Spill the Beans: Sharing addictions with family and more missed schoolwork

by javabeans

Thanks to everyone who sent in addiction stories! To submit, email us your stories, and we’ll keep sharing them as long as you guys keep sending them in.

Indiannomad has an understanding family, which we find to be a key component to allowing the addiction to continue.

My drama addiction started in a very unconnected way. I was looking for traditional costumes from different Asian countries. I ended up seeing images of beautifully rich colours of the Korean hanbok. I looked for videos and was introduced to a clip of a scene from Yi San. That started my love affair with Korean dramas. I fell irrevocably in love with the Korean historical drama. I fell in love with the characters Song Yeon, Yi San and Park Dae Su. I knew of a “Park Dae Su” in real life, so the connection was made.

It is now 8 years since I began watching. In the beginning, my husband thought I was having an affair while I watched through the nights (which was just hilarious to me and now has been resolved). I have binge-watched most of the historical dramas, I have missed sleep, skipped exercising. On occasion, I have been late to work, skipped cooking dinner and ordered food, skipped shopping for groceries, I have had to argue with my husband regarding how it isn’t an addiction (well, I am not going to admit that to him :P).

I never watch them when it is new, but always after all the episodes are loaded, so that I can watch continuously without interruptions in the story or plot line. Also I watch during holidays or summer breaks or just one episode a night most of non-holiday days, so that I can live my life without needing a detox program. 🙂 The dramas made me go look for the history of Korea, learn a slew of words from the language, listen to folk and current music and check out Korean foods.

Only my family (not friends or colleagues) knows of my addiction and know to leave me alone if I am watching. In consideration for their consideration, I have always lived up to my responsibilities (of course, otherwise I couldn’t live with myself). I have to say, apart from reading books, the Korean dramas have been a better source of time well spent watching the idiotbox, cause I don’t have to watch the inane ads that usually make up half of most TV programs and I learn history and language as I go. It’s a good deal for a few hours of my life. At least I would like to live in that illusion.

Ah, family. Spreading the addiction far and wide, as Holly experienced…

Well, my story isn’t nearly as entertaining as the others I have read! My daughter went off to college in 2008. While there, she discovered K-pop and K-dramas. She spent the next five years playing random songs for me and trying to get me to watch dramas with her, to no avail. One night she was sitting on the couch with me watching Spring Waltz on her computer, and I just happened to start getting interested a little bit. Never saw all of that particular drama, but when she suggested I watch Secret Garden with her, I finally succumbed and watched the entire drama. Wasn’t hooked yet, but was totally open to watching another.

The next time, she gave me several options of dramas to pick from, and I chose City Hunter, because it just sounded more like my kind of thing. Needless to say, I was suddenly not only hooked on Lee Min-ho, but also on K-dramas! Our next drama was Rooftop Prince and I just fell in love with Park Yoochun! As you can guess, all it took was for her to point out some DBSK videos, and I am now a full blown K-pop addict as well! She tells her friends that she created a monster! I have even been to my first K-pop concert (VIXX came to Chicago) with her at the grand old age of 53!

Family again! This time, it’s Polly who spreads the addiction:

Me being a kdrama addict is just a normal thing in our household. I’ve been addicted ever since my elementary days. Lol. Now, I am living with my siblings while my parents went back to the countryside to manage their business. One time, my parents visited us for the holy week. I was still a college student back then, so it was also my vacation break. It was time for my kdrama marathon! Yay! So I took my place on the sofa, played my chosen drama for the week — The Moon Embracing the Sun — and start watching intensely.

Then my dad passed by telling me, “You’re watching those unintelligible shows again!” He was kinda annoyed because he couldn’t watch his action movies. I just ignored him and so he went outside to do other things. When he came back I was still watching my drama and he couldn’t do anything about it so he decided to just sit beside me and watch. Then suddenly, he’s asking me about the drama’s story. He seemed interested so I, the good daughter, filled him in on what was happening.

The next day my dad was now the one pestering me to play the drama where we left it off. When we went out to visit our relatives, all he was talking about in the car was about how good the drama was and what the story was all about. He even postponed the day of their return to the province to finish watching the drama. Up to this day, my father can’t forget his first kdrama ever and I still sometimes watch kdramas with him.

Aw, Sandy has a warm and fuzzy story of how she made a whole crew of “dodgy drama friends.”

As a seasoned drama addict, I was always proud that I could maintain a level of objectivity (in the background) as I obsessed over watched my dramas. Then Healer arrived. Reality turned into a means for me to watch the show. I would re-watch the show. Re-read recaps and pore through the comments section over and over again to survive till the next episode aired. Real life took its toll. My real life friends got bored of me going around like a lovestruck idiot and i desperately needed an outlet to obsess about the show.

