This is such an honest and important question and I think you're naming an epidemic that hasn't yet been fully confronted by society. So much of our collective time, energy and thought is being anesthetized... please know it's not just you.
One thing that strikes me is your insight that it's more difficult when "when the thing you're addicted to is something you can't realistically abstain from." This aspect makes internet addiction seem like it would have to be thought of more like a food addiction than an alcohol or drug addiction, as food addiction of course also requires management of the relationship to the problematic behavior, not abstention from the substance. So focusing more on managing the compulsive behavior, and its source (anxiety/depression), not just on abstention completely.
You might not have seen this article as it seems to have just come out. But such a solid source of publication so worth considering.
Basically it's a clinical trial for Internet Addiction -- (which is named, and called IA here, and clearly is recognized medically as a real problem) -- that found good results treating it (in Brazil) with both CBT and drug therapy, focusing on anxiety as well as the IA . The anxiety seemed to be a big co-factor.
Best of luck to you.
posted by velveeta underground at 12:57 AM on March 19, 2018 [13 favorites]

For me the key is where you spend your time online, not just that you do in general. Reddit and AskMefi are stimulating sites in that they're really just a collection of people.

I wonder what good things the Internet (or just reddit and this site) has done for you. It might have brought you the warmth of community, genuinely rich personal relationships with people on sites like this, a sense of heightened status because of its anonymous nature, the feeling of being able to express yourself freely and without repercussion, the ability to avoid something deeply unpleasant, spoken or unspoken, in your everyday life. Maybe it's just intellectual stimulation that you yearn for but is absent. Maybe it's "fear of missing out" (which closely relates to the psychology of being part of an in group).

My guess--and apologies if I'm completely off base--is that there are deep seated reasons as to why internet life as you currently define it is preferable over real life.

What's funny is that often I hear about alcoholics that their primarily life relationship is with alcohol, not individual people. But Reddit and AskMefi ARE essentially a bunch of people.
posted by flyingfork at 1:15 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]

You do not sound absurd at all!
--------------------------------
Resources:
RESTART (an actual rehab for internet/game addiction)
How To Break Up With Your Phone (a just-came-out book with a 30-day plan for being less dominated by the internet)
Offtime (Android app that sets scheduled blocktimes i.e. between 3-8pm daily)
Onward (iOS app that limits net use and has an AI which coaches you through the psycho-emotional issues around compulsive use)
Freedom Prescheduled blocks for both phones and computers, can be set to be irrevocable, can include some sites and not others
Circle by Disney hooks on to your router and phone's VPN and can set up very granular permitted amounts of use (i.e. "one hour of forums a day") vs ("no forums between hour X and hour Y")
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Beyond blockers, which can be circumvented, I guess the big question is: how much of your internet compulsivity is driven by the sticky content of the internet, and how much is driven by a desire to avoid something?

STICKY/DESIRABLE CONTENT:
Obviously large parts of the internet are set up to manipulate us and keep us stuck in this hooked, dopamine-addled state (I'm looking at you Facebook/Instagram/internet porn/etc). That content is EXTREMELY sticky. But you are hanging out in less physically manipulative parts of the internet. So what are you getting here that's so compelling? Do you really want to be having certain types of conversations? Do you really want to be having certain types of feelings that you get here? Figuring out what those needs are, and then scheming about how to get those needs fulfilled offline, is one part of the puzzle.

ESCAPISM AND AVOIDANCE:
I don't know about you, but before the internet I was a compulsive fiction reader. I tore through about a novel a day. There are photos of me as a child reading at dinner parties. Some part of me feels very tense about inhabiting this moment in this body, and would like to leave into a universe of words, and I think this is for me the core issue. So trying to moderate my internet use is kind of synonymous with expanding my willingness to experience discomfort. Is any of this ringing a bell?

Dr. Judson Brewer wrote a book called The Craving Mind. It's kind of an annoying book (the link there is to a TED talk he did) but basically he thinks that we have created terrible habit loops in our monkey minds because we do this all the time:

DISCOMFORT ----> Pick up phone and watch baby bunny video ------> Feel momentarily better -------> re-encode in brain that looking at phone = happiness

