I've been an internet addict since I first knew the internet existed.

Circa 1994 - high school - the kid down the block installed a BBS system, and I was a goner.  Back then it was all email and message boards, and I remember dialing in via 4800 baud modem, waiting for the connection, checking the email, logging off... and going through the whole thing again 10 minutes later, just to see if anything new had popped up, even though I knew it probably hadn't.

In college, same story.  I beat a well-worn path to the dorm computer lab, logging in to the email system at all hours.  It was around this time that I discovered internet games, and I used to play mindless flash games when I was supposed to be working on papers.  That horrible feeling: it's midnight, you've got 2 hours of work left to do, you've been playing a game for an hour, and you know you need to stop... but you go for just one more game, and before you know it another hour has gone by.

But the real problem came when I started working in an office.  I found myself constantly reading blogs, checking email, chatting, and even playing games.  Even when I had more work than I could possibly finish, even when things got to be late.  I started to get in trouble for not getting enough work done.  One of the worst parts, though, was hard to measure.  I found myself getting worse at paying attention, at focusing.  Someone would call me on the phone and ask me to do something, but before I did it I'd check in on a blog, which led to another blog... and I'd totally forget about the phone call.  Or any time I had a spare minute, which might have been used for thinking about my overall workload, I'd be on the internet instead.  So the only work I'd ever do would be the emergencies.  I had no sense of the overall structure of my working life.  At home, I'd often be up long past when I needed to go to sleep, doing useless things on the internet, promising myself I'd shut down in just 5 more minutes... again and again and again.

I tried quitting in a lot of different ways.  My version of "cold turkey" involved shutting down EVERYTHING, even my personal email.  I was only allowed to use the internet for very clearly work-related activities.  It lasted about a week.

I tried getting help from a therapist.  We tried a thing where I had to write down every time I was on the internet, but that didn't work at all.  Next I could only check my email once an hour.  Total failure.  We tried setting specific time limits: I used a stopwatch every time I was on the internet.  I was allowed to spend an hour each day; for every minute I went over, I had to stay a minute late after work.  I knew this one had failed when I had somewhere to be, urgently, at 8 pm, and it got to be 7 and I still had an hour of overtime to do, yet I still found myself spending time on the internet.

Here's how my crisis came.  One Tuesday I was in my therapist's office, and she said to me, "Listen, I think you need to accept that you're really, truly addicted, and that trying to manage the internet in small doses is just not working for you.  Some people can limit themselves, but you're not one of them."  She was right.  I knew I had to quit altogether.  I went in to work on Wednesday and spend the whole day on the internet.  Thursday.  Friday.

On Sunday night I knew that Monday was my last chance. If, after this conversation, after knowing with total certainty that I had to quit - if after all this I could not quit, I would never quit.

On Monday I went in to work and sat at my desk.  The computer was on; it had to be on for work.  I found myself making excuses, the usual tricks your mind plays: maybe I'll just check once...  I felt a terrible urge to go on the internet.  I was desperate.

I called a friend who I knew was in AA.  My idea was just to ask him: when you're at the very beginning of quitting and you have this urge, are there any tricks you can use to stop yourself?  Instead I found myself crying to him on the phone, I am trying to stop and I just can't stop and I don't know what to do.

He emailed me the first three steps of AA.  I followed them to the best of my ability.  I was internet-free for 6 months, and I can truly say that they were some of the best months of my life since 1994.  It's hard to explain how much clearer everything is when you're not on the internet all the time.  But it made my life better in every part.  Not just work, but in my social life, my love life, my experience of the world.  I even slept better - not just longer, but better.

But it didn't last, and that's where my decision to start an Internet Addicts Anonymous group comes in.

When I was using the AA model to help my internet addiction, the one thing I kept hearing was that the only alcoholics who made it were those who kept going to meetings.  The two basic things they tell you when you join AA are, "don't drink, and keep coming to meetings."  But there was no meeting for internet addiction.  I thought it would be too much work to start one, and maybe I didn't really need it.  I regret that so much, because now I'm heading right back where I was when all this started.  No matter how much I tell myself I need to quit, no matter how great I remember that internet-free time being, I can't seem to stop.  So I'm starting a meeting.

I hope you'll join me.