Do I have a ‘work addiction’?

What follows may suggest that I require an ‘intervention’. Readers might even interpret this column as a cry for help. Please let me assure you that it is not. But I have just learned of a new addiction, and it is possible that I suffer from it.

It is not an addiction to crack cocaine. Nor is it an addiction to alcohol, though I like to think I do my bit. No – it is an addiction I have just learned about thanks to Idris Elba: ‘Work addiction.’

The actor, who you doubtless know from The Wire, Luther and other dramas, gave an interview this week in which he said he has been in therapy for the past year because he is a ‘workaholic’. After seeing a therapist he has realised his addiction to work is ‘unhealthy’.

The 51-year-old complained that he often finds it more rewarding to work for ten days straight on a film set than to sit on a sofa with his family. I’m quite sure that it is.

The trouble is that Elba went on to say that the industry he is in ‘enables’ this behaviour. I should think it does. Industries often do reward people who work hard. According to Elba, he is in fact ‘massively rewarded’ for working hard in this industry.

At this point the sympathy of some readers might start to dry up. Not least because in this era, while there is no reward for just shutting up and getting on with things, there is always some reward for giving interviews where you confess to having problems which you are ‘addressing’. That generally means addiction. If you are a celebrity who has been caught putting a hand on someone’s thigh, you can claim you suffer from a ‘sex addiction’ and that you need to go to rehab.