I am seriously addicted to the internet in general and while it may not be an addiction in the physical sense, it has caused major issues in my life.
The amount of time I spend on the Internet is insane and no matter how hard I try to will power through it and cut down my usage I always fail. If I ever figure out how to overcome it I'll have to write a book or something, because I've wasted years of my life and missed out on too many oppertunities.
People will call me weak, or pathetic, or say I haven't tried hard enough, but as someone who did use tabacco I have found Internet 'addiction' a much tougher beast to deal with.
I spend was too much time on the internet too like right now checking hn
but for me I chalk it up to lack of other things to do. I don't have a lot of friends, it's hard to make new ones, covid doesn't help, at the moment I've got no personal projects except maybe trying new recipes now and then.
that said, if I do find other activities I have no trouble doing them. I'm taking a class for example, meet the friends I do have when they are available, etc
so I doesn't feel like an addiction in my case even though I fully feel I spent way too much time on the internet
In my case, I don't have other things to do because I'm on the internet. When I manage to turn off the internet (HN, Youtube, podcasts, Twitter, LinkedIn, reading up on random, pretty useless stuff), suddenly I get pretty good ideas on what to do.
Oh, I wanted to learn finally that language. I wanted to clean up in the kitchen cabinet. I wanted to meet up with a friend. I wanted to sign up for swimming class. I wanted to go to a restaurant with my wife. I wanted to call my brother and sister. I wanted to code up an open source package...
The list of fun things to do is endless, but somehow consuming content on the internet trumps everything if you are not careful (ymmw).
Social media gives you that dopamine fix quicker than your other options. It quickly becomes a habit if you've been doing it for long enough.
I'm sure if you tried to make doing other things a habit, it would come easier to you over time. Then there's less reliance on willpower required.
If you put a block in the calendar at the same time each week, you will feel more obligated to do it.
I've done this with all kinds of things like socialising, couch25k, flossing. It really helped me when covid restrictions first hit and it was too easy to just lay about all day.
What do you want to spend your time on other than the internet? I don't know what you've tried, but you've talked about what you don't want to do, and didn't talk about what you do want to do. And it's hard to remove a habit if you don't have something ready with which to replace it.
I agree. Rather than trying to focus on not doing the thing you want to do in a sea of few options, one needs to develop new patterns.
Go travel, visit some friends overnight, go camping, anything to get out of the house and create new (or at least different) experiences and a bunch of simple-but-different problems you need to solve. When you're done and get back home, you can reintegrate to the Internet, catch up, and hopefully not feel too guilty about it. Spend your willpower making sure you get back out there, rather than trying to police your default behavior.
If that's not possible to due a lack of money, friends, physical ability, etc, then I'd say you are dealing with serious depression and professional help is not unwarranted.
I would add that clubs, gyms, and meetups are a good, often free or very cheap option as well. Running, biking, skateboarding, climbing, calisthenics/acrobatics, board games, maker groups, art, music… all have very low cost of entry and likely have communities in any town or city.
I feel compelled to also add that while it seems well-meant, I think the tone of your last paragraph is a bit unproductive. A lot (most? all?) of us, at some point, fall out of the habit of exercising our senses of curiosity and wonder and trying new things. This can be caused by many combinations of family, economic, and social conditions, or for some, because of chemistry (ie “serious depression”). Therapy is indeed a good way to develop the skills to work against this and identify whether it’s actually a chemical problem in need of a chemical solution. But it doesn’t help to go straight to calling this “serious depression” needing “professional help.” Literally all of us can benefit from therapy, and making it out to be a big deal and putting labels on people makes many less likely to pursue it.
I was trying to head off a response of why the advice to get out and do something out of one's groove is impossible. Myself, I would include "family, economic, and social conditions" within the general category of "depression", rather than reserving that label for "purely chemical" problems.
Internal and external factors tend to pile up and reinforce one another, and if someone is at a point where those external factors are contributing to not being able to try changing patterns of behavior, that would be seem to be indicative of a problem that should be acknowledged.
It feels like I'm coming from a place that is the dual of your comment - even though everyone could theoretically benefit from therapy, people are not going to seek it out and add even more complexity to their lives unless they feel they need to - especially with the care-denying medical bureaucracy that permeates the US and apparently Canada. Acknowledging a problem is a first step to addressing it with an appropriate tool rather than normalization and coping band aids.
Valid points, but you’d do well not to refer to that state as “depression.” Depression is a particular pathology and most people are going to interpret it in regards to the medical/chemical circumstance rather than what you’re describing.
Siloing the concepts seems like a bad idea. Let's say someone has bad life circumstances, bad reinforcing patterns of behavior, plus a chemical imbalance in their brain. If they seek medical help for "depression", should treatment focus on the chemical imbalance? It could be that chemical imbalance is entirely due to their life circumstances, and addressing those would be much more appropriate than medicating them.
Treatment should focus on both. That doesn’t mean that bad life circumstances are depression though; rather they can be a factor contributing to depression.
