There is a website dedicated to overcoming Internet Addiction.
It greets me in a cheerily professional manner: “Welcome to the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery!” Evidently the irony of this site’s existence is lost on the proprietors. I nearly want to slap the smiling cyberface before it doses me with cybermeds to break the downward spiral of my increasing cyber addiction.
I have searched the DSM-IV, that manual of renown that sets out the specific criteria for mental health anomalies. There is not an addiction to the internet that is officially recognized by the Powers That Be in the psychiatric community.
But I just KNOW it has to be out there. Otherwise, why would there be a treatment for it? Surely this website is not just teasing me! If I am a victim of this dread disease, surely the disease exists!
So I Google it. Not only do I turn up 7.4 million results in 0.45 seconds, but I am also told by Google (the authority of which is second only to Wikipedia, in my mind) that I can further refine my results by such categories as “Treatment,” “Tests/diagnosis,” “Symptoms,” “Causes/risk factors,” and “Alternative medicine.”
WHIPLASH!
Excuse me, but “alternative medicine? Internet addiction can be cured by acupuncture? Really? Ooooooh, goody! I can combine my revulsion of needles AND my love of the internet! Talk about aversion therapy!
By far, the greatest discovery I have ever made on the entire internet, and the one plug-in for Mozilla I use almost daily, is StumbleUpon. It’s a great little button I click merrily several times a day when I feel like tickling my brain into hyper-awareness. It takes me to random internet sites that address topics I have told StumbleUpon I’d like to stumble onto periodically. I recommend it for anyone who, as I do, enjoys mindless surfing as their primary exercise.
Stumble helped me find the second greatest thing about the internet: the fact that it has an end. Actually, it has several ends, which proves that it is not really a web but a series of interconnected strings, much like the macrame wall hanging I made for my mom in 1975 that she still proudly displays.
The Internet evolved to its logical end. Just like us.
Last Updated on November 12, 2006 by Anne
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