So of course, since we've all done this approximately eighty jillion times, our brains have fully automated the process. We have like a millisecond of discomfort, and then our brains are speeding down the superhighway to internet-town. Dr. Brewer thinks we can interrupt that pattern by becoming curious about our discomfort rather than fleeing it, and he has some programs for overeating and anxiety that work on those principles. I've thought about taking one of his (online) courses and just pretending he means "internet" whenever he says "food". Maybe we should take it together along with the Catherine Price phone breakup challenge :)
----------------------------------
tl:dr; I don't think the therapy world has fully caught up with this, but if you want to ask therapists what they've got for it, I think the magic words are "process addiction"; a lot of Freedom/Offtime-type blocks can be circumvented, but they can get pretty damned functionally inconvenient, especially if you have a friend or therapist who can hold the password which gets them to go away; and you're gonna want to find a way to fill the needs that Metafilter fills, and a way to get curious about discomfort. Oh and congratulations on taking this first step! :)
posted by hungrytiger at 1:40 AM on March 19, 2018 [43 favorites]

Yes to the other comments that you are not alone. I have missed out on ACTUAL PARTIES because I was "reading an article online". And I do think this site feels more like a community than other social media and so does have more to "offer"-- as does the longform journalism that I binge-read to the expense of my "real life"-- than some of the other black holes online.

This is basically just cheap CBT, but I asked my brother how he can be such a casual facebook user and he just said: "Every time I think about checking Facebook, I ask myself: is Facebook more interesting than what is going on around me right now?" I started doing it and it does work-- even people-watching in the dentist's office is more interesting than Facebook, when it comes down to it.

I think overall the answer is something like mindfulness. The website Tinybuddha used to have a little picture of a Buddha reading at the end of every post-- the idea was that it was a small visual reminder that it was better to stop after enjoying one article then to keep consuming contentcontentcontent mindlessly. I still think of this even though that site is now basically clickbait and now has the same "keep your eyeballs on this!" vibe as the rest of the internet. I sometimes give myself a quiz after reading an article online to be sure I was even using my brain. Looking back after a year on how little I remember of my hourshourshours spent online (and what popped / was a meaningful virtual experience) also helps me mindfully choose not to engage in things I know are a total waste of time and emotional energy.
posted by athirstforsalt at 2:27 AM on March 19, 2018 [9 favorites]

I have the same problem to a lesser extent. I use the Self Control app on my Mac to lock myself out of MetaFilter and some other websites as needed. You are not alone; this is not a trivial issue. And you are not weak or defective. You are deeply human. Unfortunately modern technology is designed to take advantage of human tendencies. Thank you for posting this; I hope you get the help you need.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:58 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]

A totally practical suggestion: can you upgrade your smart phone to a “dumb” phone? When I had to send in my iPhone to get its screen replaced, I pulled my ol’ Nokia candy bar phone out of the drawer. I had forngotten how great that phone was: small, easy to use, great battery life, great as an actual phone. And, I really didn’t miss the smart capabilities at all.

This won’t completely solve your problem, but it will at least guarantee that you don’t have the internet EVERYWHERE.
posted by Betelgeuse at 4:06 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]

You say you've had years of talk therapy, but have you had therapy specifically for this problem? If not, maybe this needs to be your #1 priority in therapy for a while.

Also, I would suggest that your internet addiction, like many addictions, is filling a hole in your life. It's filling it in an unhealthy way, but underneath the addiction is a genuine need. If you can identify that need and find a healthier way of meeting it, the problematic behavior will likely lessen.

For me, that need would be avoiding boredom. I hate to be bored and also I bore easily. Browsing the web helps me feel engaged when there's nothing else to do, but often it isn't the best way to entertain myself, just the one closest to hand. Also, after 15 minutes or so I've usually exhausted it as a source of interest but will keep cycling through my sites for a while until I realize what I'm doing.

The solution for me is to find something healthier to do. Go for a walk, edit some photos, tackle a chore, call up a friend, those kinds of things. Anything besides endlessly refreshing the same four sites. It feels better, keeps me from being bored and anxious, and has a more positive impact on my life.

So my suggestion would be to recognize the underlying need and seek out healthier ways of satisfying it. Replace it with something better.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:21 AM on March 19, 2018

I always find it easier to replace a bad habit than to quit one. Try timeboxing something else you want to do. For twenty-five minutes, read a book, take a walk, cook. When you are done with those 25 minutes, you can go back to the internet.

If you are truly scrolling without break, you are probably disturbing your body's biorhythms. Drink a lot of water, and when your body tells you you need to pee, do it. Put down your phone, walk to the bathroom, use it, walk back. It's a natural reminder to take breaks.
posted by tofu_crouton at 5:36 AM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

It may be worthwhile contacting therapists who specialize in food addiction or work-addiction/workaholism. They'd presumably be experienced in helping people cut back to healthy limits on activities that are required to live but that can be overused to the point of problems. If any one particular therapist can't help you, they may also be connected enough to addiction-treatment specialists that they'd have other recommendations for you.
posted by lazuli at 6:06 AM on March 19, 2018

On Mefi:
-- You can turn off the "x new comments" updating thing. Go to your Preferences page and un-check "inline comment updating".
-- You could choose to render the site in a theme you don't like to read, make it less of an instinctive reward. Anything that will disrupt your muscle memory associated with the site will help with breaking that loop.
-- Do you check the site through Recent Activity? If you log out, you won't be able to access your RA page (although this might turn inline comment updates back on).
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:17 AM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

I think instead of trying to force yourself to stop using the internet, it might be more productive to ask yourself what you're afraid will happen if you stop using the internet. Having that understanding will help you either find another way to make sure your goals get done, or to come up with more rational ways to think about them.

