Knitting addiction

It’s been a revealing several days. I have discovered that I am incapable of not knitting. The only thing that would have stopped me would have been pain. After last weekend, and Celebrex, I have had none of that. So the idea of theoretically resting my Guyon’s tunnel (get your mind out of the gutter, it’s all in the wrist) didn’t last very long.

In my hard-wiring post on human behavior, I talked about endorphins. That’s probably an integral part of what creates and reinforces addictive behavior in people. I have never found my physiology to be addiction-friendly. In college, when I flirted with smoking cigarettes for six weeks, my habit was cut short by a well-timed cold that made inhaling painful. That was the end of THAT. Alcohol has never appealed. Wine is fun, but I truly hate the way excess wine feels the next day. And during the brief period of intoxication, all my control-freak instincts coalesce into a big dysphoric miasma.  So forget the booze.

In my profession, an uncomfortable number of practitioners succumb to the siren song of drug addiction. I handle varying quantities of intravenous narcotics on a daily basis. That has never lured me in.

I probably was addicted to bad boys in my youth. The fact that I married a good boy demonstrates my self-preservation instincts are stronger than my addictive instincts. Then we get to knitting. I can’t not knit. Well, I can, but it hurts too much to be worth it.   (I wonder if that’s why addicts stay addicted.)

I was talking to a LYS owner recently (name and location obscured to protect her honesty). She commented that the staff in the store sees a lot of people at the store who act out their neediness through yarn. She saw it as uncontrolled buying. Since we were talking about obesity in America at the time, she was tying it into alcohol/drug and food addiction. Cassie pointed out our knitterly use of the word “stash”, and its clear crossover to the drug culture.

Blogworld is full of knitters describing uncontrolled stash acquisitions. And trying to hide the size of the stash from significant others. And selling parts of their stash to others. The addiction to fiber and knitting is probably more benign, except for the financial aspects, and the time constraints. I really do have to beat myself to fulfill the more boring paperwork obligations in my life since I started knitting. The needles (aha! Another crossover analogy) are more fun.

I don’t plan to do anything about my knit-addiction quite yet. But it does bother me. I quit coffee years ago because I hated having to structure my life around it. If I didn’t have my cup before noon, the headache that crept up was relieved by nothing, not even coffee, at that point. You haven’t lived a full life until you have experienced being trapped in a room, unable to leave your patient, with your bladder screaming at you, and no one available to give you a break. So no more coffee. (Is this more than civilians want to know about my profession? Should I just stick to knitting?)

I started Marla. It made sense to do a really big swatch, so I began a sleeve. The Pine Needle socks are coming along well, and Eric’s Glovelets are at a dead standstill due to technical difficulties. More on these breaking stories early this week.

Comments

[heather]

Interesting crossovers.
I am sometimes disgusted by others in my LYS, the way they fill up two and three baskets with yarn that will ultimately not get used (call it more than a hunch...). But there's a certain hunger in the whole yarn experience. Heck, I can't not walk into a yarn store (or, for that matter, the yarn aisle at the local AC Moore) without involuntarily touching, petting, and stroking the yarn.

Well said.

[Lisa, Mike, Jack, Della]

What a thought-provoking post; thank you for sharing your thoughts. I've been sending my non-knitting sister to my local yarn shop when I want a set of new needles or the latest Rowan because I'm overcome by compulsive yarnaholic spending behavior if I go myself. So, like you, I've seen the needles and the damage done...oh I'm sorry. Suddenly I was thinking about Neil Young. No really! Great post.