For 144 days, I stayed clean from my addiction.

It wasn't easy. The withdrawal symptoms. The sleepless nights. The cold sweats and headaches and need to satisfy my craving. Through it all, I stood strong. I resisted the urge.

That is, until Friday night. During my dinner break at The Daily Item, I had an innocent yearning to check out the magazine rack at Weis Markets across the street.

That was my first mistake.

The rack was small, with a wide variety of magazines stuffed into a limited amount of spots. Of course, my eyes -- honed by my addiction -- knew just where to look. Darting past the Home & Gardens and Vanity Fairs, my gaze fell immediately upon the row of sports magazines, and the newly stocked offering of fantasy football guides.

Like a Weight Watcher flunkee at a Chinese buffet, I couldn't hold myself back.

I picked up the ESPN fantasy football magazine, flipped through the pages and soaked in the information. Player rankings, draft cheat sheets, full-color pages.

I stopped myself. Looking at a magazine would lead to buying it. I needed to be there as much as a recovering drug addict needed to be at OzzFest. There was just too much stimuli. I needed to leave.

I put down the ESPN guide and scanned the rack one last time. Or so I thought.

Luckily, Fanball was nowhere to be seen. Fanball fantasy magazines are my kryptonite. It was a Fanball fantasy baseball magazine that I bought on Groundhog's Day -- 144 days ago.

The NFL.com fantasy football magazine caught my attention. Sparkly cover. Colorful, glossy inside pages.

Still not necessary. In this, the information age, fantasy magazines are as antiquated as, well, the newspaper. Everything you'd ever need to know about preparing for a fantasy sport can be found online. For free. Sites like chinstrapninjas.com, fantasyfootballcafe.com, and a host of others basically eliminate the need to ever throw $7.99 (and up) at a magazine.

And, so, I put down the NFL.com guide and took a deep breath of relief. I was going to make it.

Except, my eyes betrayed me. Those unwavering, copy-editing, backstabbing eyes.

One magazine, buried by a slew of Lindy's fantasy guides, was different. My curiosity overrode my common sense, and guided my hand to the brown cover.