For example, you could come up with a new way to make sure you get the news at the end of the day, or stay in touch with friends, on the one hand. Or on the other, it's easier to work with "if I stop checking the internet, I'll be the last person to hear about the news, and then I'll say something stupid and everyone will hate me" in a therapeutic context because it's concrete and you can come up with concrete reasons why it isn't true.
posted by capricorn at 8:47 AM on March 19, 2018

If you use a desktop computer, RescueTime or other applications like it can be helpful in both quantifying your time and giving yourself a limited amount of time per day (or per X hours) on specific websites or applications.
posted by cnc at 10:02 AM on March 19, 2018

I am not saying that treating this like an addiction is a bad thing if doing so turns out to work for you, but I wanted to at least have one person make a note here that I am very bad about this when the medication I take for my mental health crud is not properly-aligned, in particular my ADD meds. A lot of the stuff described above is stuff I'd call good advice... but if I were writing it, it wouldn't be as anti-addiction measures, but as ADD management measures. So this is just to say, if you try other things and they don't work super well for you, it might be good to get some kind of screening, or experiment with whether this behavior is the same/better/worse after 200mg of caffeine. (A perfectly OTC dosage, but enough at least for me to notice a difference in my ability to both focus and refocus appropriately on the things I actually want to be doing.)
posted by Sequence at 10:25 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

It sounds like you're ready for something fairly serious, but if you want to start with a more minor intervention, find a check-in buddy. My version of this is my own sense of shame if I am caught by my partner being online forever (obvious sign I didn't mean to stay online: I am sitting at the kitchen table instead of in the living room where it is comfy), but if you live alone this could be someone texting or calling you to tell you to get offline, and calling you again an hour later to make sure you stayed off. For me just having to admit to another person that I failed at something that seems like it would be so easy helps. Maybe that would disrupt the cycle enough for you to change it.

I have also had some success by revisiting a book that I know I love. So the ease of getting on metafilter where I know the people is maintained because I am getting into a story where I know the characters. This helped me enough that it got me back into reading novels on my train ride to/from work instead of just pulling up twitter or whatever.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:30 AM on March 19, 2018

This doesn't sound absurd at all, and I don't think describing it as addiction is inappropriate. Even if it's not an addiction in the strict sense of the term it is certainly habituating and the "hit" of new activity or information exploits reward pathways in the brain.

For the past several years I've observed a month of abstention from alcohol and sweets. This year, I felt increasingly concerned that the amount of time I was spending putzing around on social media was interfering with time spent on learning, outside activities, and building/strengthening in-person social networks. So, I decided to try something new and abstain from social media instead (two sites I see as means for creative expression excepted). Abstaining from the social internet was a lot harder than giving up booze and sweets. I was really taken aback at how much harder it was. I had already uninstalled all the social apps from my phone some time ago. It still took me a solid couple of week to stop reflexively typing in site URLs to "just check things for a minute or two". Use of internet tools is integral to my profession so simply quitting the whole web cold turkey wasn't feasible, which added some additional challenge. Around week three I discovered that Facebook starts sending text messages like "So-and-so posted a status update. Have you seen it?" to tempt you into logging in again. Creepy!

I did eventually make it through the whole month off and—I think—was able to reset my sense of the value of social media and set firmer limitations on when and how I use it. If you choose to try something like this yourself I have some advice on how to get through it:

1. Set a time bound on your period of abstention (preferably at least a week) and take it one day at a time. You're not "giving up the internet OMG FOREVER", you're just not using it today/this week/etc.
2. Give yourselves a lot of rewards, and rewarding distractions, for good behavior. I bought myself colored pencils and doodled in the morning instead of web surfing. Want to eat cookies after dinner? Go ahead and do it. Want to Netflix binge or read fluffy paper magazines? Enjoy it.
3. It sounds like you already took some steps in this area, but make it as annoying as possible to violate your abstention. For me this meant purging all my browser-stored passwords, changing my social site passwords to garble using a password manager (e.g., Keepass), and then making the passphrase to unlock the password manager really long and complicated.

posted by 4rtemis at 12:12 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

On the off-chance that you're taking a dopamine-receptor agonist medication, you might want to talk to your prescribing doctor about these behaviors, too.

