Like most recovering addicts, I clearly remember the moment I finally hit bottom. I'd been strung out for months: sleepless, poorly nourished and hollow-eyed, but still manically active. No matter how dilapidated my body became, my favorite chemicals could always make me feel fine. Until one day, they couldn't. Hello, my name is Martha, and I'm a stress junkie.

Stress Abuse
Stress junkies are people who, without even knowing it, use their own physiological responses as a mood-altering device. When we perceive ourselves to be in a threatening situation, we have specific reactions designed to help us either run like hell or battle for our lives: Our blood pressure increases (rushing extra oxygen to the muscles) and our digestive processes slow down (preserving energy).

Naturally, there's a catch. Just like heroin or aerosol fumes, stress hormones have side effects that can kill you. Pumped into the bloodstream at high levels for long periods of time, these chemicals contribute to ulcers and heart disease, weaken the immune system, and leave us vulnerable to everything from automobile accidents to depression.

Pick Your Poison
Stress junkies indulge their habit in any number of different ways. My favorite methods include procrastination, perfectionism, obsessing about obligations, and inventing catastrophic fantasies about What Could Go Wrong. If this sounds like you, it may be time to examine your own addictive tendencies. But even if you're as unflappable as a Zen master, you're still dealing with stress junkies every day. There's your office manager who freaks out over every hitch in the workday. There's the friend who broods obsessively about appalling current events: terrorism, child abusers, killer bees—terrorism committed by child abusers using killer bees.

The common factor that links these very different personalities is their single-minded devotion to repeatedly creating specific kinds of upsetting situations. Why would anyone do such a thing? There are several very powerful reasons:

The emotional geyser effect: Most stress junkies have unhealed emotional wounds. The unresolved pain remains stuck in a sort of holding tank, filling it up until there is little or no space left. An explosion of anger or tears, like a geyser eruption, lessens internal pressure so that the addict can function until the pressure builds up again.