Hi, my name is Sam and I’m an addict…
No this isn’t me coming out as a substance abuser or the
newest member of AA, if it was I probably wouldn’t be telling you in this way!
No, my addiction is a bit more subtle, and I’m guessing a
bit more common as well.
I’m addicted to TV. Or maybe I’m addicted to the state of
mind I slip into when I’m glued to the 19 inches of LEDs in our lounge.
I would say that we all have at least one addiction in our
lives, something we go back to time and time again when we get down or
something that our day just wouldn’t feel complete without. It doesn’t have to
be an obviously harmful thing in and of itself, yet the fact that you become
addicted to it transforms your relationship with it into something that is a
destructive force in your life.
I have this relationship with television, probably closely
followed by the internet, especially social networking sites. There’s a lot of
buzz about how these new ways of communicating and socialising with others are
affecting us, and about how addictive they are. I recognise many of the
symptoms in my own life, but I think TV works a bit differently.
I don’t know about you, but I’m an evening person. This is
gradually changing as I get slowly older (and maybe a little wiser???) but I
still have the capacity to sit up blindly watching a flickering screen well
into the early hours of the morning.
These days, more or less every time I discover I have a dead
leg as a result of sitting in the same awkward position on the sofa for hours
on end at the end of a long film or a prolonged channel hopping session, I get
angry with myself. What have I just been doing for all that time? What have I
achieved? What have I or the world at large gained from my addictive pastime? I
go to bed annoyed with myself and determined to do something about it, to
change my ways and stop wasting all that time. And yet the next night or the
next week I find myself with another dead leg.
So what is it? What draws me? Sometimes I think it’s story.
My wife will testify to the fact that if you ever want to watch a film or a TV
program with me, you better be prepared to sit up and shut up. My wife is one
of those people I cannot fathom out – she can ‘watch’ a film whilst
simultaneously browsing Facebook AND attempting to have a conversation with
me(!) Now I’m pretty sure this has something to do with the incomprehensibility
of the female mind, but what it highlights to me is the very different way in
which I interact with TV…
I need to see everything, I need to know everything, I need
to suspend reality for an hour and immerse myself in another world. When I come
out of the cinema it will literally take me half an hour or so to come to terms
with the fact that I’m not a secret agent, a super hero or the president of the United States (not a Rom-com lover).
TV is not something I can just switch off if I’m getting
tired or realise a new day has begun while I’ve been sitting there. It’s a
story that needs to be completed and resolved.
Equally though, if there isn’t a decent film on offer, I can
also catch myself channel hopping in the evening and watching mind numbing
things I probably wouldn’t give the time of day to ordinarily. Why do I do
this?
I heard somewhere that your mind is more active when you’re
asleep than when you are watching TV, it sounds incredible but I can really
believe it. Your mind is amazing and it does incredible things while you sleep.
Memories form during sleep, connections are made between synapses and you
learn! All this happens while you’re not even aware that you’re thinking.
That’s partly why babies benefit from so much sleep – they’re learning about
everything and trying to make sense of the world around them.
But don’t you find that just sometimes you want to switch
off your mind for a bit? To ‘vegetate’ and not have to engage actively with the
world?
If I had to find a way to describe the feeling I suppose
it’s almost like slipping into a pleasant waking coma. You don’t have to worry
about anything else, it’s just you and the screen, no responsibilities, no need
even to create your own images as you would with a good book. It’s all there
for you, presented on a plate – just eat it up.
I am part of a generation that doesn’t just want to be
entertained, we fully expect to be entertained. We get bored with real life
quickly and easily, so we allow the world to come to us as we sit stationary.
I hate to think of all that I could have done, places I
could have been, people I could have met if I hadn’t been sitting in that same
place with a dead leg.
But I’m not going to get angry with myself anymore. It’s a
vicious cycle you see. The more I get down about myself, the more I want to
feel better or escape, and how do I escape? I slip back into that pleasant
coma.
Instead I need to be pro-active. To break through a wall in
my mind that prevents me from getting up and switching it off. Often that will
be not switching it on in the first place, removing myself from the situation.
Our addictions are tough to break, but the things we think we can’t live
without or have just become a normal part of life can often be more harmful
than we realise and restrict us from truly living life to the full.
You might not struggle with TV; yours might be a different
addiction. I guarantee though, if you do even a little self-reflection, it won’t
take you long to discover you too are an addict.
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