Parkinson's Drugs May Lead to Compulsive Gambling, Shopping, and Sex

A class of drugs called dopamine agonists, used mainly to treat Parkinson’s disease, has long been suspected of causing strange psychological side effects, such as compulsive gambling and sexual activity. But a meta-analysis published today in JAMA Internal Medicine aims to settle the question and change the way doctors, patients, and regulators handle the drugs.

The analysis of adverse events reported to the Food and Drug Administration over a 10-year period linked the drugs to excessive gambling and sexual behaviors, but also to shopping sprees, stealing, and binge eating. More incidents stemmed from the use of pramipexole and ropinirole than from other drugs in the class.

posted by lazuli at 2:07 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

I very much have the type of personality that gets hooked on activities (right now, that's a couple of computer games and 'poking around on my phone'; sometimes it's Facebook or advice columns or webcomic archives; for a year or two it was WoW).

For me, the only path out that I don't fight against and self-sabotage is stopping at the decision point and thinking, "What do I really want to do tonight?" Then finding something I honestly want to do more. Gosh, I'd love to make some real progress on my to-do list, I'll deal with the papers piled up over here. Huh, I could go for some conversation, I wonder if a friend would like to hang out? Tonight is a party and I don't want to get sucked into the web, so I'll set my phone down in my purse and go wash my hair. But thinking of it as stuff I should do, shouldn't do, etc. just builds up the feeling of negativity and makes me want to flee from the pressure into the soothing embrace of absorbing words. It has to be compassionately and honestly, "hm. What would I most enjoy doing tonight?" And then the visualization and attraction of that other thing pulls me through.

Which doesn't mean I don't fall into the internet sometimes. I do. But it gives me something with a little positive pull for when I realize it's 9 PM and I'm late to some event, to say "oh, I have to go! This party is going to be terrific, I can't wait to get there!"

The other thing is my ability and interest in doing other things swings wildly based on how much energy I have. If I'm exhausted and grouchy and a bit sick, or depressed, it's a lot harder to figure out why I'd want to throw off my comfortable blanket of words and go somewhere outside. So in those cases especially, it seems only to work if I do it right away: I'd rather work on my knitting, say, and not get online tonight. Or work on writing my novel. But for me once I'm sucked into that other thing, it's fine - the hard part is the moment of choice. That may or may not be true for you, but think about it a bit - what is happening when you *do* do other things? Or when you are faced with the choice to stop or not, can you make that a more conscious choice and observe what is happening in your mind?
posted by Lady Li at 2:21 PM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

I just want to let you know that this is not absurd and you are not alone. I too have been in many pathetic reddit metafilter death spirals where I mindlessly click from one thing to another sometimes barely reading the content (checking email and forums on topics of interest to me are also a huge problem). I would definitely characterize it as an addiction. And at least for me it is not at all about the community considering that I am 99% lurker.

Unfortunately I don't have a solution, but I will say that it was worse when I was less happy about my life. It is also is especially bad when I am hungry. Basically I would say that the less depressed I am the easier it is to stop myself and that increasing barriers helps as well. Obviously you can get around a blocker but sometimes for me it is enough of a roadblock that I have a second to think "oh right I don't want to be on reddit right now". Another thing that sometimes helps is shutting down my computer when I am done with a task and putting it in a drawer or whatever so it's out of sight.

But in summary you are not alone, congratulations for taking the first step. And please don't be ashamed...living in this modern world is a challenge and seems to present everyone with some unique kind of struggle. As I write this I am realizing that perhaps metafilter and reddit are not things I can have a healthy relationship with, just as some alcoholics can't with alcohol even though there are plenty of people who can. Some things can have good and bad aspects but it might be on the balance that deciding to never look at reddit or metafilter again is the healthier choice. I am pulling for you!
posted by 12%juicepulp at 8:38 PM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

I wanted to completely cut myself off from the internet, but that's not possible, between work and shopping and needing to keep up with the news (and the fact that I've actually gotten quite a lot out of being on this site)

I don't believe this. You can get your news elsewhere and unless you live in rural Wyoming you can buy what you need in person. Or if you really really can't, you can go to the library or a friend's and order stuff on their computer.

What kind of work do you do that requires surfing reddit and mefi? I bet it doesn't - so is your workplace fine with you wasting that time? Can you change your office arrangement so that coworkers can see your screen? Can you ask IT to block those sites?

