A year ago, when I was trying to get through to my husband that we were spending faster than we were earning and that our credit cushion was wearing dangerously thin, he had a brilliant idea, “Let’s get another credit card.” Yep. We’re running out of credit, we’ll get more credit, problem solved, ta da! (Our own family version of an Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling project.)

That was clearly not a good solution and not the one we took, but it was the most obvious solution, especially with credit card companies sending offers in the mail every day. In fact, the offers kept rolling in even as collection agencies called and lawsuits threatened. And I have to admit, mad as I was that we’d gotten ourselves mired in debt, I was equally angry that credit card companies found it so very profitable for us to do so that they let us have access to more in credit than I’ve ever made in a year. Our credit is trashed at this point, yet we still get credit card offers every day, and all I can think each time I get the mail is: These companies are just like drug pushers!

I was listening to a piece on NPR a while back about a rise in underage prostitution in certain areas. A guest on the program noted that as a result of stricter enforcement of drug laws in these locales, many former drug dealers were turning to pimping, as a safer, more profitable business. And as secondary crimes and violence related to drug trade were decreasing, police were now dealing with more secondary crimes and violence related to prostitution. As I listened, I thought, “Either way the problems with violence in these cities are related to addiction.” Because while some of the clients of drug dealers or prostitutes will be folks who rarely use, the most profitable clients, the regular clients, are primarily going to be addicts. Drug addicts drive drug trafficking. Sex addicts drive sex trafficking.

Those addicts are the regular clients that dealers and pimps want, the same way that the folks at the local bakery depend on me. They know me and make sure I get the good stuff: because I keep coming back again and again, and I tell my friends and bring them back too. I’m a sweet shop’s big old cash cow. Businesses know they need to keep their regular customers both satisfied and yearning for more. So, credit card companies want people who will carry a balance and cigarette companies want smokers to suck down a pack or more a day and alcohol manufacturers (regardless of their ads giving lip service to responsible drinking) aren’t really catering to people like me who drink a single glass of wine with dinner once a month. What they want, what they cater to in their business practices and their advertising, are addicts.

I’m not saying that business owners frame it that way — I don’t think most of them do (although some certainly may) — but I do think we live in a culture of addiction where the way to make money is to indulge and reinforce the fantasies of your best clients: addicts. Billboards and TV and movies and music and Internet banner ads whisper the messages to us, the messages that may disgust and anger some, but that addicts want to buy: Alcohol makes you sexy. Drugs are cool. Credit makes you powerful. And everyone’s a porn star.

And I believe we, as a society, are aching for recovery.