Substance Abuse: Internet

To overly use a substance- I'm sure we all do it. 

I abuse my fluffy cream sweater; I wear it every single night when I get home from school. 

My little sister abuses her music; every spare minute it seems she's listening to spotify (which I totally get).

My mom abuses her family calender system; no family needs to be as organized as we are.

But what crosses that line from using something a lot to it becoming an abuse?

Substance abuse is usually limited to drugs- legal or illegal. But what if our abuse stems on something so common we don't even notice it?
We all know the horror stories of the war veteran who turns to alcohol to take the edge off of the PTSD, or the woman who has to sell herself to feed her horrible drug addictions. All we ever hear of is these horrors- people who run away from them problem through drugs or alcohol. It's terrifying, no one wants to be in that situation, but the people who are in that situation are not treated with the respect of people (but that's another topic for another day). 

Yet I'm going to throw something out there- something that really contradicts what we define a substance abuse.

Okay, are you ready for this?

In my opinion, the constant and detrimental use of a substance in order to avoid reality is a substance abuse.

So you who goes for a run every day to de-stress from life; you're totally fine because it's not detrimental.

However, you who goes on tumblr just about every free second, evaluate yourself. Why do you go on tumblr and under what circumstances? Do you go on it once your homework is done- or do you tell yourself "Five more minutes and I'll get back to work," and the time stretches on way past those five minutes. If you can relate to the latter, you might be in the same boat I am in.

I'd use things like tumblr and youtube to take my mind off of the work I had to do, the obligations I had, to the point where I specifically only used them for this purpose. This result snuck up on me without me noticing, but dang is it a problem!

I know I can't be the only person my age who does this. With video games, or snapchat, or twitter, or instagram, or things more studious like reading all the time to ignore work, I know I'm not the only one.

So what can we do? Well I'm gonna tell you my plan.

I am deleting my apps, as many as possible, and I hope that keeps me off my phone and less reliant on it too. If it's more effort to get to the app than it is to just bunker down and do my work- I'm gonna do my work.

And I sure hope I do.