If you went to a doctor for type 2 diabetes, they would tell you to eat healthier and exercise as well as to take medications when needed. Your eating and activity habits are not themselves diabetes, even though they contribute directly to your diabetes. Another person could act exactly the same but not trigger diabetes because of lower genetic predisposition. And another person could have a healthier lifestyle than you and have diabetes despite that (e.g. Type 1). Lifestyle is a contributor while diabetes is the pathology.
Life circumstances can be a contributor, but depression is a pathology. An effective healthcare team will treat both.
The medical community doesn't own the entire term. An individual should be able to say "I think I'm depressed" when reflecting on their own mental state, without that implying a narrow medical condition. Or worse, some paternalistic doctor attacking them for self-diagnosing.
You can say whatever you want to say if you feel it expresses your point. I’m simply trying to illustrate how many people would misconstrue your meaning if you refer to “depression” that way.
You can't willpower through it if it's a defense mechanism employed by your brain to hide underlying pain. Maybe it's time to try something new. Check out Gabor Maté: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=74DDEDmHDvw
Don't ignore it. Laugh about it! It wasn't lost on me writing the comment either. Isn't it great that the very thing that brings us pain can also be the vehicle for our healing?
I agree here. I think the key for me was to redefine the relationship and not break it off cold turkey. I find it interesting that the OP mentioned a push notification is what brought them back into the addiction.
I also think it's important to remember some of these sites have been designed with the explicit intention of being addictive. Didn't some of the biggest sites hire behavioral psychologists to help design products that get people hooked?[1] I'm not surprised to hear that folks are feeling this way and I think it's an entirely valid and legitimate feeling to be addicted to Youtube and the Internet.
The internet has been life changing for me and I can easily say I have been addicted to it before. As an autistic person who has a lot of sensory issues, the computer has provided a super safe and easy way to explore the world. But it's been easy to get too attached and not want to do anything that I need to IRL.
In early December I disabled all notifications on my phone and set a schedule to check my phone twice a day. I've found that I've been way happier as a result and not getting stuck in internet holes. I see push notifications as a net negative on my mental health and I think I'll keep them off long term.
May we all find a healthy balance that works for us.
Passive consumption and active skill building are different emotional contexts.
Adam Smith wrote of it hundreds of years ago; extreme division of labor will make humans as dumb as the lowest creature.
To reduce screen time during covid I ditched my TV, bought a guitar. Not saying everyone should pick up music; I already knew how to play saxophone and piano; it was evolving my current state. The point is I cut passive consumption to infrequent mentorship via YT tutorials, rather than endless staring, to focus on mechanical skill building.
Our society needs to let go of career memes, which IMO are coupled to historical memes like “A man named Farmer is a farmer for life” which forces us to relinquish our dynamism in deference to memes of greater good. But I should qualify; I grew up in farm land, building barns, fixing big machines (programming machines all night), cutting wood in January, managing livestock, was routine in my teens. Diverse hands on experience was baked in early (only in my 40s now). Someone without that will have a harder time.
The only evidence human agency must serve aristocratic vision is being told as much from birth.
“ A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
If you're intent on getting off the internet, Gabor has several books worth reading.
One trouble with his writing and speaking on the subject isn't that I think he's wrong or does a bad job at all, but like anything in psychology, you aren't going to read it and "get there", so to speak. What Gabor describes is often years of critical reflection away from fully making sense. I guess from my perspective I don't get the sense that he's aware of that; he speaks with ease, confidence, and a tone that suggests this can all be so easy.
Take for example the simple notion that your anxieties are a feedback loop, deeply entrenched through decades after being initiated in your childhood. This isn't far fetched, but for many of us, the idea we had hard times in childhood that could cause real trauma is far fetched. It doesn't seem to make sense, and you might almost feel silly or guilty for entertaining the thought. Your parents loved you, right? You had food and clothes, a cool bed shaped like a fire truck, etc.
It takes a long time to navigate those things and uncover what might have gone wrong (if in fact something ever did), and to assess that with family in a way that's constructive and as factual as possible (if that's even an options). The very nature of these things causes us to pretend it never happened, and for adults, the reason it was never addressed could be because they didn't notice it or recognize its significance. This gives everyone the sense that everything was "fine".
Of course there are more acutely traumatic experiences in childhood, and that's easy to point out yet still can be so difficult to recognize as a harmful, frightening, overwhelming thing. You build up these defences, excuses, explanations, etc. Nah, there's no way you had childhood trauma.
Maybe this is incredibly obvious to most people. It wasn't for me, and I found myself putting down his books and thinking... Well shit, if it's that simple, what's wrong with me? Why can't I get past X or Y if I'm endowed with this knowledge? I don't expect miracles, and I didn't, but I suppose his writing brought me very close to the problem yet left me feeling so far from the solution. It's almost like you're looking at the peak of a mountain straight ahead of you, yet the only way to the top is to back track an enormous distance, navigate around the base from far away, doubt yourself the entire way, and climb the mountain from an approach on the opposite side you're currently on.
To his credit, he acknowledges his own lack of progress and deficiencies, and how it's always an ongoing project. Of course it is. I suppose I have the sense that he underestimate how hard it is to get the the point where you can leverage the paradigm he's offering, even though it seems a stone's throw from solutions.
