Why addiction to addiction
Becci Matheson is tall, impeccably dressed and perhaps just a little too slim. In an earlier age, with her highlighted blonde hair and cut-glass accent, she would have been called a Sloane Ranger. Indeed, she did go to the same prep school as Princess Diana.
Her father is Jeremy Hindley, the top racehorse trainer and British Home Stores heir, and Becci, now 30, inherited a cool quarter of a million on her 21st birthday.
But despite the looks, education and privilege that her happy upper-class life has bestowed upon her, Becci's story to date is one of chaos, fear and, at times, sheer squalor.
In a desperate attempt to find happiness, she has ricocheted from drug abuse to excessive drinking to food and shopping binges. She is, as she admits with startling candour, addicted to addiction.
'People ask what I am addicted to, and I have to say: "Do you want a list?" Since the age of 18, I have been hooked, at various times, on cocaine, food, dieting, laxatives, cigarettes, shopping, anti-depressants, painkillers, exercise and even work.'
Disturbingly, Beccci's story is far from unique. She is one of a growing number of young people who squander their youth and health on a dangerous rollercoaster of reckless, compulsive behaviour.
Becci's complex relationship with food developed into anorexia - prompted, she says, by an older boyfriend who taught her to associate attractiveness with being thin.
Likewise, her growing drug problem developed. Disturbingly, Becci says almost all her friends were regularly taking drugs from the age of 18.
'I'd already tried LSD and cannabis at parties, and as the rave culture took hold in our corner of East Anglia, I began to take Ecstacy regularly at weekend raves, staying up all night until 6 am.'
Becci's addictions were rapidly spiralling out of control. Though she may have been in denial about them, her friends weren't - and when one confided in her parents, they arrived in London for an emotional confrontation.
'I denied everything and insisted I was fine,' recalls Beccci, 'but within days they had booked me into a treat-ment centre.'
It was to be the first of many failed attempts to battle with her inner demons. Although she saw the best counsellors and psychiatrists that money can buy, nothing seemed to work.' Meanwhile, Becci's addiction to exercise began. She was managing to hold down a secretarial job at an investment management company, but beneath the happy-go-lucky image she was more miserable than ever.
'I was addicted to exercise, cigarettes, laxatives and starving myself, as well as getting increasingly hooked on cocaine.'
As if things weren't grim enough, Becci then developed another craving - for shopping.
'At the time, it seemed like an innocent way to cheer myself up. I would go out every single lunchtime and buy something new .. . a pair of shoes from Patrick Cox, trousers from Joseph, a new top from Jigsaw. I probably spent between £50 and £100 each time.
'It got to the stage where I was obsessed with never being seen in the same outfit twice.
Meanwhile, Becci's drug addiction was was taking an ever more serious hold. By the age of 22 she had a serious cocaine habit. 'Cocaine was - and is - rife in so-called polite society,' she says. 'I wasn't unusual in taking it at all.
'In the end, I became so desperate and unhappy that I attempted suicide on cocaine and laxatives.
Really, it was a cry for help. I was only 22 years old but I felt that I was living a completely cursed life, an endless round of lies, overdrafts, hangovers and binging and purging on food.
'It was then that I decided to go travelling with my sister, to escape the nightmare that my life in London had become.'
'At first I felt incredibly liberated because I couldn't get hold of laxatives out on the hippie trail in South America. It was wonderful to be free of that compulsion.'
'Cocaine, though, was all too freely available, and as the trip wore on I also began to take laxatives again, bought from pharmacies in the big towns that we passed through. But still I kidded myself that I was in control.'
On the eighth month of her holiday, while in Venezuela, she met her first husband, an American multi-millionaire called Cameron.
Like Becci, Cameron was in his early 20s and part of the so-called 'slacker generation' - happy to live on inherited wealth and not interested in work for its own sake. Moreover, he also took cocaine.
Shortly after the wedding, Becci moved to Cameron's home town of Boulder, Colorado, hoping she would finally put her problems behind her. In fact, worse was to come.
'In an atmosphere of near-limitless funds, my shopping addiction flourished. I spent £60,000 on decorating our five-bedroom house. I imported hand-woven curtains from England, Fortuny lamps from Italy and spent £7,500 on a hand-carved cherrywood bed made especially for us in Denver.
'Even worse, though, was the amount we spent on drugs. At first we took cocaine only at weekends but it soon spiralled out of control.
'I also started drinking heavily. I'd have one vodka and tonic . . . and be unable to stop. It got so bad that I'd have alcoholic blackouts, unable to remember anything that had happened the night before when I woke, hung over, dehydrated and deeply miserable between my designer linen sheets.
Thirty-two-year-old Hugo is now Becci's second husband. A chef who once worked at the River Cafe with Jamie Oliver, he too comes from a privileged background. His father worked in the City and then went on to farm 200 acres in Devon.
But despite her happy marriage, Becci's demons were still lurking. Having decided to become a photographer, she became a workaholic, putting in 70 hours a week. And although she was free of illegal drugs, she had become hooked on anti- depressants and painkillers.
'I was anorexic, bulimic, hooked on shopping, addicted to anti- depressants and painkillers, and working flat out. It was a recipe for disaster.'
'One dday Hugo found me lying on the kitchen floor, sobbing and banging my head on the fridge door. He knew then I couldn't go on like that. He suggested I should go into rehab - and I am so grateful that I have been given a second chance.'
Becci believes she has a medical condition which is the root of all her problems. 'My illness is cross-addiction. I seek out anything and everything that will get me high and alter my moods,' she explains.
There may, indeed, be a genetic component to addiction but the truth is that in today's frenetic consumer society, where anything and everything is for sale, it is all too easy to live a life fuelled by excess.
Becci is all too aware of this paradox. 'I'm sure people look at me and just see a spoilt little rich girl - and yes, they have a point.
'I've had far too much money and freedom in my life, and to a great extent that has been my undoing. But I do firmly believe that addiction is an illness and has to be tackled as that, not as a moral or spiritual weakness.'
article : Why addiction to addiction
Flavored cocaine is nothing new, we're told. Law enforcement sources tell us that since the 80s people have been buying coke in all sorts of flavors, including rum and cherry, and now it appears strawberry is back and all the rage. 
Even, the notion that simply using a drug, whether cocaine, alcohol, or whatever means an inevitable descent into addiction is something of a myth. Many, many people “use” without ever becoming addicted to their “drug” of choice, whether that’s a spin on the overtime hamster wheel, the exercise bike or the roulette wheel. They might even reach the point where their habits consume more of their time, money and concentration than any other activity in which they take part. But, even then taking their “drug” to excess is not necessarily their being addicted.
So much, so obvious. There is no way to unravel the complex relationship between one’s genetic inheritance and one’s environment. Additionally, as to how it could physically be possible to talk of the psychology of addiction without discussing its neurochemistry, I do not know. What is clear is that the tabloid hyperbole and scaremongering surrounding those illicit drugs that society fears the most needs a detailed re-assessment, as does the nature of addiction in realms such as gambling and with other non-chemical stimulants. This is especially important given the flippancy with which the terminology of addiction is applied to problems that seem not to be related to addiction but are simply bad habits.
