Hello cruise addicts and welcome aboard! I’m Dr. Kruz Nutty, the world’s premier authority on cruise addiction. I’m completely nuts about cruising - the ships, the sea, the food, the relaxation, the shows - the everything - and I can’t stop thinking about anything except cruises!

When I recognized my own addiction to cruises, I searched relentlessly for a therapist who could help me or even a doctor who had a magic pill to ease my pain. But I soon realized neither existed. I was alone and I couldn’t find anyone who could really help! So using my own pseudo-psychology, I opened my cyber therapy office and wrote, Cruise Crazy: The Cruise Addict’s Survival Guide, for land-sick sea lovers to help you cope with your cruise addiction.

It is my hope that this survival guide will help you to laugh at your obsession with cruises while also gaining a better understanding of yourself and your not-so unusual affliction. You will also be thrilled to know that unlike other recovery programs for addiction your path to survival is by discovering new ways to continue indulging your passion for cruising! This is accomplished through twenty five soothing treatments and relieving remedies that I’ve developed that will also help you with those especially nasty cruise withdrawal symptoms. In the end, you will discover that coping (and surviving) while waiting for your next cruise is now much easier and actually enjoyable.

Cruise Crazy: The Cruise Addict’s Survival Guide, offers laugh therapy - a survival strategy - as a breakthrough, new method of treatment for cruise addiction designed by me, Dr. Kruz Nutty. Laughter is always the best medicine for any ailment, and particularly this addition. I believe that your best strategy is to laugh, and laugh a lot, and mainly at yourself, while you read and/or re-read the survival guide as often as needed. Chapters one through four of my book provide the entertainment and laugh therapy cruise addicts need and chapter five contains the twenty five therapies for cruise withdrawal pain.

Cruise Crazy: The Cruise Addict’s Survival Guide is also the first book to address the overlooked subculture of cruise addition that exists in our society. Cruise crazies like us go through the same experiences, feel similar emotions, and have the same needs, but we don’t share the same cruise addict language. That’s why I formulated and included in this survival guide an extensive list of terms to form a single vocabulary, a virtual cruise crazy dictionary that I call the cruise line lexicon. My new “mother tongue,” meant for cruise addicts, provides a method to understand yourself, your addiction, and other cruise addicts by providing names and definitions for all of your obsessive, compulsive, wacky, addictive behaviors. Now you’ll be able to talk to other cruise addicts using vernacular that everyone can understand. Coping between cruises has just become much, much easier (and more fun) as all cruise enthusiasts around the world learn the cruise line lexicon!

Chapter 1 of Cruise Crazy: The Cruise Addict’s Survival Guide begins by examining cruise addiction and how it begins. You see, everybody and anybody can become addicted to cruises because no one is immune from the seductive power of the cruise ship. It begins the moment a newbie cruiser boards their first ship and realizes all of the guilty pleasures that tempt - taunt - (and haunt) their will and good judgment. In a very deep part of the brain, the chemistry of the addiction begins, taking over as your fascination for the sea and the ship becomes permanently attached to your deep desire for fun and pleasure. First time cruisers are instantly hooked! Unknowingly, (but in a good way) their minds have been taken over with a dependence on CRUISES!

Also in Chapter 1, you take Dr Nutty’s Cruise Crazy Quiz, to identify and recognize just how much of a cruise crazy addict you are. For example, do you generally enjoy cruises but know down deep that you’re on the verge of becoming addicted? Or are you a totally whacked-out cruise crazy fanatic? Not everyone has the same severity of addiction, and that’s why the quiz enables you to determine which of four levels of cruise addiction you’re experiencing. And also how many of Dr. Kruz Nutty therapies you need to help you make it from one cruise to the next.

Sample questions from Dr Nutty’s Quiz:

How often do you have thoughts about cruises?

(a) Occasionally
(b) Maybe once a week
(c) A lot and then at least every day as my cruise departure date gets closer
(d) Non-stop, constantly, it’s all I can think about!

When I have troubling falling asleep at night I:

(a) Drink a glass of warm milk
(b) Read a book
(c) Surf the internet for cruise stuff
(d) Count cruise ships (like sheep) sailing away into the sun-set

Is the price of a cruise important to you?

