> ...pretty much anything else you worship [other than religion] will eat you alive. If you worship money and things... then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

This is implying that worshiping religion/god/spirituality is exempt from extreme obsession. But I have to contest that religion can create far more extreme of obsessions than other forms of "worship" that Wallace references such as beauty, money, etc..

I grew up religious (in a high-demand religion) and saw that the religion created extremists among most of our church members. While an obsessive "worship" of losing weight can lead to anorexia, we see a good thing become bad. Being interesting in beauty isn't bad by itself, but an obsessive/extreme version can lead to depression and many other things.

Religion is no exception (even though Wallace seems to exclude it). An obsession over religion leads people to over analyze their life in the search of being perfect. It forces them to make unnecessary sacrifices for a reward that they will never actually attain. I've seen it tear apart families as bad as alcohol abuse or domestic violence can. There is a very dark, evil side to religion. The religion I was involved with put so much pressure on people to live life a certain way, to be perfect, that it was unattainable. The religion's goal is to enforce compliance and promote unity through shared suffering. But it has negative effects too. I've lost many close friends (including one roommate) who committed suicide from church pressures. Prescription drug abuse is particularly bad within the community that I grew up in, I personally know several people who have life-long addictions to prescription opioids that started from church pressures. I have seen domestic violence and child sexual abuse, all justified (and protected and buried) under religious arguments. My personal experience with religion shows consequences that far exceed those of other obsessions such as wealth, beauty, fitness, drugs, and so on. So I would be very careful about giving religion a "pass".

Are all religions bad? Probably not. I know plenty of people who have healthy relationships with religion. But the bad stuff is definitely there too, and it is FAR from rare. And I am only talking about relatively tame religions too. We can go even more extreme and start discussing the effects that religion have had on promoting unspeakable acts such as the holocaust, the crusades, the jihads, 9/11 attacks, the inquisition, Boston marathon bombs, numerous mass shootings, Incan & Mayan sacrifices, the KKK, witch hunts, wacko in waco, jim jones mass suicide, and this is a short list.

I am no longer religious myself (it was a religion imposed on me by my parents), but I have no problem with other people being religious. I would just caution that there are extremes, and religion is an easy one to fall into an extreme. You are literally discussing something that is "out of this world" and can not have any proof. The rewards are infinite (eternal life, glory without end, etc), which makes them more desirable to attain and justifies more extremes to earn. They also self-exclude and discriminate other people (your religion is right, everyone else is wrong or evil). The stakes that religion creates are simply so high, that it is easy to fall into the obsessive and extreme category, more so than worrying about an obsession over wealth or fitness.