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OK.  Really?  Fast cars as a mental illness?  Religion as a mental illness?  You get ‘chemical brain highs’ from a variety of things – just because that happens, does it mean it is an addiction or mental ‘illness’?  Not to mention illness gives off such a negative connotation (do we have a heart illness?).  It sounds weak and soft, when in fact brain issues are quite serious, medical, and biological and should be treated as such.

Back to my point; texting. For me, the differentiating factor of addiction is when it interrupts your daily life and creates negative consequences for you and others.  That is really the significant factor.  Negative consequences.

I am pretty clear that for me, texting is an addiction.  I use it as a way to communicate negative feelings when I am upset – which generally just makes everything worse.  I am also impulsive and my mind works very, very quickly.  So I might have solved a problem ten minutes ago, but come up with a new solution 10 minutes later.  When I communicate this to others (whose brains maybe aren’t on such warp speed) I am confusing, inconsistent, and perceived ‘crazy.’  After reviewing some recent texts I can see why (but really, it all made sense to me at the time and I had a different tone!).

No excuses, though.  The problem I have is that texting is so EASY and so right there.  But once again I have created problems in my life because of it, so I am vowing to stop.  I talked to my brilliant friend Raquel and she had some rather creative suggestions: