I have one of the most painful addictions on the planet: feet olives.

I understand that crystal meth isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be, but supposedly it makes you feel good for at least a little while, only to leave you writhing on the floor and scratching at your own face when it’s all over.

In the case of feet olives, I can’t even say they taste good while you’re eating them. There are lots of foods that are incredible during the meal, and then make you burp a deep-fryer for the rest of the evening, vowing that you’ll never eat that food again (until next week). But feet olives are nasty even while you’re eating them, but somehow we keep buying them and keeping gorging on them, straight out of the little tub. We make all kinds of awful faces and horrible gagging noises, only to stab our pokey little forks back down in the tub to fish out another one.

For those of you unschooled in the realm of feet olives, I do have to admit that it is not their actual taxonomical or gastronomical name. I just call them that. I’ve even got my husband calling them that, as in, “If you’re going to the store, pick up some feet olives.” We know what we mean. The really awful thing is I’m driving to the store dreading the purchase, like a crack whore who’s on her way to meet a really nasty john just so she can make enough money to score. I even go into the store looking around for help, silently screaming for someone to stage an intervention right there between the olive bar and the buffalo wings. But no one ever hears my cries.

I’m not even willing to go so far as to say, “I don’t have a problem, I can stop anytime I want to.” Nope. I can’t. And I even wish I would. They’re disgusting. They literally taste like I would have to guess that a fifteen-year-old boy’s unwashed pinkie toes taste like. The very thought of feet makes me queasy now, all because of these disgusting olives. And yet, there’s a half-eaten jar of the rancid things in my fridge even as I type this. They’re calling to me with their putrid vapors, staring back at me every time I go to pour my children a glass of milk.

Sadly, I called a rehab facility in the next major town (I don’t want anyone who might know me finding out that I needed professional help…and we don’t have a rehab center) and they were surprisingly uninterested in my problem. Crack? Yes. Meth? Yes. Even cigarettes…yes. Bleu cheese stuffed olives? No. Overeaters Anonymous was briefly willing to help until they learned that I can only down about four of them at any given time, but they told me to call them back when I build up to a full three pounds at one sitting.