Art Credit: Doreen Lam

Hi. My name is Sarah, and I have a problem: I buy too many books.

Not enough people take this problem seriously. I have tried to look for guidance in the past to no avail, which is why I have recently joined Bookaholics Anonymous—sort of a funny name, really, considering that I’m not addicted to a “bookahol.” (I am, however, addicted to coffeeahol.)

In any case, step five of Bookaholics Anonymous is “admitting to another human being our wrongs,” so I figured I’d get extra credit if I confessed to as many people as possible. Short of putting out an ad in the National Inquirer, I figured writing to the Spec was my best option. So here I go:

Reading has become such a problem that I even have the undesirable “book tan.” I blame this on Kurt Vonnegut. So it goes. (Too soon?) On the sexiness scale, a book tan ranks up there with the band-aid tan, which I have also sported. A book tan, for those of you fortunate enough to have never come into contact with it, is when the sides of your arms—just the sliver that remains face-up while you hold your book—gets more sun than the rest. In my case, I am left with two freakishly white, glow-in-the-dark arms with a slightly pinkish hue on one-quarter of my dexterous, albeit pale, appendages.

Recognizing my compulsion, I vowed to stop buying books last year. I wouldn’t let myself purchase another until I read every single one I owned. This, I figured, would force me to read the books I would otherwise never get around too, such as Don Quixote or the Bible.

So I tried to holster my obsession with book-buying by avoiding bookstores altogether. But I soon realized that temptation lingered everywhere I went. I couldn’t open the New York Times without being bombarded with advertisements for the next upcoming thriller or watch The Daily Show without authors visiting and extolling their newest work’s virtues.

If I did happen to wind up in a bookstore (just to smell the leather-bound jacket of the OED), I had to act like I was there accidentally. Excuses ranged from “I can use my B&N card to get 10 percent off my Starbucks drink” to “Books here, you say? Oh, I was just looking for white-out.” Admittedly, they weren’t fantastic. Once, I ran into my sponsor and retorted that I had a date with Chuck Klosterman. She didn’t believe me so I elaborated (when in doubt, add details). “His favorite Zeppelin album is IV and we frequently talk about sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs.” So she shrugged and left me alone to peruse.

Eventually, I caved. I couldn’t help it. I bought a book. Well, what I thought at the time to be a singular book. But it wasn’t even until later that I realized what I had done, which was to fill the trunk of my car with P.G. Wodehouse and Palahniuk novels. Addicts are addicts, and we will delude ourselves into believing anything—that we’re off somewhere else instead of participating in the one illicit activity we’re meant to avoid. And as with any addiction, the hardest part is knowing when to stop. I was able to pry my hands off of Become a Better You because the author, Joel Osteen, is a bag of douche. But still, when I need to borrow a Postal Service buggy for oversized mail to carry my bags of books to my car, I’m buying too many.

At this point I realized that I needed professional help. I found my local Bookaholics Anonymous chapter and have been a loyal member ever since, faithfully attending the fortnightly meetings in the basement of a church. (Actually, that’s a lie. They meet once a week, but I just love the word “fortnight.”)

Frankly, I’m impressed with my progress, and so is my sponsor. I’ve embraced each step with open arms. Step One, is, as everyone knows, admitting that we are powerless. Check. Step Two: Believing that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. Well of course! They’re called publishers. Step Three: Turning our will over to this higher Power. This is where I ran into some difficulty; I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to decide between Lucky Charms and Rice Krispies every morning unless I were living with a publisher. So I skipped this one. Step Four: Searching for a moral inventory of ourselves. I didn’t know what this one meant, so I assumed that I had done it. That brings me to the fifth step, which I am currently working on. And the meetings themselves are a blast. During each session, we each take turns talking about the last truly horrific book we read, and then we burn it. The purpose of this exercise is to prove that there are a lot of texts out there that really suck.

But I’m not sure if it’s actually discouraged me from buying books. Every time I burn one of my “lessers,” I feel a moral, ecumenical, spiritual, and grammatical duty to replace it with a better one. So off to the bookstore I go. It really is an addiction. Why won’t people take this disease seriously? Addictions are a serious business and they hurt a lot of people. I don’t mean that books have physically harmed anyone—barring that one time a hardcover bounced off my noggin—but my addiction to buying them has certainly hurt my wallet. That’s the price we the afflicted must pay to get our fix. When we’re jonsin’ for a hit, there’s nothing to calm us down like a shot of David Sedaris.

The author is a Barnard College first-year.