Kicking the Reading Addiction…in moderation

Books were my first addiction.

Summer vacation was all about books. Going to the library and getting as many books as I could carry, then reading all day and late into the night, day after day, was some kind of heaven for me.

I was never bored, as long as I had a book. Waiting in line? Read a book. Long bus ride? Read a book. Getting picked up after school? Read a book.

My family didn’t have a television until I was 10, so books didn’t have much competition. And even once we got a TV, books never lost their place. I couldn’t stay up past 11 at night watching TV, but I could read until 2 or 3 am; I couldn’t take TV with me to school at that time, but I could take books.

At some point I realized that how much I was reading was unhealthy. I was using books to escape the reality my body was in, allowing my mind to be totally engrossed in other worlds. As a kid, there weren’t too many consequences; as an adult, though, it started to be a bit of a problem.

I had a habit of waking up in the morning with a to-do list, and start reading while eating breakfast, then I wouldn’t want to stop reading. I’d tell myself I’d start doing my list after this chapter…after this one…ok, just one more chapter. At some point I would calculate how many pages I had left, and decide I had enough time to finish the book and then start my to-do list. Almost invariably, the moment I finished the book, I would feel a palpable need in my body to start reading another one. Finishing a book left an empty vacuum I was eager to fill. So I’d grab the next book and say to myself, “Ok, just one chapter, then I’ll start my list.” You can guess how well that worked.

I think the vacuum I felt at the end of a book was created by all the emotions I had just felt…I had gotten to know the characters, felt what they felt, followed their ups and downs, witnessed whatever culmination of their story happened at the end of the book, and then they were just…gone. If it was a series, I wanted to start the next book to know what happened next. If the book didn’t continue in another book, I wanted to start a new book, and get to know new people.

As a kid, I had always been praised and encouraged for reading, so it took many years to figure out as an adult that my relationship with books was sometimes obsessive and unhealthy. As addictions go, it was a pretty good one. My eyesight may have suffered, and I certainly had a messy house, and perhaps I could have been more productive over the years if I hadn’t spent all those thousands of hours of reading, but I never stopped exercising altogether, so my body didn’t suffer as much as it would have with other addictions.

My addiction has actually had some really positive benefits. Those thousands of hours of reading have educated me quite a bit. I have peeped into cultures from different countries and different time periods. I have some idea what it’s like to grow up Chinese-American in the late 20th century, or to find a husband in Victorian England. I have thought through hundreds of thought experiments reading science fiction. I know the meanings of many words I have no idea how to pronounce, because they are common in books and uncommon in conversation. Books are an amazing technology, imparting an author’s wisdom and experience long after the author has died. They’re the closest thing we have to time travel.

Yet even the best things have a dark side. After I realized my reading was out of balance, I quit cold turkey. I went from always having a book to rarely having a book, for at least a few years. I got really present with my life, except for a nightly movie (I still loved stories, and didn’t want to give them up altogether). I still was never bored, and I still had a messy house; at least I was spending my days being out and about and active.

I am grateful to say I have been able to reintegrate reading books into my life without going back to my old obsessive ways. I can take a week or two to finish a book, rather than a day. Reading all day is a treat that happens when I have a long bus or airplane ride. Every once in awhile I’ll binge read for a week or a month, tops. I see those times as the equivalent of turning the compost pile, my way of going in myself and seeing what’s there. I’ve realized that even as books enable me to escape the external world, they light up my internal one, giving me insights about myself and how I interface with others.