 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Warning: Drug addicts are lurking in this group Ray Beatty raybea@melbpc.org.au |
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The headline was chilling: Our drug habit hits $1 billion - a testament to the incomprehensible need by so many of our fellow citizens to fry their brains with heroin and cocaine. Drive Clarendon Street to the city and you ll see on the Yarra bank another monument to our addictions: the Crown Casino temple to blackjack. Retreat to your boring yet familiar suburb and there is more addiction: every pub now seems to be a mini casino with its one-armed bandits, Sky Channel and Tatts Pokies.
But wait, addiction is everywhere. Even among the upright bourgeoisie who populate the Melbourne PC User Group. Carry out a secret, anonymous survey and you would be sure to find a sizeable percentage who will confess to being mainliners. Online, that is.
Yes, Net surfing (and BBS paddling?) are addictions too. In fact there is now an On-Line Addiction Centre in Rochester, NY, where those whose lives are being destroyed by the craving to live in cyberspace can seek understanding and help.
The President of the Centre, Dr Kimberly Young (ksyg@uhura.cc.rochester.edu) equates the behaviour of compulsive computerphiles with the obsessive patterns of drug addicts, alcoholics, workaholics and nymphomaniacs. In fact I suggest you don t let your Mum or your partner see this article...
So does your behaviour fit into the pattern of an addict? Take a look at the list of criteria compiled by a psychiatrist and see if there is any germ of recognition. What do you think - have any of these symptoms ever happened to you?
The Symptoms of Addiction
- You get restless as the time nears to retreat to your silicon shrine and go online.
- You log on nearly every day or night, miss very few nights a week.
- Once on line, you lose all track of time.
- You never admit to others (especially spouse) just how much time has been spent on the computer.
- Family and friends start complaining how they can t make a phone call any more. Perhaps you even have a second line.
- As online usage increases, so the communication with real people decreases.
- As soon as your spouse or parent is out or asleep, the computer clicks on.
- You even sneak a look at your mailbox from your workplace.
- Your significant other starts noticing the size of the phone bill.
- You start to notice the size of your phone bill.
So what is the fascination of computer communications that makes it so addictive? I've always thought of it as akin to some people's compulsion to do crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles - long bouts of intense mental activity and a surge of satisfaction when a problem is solved or correspondence exchanged. It's the feeling of achievement which comes out of any hobby. And of course the Net is so vast and ever-changing that you could never ever solve it - each time you log on you discover something different and new.
Of course it's wonderful for the disabled - however severe the handicap, if the brain is working well there's a way to get into computers, just look at Stephen Hawking. Single parents also gravitate to it as a way to socialise and keep their minds active even while stuck with looking after kids at night. But the rest of us don't have any such good excuse. We just enjoy the thrill of exploring the world from the depths of a dreary Melbourne suburb.
Hard-core activists
World Wide Web has brought colour and excitement to the exercise in recent times, but the real addict, I suspect, would look at Web browsing as just window shopping. The real hard-core activist is into communicating through the news groups and the club BBS.
Just look at the intensity of activity in the General message section of the BBS - now and then I dip in and lurk around. Obviously the correspondents have long-developed conversations, usually with no connection to the original subject title any more. It's a little like wandering into a huddle of people at a party, listening to the conversation for a while and then tossing in your two bobs' worth. If your point isn't pretty spot-on and relevant, it just gets ignored and the conversation continues like you didn't exist.
For the greatest collection of heavy addicts, browse the Usenet and IRC. Among those thousands of newsgroups you'll find plenty of people who spend 20, 30, 40 hours a week online. The computer has become their life and they gradually shrink away from reality. Of course it can also be a shared addiction. One couple has a computer in the living room and another in the kitchen, from which they pursue their strings. The wife now summons hubby to the table by e-mail!
The psychiatrists say
Psychiatrists like Dr Young have started studying the phenomenon. So far the jury's still out as to whether it s a good or bad thing. The Internet apparently consumes the user to such an extent that much of their life is spent in front of their computer, says Dr Young. On the positive side, another psychiatrist found that intensive Net use helped children with a form of autism. It helped them expand their solitary, isolated world.
Now, facing my own addiction... Well I was fortunate to be born with very short sleep requirements, four or five hours are fine. And my wife is a dormouse who climbs between the sheets before 10. Which gives me at least four hours a night to spend locked away in my study, gallivanting round the world on the Net, dropping into distant conversations or savouring the exotic delights of far-off Web sites. Then, with senses sated and shoulders limp from the exhaustion of so much concentration, I collapse into bed like the world-weary traveller I am.
Me? An addict? Never!
Reprinted from the August 1995 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
