Strange Addictions Not That Strange

TLC’s My Strange Addiction had us at hello, but this does not mean we were prepared for the hairdryer addiction. Which is not what it sounds like.

Minds out of the gutter! The hairdryer addiction is about sleeping. See, since she was a little girl, this woman’s gone to sleep with a hairdryer, the heat and white noise of which she finds ample compensation for the risk of fire or electrocution.

Some of the behaviors — tanning, chalk and toilet-paper eating, for instance — are more immediately harmful. But weird as the habits may seem, the psychology is no different from that of any other addict. Once something is “soothing,” says one psychiatrist — whatever that thing might be, for whatever reason — “the patterns are very hard to break.”

The woman who goes to six salons a day — in defiance of the law — is a good example.

But lest we judge, MSNBC reminds us, “It’s important to remember that self-soothing strategies, of the non-extreme variety, are actually pretty common.” Some are just less…socially acceptable than others.