The only thing that ever works 100% is to get rid of your home internet and smartphone. Like alcoholics, some people just cannot moderate their usage, and you may be one. I sold my computer for a year in college because I was incapable of getting anything done. I did all my research and wrote all my papers on library computers. That part sucked, a lot, but it broke me of the compulsion. I also did a hell of a lot of hiking and biking and reading that year.

I know the exact physical feeling you're having when you read this but I want you to consider that it is possible to live without the Internet. People did it for millennia. It's a hell of a lot less convenient, but your freedom may be worth it. Give your router to a friend for a week and see what happens. Anyone can do it for a week.
posted by AFABulous at 9:20 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

NOTE: The following is based on my own experiences with internet addiction and could be entirely specific to my own personality.

You're desperate right? So here's what I came up with out of desperation after trying everything else: Expose your addiction to the world and allow your fear of personal and public shame to reform your lifestyle.

I know that sounds really really bad. Most first principles of living shouldn't start with shame and fear. Standard backlash at this idea will include:

* You should be engaging less with social media.
* You should be minimizing the amount of information you're sharing with the Zuckerbergs of the world.
* You should be living your real authentic life and not posting photos of on instagram of how you spend your time when you're not sitting at your computer.

With that out of the way here's how it works for me -

Start a personal blog on whatever social media that you share with people in your life that you wouldn't want to know about your internet addiction. Make it clear in your blog that you're going to be sharing your daily habits and do it in a way that you'll be ashamed to admit that you failed to follow through with your blog plan. Begin the process of meticulously recording how you spend most of your time as truthfully as possible. So for example if you spent 2 hours messing around on Metafilter at least make notes of your thoughts/ideas of the media you're consuming. You can't turn off your impulsiveness completely but you can spin it on its head a little by making it a more active experience. Write down the books your reading or what you're listening to. Basically track as much of how you spend your time as possible.

I found that over time this worked for me because I was able to look back at what I did and concretely see what I was doing rather than just feeling like I had this huge shameful black hole of timeloss. At the same time I felt that even if no one ever read my activity/blog that the fact that it was out there sort of unconsciously reinforced less impulsive behavior. Tangentially I also had a pretty bad compulsive eating issue that I party solved by taking a picture of everything I ate and uploading it to instagram. This experience made me realize that many of the people you see who are sharing every aspect of their life might not just be trying to rub their meals and activities in your face. In reality for some reason knowing that I committed myself to sharing my life openly with others immediately caused me to choose good behaviors and then reinforced that.

RE: Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc

Start a personal third party blog and link to it on your traditional social media. This way at least you're adding some layer of privacy from the social media data scraping machine. This experiment requires making sure your friends see your activity, not some marketing guy at facebook.

Finally, this worked for me, it may not work for you. It may ruin your life. It may make you the laughing stock of your friends and family and community. Try this plan with caution and don't say I didn't warn you that it might be a bad idea.
posted by laptolain at 10:47 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

There's some research to back up tofu_crouton's comment about it being easier to replace a habit than to change it.

I suggest two approaches to replacing the habit:
* trying Charles Duhigg's flowchart for changing habits
* scheduling blocks of time for other activities


Charles Duhigg wrote a book called The Power of Habit. His website has some excerpts from the book, including a flowchart for changing a habit, a section on how habits work (and how to change them), and a guide to changing habits. Basically, the flowchart says to (1) identify the cue - what's prompting you to spend time on websites?, (2) identify the reward - what are you getting out of it? and then (3) substitute a different reward and routine. So if you find that your cue is feeling bored, and to respond to that cue you go read Metafilter, which gives you the reward of feeling educated, find something else that will give you that reward (reading a page of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything? a "how to improve your word power" book?), then watch for that feeling of boredom and swap in a moment with your book instead of internet.

A slightly different tactic is to schedule something else for the times you're spending on the internet. Do you waste an hour in the mornings? Schedule a morning walk, with a friend, so you have an obligation to show up. Do you waste two hours in the evenings? Sign up for a class. Sit down with a weekly calendar and write in all the things you have to do (work, eat, sleep), and all the time you're currently spending online. Schedule new things into those hours you're currently spending online.

Finally, consider giving yourself a budget. Is there any amount of reading Metafilter that you think is acceptable? Half an hour a week? 15 minutes a day? An hour a day? As you say, you've gotten a lot out of Metafilter. Lots of people who want to change their eating habits find they're more successful when they include days or quantities they can indulge in that don't cross the line into "too much". You might find you're able to find a better balance if you consider honestly how much time on Metafilter is an acceptable and even valuable part of your overall well-balanced life.

Good luck! You can do this!
posted by kristi at 10:24 AM on March 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

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