But what really got me into the synth addiction was when I dropped a Sound Blaster Pro card into my '386 back in '92 or so. It came with some MIDI sequencing software, combined with the cheesy 2-op FM chip on the card, I was hooked. Soon I found software to edit patches on the thing. A year later I dropped a wad on a Korg O1/W. Then a D-50, and a Korg Polysix in '94.
Getting married "cured" my addiction for a while, and my synths became dust collectors for a few years, and I even considered selling them just to get them out of the house. But then a house fire in '05 took care of that, and I went synthless for a couple years, but addicted once, addicted always. I was suffering major synth withdrawal which I thought I could cure with a quick fix (a Microkorg). No, instead it just kicked my addiction back into high gear. I wanted more keys, more sounds, more polyphony, so now I'm back to my 3 synths a day habit, much to my wife's chagrin.
(well, she is enjoying the Christmas music I'm starting to make on them).
Well said.
Without really knowing what I was doing, I went out and bought a Juno-106. It was probably the best choice I could have made at the time; it was quick to learn to program and pretty easy to get good sounds with even lacking any keyboard chops. The first few band practices were, em, interesting... fortunately, I have a good ear and I was able to pick up enough to fake my way around quickly. And I was pretty good at recreating patches and sounds from songs. We did a Prince song that began with a random-filter-cutoff patch, which you can't do in a straightforward way on the 106 because it lacks a sample-and-hold. I set up a bank (eight memory locations) with eight copies of the same patch, with everything the same except for the filter cutoff setting. I plugged a foot switch in the patch change jack, and cycled through the bank by tapping the switch in rhythm, simulating a S/H action. Later, I rigged up a homemade LFO circuit with a bilateral switch and plugged that into the foot switch jack, so it did the patch changes for me. 
