How does one get off the merry-go-round?

I used to have five passions-audio, catamaran racing, sports cars, being a good professor, and my family. I now have but two-audio and my family although my kids now have kids. I find people with no passions boring. I have absolutely no desire to get off the audio merry-go-round. I do a lot of listening but as relaxation and often not dedicated. What I love is when the reproduction is so real that I have to put down my book and just listen.

Between 1992 and 2007 I spent an average of $5-8,000 per year on this hobby, er merry-go-round. Looking back over those expenditures, I can certainly identify a few that returned much better value than others. But at the end of 2007 I decided to "freeze" my system and put all that money into an account for going to live performances.

If anything, I now spend MORE than I used to, but now it goes into tickets & travel (to Music Festivals, catching musicians in their home towns, etc). Now when I look back at my spending, I can say, "Oh that's when I saw Lyle Lovett" or that was the Caramoor Extreme Chamber Music series, or that was our third trip to Tanglewood. Many of those events have given me much greater pleasure than my stereo system ever did on its best days.

Of course, it is still nice to come home after work and listen to some music, but the desire to upgrade my equipment is mitigated by the thought that I could be using that same money to go see Rachael Yamagata or Vienna Teng or Yo-yo Ma in concert.

Works for me! My system has been very stable ever since.

When it stops being merry.

Three things have worked for my audio addiction:

1. Finally meeting at least some of my expectations for good audio playback. Yes, I can find things wrong with my system, but on the whole, to my ears, it does more things right than wrong.

2. Having components of more or less equal perceived quality. This prevents me from obsessing about "weak links" in the system, which are maddening to an audio addict.

3. Redirecting my compulsion into finding new music. Maybe that's still an addictive process, but it's a lot cheaper, and ultimately, more fulfilling.

Suffering from too much GAS? Sadly most audiophiles here seem afflicted with too much GAS.

This is the correct technical term for what Drubin describes as the "merry-go-round" affliction. I am surprised I have never seen this popular term used here on Audiogon. Are audiophiles out of touch and in another world or are audiophiles simply not musicians or musically adept, for the most part?