Paralysis, spiraling, and so much more...

What you put in, indeed, is what you get out. In 1984, I attended a computer camp where I learned the phrase Garbage In, Garbage Out. This, of course, was referring to BASIC programming on IBM clone computers. One error could destroy hours of work. There was something satisfying about spending hours writing a program to say the dinner grace with the help of a ‘Charlie Cartridge.' This was before Alexa, Cortona, or Siri. The World Wide Web didn't exist, and only through a 300-baud modem,

IBM 8088 PC

could you access private message boards. This was the tech that I grew up on.

Human beings sometimes become paralyzed by the things of the past that flood into our minds, like a computer virus that brings your commuter to a grinding halt. One of the earliest viruses I can remember was Monkey B. There was little or no help for your 32-megabyte RLL drive. (Yes, I said MegaByte.) As we grow up, our minds record the past and present and project the future, which has yet to be written.

Me and my daughter refer to this as 'death spiraling.' It's when everything seems out of control, and there is nothing to do or say except that everyone dies. Then it stops, and we reset into reality. As I continue to recover from strokes this past year, part of my Occupational Therapy is to manage these spirals by breathing through the anxiety that often leads to this kind of 'death spiraling.' It has been getting better at times, but I am still prone to those moments where I need to be grounded.

I relied on the 'doom scrolling' of the trash social media sites and internet purchases for a long time. Point. Click. Dopamine hit. This lasted a minute or two, and then I was off again for another dopamine hit. Rewiring the brain is like untangling Christmas lights in the dark. I watch my wife and daughter endure the frustration of doing the impossible every year. My answer is to throw them out and buy new ones, but for some reason, my advice falls on deaf ears. They may enjoy the challenge, but I see it as a frustrating, never-ending cursing experience. Then comes fixing the light bulbs that are out. Don't even start me on the ordeal of watching them try.

When I am faced with a memory that infects me, it is like that Monkey-B virus. The hard drive is gone—go to what works. Think of all the possible things that can and ultimately go wrong, and everybody dies. I have a friend who is so filled with sunshine that she could be selling lemonade with a view of a nuclear bomb exploding. There she will be by her stand, "5 cents please, and look at the view.”

Replacing the 'death spiraling' takes time, and the only thing that seems to help me is to think of the ways that my life is and has gotten better for the things that I have in this life. The most important things for me are my wife, daughter, dog, and recovery group. These are the first on my gratitude list, which includes many more, but I am not going into full disclosure.

When you stop the noise of the twenty-four-hour media and walk away from the trashy social media sites, which serve one purpose: collecting your data and selling advertising based upon how you scroll and click, you can defeat the virus. It's the antidote to the virus that has infected your life and behavior.

Being on social media since 2010, I decided to abandon it completely this Christmas. No longer will I be a pawn in the tech giant's hands, bringing them more wealth and power. No longer will I 'doom scroll' for hours on end and be a slave to a machine. The best part about the IBM clone computers was that you could flip the switch and reboot if they froze. Remember, we're talking about machines that only had 640k RAM and ran very few programs. Our cell phones manifest themselves all the time, even when they are charging. They are always on. Think for a moment: when was the last time you powered yours off? Even while charging, they constantly receive data and send notifications and text messages. They have replaced the alarm clock, and I used to wake up in the middle of the night even when I heard the iPhone buzz on my dresser.

I had to make some changes. I no longer take my phone to my bedroom. My wife gets up at a particular time every day, and on that basis, I am out of bed and ready for a new day. No matter what happens at night, it can’t be that important that it can’t be answered the next day.

For those of you who remember the Y2K scare, it happened when 1999 was about to flip over to the year 2000. People were terrified that the world would end because computers that ran everything in our world, from the stock markets, ATMs, banking, and other financial industries, would come to a grinding halt due to computer programming errors. Nationwide, about a thousand computers were affected. The hysteria surrounding that event sent people clearing out their life savings, hoarding food and supplies at grocery stores, and buying a plethora of guns, preparing for anarchy.

In the twenty-fifth year of the new millennium, we have come closer to the total collapse of society as we know it. There is so much fear and anxiety that not even high doses of valium or Haldol (antipsychotics) could bring us back to sanity. What is the answer? How do we restore the madness of this world? The answer is simple: unplug from everything you fear to lose. Those friends you have on social media—they aren’t your friends. They are people you might have or had in the past, but wouldn't they pick up a phone if they cared about you and your well-being? My phone number hasn't changed in 25 years. I am a public figure, which can be found by searching Google. Yet, none of my social media friends has ever called me and wanted to talk or get together. What’s the point in ‘doom scrolling’ someone else's life or politics? It only feeds the virus, which, as Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix, "The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes." It's time we walked away from our dependency on technology and stopped the cycle of pointing, clicking, and looking for our next dopamine hit.