Spill the Beans: A sleepover tiff and a chance at healing

by javabeans

And the addiction stories continue to pour in — thanks to everyone who sent in one! To submit, email us your stories, and we’ll keep sharing them as long as you guys keep sending them in.

If you replace one addiction for another, can you still consider the first one cured? Nina has experience with this scenario…

So the year of 2011 is when my obsession began. I used to watch a lot of anime, to the point that I would not sleep for hours and just watch as many anime that I can. I was watching so much that my brother and I made a bet. I wasn’t allowed to watch any anime for at least two weeks.

I was so bored I was trying to find something to watch. American shows were just not doing it for me. So I decided to just browse the internet for new shows, not to watch but for a list so when the time came I could watch them again. So I came upon this anime called Winter Sonata but I saw it was a series, you know with Spring Waltz, Autumn in My Heart, etc. I thought it was a series so I was trying to find the series and ended up with the Autumn in My Heart K-drama. So I watched it. And let me tell you, it was the worst day of my life when I finished it. I was so upset about the ending and rocking back and forth just thinking why can’t they just be together. After that I was searching for new shows, and Boys Over Flowers, Secret Garden, and Playful Kiss were my next shows.

My addiction has turned for the worst so that I have missed classes, not studied for test and missed work to watch my shows. I tend to repeat shows because I get so excited about rewatching the plots, I’ll scream at the TV when I already know what’s going to happen. Right now I’m re-watching Nice Guy for the third time and I have a test on Friday which I have yet to study for. Next it’s Prime Minister and I again for the second time. 🙂

We agree with Mstargirl, there’s no such thing as too much K-drama!

I totally fell into K-drama by accident. I follow Rhys Ford’s blog after loving her books and she mentioned Yoo Ah-in for “best couple in a drama” way back in 2013. The pics she posted had me very curious and I loved the video she posted of Song Joong-ki. So I googled Sungkyunkwan Scandal, loved the Joseon F4 and the rest is history! Fast forward to the present and my family are constantly teasing me about my constant watching of “that Korean stuff” I’m forever playing on my laptop instead of regular TV! Song Joong-ki holds a very special place in my heart and always will. Kdrama/Jdrama is still very unknown in South Africa though. I get weird looks for mentioning it but I will still convert somebody someday! I read Dramabeans everyday along with other blogs to keep up with my kdrama addiction because there’s never too much of a good thing!

Love can now say she’s experienced firsthand ye olde K-drama trope of hate turning to love:

So my drama watching started the summer before my 8th grade year. It started pretty weird if I do say so myself. I have a (play) cousin who I hated for most of my childhood. Now that I’m thinking of it, the only reason I hated her was that she was so much like me that it annoyed me, yet so much unlike me that it annoyed me also.

Anyways we were always having problems no matter what the case might be. However our moms were best friends so we were around each other a lot. We even had mutual friends. So one day my mom made me and my sisters throw a sleepover and invite her and her siblings along with some others.

They came over and started talking about this new Asian thing they were into. I didn’t like the girl so I wasn’t about it. I was throwing out snide comments (because I’m a bitch) she was saying whatever was on her mind (because she’s blunt). After a while my mom got sick of it and locked us in my room.

Due to the sleepover I’d taken everything out of my room save the bed and the computer since neither could be moved. All my books had been removed along with phones, books and such. It was about 6pm when we’d gotten punished so we still had a lot of time before sleeping.

We were both bored but she’d gotten to the computer table first. I was trying to be high and mighty so I pretended like she didn’t exist and just stared at the wall. I fell asleep, woke up, and stared at the wall some more.

Some way through, probably around 9, I heard her start howling with laughter. I looked over and saw her watching this show filled with Asians. Now we’re black and I know she doesn’t know what they were saying so I got annoyed and started making fun of her.

She was so engrossed she just ignored me. I was angry at that so I started mocking what the characters were saying. But after a while I realized… Oh man this story line is getting good. I’m a really big romantic and it was getting really cute so I stopped mocking the story and started watching it along with her. After a while she fell asleep but I continued since I wanted to know what happened. Afterwards I started the drama from the beginning since I’d walked in around episode 4 or so.