Regardless, I highly recommend his books. I'd just add the caveat that if it resonates with you, don't expect to make meaningful progress on any new ideas for a while. And that's okay. These things always take time – especially if you've been living with it for decades.
I guess you can say I just haven't reflected enough but I really have a hard time with the whole branch of thinking that blames all our patterns and activities on some hidden childhood trauma, and more generally with the obsession over finding the "original sin" cause for the patterns. It just feels like a cop out to have an explanation to something one can't deal with as if we have to blame the universe for our nature.
I find it more interesting to focus on developing modes of thinking and making our immediate environment more conducive to leading a good life, by recognizing bad thought process patterns and actions or people that lead us to do those bad things. Explaining the reason or understanding it always felt completely useless to me and it's why I can't really give the time of day to most of these theories of the mind or however you'd call them.
You’re not wrong, this kind of thinking can actually be a diversion from solving problems. I mean, if you can blame things you don’t necessarily remember and perhaps even your parents, there might be some sense that you can pass the buck and therefor responsibility for getting better or doing better.
At the same time, I think the idea isn’t necessarily that some huge traumatic thing had to occur. In fact it could have been fairly innocuous or mild. What people do though, sometimes, is reiterate certain events to such a degree that their psychological response and the neurological pathways it follows become excessively worn in. Those pathways become easier to follow and more likely to be followed. Getting anxious about this, feeling stupid about that, feeling shame about that. The more it happens, the easier it is to feel it.
It isn’t so much that we blame a single event and move on, but that we try to understand the source of various developments. Try to understand what experiences informed certain behaviours.
At the end of the day, whether you were 6, 16, or 26, any event which shaped you is still your responsibility to address in this current moment. There’s no blame to pass or responsibility to offload. We can’t blame the universe for our nature because if we’re unhappy with the way we are, we’re still the only ones who can do something about it. Whether it was caused by childhood trauma or aliens. The end result is your personal accountability in every moment.
There does seem to be credibility to the idea of minor traumas being very influential during formative years. It doesn’t have to have happened to all of us of course, but as children we do internalize things like crazy. One major theme I see is when caregivers are present but emotionally unavailable. When kids are isolated in this way, it seems very benign on the outside yet also seems to be able to cause major issues in kids early on and late into their lives. It becomes much less common to be influenced by experiences in the same way by the time we hit puberty, for example. We internalize much less and confront things we’re uncomfortable with, if not with peers or family then with ourselves. In our formative years we simply lack that ability.
I get that and I thought a similar way before first picking up a book on childhood trauma (a partner of mine insisted, he said this would help) and, while reading, taking a long hard look at my childhood and realizing some things. I later read more similar books and none of them offered an easy way out. Plenty of hard way, though, and while some of those might start out with blaming your parents, the end goal is always to not need blame anymore.
Many of the things I started going through with these books and later on a therapist are probably something I could have dealt with, without first identifying the trauma. But it would be the kind of "could have done it", like I also could have done learning advanced math by just reading some books instead of going to university. In theory it works, for some people it works, but for most of us, taking some classes and having homework and exams is what makes it actually possible.
Permit me an example: Imagine this - you placed an empty bottle somewhere in a corner on the ground. You were busy with chores, it was in the way, you'll deal with it later. Your partner walks in and accidentally knocks it over. You forget about your chore. Your entire mind is filled with the need to apologize, hide, try to make up for putting that bottle there. You watch your partner sigh, pick it up, put it away and proceed with whatever he was doing, but you still can't focus on anything over the intense feeling of guilt and fear. It will take a few minutes to let you get back to work and probably at least an hour for the feeling to entirely go away. What do you do with this shit? I didn't know. I just knew situations like this far too well and they happened a lot.
Reading a book on trauma gave me several clues that had gone right past me for at this point about 13-15 years of my adult life. First off, I didn't understand this was a limbic response. In hindsight, if you need a textbook example for freeze responses, I'm right here. Then I had to understand what I was afraid of. That was tough, because up until reading anything on this, I did not understand "someone shouting at me and calling me stupid for several minutes" to be something that would cause panic. For a little kid, it definitely does. And in this moment, mentally I reverted to little kid mode. I needed to handle whatever the almighty parent throws at me. In my case, handling it was suffering through it and either crying in my room when it was over or later dissociating to escape the pain.
So basically, I had a flashback. Plain and simple. While I consciously knew that would never happen, something inside of me expected my partner to go nuclear on me for being so inconsiderate and lazy and I would not be able to do anything. I would just stand there and take it until he's finished shouting and I'm allowed to go to my room and cry.
My partner doesn't shout at me. Never has. This made it so hard for me to understand, what was going on. Telling me that I was overreacting and just consciously understanding I was safe was helping a little, but it was painfully slow. Also, was I overreacting? Wasn't this how people feel when they have done something wrong? Understanding, what I was actually afraid of (my dad) and that this situation was not normal (it was emotional abuse), jump-started recovery. I suddenly knew what I had to compare reality to. I knew better what to tell myself to soothe and ease out of panic. I could start doing some of those cliche exercises to low-key trigger that fear, walk through it and come out the other end to actively understand I'm still okay. I could also imagine rescuing myself or reliving the situation today and react as the self-reliant adult I am. All the (not) fun stuff.
