Teddy and Bernie

THE NEXT HUGE AMERICAN ADDICTION PROBLEM

JUST GETTING STARTED AND GROWING FAST

I'm bad.

*

Opiod addiction in the U.S. is killing, what? 65,000 a year and growing! Way more are 

seriously wounded; next year's fatalities. 

And our new cell/text addiction is already challenging DUI for accidents with deaths and maimings. 

... Coming down the pike

The NEW ADDICTION - promising to scramble our culture - is being hypodermic-ed into our ears, which is a pretty direct route to the BRAIN.  

A U D I O B O O K S

Addiction

Getting Hooked

The addiction process starts with long car trips. The miles just slide by while your mind is on an espionage caper or suiting up for an spacewalk over a giant planet. The autodriver we have all trained in our brains does the driving.

Gateway Drug

Then you start listening while you do work that doesn’t require much thought. You thrill to a daring romance while you vacuum or weed or make beds; your domestic autopilot handles the tasks.

Hooked

The addiction starts to become obvious when you slip in your earbuds just after you wake up in the morning. Then you find you can listen while you do slightly more complex work. Making breakfast, even an omelet, no problem. 

Soon you can handle more:  sorting things, scanning your e-mail, glancing over the news headlines, while the final chapters of a book come to a thrilling climax. 

When people don’t notice you have your ear buds in, they might ask you a question or even try to start a conversation. In the early stages of the addiction, you pause the audio and pull your consciousness out of the speedboat chasing the submarine and refocus on the content coming from the other audio source, someone’s mouth. Deeper into the addiction, you will deny you heard the interruption in the plot. “Oh, sorry,” you’ll lie if the interrupter is insistent and you have to attend to some issue. You’re not sorry; you’re irritated at the interruption.

How does this addiction work?

Pre-audiobook, “interesting” was a sometimes thing. Events in life swing through cycles of “boring” and “tolerable,” popping up to “interesting” only now and then. With a good book, read by someone who knows how to do it, the “interesting” switch is pretty much always on. The pleasure chemicals in your brain, the endocannabinoids, dopamine, the endorphins, are all tickled by this non-stop state of interesting. The mind and the body become acclimated to the warmer climate of these neurochem levels.  When the audiobook stops, there is a subtle but insistent compulsion to fire up another one. Addictive, they are.

If all this describes your current state, addicted you are.

Background (we can’t blame Big Pharma for this one)

Our technology is the direct descendent of the Walkman. Then the portable sound source thingies rocketed ahead with the iPod.  Now phones and wireless earbuds! Plus tiny devices storing books and books and clipped to your collar, pouring interesting, exciting, enlightening material right into your skull.

Just as portable audio devices were becoming ever better, the spoken word content has grown and become … just better. 

There are now multiple lifetimes of listening material in audiobooks. An army of book readers/actors is turning more and more of the written word into digital addiction. Whatever your taste - modern fiction, historic classics, how-to guidance, self improvement, stand-up comedy, romance, sci-fi… it’s just waiting for your downloading, first into your device, then into your mind. 

People are clearly becoming addicted to this new drug of thoughts, pouring into you while you just listen. Not taking nearly the concentration, the commitment to focus on the printed word. The words just flow through your ears into your brain. It is the easiest way to soak up a good book ever invented.

How to Cope?

Try to hold onto your pre-audiobook passions. Slip in an actual conversation now and then. Keep a tenuous contact with your physical surroundings.  Remember the other humans around you.

Some people can dance - even dance well - while toking up the James Bond or the James Joyce. It might be the same autopilot that does the driving that does the dancing. So dance, baby, dance.

olde scooter

*Skull credit

btw: Very few deaths reported (so far).

GOT A AUDIOBOOK-LOVING FRIEND? SEND 'EM THIS LINK: 
http://seniorjunior.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-next-huge-american-addiction.html