By Spencer Shortt
Caffeine
What’s the most commonly available beverage in the world besides water? Hint: it’s not wine, sorry ladies. Coffee has long been accepted as an ordinary part of most people’s days and with over 31,000 coffee shops in Canada alone, it’s pretty safe to say that it has become an addiction for most Canadians. Seriously, set down this paper and count how many people around you have cups from Starbucks or Timmies.
Sleep
I literally took 4 naps while trying to write this article. If that isn’t proof enough for you, I don’t know what to say.
Studies have shown that oversleeping is actually linked to a range of medical problems, like diabetes, heart disease and increased risk of death.
Nicotine
$80 billion. You could literally buy anything in the world with that. That’s how much the world spent on cigarettes and other nicotine distribution devices last year. Need I say more?
Sugar
Everyone has cravings. My personal favourites are pepperoni pizza, extra crispy fries with hot sauce and an entire bag of peanut butter M&Ms dumped directly into my face. Sugar is particularly popular since over 325 million North Americans answered that they consume sweets at least once a week. That’s more than half the population of the entire continent, so it’s pretty safe to say that sugar is an addictive substance.
Sex
The top searched websites on Google in 2018 were YouTube, Facebook and PornHub. Pornography and the sex industry as a whole are one of the wealthiest industries on the planet. Whether it’s singleplayer or multiplayer, ‘boinking’ is one of the world’s favourite pastimes.
Gambling
People sure love to make money, spend money and gamble. A study in 2017 determined that, on average, $9.7 billion is exchanged in Las Vegas each year. Thats a f**k ton of money– approximately 2.4 billion BigMacs.
Shopping
You know how I said that people love spending money? I wasn’t kidding. Over $110 billion was spent on Amazon in the last year alone, according to a study done at the University of Pennsylvania. You could stretch that stack of money to the Sun and back eight times. I counted.
Internet/Tech
Dude, how did I spend over 48 hours on my phone this week? That’s literally more than I work. New studies are revealing that an addiction to technology exhibits the same behaviour as drug addiction and effects up to 8% of Americans.
Money
We’ve already covered two of the things that rappers never shut up about: sex and drugs. The third thing that’s always on these dude’s minds is money. Our entire society is built around the exchange of little bits of paper. Needless to say, money is quite comparable to both sex and drugs: the more you have, the happier you think you’ll be.
Food
People sure like to munch. The average Canadian household spends almost $600 a month just on groceries. That’s more than gas, cell phone bills, insurance and Spotify combined.
Graphics by Jacob Turpin & Shawna Bannerman
