I Am An Addict.

by Edward J. Albenstein

I can't believe I'm confessing such a thing in public like this, but frankly, it beats going to one of those awful meetings.

I've been warned since I was a kid about how I had to stay away from this stuff. I barely knew my grandpa, and it wasn't until I was an adult that my parents revealed to me that he was a raging workaholic. And Uncle Ted—it's been fifteen years now since we lost him to chocoholism.

But for some reason, I never thought this would be my fate. But then, I never thought I'd ever open a Facebook account.

I mean, sure, I tried Friendster in college, but who didn't? I figured I'd give Facebook a try, just to see what the hype was about. And that first time, it didn't seem so bad. I liked a status, maybe wished someone a happy birthday.

But they say you're hooked from the first time you use it, and they're right. At first, I'd only log on in social situations, but before long, I was going to work in the morning with Facebook in my system. At night, I'd tell my wife I was going to get wasted with the guys and go to the strip club—maybe urinate publicly if the mood was right. But in reality, I was in an alley with my laptop, commenting on photos of my third-grade teacher's grandson Todd in one tab while I played Scrabble in another tab—also with Todd.

Nowadays, I've forgotten how to interact with the real world. I don't laugh anymore. Instead, I have this plastic “Like” button that I made, and whenever someone says something funny, I just press the button.

But this afternoon, something happened. I was on my phone, watching a video about human anatomy—which my college roommate's cousin Ernie posted to his feed. In the video, they dissected the liver of a lifelong Facebook user, and the entire thing was Facebook blue. It burned my eyes to look at it. So I turned on the computer and opened a browser—and, though my fingers fought me, I resisted the urge to type Facebook's URL. Instead, I came here.

I'm Edward, and I'm a facebookaholic.