After wards I caught the kdrama fever and still have it even now in my sophomore year of college. The irony of the situation is that even though I’d made fun of her I’m the most obsessed with kdramas and am a diehard kpopper but it never would have happened if it wasn’t for my cousin who is now a close friend and us bonding over the drama, My Girl.

Oh, the things we’ll do to get our next episode fix! matahari knows this well:

I am actually pretty new to K-drama universe. I wasn’t a fan. I know some K-dramas were aired on local TV and I watched it bit by bit but I don’t quite follow since 16 episodes of fluffy romantic comedy wasn’t my taste at all.

Till I went to college early this year and befriended a K-drama addict. She told me there was this Kill Me Heal Me drama about multiple personalities and I was like, “What? Do K-drama stories finally have a creative plot story now?!” and I asked my friend to copied few early episodes of it to my hard disk. I didn’t expect much so I guessed I’d check out later when I have nothing to do.

One night, I watched the first episode. Then second. The third. And to the cliffhanger episode when Ji Sung kissed Hwang Jung-eum while saying, “I’m Cha Do-yyun.” KYAAAAAAA. I literally screamed. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the next episode because my friend only transferred the first 8 episodes. I was frustrated. I need to see the next chapter. I had to. I tried to stream online but to no avail I had the slowest internet speed on Earth.

It was almost a quarter to midnight so I phoned my friend that I will drive to her home so she can copy the rest of the drama to my hard disk. She said I was insane because it’s almost dawn and that both of us will be scolded by her parents if they found out I drive around in the middle of the night just watch a Korean drama. I said, “Whatever. Sneak up from your back door or jump out of your veranda. I’ll come in 15 minutes. You don’t need to open the gate. I’ll throw my hard disk over your fence, copy the rest of the episodes and throw it back to me.”

And we did it. At almost 1 AM in the morning, I drove to my friend’s home to retrieve a K-drama. She threw it back after transferred the files and I drove home later safely. I didn’t sleep and was marathon-ing till the sun rose up.

night owl has landed upon a nicely simple way of judging a drama’s watchability, honed over years and years of addictive drama-watching. Oh, the skills we learn when dramas are the motivation…

“Well, how do I stay awake?” I asked my manager when he grumbled about me watching kdramas in office. I had watched kdramas on and off on TV but my real love for kdramas began when I was a zombie owl working night shifts. My job was closely aligned with the financial markets and we worked 24/5 in rotational shifts. Nights shifts are difficult because most of us humans tend to fall asleep when the moon is shining outside. Once the afternoon shift team left after midnight, we had about two hours to kill before the (overseas) market closed and we would be flooded with the deluge of work. Every minute would seem incredibly long in the quiet office. There was only so many minutes one could chat, play video games, read a romance novel, do work research before the eyes would naturally start to close and the brain would start shutting down. So I had this brain wave of trying to watch dramas online and found streaming and Youtube well before half of my colleagues had even heard of it (this was ten years ago!).

My first drama for the experiment was Full House and it passed the test and so it began. The requirements were simple — it had to be 16-20 episodes that had already aired so I could watch within the 3 weeks of my night shift, and the barometer was simply if I managed to stay awake after five to ten minutes of watching. I knew I was getting addicted when I would stop by the office on Saturday after a lunch out with friends to catch up on one or two episodes because I couldn’t wait for the next night shift cycle and the internet connection was too awful at home to stream dramas.

Since it was zombie night owl watching — one eye on the clock and one ear perked to be ready to jump to work — this wasn’t the typical kdrama viewing where every scene was relished. I skipped scenes where it induced sleep and compressed the episode into 20-30 minutes so I could finish the series before I was rotated out. I almost started to look forward to night shifts because it would mean watching a drama! Almost!

As for my manager, well he grumbled a reluctant okay and told me not to overdo it since he didn’t want me setting a bad example to juniors — what can he say when he had started snoring after a power nap the previous night? But to stop his grumbling, I eventually opted to watching kdramas in the weekends at home after a few years and instead, took to the healthier option of taking brisk walks in the cold night around the office and having a cup of tea outside with the fresh air blowing in your face (yes, that will wake you up!).

Even after I left my job, kdramas continue to keep me sane and yes, the barometer is still the same — am I still awake after 10 minutes of watching?

Aniya is figuring out how to make dramas/kpop part of her work… I’m sure there are people here who can give her tips on how to pull it off!

