The Addiction Nobody Talks About

I did back-to-back readings for years. I thought I was helping people. I didn’t realise I was addicted. And it nearly took my practice from me. The worst part? I didn’t see it coming.

Here is how it happens, why you won’t see it either, and what it took to find my way back.

This is not a story about burning out. It is a story about something that felt really, really good — right up until it didn’t.

What addiction looks like

It started on Twitch. Free readings. Back to back. At first it was once a day, about an hour and a half. That felt right.

Then it became four or five hours. Every day.

When a reading was done and before I had time to take a breath, the next person was already typing their question.

And I loved it.

That is the part nobody warns you about. It felt good. It felt like purpose. Every reading was a connection — a real one. Someone out there needed something and I could give it to them.

That is the high.

And like any high, you start chasing it.

I was not thinking about recovery time. I was not thinking about what I was giving out or what I was taking in. I was just thinking about the next reading. And the one after that.

My partner noticed before I did. My friends noticed before I did. I was always half somewhere else. Always thinking about the stream. Talking about it when I was not on it. What I needed to do. How I could make it better. Talking my partner’s ear off about it to the point where she would just sit there, half listening, getting on with what she was doing.

That is what addiction looks like from the inside. It does not feel like destruction. It feels good. But it is not.

How it hides

Nobody tells you it is happening. That is the thing about this kind of addiction. It does not feel like a problem. It feels like you are finally doing what you were meant to do.

You are helping people. You are showing up every day. And on top of that, you are following advice from people who seem to know what they are doing. Be consistent. Post every day. The more you show up, the faster you grow. So you do it. You follow the system because it sounds like the right thing to do.

And that is exactly how it hides. Because everything you are doing looks correct from the outside.

There is something else that made this worse for me personally. I am an empath — a healing empath. That means I don’t just absorb people’s emotional energy. I can take on their physical pain as well. Headaches. Pain in their legs, their arms. It comes through. Even in text. Even when I can’t see their face or hear their voice.

That is a whole conversation of its own. But for now just know — every reading I did, I was not just giving. I was also taking on. And with no recovery time between readings, that weight just kept building.

The real trap: when you stop reading cards and start reading your audience

When you are running on empty, something shifts. You stop trusting what the cards show and you start guessing what they need to hear. It is subtle. You don’t notice it happening.

You are reading the cards. But in the back of your mind you are thinking — will this upset them? Am I reading this right? And without realising it, your job becomes managing their reaction instead of delivering the message.

In person you can catch it. You see their expression shift. You know something connected. You pause and ask — does that resonate? If yes, you follow that thread. An honest reader does not soften the message. You just know how to word it so it still conveys the problem and the solution clearly.

But in text there is an empathic connection but no feedback. Most people don’t respond until the end. You can’t feel what is resonating because they are not telling you. You are reading into a silence. You are reading blind.

With email it is worse. There is no empathic connection at all. You send a question and wait three days for a reply. By then the reading is done. You pull the cards again and they show something different. The energy has shifted. You can’t maintain the thread.

The breaking point

Eventually something breaks. For me it was not one moment. It was a slow decline. I didn’t feel it happening. I was drifting. Like a boat with no anchor. And I didn’t know it.

Your regular clients notice before you do. Way before you do. And most of them won’t say anything. They just stop coming back.

I tried different things to fill the gap. I moved to gaming on Twitch. Different audience, different energy. I thought maybe I just needed a break from readings. But it was not a break. It was avoidance. My therapist helped me see that.

I also paid for a course that cost more than money. It cost me my confidence, my practice, and my voice as a reader. Because I started reading like the person who made the course. Not like myself. And that compounded everything.

I want to be honest with you about how that feels. A year of not reading when it has been part of your life for over forty years. It is not just losing a skill. It is losing a part of who you are.

But something brought me back. Not a plan. Not a decision. I would pick up the cards. Look at them. Put them back down. I wanted to read again. I just didn’t know if I still could.

Then a friend reached out. Someone I respect. Someone who helps people through some of the hardest things life throws at them. He asked me for a reading.

I almost said no. But I talked to my partner first. She has been my rock for eighteen years. She told me to do it. Go ahead. And what I didn’t know at the time was that she had already spoken to him. She told him I hadn’t read in a long time. That I was rusty. She asked him to go through the reading and let her know if it sounded like me. Not as a reader. As a person. The Andrew he knew.

We hadn’t seen each other in a long time. We only kept in touch through social media. But he talked back as I read. Real feedback. A real conversation. And that made all the difference.