Going from there, I gradually discovered more and more flashbacks that kept eating up my mental capacity, so I could isolate the triggers and deal with the emotional mess they caused, one at a time. And lo and behold - if you are not busy dissociating on a daily basis, you can actually have real emotions. It's great!
At this point, the amount of blame involved is very little. Sometimes I use a little blame to get out of the shame-cycle. It usually starts with feeling guilty for not replying to some shaming message my parents sent me, starts spiraling into feeling like I'm the worst child ever and then ends with "Screw you dad, I've handled your emotions long enough. We're not doing that again." That is part blame and I hope that I will eventually be able to do without it. It's a work in progress.
I found Scattered Minds very interesting in the context of ADHD. I don’t deal with addiction, but the next one was The Realm of Hungry Ghosts. It’s a very compassionate and holistic perspective on addiction that covers far more of the manifestations of addiction than most books I’ve read. Gabor has great intuitions about how the social fabric of addiction, recovery, and prevention.
I read Hold On to Your Kids and enjoyed it, but I prefer many others in the category quite a bit more. I agree with what he says and I think it’s worthwhile information. Perhaps I just prefer another format in the context of childhood psychology. If you have young kids you might find that you enjoy it, though — it’s certainly worth taking a look.
I'm addicted to the internet the way I'm addicted to electricity. It powers my quality of life: I don't feel any shame about it.
Wanting and expecting to use electricity and being reliant on having it available to me doesn't make me pathetic (although arguably it does make me weak).
It’s not about being productive but about not having fulfilling activities. If the internet is fulfilling for you great, but there a point where the addiction takes away other fulfilling activities.
No they don’t. It’s bad to be a workaholic sure, but the universe is an unforgiving place and we’re here only to be productive. This is a truth regardless of your metaphysical beliefs.
What people need is to make sure they’re not being overly productive at one thing while letting other things drift away.
how did you make this jump? the universe doesn't care in the slightest how you spend your time or what you do. we're not here to anything. we're utterly insignificant and our life is devoid of meaning. you can choose to fill it with fulfillment by some definition of producing something. I really don't care. I just think it's sad to define your life in relation to some arbitrary definition of your externally bounded output. but by all means, if that's what you want...
just don't say it's The Way of The Universe. That's just wrong.
This is way different though. The internet is a powerful tool and we need it: forums and media are not things we need. I doubt you’re addicted to the productive spheres of the internet (although I am addicted to discovering new domains and improving my mathematical knowledge: that may be considered “productive.”)
I have the same issue. As an orthodox Jew, I'm very very thankful for keeping the Sabbath, because that makes it 25 hours off my phone. It reminds me that I can do this, and I can limit my time. But setting those boundaries is really really hard!
I use Cold Turkey Blocker between 9AM and 5PM. My wife's got the password should I need to unlock it. It's a partial solution, but if you have a few sites that are habitual (I can type "cmd+t ol enter" in my sleep) it can help break the habit.
Locking the phone and laptop in the car for the weekend used to work quite well for me, but my living situation is different now.
Blocking distracting page elements like I block ads (uBlock Origin), and occasionally blocking websites altogether (SelfControl.app) when needed makes a big difference.
Leaving the cellphone out of the bedroom was another important improvement.
I also added rules to remove pagination buttons from reddit and HN.
At some point you hit diminishing returns because you still seek out these websites. The hard part is closing the computer when you are done computing, and tackling boredom with other means. I have no solution for this, except working in one hour increments with timers.
> and no matter how hard I try to will power through it and cut down my usage I always
You can't make it impossible to access the internet, but you can make it super inconvenient.
For instance, one thing that worked for me was blocking HN and Reddit on my router. Obviously I can get around it but the inconvenience to circumvent makes the habit feel like it's not worth the payoff. Or, it at least makes you more aware of your reflex, and the fact that you don't get the immediate reward makes it easier to break the habit loop.
100% this. I have Reddit blocked on my laptop, and the browser blocked on my phone at certain times of day. Again, I can absolutely get around this, but it has disrupted the habit for me.
It feels like being addicted to the best of other people. Its like going out with your friends, and the best moments, the wittys comments, the funniest rant, are distilled into a hour long avalanch. The internet, is just other peoples personality, filtered, distilled and served.
TL, DR; You are addicted to other people, without lasting connections. Shame on you for being a social animal
I find things like leechblock[0] useful. In general, will power is a poor substitute for designing your environment. It's a limited resource that should only be used to start developing habits.
What about the existential dread route (sorry!). "If I don't quit this, then I'll never do X.. and my life amounts to nothing". It might be blocking a lot of life goals that will never come to be.
Isn't this one of those things that usually ends up having the opposite effect it's supposed to have? As in, people who scold themselves about their specific addiction are likely to include the self scolding as one of the rituals related to the addiction. The feeling bad part / existential dread can be as much a part of the addiction itself as the feeling good / placated part.
I spend way more time random surfing than I probably should. Honestly we probably are both dealing with ADHD, depression, or some sort of anxiety disorder.
