“Hi, I’m Jake, and I’m a recovering smartphone addict . . . ”

Hi, I’m Jake, and I’m a recovering smartphone addict (Hi Jake). I’m not being dramatic, or figurative, or philosophical when I say that the little rectangle of glass and metal and magical inner workings in my pocket used to have a hold on me, like it does for so many of us these days.

Nor am I being one of those trendy people who decries the societal impact of technology and replaces their latest device with an old ‘dumb phone’. But if you like spooky stories, then buckle up. It might not be as good as an episode of Black Mirror, but I’ll try.

It started in the gym weeks ago. In between my exercises, I gradually became aware of this compulsion to walk across the gym to where my phone was, and look at it. And I would, time after time, back and forth. My workout was being dwarfed by the workout I was getting from walking laps to check my phone.

Whenever my brain was left with a literal minute to just occupy itself with internal dialogue or meaningful thought, instead of taking that opportunity I would pick up my phone, and look at the screen, and see there were no notifications, and put it down again. It wasn’t even conscious, it was like breathing — it just happened. I must have checked it 20 times in an hour. But much like breathing, now I was aware of it I couldn’t stop noticing it.

All throughout the day, I was unmistakably drawn to my phone. Not even to do anything, just to pick it up and hold it. Then boom, I felt happy. Instant dopamine hit. That same short feedback loop on repeat. I was having cravings for my phone — I didn’t just want to check it, I actually felt compelled to.

As I probed my limits around this, I quickly found that if I didn’t check it when I ‘needed’ to, my head immediately filled with elaborate scenarios of what could be happening that would justify me just having a quick look. What if there were an emergency? Was I being rude to a friend who needed to chat? Maybe an interesting offer had landed in my inbox, one not even involving a Nigerian prince?

So I would hold out, maybe for a minute, or two, or five if I was lucky, and then I would cave and I would check my phone. Inevitably, the result was always the same. I picked it up, and was greeted with a bright, beautiful, AMOLED display full of nothing I needed to see. Again. But hey, it felt good, like scratching an itch.

At this point it was increasingly

obvious that this was an issue. Replace my phone with any other vice, and I would have been at a support group long back. I needed to try and limit my usage.

One technique I researched was to self-impose a limit on the number of times you let yourself check your phone in a given time period. Like an addict frittering money away, I blew through my budget of phone checks in no time at all.

And then once I’d used all of my phone checks-up, I’d get out my laptop and use the same functions on a larger screen. I didn’t particularly want or need to check my phone, but I did.

I justified it to myself with a “just in case”.

This horrifying realisation of my dependence worked as motivation. Day after day, I kept chipping away. One less check here, an hour without it there. A big part of progress was just being consciously aware of my usage of my phone, whereas I would previously have been mindlessly scrolling. I’d also only let myself unlock my phone if I had a specific task to do. I’d encourage you to try doing both of them.

One day, after a bit of building up to it, I took the leap. I checked my phone thrice in the whole day — morning, lunch, and night, and for a maximum of 15 minutes each time. I also spent much of that day physically away from it as well. Out of sight, sort of out of mind.

Everything went all right too. No big dramas, and predictably, I missed nothing important. It seemed like something I could do more often. I was finally getting a hold on it, by not needing to hold on to it. Perhaps I had broken free from the phantom ties.

I went to sleep pretty pleased with myself that night. I put my phone on charge on my bedside table after my final check of the day, where it was out of my reach when I lay in bed (another little tip I had read), I flicked through a book for a little, and then I drifted off to sleep — perhaps easier than usual, but I can’t say for sure.

3am. Pitch black. I felt something brush against my side. Cold, hard metal, against that sensitive area on your sides between hip and rib cage where the annoying kids in school would sneak up behind you and press into to shock you. Shock me it did.

Eventually, when my life had finished flashing before my eyes, I rolled over to meet my fate.

There were two faces, distorted and twisted by my sleep-filled eyes, staring into me with their own unnaturally bright eyes and barring their teeth into an unnerving smile.

It was my girlfriend, and it was me. It was my wallpaper. There were three in the bed, and the little one was my phone.

Either my phone is more attached to me than I thought. Or I’m still more attached to it than I thought.

3am. Pitch black. I felt something brush against my side.