before leaving Twitter in Sept 2019, I always assumed/sorta knew I was legitimately pathalogically addicted to it. I figure "addiction, but not chemical - so not the same or as severe, right?". I was wrong. I found the following months to be just as significantly difficult (with time, habits, urge - though not a physical detox, obviously) as it had been with quitting booze or amphetamines as a teenager. I had a brief addiction to video games when I was 20 - played them constantly, ever 15 mins I would want to sit down and fill a void with some gameplay. This lasted only six months, so I didn't have much memory of "going away" from a digital addiction. After 10 years on Twitter, I knew I would have to make sincere and authentic mental shifts to leave/stay away from it. It wasn't a "take it or leave it thing" like I assumed/presumed it to be in 2009/2010 - use a thing, ANY thing, multiple times a day, every day, years on-end, a decade plus, and it's gonna form into an addiction.

What was neat/good about leaving (or fascinating, initially) was how I was changing HOW I was thinking about things. Like my brain was re-routing to ways it had not done in many years. I used to think in a "set pattern" about things, all things, in life. And then as time (months, a year or more) went on, I saw the "unshakable" views/perceptions I had of the world alter to be different - some (most) more positive/optimistic, some even more realist and pessemistic - but more akin to HOW my brain worked and how I AM in the world au naturale - not a digital dependency having pre-dominant influence over it (my ways of seeing/being in the world).

anyway, things get better - takes time, legwork, et al. But all better int he end :)

stay well, wolf

Write a reply

Replies

~detritus wrote:

Oh yeah, I used 4chan for a number of years. Honestly I left 4chan not too long after it was clear that it was going down the drain. But for a number of years I used it and for a number of years after that I used a so-called 'altchan'. Just recently I stopped using said altchan, as the realization dawned on me that I was concerning myself with stuff I didn't give a shit about but which were implanted in my conscious mind by reading them on that site. I "valued" stuff that had no value for me. I thought important stuff that I didn't actually care much about.

Today I saw a comment written by a 4chan user and, boy it shows. It's interesting to see just how evident the patterns of thought and speech are in a person who is immersed in that medium.

I also noticed that each time I get away from those kinds of sites, my life starts changing for the better. It's just like drugs. A person who is addicted to crack can let 10 years pass and afterwards have no recollection of what happened during those 10 years on crack.

Source