I actually do have an (adult) ADHD diagnosis, though I've always been a bit sceptical of it. It seemed too easy to get and I really didn't think the testing criteria were very good.
I have wanted to try medicine to see if it helps me at all, but I've never been able to do so. My GP was willing to perscribe me something, but decided my BP was too high and that was that.
There are definitely anxiety issues at play as well, but I don't know to what degree.
My assessment took several days, totalling around 8 hours of time in the clinic. A lot of interviewing and cognitive assessments. I'm not sure if that's standard, but maybe that gives you something to contrast it with. I left the experience with a fairly hefty document describing my abilities/disabilities along with various recommendations moving forward.
I also received an IQ test result which was strange to see, and I actually would have preferred not to see it.
I had to fill out a huge document (30 pages) going over my childhood and adult life, issues I face(d), and all kinds of other little things, as well as some multiple choice assesments. My mother had to fill out another set of documents (10 pages) about me. They required any and all report cards I had as a kid.
I had to get that all together and done before I went, because the clinic is a 2.5 hour drive meaning it wasn't practical to spend a ton of time there.
The actual clinic time consisted of an interview that took ~2 hours and seveal tests. The only test I remember clearly was something called the CPT test, because I thought what they were asking me to do was actually impossible (don't press the X when it's shown).
After that I had a follow up virtual call a few weeks later to discuss the results and they provided me with a document about all the testing, results, and steps going forward. In their own words I have "severe inattentive ADHD".
My main issue is if you know exactly what to tell them of course you'll be diagnosed, it's not like a physical issue that you can't fake. Someone seeking a diagnoses just for drugs could easily have gotten it. Additionally it was a private clinic and I worry there was some incentive for them to provide the result they thought the client wanted.
I suppose the gist of it was that I felt stupid all my life and never challenged myself as a result. Then I found out I’m not, at least according to that scale.
I had aspirations I didn’t pursue because I thought I wasn’t capable, for example. Lacked confidence because I believed I wasn’t competent. Suddenly I was faced with the notion that I wasn’t failed by genetics or something I couldn’t control, but rather, I’d simply lived for decades apparently completely unaware of myself and wasting my potential. What a strange thought.
My score wasn’t exceptional. I expected it to be much lower, though.
I’m still not sure how I feel. I wonder if I should do more with myself or not, if any of it even matters, that sort of thing. I suspect never knowing actually could have been better; it’s unlikely at this point that I could ever realize potential that I was previously unaware of. I don’t think it serves me at all. In a strange way I guess I liked assuming I wasn’t intelligent. I genuinely don’t feel intelligent.
You seem to be doing some kind of software dev (I skimmed your comment history). Curious if you got into that despite "feeling stupid" and not challenging yourself, and the IQ test came as a surprise in spite of that, or if you only decided to get into software after being confronted with being "not stupid"?
For what it's worth, I don't actually think IQ is a canonical measure of intelligence, and the narrative people have of "being stupid" is often driven by society valuing certain kinds of intelligence more than others. But the kind of intelligence it takes to do software dev is more widely considered the "legitimate" kind of intelligence (by people who tend to view intelligence in more reductive, "black-and-white" terms).
>For what it's worth, I don't actually think IQ is a canonical measure of intelligence, and the narrative people have of "being stupid" is often driven by society valuing certain kinds of intelligence more than others.
Not only IQ is correlated with every positive prosocial behavior we, in general, value but every seemingly disparate form of intelligence is correlated to the others so we can, in fact, talk about a single form of intelligence that manifest in different form (generally named "g factor"). This is just the inherent unfairness of life. I wish it wasn't true and only your hard-work would matter, but it doesn't.
This is actually what made it so disturbing to me. I think people with high g factor are innately advantaged by no merit of their own. According to my personal philosophy, I’d say these people (assuming they experience inordinate success in life in a career which leverages features of high g factor) are obligated to some degree to use that ability to uplift other people who struggle due to low g factor.
After some consideration I was left with the sense that I’d squandered something because I was too busy mired in egoism, navel gazing, insecurity, and helplessness driven by the sense that I’m less fortunate. And yet I’ve had a lot of good fortune which clearly stemmed from mental characteristics I believed I didn’t have.
I suppose I always felt like such an imposter. As though I was only ever hours or days away from being found out, then being relegated to a life more suited to someone as incompetent as I was.
Now I try to be less self absorbed and think more about what I can do for other people — people who can’t thrive in a technology-driven world due to innate disabilities, for example. Statistically it’s known that this is a staggering portion of our population, and these people deserve to get as much out of life as anyone. Living in poverty because you can’t understand how to apply for a job online, perform many basic jobs, navigate state or provincial websites to obtain disability assistance, or manage personal finances and so on is such an egregious offence to humanity in my mind.
In summary, I should have spent less time feeling sorry for myself and more time helping people with real problems.
I suspect I will never manage to meaningfully help people more than I would have when I thought I was stupid. I believed in pro social behaviour before the test. For that reason I’m not sure it helped me to see the IQ score.
I’ve been a software dev for about 15 years, and did the assessment about 2 years ago.