That was when I saw the comment that some Singaporean Healer fans had come up with a “Healer whatsapp group.”

You see I usually lurk in Dramabeans. Only the occasional rage will pull me out of my abyss. But well, there was no hesitation that time. Email. Sent. “ADD ME PLEASE.”

Our convo was crazy. We were chatting nonstop. I leave my phone for 10 minutes and I get hundreds of messages. One morning I woke up to 700. I met up with complete strangers to watch the finale of Healer. I grin at my phone in public places. My other friends now knows this group as my “dodgy drama friends.” But it has been 8 months since Healer and our chat still rings everyday. Hehe. Seems like we are united by more than our drama obsessions and our ever-changing oppas.

(SHOUT OUT TO MY GIRLS. I KNOW ARE READING THIS. Love you guys.)

I’m pretty sure Hyun Bin was the cause of many, many people joining dramaland, not just kim_hj.

My drama addiction began back in 2006 when my friend introduced me to Goong. I was twelve, young and inexperienced. How else can I excuse the fact that Joo Ji-hoon’s wooden prince of woodenness became the standard against which I measured all males? Questionable taste aside, after a quick crash course in .avi extensions and subtitle obtainment (to supplement my ailing Korean), a K-drama monster was born.

As the years passed, I went through all the classics (Kim Sam-soon, Coffee Prince), the unhealthy candy-coated nightmares (Boys Over Flowers), sageuks, fusion and otherwise (Return of Iljimae will always reduce me to a puddle of ineffectual tears), and found a few true loves (Giant, Soulmate, Tamra). Through it all, I had several close scrapes with assignments and grades, but nothing too severe until December 2010. That is, in the midst of Secret Garden. But more importantly, HYUN BIN. All work came to a grinding halt that month, even an impending project which required me to write ten papers of varying lengths and to present them in a decorated book. All due two days before Christmas.

Thanks to Hyun Bin, the project was due the next day… and I had done exactly NONE of it.

Desperate measures had to be taken. I decided to skip school and become an essay writing machine. And yet, the first thing I did when I awoke at 5 am on that dreaded day was not to crack open the books… but rather to re-watch the first episode of Secret Garden. It wasn’t even a new episode. There was really no excuse. Except… hormones? The K-drama gods must look after their followers though, because by some miracle I got the whole thing done and earned a solid A.

But I never learned my lesson.

Proof? Instead of working on finishing off a thesis proposal that’s due in T-minus 30 hours, I’m typing this out and contemplating skipping class in order to get it all done in time.

And RenKa, too:

Hi, after a long time of only lurking, your recent series about drama obsession made me share my own story. Not really funny or exiting, but becoming a drama-fan has brought me so many joyful and merry moments. So, before I discovered the wonderful place of dramaland, I was already an anime and manga fan. My favourite manga is Hana Yori Dango. It took me some time, until I discovered that they could not only make my manga into anime, but also into live action series. This really surprised me, for some reason. Before I finally came across the Japanese version, I watched whole 4 episodes of Boys Over Flowers. And I came to conclusion that K-dramas were probably not meant for me.

When I was in the first year of my master studies five years ago, I had to go to the hospital for some minor operation. I wasn’t feeling that well. As a mental preparation I already watched all the interesting J-doramas and TW-dramas and was looking for something new and lighter. So I tried some Korean movies, mostly rom-coms. And then I decided to give K-dramas one more shot. My first pick was Coffee Prince… and that practically sealed the deal. With the excuse of postoperative pain I watched dramas all the time. I had to repeat my seminar on Japanese because I had too much absence. MySoju and Dramacrazy became my second home, and some time later I discovered your amazing blog.

I lived with my classmates and my roommate at first couldn’t understand my obsession. That is, until I introduced her to Hyun Bin in Secret Garden. We watched dramas together, talked about dramas, wrote via Skype. Now as an avid fan of JYJ she is mourning Yoochun’s departure to the army. She was, and still is, my great relief and helped me after the operation and actually during all the hard times I had.

In the end I did watch Boys Over Flowers. I still think the Japanese dorama is the best adaptation. And cringe every time I hear “Almost paaaaaaraaadiiiiiiiiiiiise…” But without the bridge, even though a little bit untrustworthy and shaky, I wouldn’t be able to cross to the wonderful land of K-dramas and K-drama fans.

And, btw: In our country there is a region whose historical name in German is Oppaland. It always makes me smile, every time I come across an old geographical book with this expression. Thank you for all your hard work.

