Help! I'm Addicted by Rhyannon Styles

Author:Rhyannon Styles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2021-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

MICHELLE’S STORY

When I was younger, I was a huge computer fanatic. Initially, it was computer games, especially the PC version of Invaders. When I was six, my dad returned home with a computer that he was supposed to be using for work. Once it was inside our house, he never saw the computer again. I kept it to myself. This was at the very start of the internet, just before the world wide web was invented. Computers really became my life. When I was in primary school, computers and video games were a social activity where I would go to my friends’ houses to play. One of my closest friends’ dad had travelled the world and brought back souvenirs, including an Atari 2600 console – it was amazing.

Up to the age of eleven, I was such a happy kid, playing and socializing with all my friends. We were always swapping things; I was especially happy to swap things with the girls, and at that point female friends were my closest friends. Addiction definitely runs in my family. My cousin was the first person to romanticize drugs to me. Unfortunately, they still suffer. I wouldn’t say there’s any pure drug- or alcohol-related addiction in my immediate family that I’m aware of, but there was and still is workaholism. My mum and dad worked really hard to provide for the family but at the expense of time spent with their children and their own psychological state. They put most of their energy into their work. Using providing for the family as a narrative to explain why they couldn’t stand still. They were always doing, doing, doing. Never able to chill. Seventy per cent of my needs were met and they were met beautifully. We grew up with a swimming pool in our garden. I was showered in gifts of video games and computers, I had everything I wanted, but not the thing I needed the most. Thirty per cent of my needs weren’t met at all. I realize today this can be considered childhood neglect. My mother could not be the warm mother that mirrors her child in a way that is compassionate and gentle. Thirty per cent of that love which was missing was enough to traumatize me. I internalized the belief that something was wrong with me. Something was missing.

When I moved to high school and puberty kicked in, the need for the screen became more intense. I knew I just needed my computer to get through the day. Eventually, my parents took it out of my room. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew there was a lot of relief and solace in the coloured pixels. There were early signs of the inability to focus on things that were important to help me flourish as a teenager. I definitely spent too much time on the computer, instead of broadening my horizons and studying for my exams. I was really using the devices as a relief for the difficult feelings of having to deal with testosterone in my body.

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