I got into software because it was the single thing I cared about that could earn me money. I really had no idea what I was doing and constantly went from frying pans into fires, learning what I needed in a frantic race to avoid being “found out”, so to speak. The last 7 or 8 years has been a lot better now that my foundations are better and I have a bit more confidence. My career would definitely benefit from more confidence.
> the kind of intelligence it takes to do software dev
This is true, but I suppose at the time I didn’t believe I was actually doing it. I’d endlessly compare myself to genius-level developers, or simply others with skills I didn’t have. If someone at work could do something better than I could, well, it was obviously because I’m incompetent. How could I be 10 years in and this person who’s 5 years in understands debugging and testing so comprehensively? Man, everyone’s going to realize I’m a fraud soon. I better cram in testing and debugging research this week.
The IQ definitely did come as a surprise in spite of that. I can mechanically shovel software knowledge into my brain, but I don’t do anything novel or interesting with it. I write okay software, but it’s largely just a feat of mimicking the work of intelligent people. I can make the thing that makes the company money, but I can’t make a thing that others would mimic as I do.
As I mentioned in another comment though, a lot of this was me being insecure, indulging that to excess, and being quite neurotic about it to the point that I was clearly overlooking significant advantages I had over others who truly did and still do experience disadvantages due to lower intelligence. That was a well deserved blow to my ego, to realize I was so self absorbed as to ignore values I believed were important to me. I didn’t think I was like that, but in fact I was — extremely so — for decades.
If I can live comfortably with a job in software, why am I spending time feeling sorry for myself while other people, some I know personally, live with less because society values their minds less?
I suppose though that the reason I didn’t want to see the IQ score is because I suspect it was too late in life for me to respond in a meaningful way that would be aligned with my values. I have the sense that I squandered something. Rather than feel sorry for myself about it, I’ll do my best to turn things around.
I'm not the GP, so I don't get to make that call. If they say no that's the end of the story. It's frustrating, but ultimatly just how it is.
There's no possibility of a second opinion either because I'm really damn lucky to even have access to a GP, the waiting list for one is ~3-4 years long right now if you don't already have one.
That's crazy. Where do you live? In Poland I just skipped the insurance system to get ADHD meds and went to a psychiatrist specialising in ADHD privately - $70 for a 20 minute visit seems a bit steep but it's better than waiting years.
No, that's impossible. I live in a Canadian province where the provincial healthcare situation is very, very bad.
There are no private doctors and private psychiatrists are not legally allowed to perscribe. ADHD medication is controlled so only NPs, GPs, and (I think) psychologists are permitted to write a script for it.
Basically there are no options for me except the ones I have already taken, short of moving to a different province thousands of kilometers away.
Can they prescribe non-stimulant ADHD medications? I imagine those are less-strictly regulated.
My previous psychiatrist said he's had some luck with patients on stimulants lowering their stimulant doses and adding a non-stimulant treatment like Strattera, but his patients rarely had success stopping all stimulants and taking only Strattera. That's just one docs opinion, but having been treated for adhd for 15 years, it doesn't surprise me.
So, consider yourself lucky you don't already need stimulants to get by. Some of the newer non-stimulant options may be effective for you, and you won't have to deal with the "druggy" aspect of being on stimulants for work. Stimulants can seriously affect your life, both positively and negatively. You might be able to get things done that you never would have done before - I felt like I was finally able to compete at a normal level when I started - but you might retreat from society at the same time, be less interested in spending time with loved ones or building relationships, and then there's all the short-term side-effects like trouble sleeping or losing interest in eating.
Basically my experience has been a double-edged sword and it's bittersweet. For every way that it's benefited me, ADHD meds negatively affect me in some other way and it's hard to quantify the net balance.
> So, consider yourself lucky you don't already need stimulants to get by.
I wish that were the case, I've been heavily "abusing" Redbull and Claritan-D (non-drowsey with sudafed, I found this helped purely by accident a few years ago) for years just so I can barely function enough to hold down a job. It's probably part of why my blood pressure is so bad in the first place.
I have to put literally all the energy I have into work, by the time 1700 rolls around I have no energy left to give for anything, I just crash. Most nights even getting supper is a huge ordeal, much less anything else.
Non-stimulant drugs might be an viable option, I haven't inquired about that yet, but I intend too.
I apreciate you giving a small window into what the medication has been like for you. How it would affect me and how I'd change on it has been one of my main concerns should I somehow actually get perscribed anything. At this point I'd try anything because the older I get the less sustainable this all becomes.
Medical tourism is an option too, I think. If you visited a doctor in another country, and obtained a prescription, you'd be allowed to bring it with you back to Canada, right?
> you'd be allowed to bring it with you back to Canada, right?
You’d never be able to get a foreign prescription filled in Canada, federal and provincial regulations forbid that. Brining medicine back would be fine, but then you can’t get more without an expensive flight again.
If I lived near the US border I’d just get an American doctor and get prescriptions filled in America, but I’m nowhere even remotely close to the border.
> I am seriously addicted to the internet in general and while it may not be an addiction in the physical sense, it has caused major issues in my life.
Interestingly it still can have physical effects. I have seen a case of an person who got addicted to web novels (like every day another short chapter; hit their quirky humor; not porn; clinically depressed). And that person showed effects of withdrawal in their interaction with that media in certain situations. Sure the effects where comparable harmless but still there anyway.
