This morning’s Metro newspaper has a double-page spread on The Fix:

How many times have you checked your phone for messages so far today? Do you constantly have one eye on your Twitter mentions feed to see who’s talking about you? Would you like another cupcake?

If your answers to these three questions are ’32’, ‘Both eyes’ and ‘No thank-you, a fourth would be too much for me’, then there is nothing special about you whatsoever.

You are just one of the millions who find themselves compelled to continuously refresh their emails and help themselves to just one more piece of cake.

In his latest book, The Fix, which has the slightly frightening subtitle, ‘How addiction is invading our lives and taking over your world,’ Damian Thompson, blogs editor at The Telegraph, says that it is becoming harder and harder for all of us to resist the world’s temptations.

For Mr Thompson, one example of this is how sweet bakery goods have become culinary cocaine – ‘Why cake is the new coke’ is the title of one of the book’s chapters.

‘If you see people bring cake or donuts into an office, people flock to it and then make return visits,’ he told Metro.

‘It does remind me of hedge fund managers or city businessmen in the 1980s frantically returning to the glass table on which the lines of coke are set out.

‘The little sugar buzz is so intense and so irresistible that a little drama of temptation is played out in the office.’

The Fix examines how cupcakes, prescription drugs, smartphones, internet gaming and online pornography are becoming our new addictions of choice.

Mr Thompson speaks from experience. A former alcoholic, he has been sober for 18 years, thanks in part to the help of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

He has been criticised in some quarters for his insistence in the book that addiction isn’t a disease, something that flies in the face of what many alcoholics adhere to when going through AA.

‘My own experience of AA was very, very helpful,’ he recalled. ‘I was almost the caricature of a drunken, young journalist. I reached a point where if I kept on drinking it was clearly going to kill me…’

You can read the rest here.