slave to

be a slave to (something)

To be unduly influenced by or care too much about something; to spend too much or time or energy on something. Jeremy is a total slave to fashion. He can't leave the house without making sure every part of his outfit matches perfectly. I wish Sarah would relax a bit more over the weekend. She's a total slave to her job.
See also: slave
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

*slave to something

Fig. someone who is under the control of something; someone whose time or attention is controlled or "owned by" by something. (Fig. on being a slave to a person. *Typically: be ~; become ~.) Mary is a slave to her job. Bill is a slave to his drug addiction.
See also: slave
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • a/the feel of (something)
  • (I) wouldn't (do something) if I were you
  • a straw will show which way the wind blows
  • a crack at (someone or something)
  • all right
  • (you) wanna make something of it?
  • all for the best
  • a thing of the past
  • a slew of (something)
  • a bird in the hand
References in classic literature
Any one attempting to harm "young Mistress" or "old Mistress" during the night would have had to cross the dead body of the slave to do so.
While some declared that it sufficed for a slave to be beautiful, others, and Khacan was among the number, maintained that beauty alone was not enough, but that it must be accompanied by wit, wisdom, modesty, and, if possible, knowledge.
At length, early one morning, while Khacan was on his way to the king's palace, a dealer, throwing himself in his way, announced eagerly that a Persian merchant, arrived late the previous evening, had a slave to sell whose wit and wisdom were equal to her incomparable beauty.
Being a man of great wisdom and learning, he perceived in the short conversation he had with her that he would seek in vain another slave to surpass her in any of the qualities required by the king, and therefore asked the dealer what price the merchant put upon her.
Now it was not the custom to show a slave to a private bidder, but as no one dared to disobey the vizir his request was granted.
I will interest him at the same time in your behalf, and this will be worth much more to you than what extra money you might obtain from the merchants." "Bad old man," he exclaimed, "rather than sell my slave to you I would give her to a Jew." "But, Noureddin," I remonstrated, "you do not consider that in speaking thus you wrong the king, to whom your father owed everything." This remonstrance only irritated him the more.
He ordered the captain of the guard to take with him forty men, to pillage Noureddin's house, to rase it to the ground, and to bring Noureddin and the slave to him.
When the slave left and it was not according to the contract, he took the slave to court.
From Slave to Superstar of the Wild West: The Awesome Story of Jim Beckwourth is the incredible true-life story of a biracial ex-slave turned American mountain man who lived over 200 years ago.
William and Ellen were illiterate, because it was illegal for anyone to teach a slave to read.
(7) First, by tying Henry's physical condition to the grapevines -- the body of the slave to the product of his la bor-the narrator symbolically portrays the dehumanization that slavery entailed.
"What irks me, you know this, is that I am and forever shall be a slave to that which brought (said: 'brung') me here." In an apparent afterthought, the "brought" and the "said" had been hastily crossed out with a red pen, the logic of the phrase rerouted through an act of self-editing.
Conversely, the larger plantations in Anne Arundel County fostered substantial slave communities and afforded fewer opportunities for free blacks and slave to meet.(29)
There the master, because Frederick paid him a fixed weekly wage, allowed his slave to make his own work arrangements.
According to his biographer Ellen Tarry, author of The Other Toussaint, he was fortunate as a slave to know his mother and father and to be instructed in the Catholic faith and receive baptism and the other sacraments of the Church.