Remember how those teleshopping ads go on in a monotone, “I was fat, and I was sad, and I had just broke up with my boyfriend/girlfriend, when I discovered this miracle slimming belt!”? My k-drama addiction too started that way, lol.

It was during the initial years of my PhD. I had just broke up with my boyfriend of three years and was depressed. And stupid that I was, I immediately tried to jump into another relationship with a guy that I didn’t even like much! He was bad, both in manners and in bed. So I broke up with him too and got back to being “depressed.” To cheer myself up, I tried watching some TV soaps from my country online. Since I used to enjoy the bickering romance between the leads in one, my friend suggested Full House (I know, right!). That was in 2009. I fell in love with Rain, never to rise again! I kept watching it on repeat for a week, while I downloaded all his other dramas, which led me to more dramas with other beautiful men, till I realized that it was my submission year. With a heavy heart I packed both of my 1TB hard drives where I could never reach them, and how I hated the author I was working on! And the thought that if I had got my synopsis passed a year later, I could have worked on k-pop instead, made my days and nights miserable. While I drowned my sorrows in alcohol, I churned out pages for my dissertation and thankfully, did submit on time.

Since then, I’ve watched almost every drama that I could lay my hands on. Not just the ones airing, even classics like Eyes of Daybreak and Sandglass or First Love (Bae Yong-joon was actually good before he started taking his pretty face too seriously!) and Feelings, could not escape me! To make up for my PhD angst I started reading up so much about the culture, history and politics of South Korea, that k-drama/pop is one out of three topics that I am considering for drafting my post-doc proposal. Who said work can’t be fun? 🙂

Aw, Airen_27, getting kicked out of public places for excessive squee is totally a thing you should be proud about!

Hey guys! My story isn’t as funny as the ones I’ve read here… but here it goes… It started when I was 15, all thanks to my sister. I was just done with my 10th grade board exams and one day I see my sister and my mum bent over the laptop giggling like a pair of schoolgirls while watching Rooftop Prince. My mum who usually doesn’t watch television was telling my sister how good looking the younger Lee Min-ho was, I was super intrigued and started watching the drama with them. Although we didn’t finish watching the drama (we ended up reading the recap on Dramabeans) it was enough to get me interested in kdramas.

Then came along My Girlfriend is a Gumiho and boy was I hooked! Contrary to my user name I remember shouting at my sister for making me watch a drama with such a bad-looking actor, she just gave me her irritating all-knowing smile and told me that “He’ll turn good-looking.” Two episodes later and I was squealing over Seung-gi’s dimples (sigh!).

Fast forward to two years later. Loads of dramas later, I’m now part of a WhatsApp group for drama fans from all over India! It was like a whole new world had opened up to me — suddenly I could squeal about Seung-gi’s dimples to people I’ve never met. We decided to change that and planned for all the people on the group from Bengaluru to meet at a coffee shop. I sat there with my sister trying to guess who we were supposed to meet (none of us had our actual faces as our profile picture). Soon, some of them showed up and surprisingly we couldn’t say a word to each other! We decided to get down to business and exchange dramas in complete silence until we decided to watch Kim Hyun-joong’s gwiyomi video (super bright idea), and this totally broke the ice and we started having sooo much fun that the management of the shop actually kicked us out! It’s been more than a year since this happened and we continue to be good friends and have loads of fun every time we meet.

Agreed, Asheena, they can be glorious.

My addiction with the world of Kdrama began in the summer of 2014. Having burnt through my hard drive of TV shows after graduating and being unemployed, a friend recommended I try a Kdrama. I honestly didn’t think that a show called Goong would change my life forever. Now, everyone tells you about how they’ve skipped school, work, etc. and binge-watched dramas, which I will say I have done too.

But I’d like to concentrate more on the positive side effects of my Kdrama addiction. It opened me up to a culture in ways so similar to mine yet so different. I quickly found myself looking for Korean restaurants in Dubai, and tried all the yummy things I had seen in Let’s Eat. I even started to study the language, and although I’ve hit a bit of a bump, I can now read and write pretty decently.

And most importantly, I discovered the glorious men of Korea.

