''My name is Tony, and I'm a workaholic.''

We teach what we learn. Several weeks ago, I flew to Florida on a Sunday at dawn to collaborate with my business partner on a project related to our work helping executives counterbalance stress with recovery. We worked until late that night and resumed again early Monday morning, pushing hard until 2 PM, when I flew back home to New York. I worked on my laptop on the plane without ever looking up, made calls on my cell phone in the car while driving home from the airport, kissed my daughter hello when I arrived, and raced upstairs to respond to my accumulated email messages.

At 6 PM, I changed clothes, got back in my car, and sped to an important business dinner. It lasted until 10 PM, and on the way home, I called my partner by cell phone to debrief him. We were still talking as I pulled into my driveway. Intent on finishing the conversation before I went inside, I stayed in my car. His voice began to break up, so I got out of the car and began walking around to see if I could get a better connection. The next thing I knew, my car was rolling down our lawn, headed straight for a stone wall 30 feet away. Horrified, I began chasing the car as it ran over azaleas, hydrangeas, and rosebushes. At the last possible moment, I reached in and yanked the emergency brake. The car jerked to a halt just two inches from the stone wall.

I believe in the power of metaphor. When I recovered from my shock, the message seemed inescapably clear: I was on the verge of hitting the wall myself, and I had better pay attention. Ironically -- or perhaps appropriately -- I had decided even before the experience that I would write my next column about workaholism. As part of my research, I had arranged to attend a meeting of the only New York City chapter of Workaholics Anonymous. Three days after the encounter with my runaway car, I drove to a church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at 8 AM -- perhaps predictably, arriving a few minutes late.

There were 4 other people gathered around a basement table. You guessed it: Most workaholics don't have the time to attend meetings. The group's size hasn't changed significantly since its founding a decade ago. Sure enough, as I was leaving, one of the participants turned to me. "Welcome to the French Resistance," he said. "There are 5 million workaholics in New York, and you've just met the only 4 who are in recovery."

It was amusing -- but it may also be true.

"Overwork is this decade's cocaine, the problem without a name," argues psychotherapist Bryan Robinson, author of Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them (New York University Press, 1998). Workaholism, Robinson says, is "an obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifests itself through self-imposed demands, an inability to regulate work habits, and an over-indulgence in work -- to the exclusion of most other life activities." The clearest indication, he argues, is simply the inability to turn work off. Robinson suggests that as much as 25% of the population qualify as workaholics -- which would make the syndrome by far the country's most common addiction. Moreover, Americans now work an average of 46 hours per week (52 hours per week if you include work at home), which is more than the citizens of any other country in the world.

I have been writing about this issue for two decades, in large part to try to get a handle on it in my own life. In 1983, I wrote an article called "Second Thoughts About Having It All," at a time when my wife and many of our married friends felt more and more overwhelmed raising young children while also keeping up two busy careers. In 1988, I wrote a story about what I called "acceleration syndrome," describing what I saw as people's growing addiction to the speed, intensity, and relentless activity of their lives. In 1995, I wrote a book, What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America (Bantam Books, 1995), about people who were seeking something deeper and more meaningful in their lives. And of course, the columns I write for Fast Company focus on the ways that people are now trying to balance their work with the rest of their lives.

What I have never faced, I think, is the degree to which work truly is my drug of choice -- and how much I live in its thrall. Let's be clear: It doesn't make sense to equate alcoholism with workaholism. There is absolutely nothing salutary, for one's self or for others, about drinking to excess. Working to excess may have many insidious consequences, but it can also result in great productivity -- and may even lead to major breakthroughs.