My addiction began in second grade. It had started as just a simple pastime, something to do when I was sitting idle, a nervous habit so to speak. Then I began to lose sleep. Day and night blurred together until I couldn’t distinguish between the two. I ate at odd times of day, any schedule of mine permanently thrown off while I was using. I withdrew from society, shutting my door more frequently, wrapped in a cocoon of my addiction, fully submerged so much that even my parent’s demands of me to come out were nearly silent. Yes, I became an addict, still am, for nothing is quite so sweet and satisfying as my drug. Books.

My very first hit, that I still remember today, was in second grade. I read a whole Magic Tree House book in a day. The joy of Jack and Annie’s adventure kept me high even into the next day. I’m sure the librarian thought I had overdosed and was trying to figure out who she could pin the blame onto incase it was discovered that she was my dealer. This new discovered drug was great to me, it made me hallucinate so much so that I could convince myself I was a woman masquerading as a Union soldier, or Anastasia Romanov daringly escaping the Reds that overthrew Imperial Russia. My drug was a release from the world, a blissful severing from the worries of school and friends. This ability to embody another person, another life, well that’s something I couldn’t pass up. And as the years went past historical fiction just wasn’t getting me high enough anymore, I had grown tolerant, and while I stilled loved the feeling of horror from the blood that ran freely through the streets of France during the French Revolution, I needed more, I needed something fresh. Then I stumbled upon fantasy, and my craving was met. I loved the blood thirsty pixies, and weres of all different kinds, the kind that could shred a human throat in thirty seconds flat, or the graceful yet deadly Shadowhunters whose heavenly mandate is to kill demons that infect the human world. Oh yes, this detachment from reality it is how I survived, my way of self-medicating so the stresses of life- like which college I’m going to, or the stupid cosecant squared trig identity- couldn’t get to me anymore. Because, I simply wasn’t here anymore.

Constantly surround by my addiction I began to wonder... Could I administer this drug too? This great feeling of release from reality, could I show the way for others? Are there even other addicts like me out there in the world, locked deep into their rooms? And so I’ve found myself drawn to pushing my addiction to others, wishing to create more addicts. No longer am I just a user, oh no, I plan on being a dealer too. To do that I’ll have to work with the biggest dealers in the country, the publishing companies, slowly making my way through the ranks. And with luck maybe one day I’ll set out on a hunt across the world, searching for the perfect ingredients for a word concoction of my own that I’ll deal out too.