Ow! I’d argue that drama addictions don’t actually bring us harm, but Hwannie had a lot of pain come her way…

I have been a longtime K-drama watcher with All About Eve as my very first K-drama, which I saw I think a couple of years after it first aired. The drama that started my obsession, though, was Lovers in Paris. After that, I scoured the net for other K-dramas. Whenever I couldn’t find a title on the net, I turned to bootleg copies sold in Chinatown (crazy subs… Lol).

I reached the peak of my K-drama obsession around 2007 when I got injured at work and had to stay home for an extended period of time. It was around the time Coffee Prince was airing. It was the first drama that I live-streamed. The drama turned me from a lurker to an active chatter. Funny anecdote (it is now but it wasn’t at the time) related to Coffee Prince was that my shoulder surgery fell on the day that an episode aired. Although I was discharged the same day as the surgery, it was a major surgery which required general anesthesia and being on the ventilator while the surgeon performed the surgery.

As soon as I felt awake and stable enough for discharge, I asked to be sent home. In my haste to go home and get in front of my laptop to watch the Coffee Prince episode, I forgot to ask for my pain medication prescription before I left the hospital. That night, I paid a steep price by way of excruciating surgical pain. It was so bad that hubby had to bring me to ER. Well, that experience did not dampen my K-drama obsession. In late 2007, I branched out to k-varities and k-movies as well as a little bit of Kpop.

I’m sure it’ll surprise nobody that another frequent name in these submissions is Lee Min-ho, as was the case for Audrey.

I came to K-dramas by what’s probably an exceedingly strange “back door”: I really wasn’t into American TV — I tried, but when I taped the dumb things, I only felt guilt for not watching them later. But I was kind of interested in finding out what Bollywood was all about, so I started watching them and got hooked on Shah Rukh Khan and found that that N-server (why should I give them free advertising?) had a ton of Bollywood movies… Hey, two and a half hour movies, I can do that!

Then I saw a drama with an interesting premise: hmmm, Faith. Didn’t know Lee Min-ho from anybody, didn’t know enough to evaluate the fight scenes as good or bad, but I knew I loved the story (yes, it did drag a bit in the last third, but I HAD to see what happened!). Since then I’ve watched Faith three times and moved on to other K-dramas like Coffee Prince, King 2 Hearts, You From Another Star, Good Doctor, Healer, You’re Beautiful (2 times), Master’s Sun (also 2 times), Fated To Love You, and I could go on and on, but you get my drift.

I discovered via Dramabeans that I was not only not weird, but I was not alone in my K-drama fascination (okay, I’ll get real — obsession). Sleep, what’s that? — I had trouble getting to sleep anyway! Recently I advanced to another level and discovered “live” dramas and watched Producers, Oh My Ghostess and am now so into Yong-pal that I watched episode 12 mostly raw! Hey, I really have to learn Hangul now, duh.

So what does this all mean? Well, gotta read your recaps, love your recommendations, have mostly OSTs on my iPod, and have people at work wondering why I de-stress at the end of the day as I am doing boring reports while listening to Korean music that nobody there understands. Hey, they don’t know: I am a very happy K-drama fan/addict — and there are also J-Dramas and T-Dramas out there for me! So many wonderful stories, so little time. And they wonder what I will do when I finally retire in a year or so? Hah, I have a secret life and I love every moment of it!

If it’s not one drama, it’s another! Right, OnlyOneMoreEpisode? (Please tell me you went to college!)

Hey guys! Here’s my story for the Spill the Beans series!

So two years ago, when I was surfing YouTube like a madman at 3 in the morning and promising myself “Just one more video,” I came across a Super Junior MV. I was transfixed and watched it over 30 times in the span of the next 3 hours. (True story.)

Fast forward to two months later when I was super stressed about college apps and decided to go and check out Pinterest for a while to chill. As I stalked and indulged in my newfound obsession with SJ’s Siwon and Kyuhyun, I found a pin with the recommendation to watch Boys Over Flowers, which, according to the pin, was the “best drama ever. Must watch an absolute best one to watch first.”

The rest is pretty self explanatory really. I began watching at 9PM and didn’t stop until 2AM. After looking at the time, I realized that yes, I had been sucked into this drama and had forgotten to *drum roll please* turn in my college applications to three colleges. At that point, I just thought “oh well” and clicked on the button for the next episode.

The next morning, I lied through my teeth to my parents about turning in the apps and when decisions came rolling around, I told them I was rejected from those colleges. Do I feel bad about lying? Yes, most definitely. I’m a terrible person for lying. Do I feel bad about not turning in my apps? Yeah. I definitely do.

But the fact that I chose to watch the entire drama and now have this incurable addiction is a gain enough for me to forget about all that.

 
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