Help with addslashes and http post vars..

I have a form that submits, when the user submits, <input tpye=text name=firstname size=50> name=firstname becomes $firstname when i submit the form, using post. here's my question, i have about 30 of these fields, and i need to insert them all into a database. right not i have to do $firstname = addslashes($firstname); for each variable, can i do something like $HTTP_POST_VARS = addslashes($HTTP_POST_VARS); ?? then will all my varibles i use be fixeD? like $firstname will have the slashes?? Thanks for any help! Chris