When I was in college, the first boy I dated was Iranian. He was devoutly Muslim, in that he did not eat pork nor drink alcohol. Yet he seemed perfectly willing to have premarital sex, something I resisted firmly due to my own Catholic upbringing. He also had no issue with shisha, or hookah, as others call it. I remember this causing me a great deal of confusion. If one were to lead a purely virtuous life, what made one vice more acceptable to one religion than another?

Because of him, I developed a deep love for shisha. He brought only the highest quality tobacco back from Iran. To this day, it may still be the best shisha I have ever had. It became one of my most pleasurable vices, tempered only by the knowledge that it is far more harmful than cigarettes, whose taste I never enjoyed.

Since then, I have indulged in my own fair share of vice. Caffeine, alcohol, and gambling being the most obvious and frequent. And of course there are others, consumed more selectively, only with the right company and at moments that felt intentional.

Because I was never a smoker, vapes never interested me. Somewhere along the way, Zyns entered the cultural bloodstream. I had vaguely registered the discreet nicotine warning label and moved on. I rarely consume nicotine beyond the odd shisha session every six months or so, so I had no interest. That was, until one afternoon at the office, when a coworker asked if I wanted a nicotine pouch.

The circular container she handed me was not a Zyn. It was delightfully designed, bright yellow with concentric circles. The flavor was banana. I was intrigued but unconvinced. As I hesitated, another coworker walked past, eight months pregnant, and casually said, “Oh, that’s really good.” As someone who is proudly childfree, who was I to question the soon to be mother?

So I took it. And good it was. Tasty, even. Once I got used to the odd sensation of having something tucked between my gum and lip, I decided this was a trend I could get behind.

I did not do so without research. Any drug, even caffeine or alcohol, has its drawbacks. Was a nicotine pouch a day any worse than three, or at times even a dozen drinks a week? The science suggested it was not.

Still, I came to understand why nicotine is called addictive. Six milligrams once gave me head spins. Now I barely feel it at all. It has become something I reach for when I want to take the edge off social anxiety without drinking.

I caught myself wondering if that was what addiction felt like.

Years ago, during a period of serious depression, I tested the outer bounds of my alcohol tolerance by drinking an entire bottle of tequila in a single day. Throughout that same day, glass in hand, I baked a pumpkin pie from scratch and brought it to a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by an ex colleague in Singapore. In hindsight, I must have seemed unhinged. Alcohol numbed feelings I could not articulate, yet there I was, socializing, functioning, only just skirting delirium.

I remember thinking then if this was how people became alcoholics.

I took myself to therapy. I took every screening available. None indicated addiction. Everything came back negative.

I was both relieved and disappointed.

Recently, I picked up On Drugs: Psychedelics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality by academic philosopher Justin Smith-Ruiu. I am only a chapter in, but one line stopped me cold. “Addiction is a disease, but a strange one: it’s the only disease people yell at you for having.”

If I were diagnosed with addiction, there would be clear treatment plans, from twelve-step programs to medication to cognitive behavioral therapy.

Instead, I was left with a less comforting conclusion. Every substance I have ever taken has been by choice. A conscious decision, whether in celebration or despair.

Which raises a broader question. Why are we so quick to judge the vices we do not share? So eager to moralize behaviors we would never choose for ourselves? In an era increasingly obsessed with optimization, where longevity, discipline, and self control are treated as moral achievements, indulgence itself has begun to look like failure. Figures like Bryan Johnson and Peter Attia, who pursue perfect biomarkers and extended lifespans, are held up as models of virtue. Pleasure, by contrast, is treated as carelessness.

And yet, there is one addiction we rarely pathologize.

For a long time, I suspected that if I was addicted to anything, it was not substances at all. It was romance. Not love exactly, but the belief life is more beautiful when it is charged with desire and potential.

There was a boy I once thought could be something. One day, when our paths crossed in a foreign country after a month of leaving me on read, he lamented not having traveled with his Zyns. So I offered him a full container of mine to tide him through the day.

“You can have mine,” I said. “Take what you need, and return it to me tomorrow.”

When we ran into each other the next day, he thanked me profusely and handed the container back. Later, when I opened it, I was left staring at one single pouch.

The metaphor was glaring. Breadcrumbing, in the most literal sense.

We have barely spoken since. I never brought it up, not because it didn’t register, but because some endings can be recognized without repair.

That, I think, is where addiction shows up. Not in the taking, but in the willingness to dismiss it as nothing. In the quiet math we do to preserve possibility. How much of ourselves are we willing to give simply to believe in a different reality?

It is easy to moralize substances because they leave evidence. Romance rarely does. It drains slowly, politely, under the guise of hope.

Today, I take a Zyn most days at the end of work. I associate the lightheadedness with having completed something. Another day lived deliberately, with limits I understand.

Life is meant to be lived. Through dullness and intensity. Through restraint and indulgence. So long as it is chosen. So long as it is felt.

As my tolerance to nicotine builds, I find myself slowly weaning off this other affliction. And in doing so, I am finally learning to tell the difference between what steadies me and what simply asks to be endured.

