Alanis Morissette Says Work, Love, Sex and Shopping are Her ‘Whac-a-Mole’ Addictions: ‘There’s No Worth in Just Being’

Alanis Morissette is known for her honesty. In an expansive interview published on The Guardian on Saturday, the singer admitted to several addictions — or “relief-seeking measures that kill you eventually” — that include four she described as “Whac-a-mole addictions”: work, love, sex, and shopping.

Overworking is her strongest addiction, she added, “Because the number one priority is being clicked into some seed of productivity. There’s no worth in just being. And it’s a higher power thing, so work addiction is also called the praise addiction.”

“If I said, ‘Oh, I did heroin till four in the morning and totally blacked out,’ people would be like, ‘Oh shit. B–ch needs some help,'” she continued. “But if I said, ‘I’ve been working my f–king ass off for this deadline and I finished at 4.15 a.m.,’ people would be patting my back and be, like, ‘Good work, girl.’ It’s equally corrosive. Because any addiction, if we keep going with it, we’re dead. It is great for 20 minutes, then you’re dead.”

Elsewhere in the interview Morissette said she identifies as highly sensitive and as an empath, traits that have complicated her rise in the music industry.

“I have an anxious, depressive tendency. Those who are sensitive are much more susceptible to their environmental information,” she said. “If you put a highly sensitive person in an environment where they’re brow-beaten or reduced, they’ll basically want to kill themselves. It’s the worst. If you put a highly sensitive person in an environment where they’re supported, championed and listened to, they thrive.”

Morisette also touched on the 1990s, when her career really took off. “We thought that whole era was done, right? We sorted this out! Didn’t we? Oh, we didn’t. We dropped the ball. The collarbone thing came back in … and the hyper-sexualization thing is so boring,” she said.

“Of course, a perimenopausal woman’s going to say that, right? My procreative imperative is, thank f–king God, chilling out,” Morisette continued. “There are gorgeous things that come along with that – less people-pleasing, more directness. But I’m still in the middle of it. And that can be disconcerting. Most of my friends are in the middle of it, too, so we cut each other a lot of slack. My menopausal women friends are like, ‘Honey, it gets f–king great.’”

Read the interview in full on The Guardian.

The post Alanis Morissette Says Work, Love, Sex and Shopping are Her ‘Whac-a-Mole’ Addictions: ‘There’s No Worth in Just Being’ appeared first on TheWrap.