Improving Myself

I Need a Hit and it is Killing Me

I didn’t always sell my soul for a hit, but I have for years now.

Deep down I knew I was doing it, but I also didn’t know I was doing it. There was an unconscious element. I felt it though. Most of the time I felt it, a persistent sense of unease.

When I didn’t feel it, it was because I had sunk too far under to remember what it felt like to have lungs filled with air.

Woman on the Body of Water
Photo by Daisa TJ from Pexels

Somehow I would get my head above the water for a brief moment. Just enough to taste the air and remember how glorious it felt to not be suffocated by the weight of technological ploys. For a moment I felt free of the pictures and stories on social media of what I surely should be trying to achieve.

The pull and push of what I should or shouldn’t be.

Am I meant to be someone else?

That family of five has all of their kids in a sport. Shouldn’t I also have all of my kids in a sport? I loved sports growing up. Well, they were also miserable. Maybe my kids should love and hate sports too.

Oh, wait, this family has artists, maybe my kids should be an artist. Perhaps we should be both. Maybe I need to let them try everything that has any opportunity. What if they are missing their destiny because I didn’t provide them with the opportunity?

It challenged and undermined my most innate, motherly, biological desire–to successfully raise my offspring

I am not enough. It will never be enough. I can’t do everything 50 other families do.

Look at that mom and the amazing meals she cooks every day. Isn’t that what a good mom does?

Oh, but wait, this family is impeccable.

Look at that woman with a successful career.

It is like a tornado of forces telling me what I should be and always there is insufficiency because I am not and cannot be someone else. Certainly not 50, 100, or 600 someone elses.

Lightning and Tornado Hitting Village
Photo by Ralph W. lambrecht from Pexels

Our family is our own, and it cannot nor should be another. I am enough. Our family is good. My life is good. I am good.

I would taste fresh, clean air. For a moment.

Then I would willingly dive back into a drowning whirlpool of inadequacy and overwhelm.

A world of stunted feelings and growth. I needed no prompting, no pushing, just the opportunity to keep drowning myself and I had it readily available in my pocket. I would sit there and mentally consume everything I could be, should be, would never be.

Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Cha-ching.

Money in someone else’s pocket while I fought for air in my lungs, desperately trying to break through the water’s surface, just to be pulled under again.

I would breathe air when someone agreed with me, or when someone’s life looked like mine–messy and imperfect, off the beaten path. Relief. See. This is good. Breath. Fresh air.

And then I would be pushed down again, by a hand that I put on my own head to push me under.

A Drowning Woman
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Why did I keep choosing to drown in my life rather than breathe in fresh, clean, unadulterated air? I somehow longed for the water to again fill my lungs.

But I also wanted free. I wanted to leave my computer, my phone, and my self-imposed expectations–but it felt so good to stay, even as it sucked the life out of me.

I say why did I choose to keep drowning, but really the question has not yet reached a past tense state.

Why do I?

Why am I sacrificing my life to the billion-dollar tech gods?

I am exchanging gold for dross. Do you know that scum encompassing a stagnant pool of water? I lick it up, I feast on it and then I want to expel it from my being. I retch and when it has passed, I begin drinking again, sucking it into my soul.

Why?

It’s a nonsensical question and yet completely relevant.

Is it loneliness? Do I do it to fit in and follow the crowd? To not be obscured in my culture or society? Is it due to a fear of missing out or is my curiosity simply being satiated? Am I keeping a connection with friends and family and reaching out to those in need?

These are all relevant interpersonal questions.

However, the answer is much more simplistic. I need a hit like a drug addict craves a fix.

That dopamine hit is powerful.

It literally is responsible for the preservation of our species.

The role of dopamine is to maintain life, to reinforce the need to eat and procreate and it is also the MVP of addiction.

Were ready hits of dopamine ever meant to be quickly and conveniently accessible in my pocket with little to no cost or effort?

The thrill of a successful hunt leading to life-saving nutrients, fabricated with a scroll on a screen. A like. A comment. The same emotional response of success and self-preservation is achieved, yet the reward is empty and decietful.

Cha-ching.

The tech industry, like every good drug dealer that has ever lived, learned to use a basic biological function, necessary for the preservation of life, directly against my wellbeing. Destroy the user and gain profit. They are drug dealers in suits and huge offices. Drug dealers that collaborate with the government, but make no mistake. Their next big goal is to get you to take another hit and another and another.

It’s not just you whom they target. Any scroll and click will suffice. The easier the target the better. Our youth, so worried and eager to fit in. Cha-ching. Our children, young and innocent. Cha-ching. The perfect victims. Are you sad, lonely, or vulnerable? This is ideal. Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.

Positive barefoot children in casual wear resting together on cozy couch and browsing tablets and smartphones

And through it all you sit, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

Cha-ching. Multiplied again and again by the crowd that surrounds you. You are all in the same company. You look around and think, “This is okay.” “It’s the way of life now.”

