I'm an Addict
My Plan to Fight the Addiction Destroying My Mind
I’m an addict. I have fought coming clean and being transparent for a while about this. I wish I could have told my family before I posted this to the internet. But I feel like posting this online gives the admission concreteness. It makes it feel real. It makes me want to change.
My addiction isn’t drugs or alcohol. I’m not the gambling type. I don’t overdo anything that will harm me physically or drain my bank account.
My addiction, instead, consumes my mind. It makes me dumber. And it makes me feel a sense of hatred towards people I don’t know in ways that make me scared of myself sometimes.
I realized how painful my addiction truly was yesterday. I decided to fight it for one moment and enjoy life without it. I put on my headphones and cleaned my gym’s bathrooms. I clicked on an old friend, the “Discover Weekly” tab on my Spotify app.
The first song that came on was “Evil Ways” by Willie Bobo. If it doesn’t ring a bell for you, I’m confident you have heard the Santana cover of it that has been in countless movies. But Willie Bobo’s original, with its slow Cha Cha like beat and horns that filled the negative space in my ears, knocked me backwards two steps. I began dancing in the bathroom while spraying down the toilet with a foaming bleach cleaner. I wiped the poop stains off the underside of the toilet seat as my hips shifted side to side.
Then, a song I’d never heard before called “Espelho” played. The samba beat, which is reminiscent of mambo beats my salsero feet are all too familiar with, carried me to the next bathroom. I placed new paper towels in the dispenser to the flow of the music while the singer Mari Froes’ voice made it hard to keep my eyes open, as they seemed to prefer squinting while I soaked in the the French twang to her Portuguese words.
When I was done, I drove home with Espelho on replay, completely captivated by the music. And for that brief but fleeting car ride, I thought I was free. I could feel the synapses of my brain firing faster. My thoughts became about bigger things. The types of things that allow me to picture a beautiful future.
But I wasn’t free. This morning, I saw that comedian Tim Dillon posted his weekly podcast. I mindlessly clicked the big green “Play” button and listened to him ramble about the mayoral election in Los Angeles and then go on about the tragic, and highly political, death of Henry Nowak in the UK. He finished the episode by telling me how TikTok star Charli D’Amelio’s father stole millions of dollars from her.
I mindlessly soaked up the slop. I could feel my brain dropping gears to the low grade hum of fear and anger it has been idling at for the past two years. And as I sit here and try to write this article to you, that low grade hum keeps me from typing more words. Every other sentence I type I feel compelled to reach for my phone hanging perilously within reach in the top flap of my backpack. Instead of thinking and putting those thoughts onto paper, my mind craves the furious thoughts of others bellowing into my ears about how the world is falling apart. I used to have a goal of writing 3,000 words on Sunday’s. Now it’s 1,500, and I’m lucky to get that.
But I’m not going to let this decline be reality. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t stand being drawn to hearing about the worst things that happened to people thousands of miles away from me. This piece is my confession. I must finally come clean and admit it.
I’m addicted to political podcasts.
For those of you reading this that know me, this should come as no surprise. I’m obsessed with discussing politics with anyone that will listen to me ramble and engage in a debate.
And it makes me absolutely miserable.
I’m a gym owner in Naples, Florida. I have one of the coolest jobs in one of the nicest places in the world. Why do I care if a guy in the UK got stabbed by a Sikh or that some reality TV show guy is running for mayor in Los Angeles? I’ve never even traveled west of Mississippi. Why do I care that Benjamin Netanyahu had a bad phone call with Trump? I have no future travel plans to the middle east anyway! And I’m sorry, but the racial tension around the fatal stabbing of a track athlete in a state I don’t live in simply doesn’t affect my life if I never knew it happened. I’m getting sick of being burdened by everyone else’s tragedies.
As much as these podcasters would like me to believe that the world is falling apart at the seams, the moment I silence them by keeping my phone out of arm’s reach, I simply don’t see what they are talking about. Despite slightly higher gas and grocery prices, my life is generally the same as it has been for years. Do I agree with Tucker Carlson that we are living in a failing state? Maybe. Does it truly change how I’m going to live my life? Not in any way that I can affect.
Sure, it’s good to be well informed. But it’s even worse to be distracted. And right now, I’m informed to the point where I’m hardly focused on my life at all.
I’ve known that these podcasts have had this effect on me for a long time. But I simply can’t escape the warm embrace of the blue dot next to Joe Rogan’s face that tells me he released a new episode with Eric Weinstein, who will then confirm all my suspicions about Jeffrey Epstein being a funnel for the hyper-elite to get their rocks off.
How does this matter to me? Answer: it doesn’t.
And the most frustrating part of this is that I should be able to buck this addiction. I’ve been incredibly successful at eliminating many of the addictions from my life. My biggest triumph was over the social media accounts that cost me years of my life to mindless scrolling. I didn’t just delete the apps like a coward. I deleted the accounts themselves. I deleted an Instagram account with over 40,000 followers just to get part of my life back.
But I can’t delete the podcasts. They are embedded in Spotify, which is how I also get all my music. As a result, I’m trapped by my love for music. I fear a car ride with failing radio stations that don’t know my taste. I’m worried about the increased friction I’ll experience of finding new music I never knew existed. There is no better feeling for me than discovering a new song that I can’t turn off for the next week. I can’t imagine not being able to do this at the click of a button.
Unfortunately, the Spotify I once knew no longer exists. Instead of promoting new artists I’ve never heard before, it keeps me in a constant loop of the most popular artists in the genre that I like. Song discovery has all but ceased to exist for me on their app. And since they spent over $1 billion on its podcast division, Spotify feels the need to force feed me podcasts on my home screen instead of music.
I’ve realized that the negative impact these political podcasts are having on my life is so extreme that I must take drastic measures to escape them. I’m like an alcoholic who can no longer go to the bar or walk down the beer isle at the grocery store.
Just like these addicts who dodge their vice at every corner, I’ll be doing something equally extreme. I’m abandoning my smartphone altogether. I’m putting my iPhone in a drawer and forgetting it exists. I just bought an old school Nokia flip phone and will only be using that for my personal communication. It can’t even download Spotify. It doesn’t even have an app store.
I hope that it can help me get my mind back. That eliminating the droning hum of fearmongering slop political podcasts allows me to focus on the things that are important in my life and appreciate all the good happening in it. As much as I’m anxious to pull out my bright red Nokia flip phone and take a call in public, I’m excited for the peace I think it will bring me.
Oh, and one more thing, if you need me, don’t text me. Call me. I don’t want to relearn how to type with T9 Word.
T9 word!! 💀