Days Free of Fic: 0
Longest Streak: 0
Why am I treating Fic like an Addiction?
“I can’t keep living life like this. I hate my life.” This is what I feel every day getting out of bed. Anxiety starts to swarm my brain, stress starts to rise as I feed the animals that live with me and I’m slammed with guilt and shame.
Its compulsive. I read for thirty minutes to an hour before I get out of bed. If I don’t have a story on deck to start I get waves of anxiety. I’ll sit down with my phone and instead of opening up a social media to scroll like many tech addicts without realizing it, I pull up an AO3 tab.
That was enough that had me concerned. Then this last week I stumbled across a video from HealthyGamerGG on youtube:
I decided to click on it because I have people in my life who struggle with addiction and I wanted to learn if there were more ways to support them.
However, what I was instead confronted with is I am essentially living with one myself. Fanfiction. Innocuous yes, but as Dr. K listed off the ways addition is seen especially with addictions that aren’t chemical substances I realized this was my life.
I use fic to numb my anxiety and disappear into another world to avoid the pain and hardship of life. I hide it from everyone and never talk about it because I feel shame and guilt I feel for wasting my time in such a way. I live moments scared that I’ll be caught out reading it at work as my “breaks” slowly creep longer and longer.
Then he starts to talk about what he sees in patients with addiction and the number one thing he mentions is they are tired of life like this and I felt that so deep in my soul. He started to mention the things that I thought every morning, pinpoint the shame I felt, and I felt confused, depressed and ever so slightly hopeful.
Maybe I can change. Maybe I can get time back in my life to do hobbies I love but constantly neglect for sake of a fic.
The reason I decided to start a blog is because I think there are more out there like me. Whether its fanfic, tumblr, a strange phone game, I think there are others who desperately want to change their life and re-gain control from whatever technology addiction they have.
If this rings true for you as well please leave a comment. See you tomorrow.
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