The skyscrapers and vacation homes grow larger and more dramatic as your soul wilts into a pathetic barely-human puddle. Surrounded by whisps of people doing the same and so it only seems to be reality. It is acceptable.

It is no exaggeration to claim the tech industry’s highest goal is to claim my soul and yours.

If they can get me to drown myself for their benefit, make no mistake, they will.

What is one life, one soul, one family, when billions of dollars and “progress” are at stake?

I mean nothing to them aside from the money I put in their pocket. They will claim otherwise, they will appear as a god bestowing goodness on me in connection, community, family. Their halo, carefully manufactured in their high-rise office buildings, sits perfectly on their head. But they don’t care if I waste my life away, destroy my family, forget my dreams.

Person on Truck's Roof
Photo by Aidan Roof from Pexels

They have one objective.

Scroll, scroll, scroll. Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.

TikTok, TikTok-time keeps moving forward, just keep looking at the screen. No matter what. Look at the screen.

Cha-ching.

They found a way to use my biological need developed for survival against me.

Big tech has developed a biological, mental cancer and as it eats me alive, they profit. The walking dead roam the earth, their faces buried in a virtual world and the world applauds and exalts the grim reaper. Accolades and acknowledgements–you have accomplished mind control–we honor you.

It is the biological warfare so long feared. Right in plain sight, it is destroying lives and families one by one. This biological war is not one country against another, but a life-for-profit exchange.

Photo of People Engaged on their Phones
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

They have no need to insert a chemical into my bloodstream or fill the air I breathe with toxins. They use a biological component already built into my body. So much easier. That convenient neurotransmitter–dopamine–signals my body that it needs the toxin the tech industry stands ready to provide. They hand it to me on a silver platter delivered to my home, my couch, my bed, my place of worship, my children’s school. It is a barrier-free hit.

Usage climbs and suicides rates follow. What else rises and falls according to the financial goals of big tech and big money?

A responsible company would mitigate the destruction left in the pathway of progress. There are little to no tools built into the industry giants’ gold mines to mitigate the desecrated lives it runs over and throws aside. They want you squarely in the center of progress crushed in the mass of graves left in the wake they use to lift themselves up as modern day kings and queens.

Cha-ching.

All in the name of good and progress. Cha-ching.

Tools that have been developed are most often done by disenfranchised defectors of big tech. At least someone is fighting back.

How can I hope to defeat such an enemy to my soul, to my peace of mind?

They have put access to the world in my pocket and they dare me not to partake, to deny reveling in the dopamine rush that follows. How could I leave such a treasure, such an instantaneous, yet unconscious, sensation of pleasure?

So I sit, there, like a trapped monkey, holding tight to what appears to be a piece of gold. Refusing to let it go. I am imprisoned with one hand on my phone unable to release my grip, as I watch my life slip away.

Sometimes I don’t even watch. Instead, I focus on my hand, with a phone firmly in its grasp, and lose my life to oblivion. It provides relief from daily challenges. It is easier, it is safer and it feels so good as the dopamine flows. All the while, the struggles of life disappear. Easy. The hit is so easy.

Couple hugging and using smartphone near sea on sunset

How can I free myself? Is it even possible? But, I need air so badly. I can feel it, yet while I feel it, the pull to drown is so much stronger. These money-hungry monsters have led me to believe I need water to fill my desperate lungs and I’m left to a death of oblivion while I suck water into my lungs.

How can it still feel so good?

Have you seen the recovery of an addict?

It is dramatic. They first must completely leave the world, the people, the triggers that continuously pull them in.

The entirety of their life must shift.

They become intentional, intentionally talking about their addiction, facing their addiction, fighting their addiction. They intentionally seek regular treatment and mentorship from others facing the same challenges.

When you have an addiction, accepting you have a problem, is the first step. Then your response must be consistent, intentional, and dramatic.

You put your head above the water. You shout, “It’s a problem, I need help.”

A Person Raising Hand While Under Water
Photo by Dih Andréa from Pexels

There is a quick and ready answer in return and you know just where to go. It is sitting on your desk, nightstand, console or pocket, eager to provide relief–to help you. Just one more dopamine hit.

Relief. I’m fine. Everything is okay.

Until you can’t breathe again. Don’t worry. It’s easy to make that desperate will to live go away.

Just take a hit.

Cha-ching.

If you are ready to fight back:

Check out:

Digital Minimalism

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World by [John Mark Comer, John Ortberg]

Reading The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry this morning, inspired this post.

The Social Dilemma on Netflix

The Social Dilemma”: The Epidemic of Technology – Niles West News

Are you recovering from big tech? What else has helped you?

You can learn more about how social media might be impacting you here.

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