Addict[s]: How Drugs, Trauma, and Technology Are Corrupting Our Hard Drives

Everyone is an addict. Every addict has a drug of choice. We're all drinking, smoking, snorting, projecting, gambling, and gaming our lives away. Not all addictions are obvious. Some permeate our psyches before defiling our souls. We ignore anomalous patterns while spiraling toward a draining climax while forfeiting self-actualization and autonomy for a cheap, adulterated buzz."Addict[s]" explores technology's pervasiveness and its continuous insidious impact on our emotional health. Technology enables endemic and systemic vices and addictions while introducing us to new digital coping mechanisms that leave us over-exposed and vulnerable. We're oblivious to our demise yet we Doom Scroll our lives away looking for a new fix before the hangover of separation anxiety incites the raging technical withdrawals. We log on to get off on the pain of others while crashing our personalized pity party. Singing up for tech-enabled addictions, we ignore the terms and conditions while granting unlimited permissions to data harvesters who exploit our vulnerabilities for fresh poisons and toxic connections. Click-bait panders to our worst devices: ourselves. Dulling or stimulating life's doldrums, we're retreating further online where our addictions and worst habits merge with a colliding digital reality before we're rendered obsolete by a disconnected society."Addict[s]" examines chronic addiction and how avoidance, deflection, and gaslighting feed the dependency before devolving into acute, novel addictions that compound pre-existing mental health conditions. Addictions simulate our realities with the worst-case scenarios while ignoring real opportunities for growth. We are artificializing our environments with new technologies for greater highs while ignoring nefarious catalysts cauterizing our connections before leaving us forever hooked on unrelenting pain. We've unknowingly become the user, dealer, and enabler in our chronic malaise. Not even the CLT + ALT + DLT command can recover our damaged files before crashing our hard drives with viruses thriving on biased data from interconnected echo chambers.While computers augment our lives, digitization is skewing our perspectives and warping our minds. We continue to struggle with the Internet's worst effects, like online bullying, sexting, and exploitation without developing a game plan for managing rapidly advancing artificial intelligence. We search out new highs while ignoring a painful truth: we're a cheapened, digital version of our worst traits. We're addicted to ourselves. Read more