and
Nancy Drew, and although they say it is harmless and non-addicting, I found myself unable to stop.
At about age 10, I moved on to the harder stuff:
Nova by Ben Bova. It was my first hard science scifi. It read good, and I re-read it over and over to experience that feeling of pleasure it gave me. I needed my fix more frequently and turned to "borrowing from the library." Sometimes I would even ask my mom to drive me downtown to get my fix in the rain or darkness. Sure, she worried, afraid that I wasn't getting enough playtime and was spending too much time with my addiction. But a couple of pushers, "teachers," told her it was cool and to be sure I had a good reading light.
(But you told us elsewhere that you played all day long every day...)
True, but I always had a book on the porch for when it was too hot and we needed to cool down a bit. Reading on the porch swing, flying back and forth, was our own perpetual motion fan.
I eventually left home because the addiction was pulling me in, deeper and deeper. I found a group of users at a "university" and moved from scifi to poetry, modern lit, and especially medieval lit. The really hard stuff.
Eventually, the group had enough of me and kicked me out with a single sheet of paper. For some strange reason they said I was now a Bachelor, even though I'm a girl?
Without guidance from society, I slipped back into scifi. I found a ready source online, Amazon, and was seduced by their scifi "get 5 for the price of 4" specials. Soon, my home was bursting at the seams with paraphenalia, such as pbooks, booklights, reading glasses, and lately, magnifying glasses.
A year ago, I hit bottom. I was spending all my money on pbooks. It was coming between my husband and me. He had to carry my heavy bags of books, you know, since he's the guy. Then I was introduced to a way to freebase - an EB-1150. It takes books right off my computer and packages them in lightweight plastic. I found places to get my fix for free. I wound up at MobileRead, where I risk my job every day in order to socialize with the other addicts.
I now read several times every day. I'm not looking for help, just here at the meeting to brag about it.
