There is a new disease on the market. It causes acute lower lumbar problems, jambled thoughts and sore forearms. Many suffer from it -- mainly women who are still under the guise that they can take on the world with wilted stick and come out winning.

Perhaps you have seen this ailment in action. It is all over on the street. It comes in the form of young mothers pushing kids in triple strollers while balancing a cell phone, diaper bag and checkbook on 13th Avenue. You see it on the train -- ladies carting briefcase, make-up bag, tote and lunch box toppled with a saran-wrapped plate of crudités. People get it at work -- rushing for the elevator bogged down with stacks of forms, packets of Xerox copies dating from 1982 and manila envelopes with coffee stains on them.

The disease is Latin for "How Much Can You Liftus," commonly referred to as pack horse syndrome. On a positive note, unlike other equine and bovine diseases -- such as "Hoof in Mouth" or "Mad Cow" -- you don’t get sick and die. You just get annoyed and frazzled, sometimes falling on your face while bogged down and running for the bus (see past column). You also get the feeling you are insane.

And it is crazy! Every time I leave the house, I act as if I am going camping for nine weeks. A random sampling of the GIANT backpack I haul to work on a daily basis includes my cell phone (which I rarely turn on), my journal, my sketchbook, three Sharpie markers (in case one runs out), two unsharpened pencils, 30-some-odd pens, my address book, my mini address book, my date book, a HUMUNGOUS folder full of writing, writhing and projects I am working on (as if carrying it back and forth across Brooklyn prompt me to finish them faster) and yes, don’t forget my lunch.

My lunch is no ordinary lunch, either -- it’s usually a 44-course meal complete with soup, salad, side dish, bread and chopped celery all packed neatly into a fine array of Tupperware and recycled Chinese eggplant containers.

If not like a pack horse, I feel like one of those overloaded mules I remember from that "Brady Bunch" episode when they went to the Grand Canyon. The poor animals were bogged with things like wrought-iron skillets and Alice yet steadily scaled the side of the gorge. But this is Brooklyn -- not Arizona and, at present, no matter how zany it has gotten, I have not yet felt the need to haul around five-ton cookware and the housekeeper.

But what gives?

Is it gluttony? Panic? Fear? A twisted way of building up our back muscles?

It’s as if we think we will run out of things, we will never get enough of what we want or think we need -- sort of like life.... It’s an irrational terror that we will somehow be trapped on 65th Street, merely two blocks from home or the nearest supermarket, and suddenly start starving to death unless we happen to be armed with a feast fit for King Arthur.

The wholly ironic part of it is that, when real tragedy hit, like 9/11, all I did was buy a jar of peanut butter.

So what of a cure? We can try a variety of techniques, none of which I have yet attempted. We can play the "one thing only" game. This entails leaving your house with ONLY ONE of the above-mentioned items. Perhaps some discipline and reason will come from this exercise. Better yet, play the "no thing only" game, in which you ramble through your day with NONE of the aforementioned items. This will help reality kick you in the shins to see which of the items are totally worthless to carry around (ALL) and which you definitely miss throughout your day’s journey (NONE).