after reading about kristin’s ordeal and how she wrote about using the internet to escape and to numb the feelings of life, i wanted to find out more about internet addiction. with a few searches on google i found out there is plenty of text book and hyper text about the subject. more then i thought would actully be out there. i mean, i know that being on the internet for countless hours is widely accepted around the world, but i was shocked to find out how people being to forget their real life and completely focus on their “cyber-life” and to the point that it become dangerous to others and to themselves. after reading an article on Wired.com on web addicts being emitted into a clinic, i searched for hosipitals that have delt with the problem of web addiction. http://www.netaddiction.com seem to be a good source of information and they even had a self-test area. I took the test for internet addiction and scored a 31.

You are an average on-line user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.

i wasn’t hasty to believe that this was actully me; with so few questions, it can’t be accurate.
if someone was to come up to me and ask if i was an internet addict, i’d have to say not at this time. i remember once when i use to skip school to play couner-strike or when i use to not go to work to finish a website design for a client. looking back, it was quite scary to think that i gave up my education for time on the net. i built computers when i should have been taking finals. i was winning counter-strike matches when i should have been earning money for a new car. my teenage years were dark and clouded with the storm of the internet. i look what good it did. i try to tell myself that what i did was just and that a little good came out of this horror. in truth, i don’t think it was worth it. i failed in controlling myself and now i am paying the price. although i did manage to recover myself, get a GED diploma and enlist into the United States Marine Corps, i still think i failed in the true early trials of life. i can’t go back and change what i did, but i can make the most of what i have now. after Iraq, i plan to make the most of my life. i want to go home. i want to get an education. i want a job. a wife. kids. i want my life back.