ABSTRACT
The fact that Samira escaped the war in Lebanon for a life in Sweden is among the least of her problems. After a breakdown in her mid-thirties, she wanted to get to grips with her demons. She went on a retreat, drank ayahuasca – a psychedelic brew – and was reborn. The voice in her head fell silent, and she lived in the here and now – for a few weeks, anyway. Then she went on another trip, but why did the voice keep coming back? Part III is about different ways of alleviating worry, and this chapter is about distraction. The average individual takes on five times more information than they would have done in the 1980s. We are living in a world of screens. But why? Why is a country like the USA plagued by various types of addiction? Is it because these new, spellbinding activities and substances have been developed? Or is it simply because we are searching for something to focus on, something that can quiet our thoughts? This is an ongoing debate between addiction researchers. We learn that rats in larger cages prefer water to morphine and that alcoholism does not seem to have been an issue among the native peoples of America prior to colonialism. We also learn that the correlation between lower well-being and high levels of screen time is as weak as the correlation between lower well-being and regularly eating potatoes. Distractions may temporarily lessen anxiety but can also exacerbate it. To understand this dynamic, examining single variables like “drug consumption” or “screen time” alone is insufficient. For example, to grasp the surge in depression and anxiety among children and teenagers, merely knowing the duration of their screen time is uninformative. Instead, we should consider the nature of their screen activities and how these digital interactions contribute to social isolation, self-evaluation, and the struggle for recognition.