People (probably not you) are often prone to think that addictions to non-classical "drugs" which don't crate a physical/body dependence is mostly harmless not taking it serious at all, but it is not. In case of the person above there where cases where they where unable to function like a normal human sometimes for one or two days because their addiction had fully consumed them. (Through last time I have seen them they where doing better wrt. to this aspect.) Ironically that person had been aware that they where prone to addiction due to there mental health state and staid far away drugs, including smoking, porn and a strict ban on alcohol outside of social gatherings and even there close to never. And then the internet screwed them over.
Ah, this is a description of me as well. No drinking, just my web serials for hours and hours every day. Some of them feel like TV, I can feel my brain atrophy as I just glide over and through the words -- it can barely be called reading, at times. One of my eyes got blurry and painful recently. I was unable to stop reading, even though staring at screens caused me great pain. Maybe that was the cause in the first place.
It's a peaceful ocean, an escape. It's enjoyable, it's numbing. It's starting to affect my work.
I've struggled with this, probably not to the extent you have, but enough that I recognize my decisions over the last two decades hurt myself mentally, socially, and career wise. I've tried to quit various things and of course eventually return to old habits (quitting does help though, I encourage everyone to at least try).
The only method that really works for me is to have other constructive things I genuinely want to do. It's easier to avoid picking up the phone or getting on the computer (breaking the habit) if I'm thinking about X instead. That can be a hobby, a project, or even better a friend, relative, child. I don't want to sound like I'm saying, "just do this one trick." I know it's not easy and everyone is different.
The children's book Frog and Toad Together has a story about willpower called "Cookies". It sums up my experience pretty well. If you do write a book about what works for you, consider making it a children's book: I've gotten more comfort and understanding from those than anything else.
It's worse with shorts as you don't even think "just one more" as consuming a single short is so "effortless"/"short" that you might not think about them in singularity and instead think "just a few more".
The youtube/tictok shorts are a genius form of getting the human brain hooked.
It's similar to how eating a piece of cake can make you feel guilty so instead you switch to a bag of M&Ms or other such small sweets thinking it's better for you as "I'll only have a few", and before you know it, you've eaten the whole bag in one go which is worse than the single piece of cake would have been.
I've found watching long content is better to keep such addictions in check. When I've finished watching a 2h long movie, I feel also "done" and ready for bed vs the endless stream of streaming shows, youtube videos and other social media shorts can keep you hooked for days on end.
I don't know if I would call it an addiction, but I feel very similar in the sense that I spend a ton of hours on the internet and tinkering with technology.
I did take a break. A long break. I joined the Army in 2021, after being laid off during the pandemic, thinking I wanted to leave technology for good. Then after I graduated from basic, I realized I was probably going to be a shitty, unfit soldier and that I missed all of the interesting technical and engineering challenges we solve as software engineers.
I'm still working on getting back into the profession (pretty much due to my own laziness the past year... I guess needed time to recalibrate after everything). But, I have spent countless hours the past year setting up homelab equipment, various servers, writing scripts and small programs to organize stuff.
Youtube isn't something I really could get addicted to, because I don't like learning from videos or watching stuff I could read in a quarter of the time. But I guess I do have a pretty bad TV addiction. I wasted tons of hours when I was depressed binge-watching shows online. It's to the point I don't even watch movies often because I prefer the intimacy I feel when I know the characters well and am deeply immersed in a series, especially something running multiple seasons. I binged all 5 seasons of the Handmaid's Tale a few weeks ago in less than a week, for example, and considered immediately rewatching them all.
As another has stated below, I guess this is to fill the void that occurs in life when we are single and childless, unemployed, or both.
I still don't think if I would call my internet usage or passion for technology "addiction". The TV/Netflix/etc. ... sure. That's fair. But I think it's fine to be obsessed with something like programming, especially if it's your profession. People who get paid to do something they love are lucky.
You are not weak, you're battling against groups of some of the smartest people in the world who spend their days doing nothing other than figuring out ways to manipulate you to steal and keep your attention, in order to maximise their engagement metrics/ad dollars. It's an incredibly difficult and unfair fight.
I'd recommend Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, I've found it personally really helpful.
Unfortunately many apps aren’t that good and just resort to trying to be the most important app in your device.
Too much ux practice has been perverted to have the user work for their app instead of working for the user.
The really nice thing is we are not alone and rarely the first. The goal is to create and not consume. Write lots like this comment and revisit and review it. Add to it mindfully.
To help break the distraction cycles to finish a book, there are more and more resources out there for disrupting the novelty seeking attention dopamine loops.
Some things that help:
- make your phone screen black and white
- turn off all notifications of all apps. This means alerts, notifications , counters and dots.
- the notification thet is on is your calendar. Setup notifications to remind you to check your device or messages at a set time. Your brain the knows you can enjoy it with full focus.
- a tablet is handy for moving your consumption to. When you put it down it’s put down.
- The mode of iOS is really decent.
- Use airplane mode liberally
- social media and digital detoxes help
- On your laptop manually edit your hosts files. Put all the sites you refresh many times a day. Make it a bit hard to edit and you’ll discover you won’t do it much.
