Go into any convenience store and classify their wares, and you’ll find a disturbing trend toward the addictive. Snack food, sex periodicals, tobacco and cheap beer are pretty much ubiquitous, as is caffeine, which many folks can’t start the day without. More daring proprietors display hard liquor in quantities distinctly antithetical to the idea of moderation.

The most pervasive addiction these establishments fuel, the one which is almost impossible to escape, won’t be immediately apparent if you’re thinking of addictive substances only as things that get you high or wired. But there are addictions, in terms of habitual wants, which are universal in our society. Petroleum, for example.

In a way, you can’t participate socially or economically without it.

This enforced dependence hasn’t been around long. Oil exploitation only began in earnest in 1859, and even until the 1950s a great many Americans still managed without it.

Today, however, any crimp in the IV line that keeps the petro-economy alive (like Hurricane Katrina’s upheaval) drives home just how dependent we are on the stuff.

Narcosis is no longer an excuse. From the agricultural and transportation systems that feed us, to the synthetic fibers that clothe us, the furnaces that heat us, and the snowmobiles and ATVs we use for fun, we are bound inescapably to the vagaries and politics of a single resource.

Even those of us who burn wood or flee to the lakes with kayaks for pleasure would find ourselves hard put without a chainsaw or Thule-equipped Subaru. (National addictions and their economic force are nothing new, of course. About the same time as the first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania, the British were fighting the second of two wars with China to force the country open to more opium trade. The opium, grown in British India, was being sold for porcelain and tea, thanks to the Chinese. One addiction feeding off another, you could say.)

The chief problem with our national addiction is the debilitating effect of withdrawal. When an infrastructure has grown for a century around a single energy source, you can’t reorganize it overnight.

Energy executives and administration officials alike are aware of the immanent projected decline in oil availability. Political tensions with petroleum exporters and China’s dramatic growth in consumption don’t help either. Though America is in a strategic position to dominate earth’s largest deposits (Contrivance or providence? Who knows), such dominance can only come at a huge continuing cost.

Conservation is helpful and necessary but it can only forestall the inevitable. Current advocates for change look to unstable hydrogen, resource-intensive biodiesel, or renewable electricity from wind, solar, tide biomass, or other natural sources. Little is said about the possible consequences of tampering with something as fundamental as wind or tide patterns, and given the delicacy and unpredictability of natural systems, the ecological impact could far surpass the impacts of hydroelectric dams on riverine fish.

There’s another option, one less palatable yet far more effective. If alternative energy is analogous to methadone, learning how to live well without oil or coal or any subsidizing energy source – as humans did long before our flirtations with addiction began – is the most desirable possibility. The elegant economy of photosynthesis has been with us since the inception of life on earth, remaking light and carbon into fuel for human muscle, only to be metabolized, exhaled, and recycled.

It’s the ultimate in efficient, renewable, democratic, nonpolluting energy source.

In a way, the lifestyle petroleum allows us resembles the lifestyle afforded slave-owners in Rome or the old South.

A friend once remarked after visiting Monticello that he could understand why Jefferson could talk the abolitionist talk but was unwilling to walk the walk. Like slavery, like the epidemic of methamphetamine use, petroleum addiction should be taken seriously.

Now we’re at a crucial juncture. Aware of our precarious position we can either choose to ignore it, find a new drug or kick the habit for good.

With the mobility and power oil provides, it won’t be an easy habit to overcome. Like any “drying out,” it requires fundamental changes in the way we live our lives, but with the challenge of embracing hard work comes the promise of healthier bodies and communities, and the fulfillment of doing a necessary task well. It requires patience, humility, determination and skill – but as any recovering addict knows, a tough task can be the difference between reclaiming life and being – literally – wasted.

David Merrill does manual labor and makes music in and around Newburgh, where he lives.