(a) Yes - it must fit within my budget
(b) I usually only buy a cruise if it’s on sale
(c) It’s very important so that I have more money for another cruise
(d) Price? Who cares about the price when I need a fix!

Cruise crazies are afflicted with four stages of cruise addiction and Chapter 2 explains STAGE 1 pre-cruise psychosis... a result of their never ending, deep, insatiable desire to get back on a ship to get another “fix.” Pre-cruise psychosis causes you to obsess over picking the “perfect cruise” – one that meets every single one of your finicky, peculiar preferences. Your obsession is immediately followed by a series of pre-cruise rituals helping you to prepare for your cruise while you impatiently “wait-out” your day of departure.

Never fatal but often contagious, STAGE 2 Traumatic Travel Syndrome is covered in Chapter 3. This causes cruise addicts to always be worried, overly anxious, and have a mind that is consumed with getting to the ship on time. Generally speaking, those with STAGE 2 addiction turn what should be joyous fun into a tumultuous journey. Many cruise addicts try to reduce the effects of Traumatic Travel Syndrome by leaving the day prior to sailing and spending the night in the departure city. After all, Traumatic Travel Syndrome is much more acute when trying to travel and make it to the ship on the same day. While it is healthy to try to reduce stress, addicts who arrive early have, in effect, traded one affliction for another equally annoying hardship: Seaport Personality Syndrome (or SPS).

At last, onboard the ship and now wearing a confident, contented (and really cheesy) smile, you can really begin to relax. You made it! You’ve fantasized about this moment since stepping off (or more likely, when you were forced off) your last cruise ship. Chapter 4 provides a big dose of laugh therapy as you diagnose the symptoms of your cruise crazy compulsions as a STAGE 3 Sea Junkie. Whether you subside into lethargic poolside lounging - hibiscus in hair, sipping umbrella-laden ice-cold drinks, floating peacefully on turquoise waters - or rev up into a frenzy of shipboard and seaport overindulging-changing from one cunning cruise outfit to the next, and overshopping, overeating, overdancing, and overdoing in every port - see how many of the crazy conditions in Chapter 4 reflect your own sea junkie habits!

Then, the most hated moment in any cruise addict’s life, the sad, depressing, dreaded day when you must say sayonara to your ship. Facing your most melancholy moment, you must move your miserable self back onto dry land, because the cruise is over. In STAGE 4 cruise addiction, you become a cold turkey cruiser-again! In the final chapter, you examine what happens in the last stage of addiction when crazy cruisers are at their most pitiful (yet still amusing to others!), as they are forced off the ship. But never fear, Dr. Nutty provides you with the therapies and antidotes all cruise crazies need to help them survive from one cruise to the next. These twenty five therapies will help trick your mind into thinking, if only for a few glorious minutes, that you are getting what you crave - an adventurous, delicious, fun, luxurious, relaxing, and romantic crazy cruise experience, albeit a fake one, created by you!

I hope the cruise addicts around the world will have a lot of fun reading and laughing about our zany, addictive behaviors. Just remember that laugh therapy is your best survival between cruises as you indulge in as many of my prescribed therapies as possible. My treatments will help the days to pass quickly, and before you know it, you will once again be back onboard a beautiful cruise ship.

I hope I get a chance to meet all of you cruise crazy addicts out there in the world some day while actually on a cruise! We can indulge in all our wonderful, nutty behaviors together! I would also love to hear your personal stories about cruise addiction or those crazy actions you have witnessed in others. I’m presently compiling these stories for a future book: Cruise Crazy: True Stories from Cruise Addicts.

Please feel free to email at DrNutty@DrKruzNutty.com. Or send me an e-mail if you would like to just say “hi,” or if you have a request for some personal cruise therapy.

Bon Voyage!

All my best,
Dr Kruz Nutty
www.DrKruzNutty.com

Cruise Crazy: The Cruise Addict’s Survival Guide is published by Capital Books and is available from the publisher or Amazon.com or Amazon UK

Copyright 2007 Dr Kruz Nutty. All rights reserved.