Illustration results for Addiction
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A one dollar bill met a twenty dollar bill and said, "Hey, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you around here much." The twenty answered (as the dollar bill listened enviously), "I’ve been hanging out at the casinos, went out on a cruise and did the rounds of the ship, back to the United States for a while, went to a couple of baseball games, to the mall, that kind of stuff. How about you?" The one dollar bill said, "You know, same old stuff, church, church, church."
Steve Malone
Mark Buchanan writes;
“Fasting churns the stuff up from the depths. Is there anger in me? I can usually control that with a burger and fries Am I resentful, irritated, overly ambition, fearful? I can smoother that with pizza. Am I depressed or embittered, suffering from a sense of life’s unfairness? I can artificially perk myself up with a Mars bar.”
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WE do that at times – use food to deal with life…
A lady and her husband were playing the slots side by side. The lady’s husband had a heart attack. The lady pushed her husband out of the way, straddled both machines and continued gambling while the medics tried to revive him to no avail.
A River Funny
A preacher was winding up his temperance sermon with great fervor: "If I had all the beer in the world, I’d take it and throw it into the river."
The congregation cried, "Amen!"
"And if I had all the wine in the world, I’d take it and throw it in the river."
The congregation cried, "Amen!"
"And if I had all the whiskey and the rum in the world, I’d take it all and throw it in the river."
And the congregation cried, "Amen!"
After the sermon the preacher sat down. The deacon stood up: "Fo...
So we are not only talking about the sex act itself, but also anything that feds these shameful evil desires....
And listen one thing that does that, and it something I need to talk about briefly is pornography... because It is an epidemic that is destroying our country... It has it’s death grip in people especially men from 11 year olds to men married with children..
. Pornography is a $13 billion dollar a year industry....
. In 1999 web-site revenues were 1.2 billion dollars
. There are 100,000 porn sites on the web - with an estimated 200 new sites
Everyday.
. Currently more than 50% of requests on search engines are for porn
. 10,160 porn movies were released in 1999 alone
. There are 450 porn magazines being published today
. There are more porn outlets today than there McDonalds
. More than 300 million x-rated videos are distributed each year. This is more than the entire population of the US.
. 25% of porn sites have brand names (barbie.disney.nintendo,nba...) in their metatags to attract hits from search engines.
Few college football coaches have made a point against drugs as effectively as Erk Russell of Georgia Southern College. He arranged for a couple of good ol’ country boys to burst into a routine team meeting and throw a writhing, hissing, six-foot-long rattlesnake onto a table in front of the squad. "Everyone screamed and scattered," Russell recalls. "I told them, ’When cocaine comes into a room, you’re not nearly as apt to leave as when that rattlesnake comes in. But they’ll both kill you!"
ADDICTION: The existence of Gamblers Anonymous implies that gambling can be addictive! -
Current estimates list approximately 2.5 million people as pathological gamblers, another 3 million as problem gamblers, and another 15 million people as at risk to become problem or pathological gamblers. Gambling Impact Study Commission, Final Report. Last Update: Jan. 28, 2001
In his book “The Great Divorce,” C.S. Lewis gives an allegorical story about a ghost of a man consumed by lust. And in this story lust is depicted as a red lizard that sits on his shoulder and whispers seductively in his ear. When the man is bothered by this lizard on his shoulder, an angel volunteers to destroy it for him. But the man is conflicted because he wants to hold on to his lust but also wants the lizard gone. What he is afraid of is that the death of his lust will be the death of him. He offers all these excuses to the angel because he wants to keep the lizard (even though he doesn’t want it).
After much discussion the man finally lets the angel kill the lizard. The angel grabs the lizard, breaks its neck and hurls it to the ground. Now that the spell of lust is broken the man who once ghostly is wonderfully remade into a real and solid person. And what’s so cool is that instead of dying, the lizard is changed into a spectacular stallion. With great tears of joy and appreciation the man gets on the horse and rides off into the heavens.
What was Lewis trying to help us imagine? Lewis is drawing us to the bond between killing our lust and finding life. We who have given into lust so much that it feels like we are going to die without it to die, it feels as if we are going to die right along with it will find that instead of des...
Study: A Few Cigarettes Can Hook You For Life
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON –
Scientists have confirmed a suspicion held by some smokers but never proven: It could take just a few cigarettes to become addicted. Some 12 and 13 year-olds showed evidence of addiction within days of their first cigarette, according to research reported this week in the British Medical Association journal Tobacco control.
"There’s been a suspicion that many people become addicted very quickly, but this is really
the first hard evidence that we’ve had that this occurs , ’ said Dr. Richard Hurt, director of the Nicotine Dependency Unit at the Mayo Clinic.
Experts have tried for years to determine how long people have to smoke before becoming addicted, and "the best answer to date had been 1-2 years," said Hurt, who was not involved in the study. He said the findings will help scientists better understand the biology of nicotine addiction and lend more plausibility to the idea that some people may be more genetically susceptible to it than others.
The study, conducted by scientists at the University of Massachusetts in 1998, followed 681 12 to 13 year-olds in central Massachusetts for a year and tracked their smoking habits. The researchers did not label any of them addicted because the standard definition of nicotine dependence assumes addiction cannot happen without prolonged heavy smoking. These include cravings, needing more to get This teen says she’s tied to quit smoking 8 times the same buzz, withdrawal symptoms when not smoking, feeling addicted to tobacco and loss of control over the number of cigarettes smoked or the duration of smoking.
Ninety-five of the youths said they had started smoking occasionally at least one cigarette a month during the study. The scientists found that 60, or 63 percent, had one or more symptoms of addiction. A quarter of those with symptoms got them within two weeks of starting to smoke and several said their symptoms began within a few days.
In 1998, Americans spent more money on legalized gambling (approximately 50 billion) than on recorded music, theme parks, video games, spectator sports, and movie tickets combined (39.9 billion). Gambling Impact Study Commission, Final Report. Last Update: Jan. 28, 2001
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