Confessions of a TV Junkie

Hi, my name is Cranky and I am a television addict. Wow. I'm sorry if I get a little emotional this afternoon. It's just that this is my first meeting, and I am just so glad to get that off my chest. I thought I was alone, but looking around at all of you here today...I realize I am not alone. God bless all of you who share this affliction with me.

My addiction started when I was very young. Looking back, I can see that my parents were TV addicts, too, but it was a problem that was kept behind closed doors back then. My mom and dad were pretty progressive parents, and they believed in letting their daughters watch what they watched. And the TV was on in my house all the time; my dad worked second shift, so at a time of night when most people in the neighborhood were finally turning their sets off, ours stayed on so that my parents could watch Carson and Letterman and late-night Westerns. This is hard for me to admit, but they even let me stay up through Carson's opening monologue sometimes. On school nights. We were a family of night owls. I'm not making excuses for our bad habits. But that's just the way things were in my house, and I had no idea that it was wrong...

Because we just had the one TV and it was almost always tuned to what the adults wanted to watch, I had some very unchildlike tastes. I watched MASH in reruns every night and can remember camping out in the living room to watch the final episode when I was not even old enough to read the credits. Don't get me wrong, they let me watch lighter and more kid-friendly shows like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and 3-2-1 Contact. But the majority of what I liked to watch on TV were shows that could have done real harm.

You know, my mom used to wonder why I was afraid of the dark and couldn't sleep alone as a kid. I wonder if she realizes it's because she let me watch the edited-for-TV-but-still-scary-as-hell Halloween and even The Exorcist before my 6th birthday. Please don't judge her. I am sure she thought that because these movies were on prime time TV, they must be OK. And usually she watched them with me. But sometimes she left me alone in front of the TV to see all the T and A and pick up on all the sexual innuendos and double entendres in shows like The Newlywed Game, Three's Company, and Dallas. The only time I remember being censored was during an episode of All in the Family when Gloria wanted "Meathead" to get a vasectomy. I laughed at a joke that was probably inapproprite for a young child to think was funny, and the channel got changed. That was the only time I can remember that. The rest of the time, it hurts to confess, my parents enabled my addictive behavior by laughing with me through The Carol Burnett Show and popping popcorn for a family Saturday night consisting of The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

I almost came clean in college. It's the closest I've ever come to TV sobriety. Centre kept me far too busy to spend time watching television, and even if I'd had time, I had no access to a clicker. No one I knew freshman year had a TV in his or her room, and we didn't have cable access in the dorms at that time. Then I moved to a dorm sophomore year that had a comfy common area with a nice TV with cable access. I lived there with some friends with their own bad television habits. It started small; I only watched TV for one hour on Wednesday night with my dorm-mates to get a little soapy buzz from Melrose Place. It was just a way to let off some steam.

Then some friends from another school told me about The Adventures of Brisco County Junior, and I watched that show every Friday night. Alone. I know; the true mark of a junkie. I used to sit in the common room by myself for that one hour on Friday nights, getting my Bruce Campbell fix before going to my boyfriend's fraternity's parties. If he wanted to see me earlier, that was too bad. I had my priorities so messed up.

We got TiVo a few years ago thinking it would help my addiction; instead of being a slave to a prime-time network schedule, I could record and watch my favorite shows at my leisure. It worked that way for a while; I didn't do much fruitless channel-flipping looking for something on TV to keep me entertained because I had a nice digitally-recorded stockpile of favorite shows. I didn't have to cancel all my plans and turn off the phone to watch Scrubs, Survivor, Everybody Loves Raymond, Paula's Home Cooking, and The Daily Show. I had a nice balance.

Things have gotten really bad in the last couple of years, though. I have gotten hooked on some new shows and am having a hard time balancing my TV addiction and the rest of my life. It's Lost's fault. No, wait: I have to accept the blame for my own actions. But until Lost, I was really only watching TV one night a week. On Thursdays I would catch what remained of "Must-See TV" and watch the very few shows from earlier in the week that I had TiVoed. I held off on Lost as long as I could. I didn't watch it during its first season. I didn't want to give up another hour a week of my already-full life.

I caught the pilot when it was repeated at the end of the first season's original run, and I immediately knew I was hooked. That one show started a downhill sprial. Every Wednesday night that summer I stopped what I was doing to get caught up. And when our old set died that same summer, I caved to the charms of a LCD flat-screen HDTV partly because I wanted to see how the island (and Matthew Fox) looked in high definition. When the 1st season DVD came out just days before the 2nd season premiere, I stayed up late into the night on many occasions trying to fill in the gaps the reruns left. We watched the 1st season finale on DVD the night before the 2nd season opener. I have a job that requires me to get up very early in the morning, and I came to work many mornings during that time tired and groggy from late-night Lost watching after the kid was in bed.

It was only going to get worse. The thing with Lost is that I cannot wait until the next day to watch an episode from TiVo. I have to catch it live! I wouldn't be able to function on Thursday without that fix. Believe me, I've tried.

It's on at 10pm now, and that's why I came here seeking help today. I've had two miserable Thursdays in a row where I have actually gotten migraines from trying to nap for a couple of hours at 8pm and watching Lost at 10pm the nights before. My sleep cycle is just all screwed up. I'm watching something obsessively every night of the week now. I gave up American Idol last year, but the whole Sanjaya drama sucked me back in this year. And Heroes is about to start back up. I'm not sleeping enough, I'm not reading enough. I'm a woman on the edge. One more show, and I just might snap. Episodes of 30 Rock are piling up on my DVR like broken promises. I want to add this show, but it's too much. I have to stop my addiction somewhere before it completely takes over my life.

Whew. I really feel better having told my story. I know this is the first day of the rest of my life and having admitted to my disease, I can start healing. Summer is coming, and my beloved shows will be on hiatus. I will take this opportunity to reconnect with my family, to read some books, to just turn the TV off. I will just say "no."

At least until next fall...