Your smartphone is another addiction to be avoided

For people who condemn drug addicts, dismissing them as morally corrupt and weak, before immediately returning to the comfort of their cellphones, here is a thought to consider:

Aren’t we, who collectively hold drug addiction in such contempt, the same ones who can’t go an hour without text messages and email? How many of us are guilty of this?

We walk down the street reading our phones. It’s the first thing we check when waking up and the last thing we look at before going to sleep. We check them in restaurants, at places of worship and at family functions, and when that Wi-Fi signal isn’t available we get twitchy.

That couldn’t be an addiction, could it? That couldn’t be the same need that the junkies feel, could it?

“No,” say the smartphone users, “this is a tool for my life. It’s not an illegal substance.” That may be true, but it doesn’t answer the question, it merely deflects the issue. Although some narcotics do generate a genuine physical-chemical dependence, (your morning coffee, for example — did you know that caffeine is a chemical cousin of cocaine?), the dopamine-based pleasure derived from the satisfaction of a need is similar whether the substance in question is cocaine, coffee, a cigarette, a glass of wine, sex or email.

Texting is the fulfilment of a tribal desire to communicate and to stay socially connected. Make no mistake. The stimulus-response-reward pattern remains powerful and totally irresistible.

Few people who text regularly will ever admit to being addicts in this way. “Besides,” they will say, “texting and email are harmless. They don’t kill anyone like narcotics do.” Sorry, but yes. Yes, they do.

The chief way smartphones kill people is through distracted driving. Texting, and yes, even using a hands-free cellphone is distracting. Driving is one of the most information-intense activities that humans perform. Motion and visual cues come at you from both outside the car as well as your dashboard, and the circumstances change with every second. Defensive driving — which we are all supposed to practise — involves keeping track of all these stimuli as well as reading the situations ahead.

This cannot be done properly when the brain is occupied by a conversation with someone who is not in the car. Trying to text with your thumb is horrific enough. But even when you dictate text messages to your Bluetooth, and correct the inevitable mistakes, your brain is pulled completely away from the act of safe driving.

There’s a term for that kind of distraction while using a motor vehicle. It’s called impairment. Distracted driving leads to death, including the deaths of innocent people. Anyone who thinks they can do it is wrong. The fact that you are still alive as a distracted driver is mere luck; the same as those who survive another night drunk or stoned behind the wheel. It’s just a matter of time.

Addiction is addiction, whether it is to an illegal substance or to a smartphone. The stimulation and the reward are the same and so is the growing need for more. For example, look at your new data plan. Is it larger than the last one?

Here’s my challenge to everyone who visualizes coke/heroin/opioid users as weak-minded losers: leave your smartphone at home, flush the Valium and pour your wine or beer down the drain.

Spend a day or three living “clean,” not burdened by the pressing temptations of those socially acceptable highs. Follow the suggestion that some high-minded social commentators have already made to the addicts: “How about just choosing not to use the stuff?”

Do that, with your phone and your booze and your helper pills. See if you can (you can’t and won’t). Then, and only then, may you throw stones.