- block Hn too on main decides. Dedicate a device to read and consume it and leave it there. Nothing you’ll miss out on.
- turn on all digital health tracking so you see your daily app and website usage. Rescuetime is a great little app.
There is a link that I’m trying to remember which explains this and more very well.
'Addiction' depends on circumstances. If you're lucky enough to be able to spend copious amounts of time online, good for you. I know for me, I don't have that opportunity. There's too much other stuff hampering my ability to get online like kids, marriage, chores, other hobbies, work, etc
> If you're lucky enough to be able to spend copious amounts of time online, good for you.
I am not the lucky one, you are. My life is a sick joke, meanwhile you by all traditional measures have it made if you have all that.
If I didn't have my job I'd have literally nothing going for me. When I say this has cost me oppertunites I don't mean small ones, I mean even things like potential relationships. Everything has always come second to this issue.
Maybe the fact that they were used by seemingly very different society for thousand of years and society who did enforce them were more stable and successful? The hubris of modern people to think they are so enlightened they can engineer society to fit they ideological views as if humans were mere economical units.
> seemingly very different society for thousand of years and society who did enforce them were more stable and successful
Ahh, so a bias for values that were evolutionarily successful? I can kind of see the utility there.
Would this hypothetical system take into account the dominance of the societies in question, or is it just specifically how long they've survived/been stable?
Can you do a two week detox? Go skiing or camping or something where there is no internet. Just have a basic phone for an emergency. Take a friend or family member as well which is a good method is to have someone else around as well.
There may be internet detox camps you can go to as well.
Also try therapy it can help, you are not alone in your struggles ..
You sound like you satisfy at least one of the two usual criteria for addiction in the sense 12-step programs use the term. If you ever want someone to show you a program that might help you recover, just reply with your contact info and I’d be happy to help
Extensions don't work as I can disable them too easily. Even router level restrictions are too easy for me to bypass, it takes all of a few seconds.
The only thing that has ever provided me mild success was locking my devices in my gun cabinet after a certian time of day. It was easy to get them out, but it took long enough that I could at least reconsider.
I was only able to matinain that a week or two before falling into old habbits. Inevitabily I'll have a particularly bad day at work and any progress will go out the window as I look for comfort/a distraction.
When I was playing World of Warcraft too much, I decided that each time I saw a loading screen, I would do a small amount of pushups or sit ups. Nothing crazy. 5 or 10 or whatever. Less if I was tired, more if I was bored. It was a tiny physical barrier that made me think more cautiously about what it was that I was doing, and kind of "broke the loop" of the mindless activity I was doing.
Perhaps you could institute something similar. Each time you open a new tab, you do some sort of physical distraction that gets you out of your chair. If pushups and sit ups aren't your thing, it could be something as simple as "Get up from the computer and walk around the room for 20 seconds". If there are stairs in your house, you could walk up and down them once. If you don't have stairs, maybe you could put some resistance bands by a door in your house. You walk to that door, grab the bands, and do some resistance training for 5 to 10 seconds.
The thing that really helped it sink in for me was that it was something that was physically removing me from the computer. Moving away from the computer and then coming back helped to me see just how much time I was spending there. The soreness in my arms and core also helped reinforce how much energy was being devoted to the activity, too. It became a reminder that, "Yes, I have loaded into a lot of different zones today. What have I accomplished? In the game, I suppose I made a few gold or whatever, but for me the person outside of the game, what am I actually accomplishing? The point of the game is to have fun - am I still having fun? I started doing this workout stuff because I felt guilty about what I'm doing. Is that sense of guilt fun?"
You have to actually want to quit, though. Increasing the friction for access is a gimmick at best. Right now you're in the self deception phase; you know it's bad and that you should quit, and intellectually you want to quit, but your lizard brain doesn't agree.
Look at how folks who successfully quit porn do it.
> a week or two before falling into old habits
You need to replace old habits with new habits.
Also, as a random aside, get your hormones checked. An imbalance of sex hormones can make things like concentration exceedingly difficult.
> any progress
You've fallen victim of the "fuck it"s. You assume if you fail you might as well not try. A habit is that behavior we return to, and this goes for things we don't habitually do, too. Just because you fuck up doesn't mean you should quit. That nagging voice in your head, the one that says "why even bother, you'll just screw up again" is a liar.
You must get up. You must try again. If you listen to that voice you won't even try. Don't believe the inner labeling of "I'm just a failure", if you believe that you'll be right.
> comfort / a distraction
And there it is. You are dependant on the internet for a dopamine dump.
Try planning your time down to the 1/2 hour for the day. If you allocate YT in there then fine. If you don't also fine. But you know exactly how much you've budgeted and what your sacrificing if you break your plan.
The amount of time I spend on the Internet is insane and no matter how hard I try to will power through it and cut down my usage I always fail. If I ever figure out how to overcome it I'll have to write a book or something, because I've wasted years of my life and missed out on too many oppertunities.
People will call me weak, or pathetic, or say I haven't tried hard enough, but as someone who did use tabacco I have found Internet 'addiction' a much tougher beast to deal with.