Hi. My name is Bob, and I’m an addict.
It started in high school. I should have known that I had a problem – I should have realized none of the other kids were doing it.
I didn’t think there was any harm in talking about politics. It was on TV every Sunday night, and in the papers – The Sun, The Province – practically every week day. It was everywhere.
I didn’t know none of my friends were reading that stuff. How could I not have noticed that they were always talking about the Leafs and the Black Hawks when all I was interested in was Trudeau and Stanfield and Lewis?
But I ignored the problem… even submitted a couple of politically charged poems to the school paper.
When they were published, I was hooked.
Then when I left home to study agricultural science, I got involved with a bad crowd of politically motivated students. At one point I tried to keep my habit in check by starting up a small newsletter. It was mostly college humour… but it soon devolved into political satire.
After I left school, I tried to go straight – sort of.
I got a job at a community newspaper.
I was able to stay clean for a few months, but then I got assigned a council beat… attending political meetings, observing politicians up close – it was like shooting the stuff directly into my veins.
I was mainlining elections. I interviewed councillors and school trustees, and moved on to harder stuff – mayors… and sometimes even provincial and federal cabinet ministers.
You don’t know what high is until you’ve met a prime minister on the campaign trail.
I’ve since come to realize that Canadian politicians are just a gateway to the really hard stuff: American congressmen, senators… and presidents.
It’s the craziest politics that really feeds the monkey on your back. So it was only natural that I became dependent on daily doses of Donald Trump’s antics.
Lately, I’ve been trying to get that monkey off my back by watching reruns of the entire Sopranos series… kind of like a methadone program.
Trouble is, like methadone, the treatment is too similar to the cure. Now instead of shooting Trump, I’m taking two, sometimes three hits of Soprano every night.
And right now, I’m already halfway into the final season…
I’m getting cold sweats just thinking about what I’m going to do when the Tony runs out and I’m back on the Donald.