It has been a little over a year now and I have successfully watched 60 dramas in the past year. And although it may seem like I did nothing else except stare at my screen for a year, I’ve learned so much.

Billie got so into her drama that she dream-cried over it. I’d bet she’s not alone in that, not by far.

After I got married, my father-in-law got sick. So my husband and I decided to help out his family. We packed our bags and went to live on a remote farm in the outer rural fringes of Northern Territory.

Being a city girl from Sydney, It was a jarring difference to the life that I was used to. I left my family, friends, work and… Kdramas. I used to mostly steam my dramas, but since I moved to the bush we had to be tight and rationed our internet usage because we had less than 10 gigs of data a month.

Luckily I had a friend who felt sorry for my plight and sent me a whole hard drive full of dramas to keep me entertained. It was there, on that hard drive that I discovered Queen Seon-deok. It was my first historical period Kdrama and I was hooked. I remember I binged watched all 60+ episodes in less than 4 days (although I did fast-forward a bit after Mishil died).

I stayed in the caravan all day and only came out to cook for my in-laws and then quickly retreated back to continue the series.
My panda eyes, already swollen from lack of sleep, blew up into tofu puff balls by the end. Especially when my favorite character died. Abandoned by his mother, shunned by his mentor, mistrusted from his love. I just wanted to him a big hug — all he ever wanted was to be loved. The ending left me a sobbing mess.

A few days after I finished the drama, I had a vivid dream and I woke up hysterical, in tears. My husband whom I woke up from my crying, asked me, “What’s wrong?” All I could wail out was, “Bidammmm poor Bidam.” He gave me the biggest strange “WTF you on about girrllll: look. LOL.

That drama was epic, thank you Queen Seon-deok for introducing me to that sex on a stick Kim Nam-gil. Far out, getting all choked up again, thinking about a series I watched 5 years ago.

P.S. Sorry I never returned the hard drive John. Xoxo

Tempi has a poignant story that might bring a tear to your eye, but it’s also uplifting and hopeful. Thank you for sharing, Tempi!

This is the first time I’d be sharing this. It’s a bit on the heavier side but it made me what I am today and helped me get here so, here goes nothing.

I had lost my brother suddenly, when I was in Grade 9. It was not easy and I could not talk to my parents because their loss was much greater than mine. I refused emotional support and had changed into something of an anti-social witch. I was mean, I was rude and I hated everybody around me. I just couldn’t seem to let go even after years had passed.

K-dramas were something I found around that time. And I had developed an unhealthy obsession for them. They helped me shut myself off and drown in their stories. I was hardly interested in much else. I would venture out sometimes, try to make friends, be social, but anytime anything slightly negative would happen, I would go back and shut myself off with K-dramas. This pattern followed all though my high school and college too. It was my coping mechanism. I could not help it. I don’t want to either.

It was after I had just finished with college. I came across Good Doctor on KBS while randomly shuffling channels one day. And I froze. I froze because I saw my brother on the screen.

Now the thing is I’m not a Korean nor do I belong to that ethnicity. But the younger kid playing Joo-won resembled my brother. So much so that I would watch and re-watch the scenes with the kid, just to have glimpse of my brother again. And again. I don’t know how many times I must’ve looped the scenes and cried.

But eventually when the drama ended, I realized I hadn’t really let go of him even after all that time. I realized that if I ever wanted to get out of this bubble I’ve made for myself, I had to let all the bottled up shit go. And just like that, I did. I don’t know what about this drama made me realize that, but after almost four years, I was finally able to really move on. It doesn’t make much sense but I guess it gave me another chance at goodbye. And that made a hell lot of difference in my life.

Its been 4 years since Good Doctor and I still love K-dramas. I still watch the ones that catch my fancy (read: most). But I don’t use them as escape routes anymore. I can finally say I have a healthy appreciation for them. They were my poison and my cure too.

And for that I will forever be thankful.

 
RELATED POSTS

• Spill the Beans: Family bonding and friend conversion
• Spill the Beans: Mistaken names and life before internet dramas
• Spill the Beans: Dramas on vacation, in the hospital, and all night long
• Spill the Beans: Sharing addictions with family and more missed schoolwork
• Spill the Beans: Sweet boyfriends and a fanmeeting rigamarole
• Spill the Beans: Bombed tests and threats at knifepoint