I know something about addiction. I’ve been a Chapstick junkie for years. If I misplace my Chapstick panic sets in, the kind of panic that could prevent me from sleeping if I didn’t have a spare lip balm on hand. So when I see all the hand sanitizer addicts on a cruise ship I can’t judge them too harshly. I know what they’re going through, and how nearly impossible it is to kick a habit like that. Whoever invented hand sanitizer belongs in the pantheon of greats, along with the inventors of pet rocks and those silly rubber bands kids have bought in the millions and used to constrict their blood flow from the wrist. Utterly useless products that catch the public imagination in such a way they become cultural phenomena. You can see it clearly on a cruise ship. Hand sanitizer dispensers everywhere, and hundreds of people walking over to them one at a time to get an anti-bacterial fix. The problem (or the solution, if you’re an investor) is that hand sanitizers do almost nothing. In fact, they breed stronger bacteria, as they kill off all the weaklings that aren’t a threat to anyone anyway. So Joe and Jane Cleanhands shuffling over to the nearest hand sanitizer to keep my coodies off them have managed to doom us all. The super bacteria they’re busy breeding will someday attack and eat our bodies one tasty morsel at a time. No hand sanitizer in the world will save us then. It’s mindless behavior. Addictive behavior. Thoughtless, repetitive behavior, like most addictions. I’m just glad I’m not one of them. I’ve got enough monkeys to get off my back.]]>