There <i> Is</i> a Morning After for This Tuned-Out TV Addict

I’m cured. I was severely addicted to television, and now I am free. But I suppose it’s like Alcoholics Anonymous. One Day at a Time. And all that.

It took a breakdown to make it happen--not mine, but the TV’s. That, and a bank book too lean to facilitate repair or replacement gave me enough incentive to try living without the Tube. I confess that I would never have been strong enough to quit, cold turkey, on a set that still functioned.

It wasn’t easy. All through the first week, I reflexively grabbed the remote control and took aim at the great gray eye--again and again--only to remember it was blind. What’s even more shameful, I would sometimes sit and stare at the blank screen for a minute or two, like a cat staring at a tree where a bird’s nest used to be.

Former CBS newsman Joseph Benti once said that TV is like “two guys fighting in a bar. It’s not really worth looking at, but you can’t take your eyes off it.” I think that’s about as apt a description as any--except, he might have added, the fight never ends. You can turn the thing on any time, 24 hours a day, and they’re still duking it out. For me, this allure became an irresistible crutch. I work at home, you see, which affords the luxury--the necessity, in my case--of taking many small breaks while working.

The easiest way to fill these breaks was to flip on the tube, and zap for five or 10 minutes. CNN, local news, MTV, American Movie Classics, Japanese soap operas (with or without subtitles), infomercials (my favorite, for quite a while, was the “Amazing Discoveries” segment with ever-charming Jack LaLanne and his “Juice Tiger”), Bugs Bunny, The Avengers, Mr. Ed, documentaries on Mussolini--about the only things I couldn’t look at were American soaps and reruns of ‘70s game shows like “Name That Tune.” Otherwise, I’d watch almost anything for a few minutes. What’s worse, I’d often enjoy what I saw, sometimes in ways psychiatrists might not consider so healthy.

I once horrified a publicist by telling her on the phone that she was interrupting “The Price Is Right.” What, she said, you mean you watch that stuff? “Yes,” I answered. “It’s my morning newspaper. It tells me everything I need to know about humanity: the greed, the charity, the joy, the suffering--it’s all there. And besides, Bob Barker seems like a hell of a nice guy.”

It took years to realize that I was sick. The first indication, probably, was when I began speaking to the people on the screen--certainly in ways I would never speak to them in real life. The things I’ve said to Oprah, Dr. Sonia Friedman, Kathie Lee Gifford, Peter Jennings, Michael Tuck (just about all local news anchors except Hal Fishman, for that matter), Bryant Gumbel, Mary Hart are very unprintable here.

The second indication of illness must have been that I physically rubbed out the numbers on the remote control unit through repeated use. There was, for example, a well-worn path from the channel-switcher to the “mute” button. It’s a wonder I didn’t get carpal tunnel syndrome.

Like alcoholics who don’t drink alone, I had company--an enabler, I suppose you could say. A friend who was also TV-addicted took to phoning me at odd hours of the day and night, saying things like “13--quick,” or “MTV--fast” or the two words I most enjoyed hearing him speak: “Public Access.”

Wordlessly, I would drop whatever I was doing, hit the remote and tune in the absurdity of the moment: horrifying graphic knee surgery on Lifetime, Don Francisco leading his audience in a sing-along in praise of “Lincoln Mercury” on “ Sabado Gigante, “ Ted Danson making a “surprise appearance” on a Cher infomercial, Sir Mix-A Lot dancing atop giant sets of bare female hindquarters. And we would sit and watch--together by phone--chuckling, sneering, and offering an occasional vitriolic remark. It became an ugly, co-dependent contest--to find the weirdest, most objectionable thing on at any given moment, and jeer at it.

Then, suddenly, it was all gone.

I went stir-crazy. I ate a lot. I paced. My friend stopped calling. I took lots of walks. Once--and this is true--I felt the impulse to “zap” away a poor guy asking me for spare change on the street. (If ever there was an example of how TV desensitizes and removes one from reality, that’s a pretty good candidate.) I took to buying Time and Newsweek. I resumed, for the first time in years, regularly reading a morning newspaper--without follow-up depression. (Maybe it was the lack of redundant TV news backup.) I even went to a library one day and tried to read a book, but I found this required something I used to have called an attention span, so I settled for finishing a couple of chapters. I engaged in supernaturally long phone conversations and found myself getting chatty with the people I least enjoy getting chatty with--editors.

But as weeks went by--and I mean about five or six of them--I missed the tube less and less. I began exercising more regularly, going outside a bit more (admittedly, mostly to movies), and writing more letters to old friends. Eventually, about the only televised things I found that I missed were David Letterman and old classic films. As my VCR still worked, I could occasionally rent an old movie, and I’d seen enough Letterman shows to last for years.

I also began listening to more radio--some NPR stuff and lots of classical music. Oh, and--sorry if this horrifies some of you--I tuned in Howard Stern in the mornings, which I also justified to friends as “my morning newspaper--it tells me everything I need to know about humanity every day.”

Fourteen weeks went by, in all, without the tube. I eventually decided to fix it, more or less because it was broken. Why own something that’s broken? As it turned out, the set had been fine all along; the problem had been with the cable. Like magic, the cable guy fixed a connection, and all 28 channels came back--vivid, bright, and aggressively clear.

I braced myself and wondered. Would I succumb? Would I be sucked back into that sick other-reality of television land? More “Price Is Right” mornings? “Geraldo” afternoons?

To my delight, I have found that most everything I see on the tube now seems repugnant. I don’t need or want to know most of the news repeated endlessly in alarming, listen-to-me tones on channel after channel. I certainly can’t abide any of the Oprah/Donahue-ilk voyeurism. Most TV content seems so smarmy, insipid, or idiotic that I chafe at the thought of how many hours I spent using all this pap as a buffer against stress.

My addiction to TV was like a food addict hooked on Twinkies and microwave taquitos. I knew intellectually that I was filling my brain with junk, like an alcoholic knows intellectually that the stuff rots your memory and liver. But it didn’t matter. For a while, I denied the problem; eventually I had just reveled in the addiction.

Well, it’s all over now. I no longer reach automatically for the remote control, I’m still reading a morning paper, going for walks, and still listening to Howard Stern.

But I’ll tell you, that Bob Barker does seem like a hell of a nice guy.