Indulging Oneself!

I was reading my psych book about stress for the quiz, which I got a 22 on! Yay! But that’s not my point…
Something caught my eye…
Here’s the passage…

“Stress sometimes leads to reduced impulse control, or self-indulgence. When troubled by stress, many people engage in excessive or unwise patterns of eating, drinking, smoking, using drugs, spending money, and so forth. It makes sense that when things are going poorly in one areas of their lives, people may try to compensate by pursuing substitute forms of satisfaction.”

And I agree.
The first time I used self-indulgence was my senior year and I ate a whole lot. I thought to myself, “I am much stronger than that.” But it turns out I was as weak as the next person. But it felt so good to eat how much I did that I did that for about 4 days or so. Then I stopped because I realized that wasn’t the way to go. All I will do is just get fat, even thought that was something I really needed, that was still not the way to go because I thought I was going to get addicted to food.

“Thus, it’s not surprising that studies have linked stress to increase in eating, smoking, and consumption of alcohol and drugs.

A new manifestation of this coping strategy that attracted much attention recently is the tendency to immerse oneself in the online world of the Internet. Kimberly Young has described a syndrome called Internet addiction, which consists of spending an inordinate amount of time on the Internet and inability to control online use. People who exhibit this syndrome tend to feel anxious, depressed, or empty when they are not online. Their internet use is so excessive, it begins to interfere with their functioning at work, at school, or at home, which leads victims to start concealing the extent of their dependence on the Internet. It’s difficult to estimate the prevalence of Internet addiction, but the syndrome does not appear to be rare. Research suggest that Internet is not limited to shy male computer whizzes, as one might expect. Although there’s active debate about wisdom characterizing excessive Internet surfing as an addiction, It’s clear that this new coping pattern is likely to become increasingly common.”

Well, this is an iffy subject for me.
I mean some people are not addicted to the Internet, but addicted to the computer! But like the only fun thing to do on the computer is get on the Internet! Or playing games too! And don’t forget listening to music too!
But I would agree and know why they do that. But I also have another theory instead of that one.

The Internet works as something that would numb the stress, and by that I mean you forget about it for a little while. It’s kind of like a cocaine addiction. The more you use it, the more you forget about your stress and sometimes even the real world. So you are conditioned to think that it works and you deceptively actually think it does. That’s why it’s called an addiction, not because you compensate for something, but because it acts as a buffer, and you start to think you need that buffer, and that’s how you can get addicted to the Internet and the computer.

I guess I would know because I think I do have it, not the internet addiction, but the computer addiction.

“People who exhibit this syndrome tend to feel anxious, depressed, or empty when they are not online.”

A few days ago, I was cleaning all day, so I didn’t get to go on the computer all day, and when I realized that, I became a little depressed. And I realized that I was depressed, and I thought there was nothing I could do except to get on the computer. But I know I took a wrong action by actually getting on!

It’s really hard to believe that people before us actually lived without computer and the Internet and television and cell phones, too.