The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
anyone see television as being a form of addiction? I saw my mom turn to television after my father was arrested. she would watch all day long until she went to sleep. I think my soon-to-be-ex-husband, who also drinks and smokes pot, uses television as a form of escapism as well. it's crazy that i used to threaten to cut the cable off! but then he always said he could care less because he can stream online...
Yes I have seen it. My mother would have qualified for Al Anon and she constantly had to have the tv on as a distraction. She would even have to leave it on while she slept. Funny because my soon to be ex A does the same thing. He also smokes. I guess you can use anything as a distraction from the real issues.
Yes an addict can use anything to distract themselves and disassociate from their emotional bodies... food, working, working out, others, drugs, sex, the tv, the computer - as an ACoA I have the a-isms (beahviors) and I can find myself doing that too and then I jump up and take a positive action for me.
Get your own solid prgoram and your own interests to keep you interested and involved in your own life. Try to detach from ur AH's choices and make the healthier ones for you.
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Light, Love, Peace, Blessings & Healing to Us All. God's Will Be Done. Amen.
Yep, I would swear to my family that my A is addicted to TV. He has to turn it on first thing in the AM and it stays on until he falls asleep in front of it. For me, I turn it on to watch a show I want to watch and then turn it off. Quite frankly, I could live without it. For the past 15 years, my A didn't drink but I swore that he replaced drinking with TV watching and used it as a form of escape. He just sits there and stares. It's creepy to me.
they replace one thing with another don't they? It's like they are afraid of silence and quiet. we had this huge fight about getting 1 or 2 tv's when we moved...he was insistent he had to have his own t.v. like it was life or death.
I think a lot of addicts prefer to have some sort of distraction going on.
I grew up in a home where it was perfectly okay to not have any music playing or have the TV turned off, so I grew up in a place where we'd get lots of quiet time. We'd occupy ourselves with other things, of course - games, reading, conversation, etc. Although I remember having a lot of days just sitting on the couch in quiet and just... thinking.
When I married my exAH, he could not stand to have quiet in the house. If the TV was off, he had to have music playing. I remember one time asking if we could just have one day a week - one day out of SEVEN - where we didn't have the TV on, or the radio, nor were distracting ourselves with the internet and it was like pulling teeth. You'd think I'd been asking him to give up his drinking. He did NOT like it at all.
I think sitting with one's own thoughts is a scary place to be for many, many people. Addicts or not.
Yes...I do see it that way Knowmadic...when I got into recovery..I stopped watching all TV for a good while because I was finally living in reality and didn't need or want the escape so badly.
Yes, either addiction, distraction, obsession or fixation. When my AHsober lived at home when our sons were young, I asked for no TV week. So we could do things as a family. Now, that he moved out, he obsesses with TV and movies. He also plays computer games.
I never used tv for my escape, but way too many other things.
I think anything can become addictive. Personally, I have wasted a lot of time with that stuff. But to me, I wouldn't be where I am now without the experience.
It gave me something to focus on rather than my real problems. Of course I still obsess a bit... lol.
Jerry, thank you for that. That is such a good question. I've been pondering that and didn't even consider it, but it is an idea I am looking into now. I've noticed my old vicesare coming back now that he is gone...like smoking again...and see that he and I are not that different. I guess i didnt' need to have my addictions as long as he had his...i suppose he was my distraction...
Personally i must admit I have been a TV addict all my life As a child TV was my way of escaping into another world and leaving the abusive, addictive, chaotic world i was living in behind me. Of course had to par way back on this addiction when my children were growing and I was very involved with them Now that I am older I am back to being a TV addict... i don't nessesarily watch it all the time, just have it going in the back ground And i would agree that it is definitly a distraction technique
I agree with what some posters have said here that if you get rid of one addiction, there's always another to take its place. The addict's personality is like that. I know from personal experience.
My ex-husband was a sex addict (this was way back in the late 60's/early 70's)...there was no internet porn during those years or he would have been on his laptop the entire evening and weekend...he would turn the TV on the minute he got home from work and it would be on until we went to bed. He and I didn't interact at all, unless I watched a TV show with him. We didn't talk, he didn't help in the kitchen, he didn't clean house. He watched TV. To give him credit, he did take care of the outside of the house...the lawn, etc. He watched cartoons on Sat. mornings...and Sunday mornings the TV was on...maybe cartoons then, too.
Since then, I've talked to a friend who is in recovery from a sex addiction. She says that she watched TV all the time/is addicted. She told me that sex addicts watch a lot of TV.
Anyway, I'm doing some other folks inventories here...as for me, I'm somewhat addicted to watching series on Netflix. But, I don't watch it every night. I also have a lot of other things I can do to dissociate or zone out. I'm working on it...it's a bxxxx.
-- Edited by Emi on Thursday 20th of January 2011 12:23:51 AM
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Gratefully recovering today with the experience, strength and hope of my fellow travelers.