When I was in college, the first boy I dated was Iranian. He was devoutly Muslim, in that he did not eat pork nor drink alcohol. Yet he seemed perfectly willing to have premarital sex, something I resisted firmly due to my own Catholic upbringing. He also had no issue with shisha, or hookah, as others call it. I remember this causing me a great deal of confusion. If one were to lead a purely virtuous life, what made one vice more acceptable to one religion than another?

Because of him, I developed a deep love for shisha. He brought only the highest quality tobacco back from Iran. To this day, it may still be the best shisha I have ever had. It became one of my most pleasurable vices, tempered only by the knowledge that it is far more harmful than cigarettes, whose taste I never enjoyed.

Since then, I have indulged in my own fair share of vice. Caffeine, alcohol, and gambling being the most obvious and frequent. And of course there are others, consumed more selectively, only with the right company and at moments that felt intentional.

Because I was never a smoker, vapes never interested me. Somewhere along the way, Zyns entered the cultural bloodstream. I had vaguely registered the discreet nicotine warning label and moved on. I rarely consume nicotine beyond the odd shisha session every six months or so, so I had no interest. That was, until one afternoon at the office, when a coworker asked if I wanted a nicotine pouch.

The circular container she handed me was not a Zyn. It was delightfully designed, bright yellow with concentric circles. The flavor was banana. I was intrigued but unconvinced. As I hesitated, another coworker walked past, eight months pregnant, and casually said, “Oh, that’s really good.” As someone who is proudly childfree, who was I to question the soon to be mother?

So I took it. And good it was. Tasty, even. Once I got used to the odd sensation of having something tucked between my gum and lip, I decided this was a trend I could get behind.

I did not do so without research. Any drug, even caffeine or alcohol, has its drawbacks. Was a nicotine pouch a day any worse than three, or at times even a dozen drinks a week? The science suggested it was not.

Still, I came to understand why nicotine is called addictive. Six milligrams once gave me head spins. Now I barely feel it at all. It has become something I reach for when I want to take the edge off social anxiety without drinking.

I caught myself wondering if that was what addiction felt like.

Years ago, during a period of serious depression, I tested the outer bounds of my alcohol tolerance by drinking an entire bottle of tequila in a single day. Throughout that same day, glass in hand, I baked a pumpkin pie from scratch and brought it to a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by an ex colleague in Singapore. In hindsight, I must have seemed unhinged. Alcohol numbed feelings I could not articulate, yet there I was, socializing, functioning, only just skirting delirium.

I remember thinking then if this was how people became alcoholics.

I took myself to therapy. I took every screening available. None indicated addiction. Everything came back negative.

I was both relieved and disappointed.

Recently, I picked up On Drugs: Psychedelics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality by academic philosopher Justin Smith-Ruiu. I am only a chapter in, but one line stopped me cold. “Addiction is a disease, but a strange one: it’s the only disease people yell at you for having.”

If I were diagnosed with addiction, there would be clear treatment plans, from twelve-step programs to medication to cognitive behavioral therapy.

Instead, I was left with a less comforting conclusion. Every substance I have ever taken has been by choice. A conscious decision, whether in celebration or despair.

Which raises a broader question. Why are we so quick to judge the vices we do not share? So eager to moralize behaviors we would never choose for ourselves? In an era increasingly obsessed with optimization, where longevity, discipline, and self control are treated as moral achievements, indulgence itself has begun to look like failure. Figures like Bryan Johnson and Peter Attia, who pursue perfect biomarkers and extended lifespans, are held up as models of virtue. Pleasure, by contrast, is treated as carelessness.

And yet, there is one addiction we rarely pathologize.

For a long time, I suspected that if I was addicted to anything, it was not substances at all. It was romance. Not love exactly, but the belief life is more beautiful when it is charged with desire and potential.

There was a boy I once thought could be something. One day, when our paths crossed in a foreign country after a month of leaving me on read, he lamented not having traveled with his Zyns. So I offered him a full container of mine to tide him through the day.

“You can have mine,” I said. “Take what you need, and return it to me tomorrow.”

When we ran into each other the next day, he thanked me profusely and handed the container back. Later, when I opened it, I was left staring at one single pouch.

The metaphor was glaring. Breadcrumbing, in the most literal sense.

We have barely spoken since. I never brought it up, not because it didn’t register, but because some endings can be recognized without repair.

That, I think, is where addiction shows up. Not in the taking, but in the willingness to dismiss it as nothing. In the quiet math we do to preserve possibility. How much of ourselves are we willing to give simply to believe in a different reality?

It is easy to moralize substances because they leave evidence. Romance rarely does. It drains slowly, politely, under the guise of hope.

Today, I take a Zyn most days at the end of work. I associate the lightheadedness with having completed something. Another day lived deliberately, with limits I understand.

Life is meant to be lived. Through dullness and intensity. Through restraint and indulgence. So long as it is chosen. So long as it is felt.

As my tolerance to nicotine builds, I find myself slowly weaning off this other affliction. And in doing so, I am finally learning to tell the difference between what steadies me and what simply asks to be endured.