I turned the first card. The past position. I told him what I saw. He went quiet for a moment and then said yes. That is accurate. That is close to what happened.

Something shifted in me right then. Not confidence exactly. More like recognition. Like finding something you thought you had lost for good.

The present card stopped me. My empathy kicked in before I even spoke. Something was wrong. Not just difficult. Wrong. The cards and everything I was feeling pointed to one thing.

I said to him — even though I help people the way you help others, what I am feeling right now is bigger than anything I can give you as a reading. I really think you need to talk to someone who can truly help you with this.

He didn’t argue. He didn’t dismiss it. He said yes. That is why I called.

And in that moment I knew I was back. Not because I got it right. Because the connection was real.

I turned the next card. The future position. It showed recovery. But not a straight line. There were things he would need to go through first. Things he would need to face.

And it showed something else. He needed to reach out. To let people in. To stop carrying it alone.

When the reading was done we didn’t just hang up. We talked. He asked how I was doing. How my depression was. How I was feeling. And I asked him the same. We are close friends but we don’t usually go that deep with each other. The reading opened a door between us that had always been there but neither of us had walked through before.

He messaged me on Facebook a few days later. Told me he was doing okay. The reading had given him the insight he needed. And he was doing something about it.

I want to be clear about something. That reading was free. There was no difference in how I read whether he paid me or not. It was the same reading I would give anyone. What made it different was the connection. One person. Real feedback. No line of people waiting behind him.

How to spot it early

So how do you know if this is happening to you? How do you spot it before your practice slowly disappears?

There are signs. And they are easy to miss because they hide inside things that look like you are doing the right thing.

You are pulling cards constantly. Checking. Rechecking. You can’t say no when someone asks for a reading. You feel empty after sessions but you go straight into the next one anyway.

And you start measuring yourself by how many readings you do. How many people are watching. The view count. Not by how good the readings actually are.

You stop asking if the reading resonated. You stop caring if it landed. You just want the next one to start.

That is not a practice anymore. That is a job you feel you have to do.

And here is the part that hurts the most. You start saying what you think they want to hear. Not what the cards are showing. But there is something else happening too. Your own feelings start bleeding in. What you are carrying that day. Your mood. Your anxiety. And without realising it you start influencing the reading. Not with their energy. With yours.

You are no longer reading tarot. You are managing people and projecting yourself.

Here is something worth knowing. They say it takes about thirty days of repetition for something to become embedded. A thought pattern. A habit. The more you repeat something the easier it becomes. The more natural it feels. That is how addiction starts. Not with a decision. With repetition.

So what do you do about it?

First. Stop. Not forever. Just long enough to remember why you started. One day. One week. However long it takes to feel the difference between reading because you want to and reading because you feel you have to. But be careful. You can stop for too long. I know because that is where I am right now. I stopped for a year. And getting back has been harder than I expected.

Set a limit. Not on how many readings you do. On how long you read without a break. You don’t just need to stop. You need to ground. You need to release the energy you have taken on. However that looks for you. A few minutes of meditation. A walk. Silence. Whatever brings you back to yourself.

And if you are reading online, that is not optional. It is the only protection you have.

And charge for your work. Even a small amount. Not because you need the money. Because it changes the dynamic completely. When someone pays, even a little, they show up differently. They take it seriously. They listen. They give you something to connect to.

Free readings have their place. I am not saying charge for everything. If you are building an audience, free readings are part of that. But back to back, for hours, with no exchange at all — that is how you empty yourself. Mention your tip jar. Your Patreon. Whatever you have set up. Not as a price for the reading. Just as a way for people to give something back if it resonated.

I never asked. That was my problem. I gave everything and asked for nothing. And it cost me.

And finally — one deep reading is worth more than fifty shallow ones. You have just read what that looks like. One phone call. One friend. One real connection.

That is what a true reading is. No performance. No telling people what they want to hear. Just honesty. Just being present.

One more thing

This is far more of a problem when you are reading online than when you are reading one to one. In person you set your bookings. You control your time. You know when your day ends. Online there is no natural stop. The next person is always there. Always waiting. And that is what makes it so easy to lose yourself.

I am still finding my way back. I want to be honest about that. Forty years of reading and I still had to learn this the hard way.

But that is the thing about tarot. It has a way of bringing you back to yourself. If you let it.

If any of this sounds familiar, you are not failing. You are not broken. You are just someone who cares too much and forgot to take care of themselves first.

That is fixable. And you don’t have to lose a year to figure it out.

What that looks like in practice — the breaks, the list, the limit on how many cards you will pull in a day — is in What I do between readings.