Addiction

Yup, that sounds really good doesn’t it? All glamorous and exciting and in need to drastic action.

But it’s not. The really, really sad thing about this is that I am currently addicted to watching TV series. I could spend hours, days even, just clicking on the next episode of the current series I am addicted to and my life would pass quite happily by and I wouldn’t mind.

I am currently fighting the urge not to write this and to watch ‘just’ one more episode. But then that would turn into three and, whoosh, the morning would be gone and I wouldn’t have done any of the more useful things that are essential to having an actual life.

After I had forced myself to switch the machine off and go to bed yesterday evening, I lay awake wondering about this addiction. In so many ways it is like some other addictions. Life is pretty crap but when I am drunk it seems slightly less crap and I may even enjoy it. Life hurts a lot but when I am out of my head on the drug of choice, the pain recedes and life is okay for a bit. Life is disappointing but if I watch another episode, I can participate in someone else’s life and mine will just pass without having to bother with it.

I am not equating this pathetic addiction of mine with serious ones, merely saying that the effect is similar. For the forty minutes or hour that I am sitting here watching nonsense on the TV, I am surrounded by other people’s lives, their pain, their joys. I do not have to think about mine. The script is perfect, all the ends neatly tied up, tears do not disfigure, people deliver the lines that we would all have loved to deliver but never get round to. This is an easy world to live in and engage with. It gets sorted out and when it is sad, there is always a happy moment coming. I can sit and laugh and cry at all that happens without having to make any effort, or without really feeling.

Like the actors, I can for a while pretend that it is all real, I can have a life that is perfectly scripted and I don’t even have to go out for the front door. And it is so addictive. I used to do this with detective novels and now it’s TV series. It’s hiding, it’s staying at home safe and living my life second or third hand. It’s not looking out of the window because the screen is more appealing. And it has to stop.

The problem with that is the effort that is involved in actually making my life more appealing than a TV series. When friends and family die in real life, it is shit. It is not a glib exploration of the stages of grief, beautifully acted and wonderfully resolved, usually in five minutes. It is messy and painful and horrid and lasts for years and years. And that is why this must stop. I can no longer hide in other people’s lives, especially not fictitious people’s lives, not matter how interesting or appealing it seems. I have to leave the screen with all its bright shiny feelings and easy resolutions and leap into the muck and mire that is real life.

But just let me watch one last episode….