addiction

Carl Hart, a neuroscientist and professor of psychology at Columbia, recently declared that he is entering his fifth year as a regular heroin user. This surprising public statement brought new attention to Hart’s long history of advocacy for the decriminalization and legalization of most drugs. Based on his research, Hart believes that illegal drugs, when used properly, have overwhelmingly positive effects on the human psyche.

Right now, I’m supposed to be writing 50 pages on the Cold War, the CIA, and the KGB for my senior thesis in history. These are all things that I am interested in, and I literally need to finish my thesis to graduate. But for whatever reason, as I sit in the dingy stacks of Avery—a place that is beginning to feel like Dante’s depiction of limbo—I can’t bring myself to write this thesis. Instead, I’m writing this column. I’ve been waiting for the start of every half-hour hoping that it will motivate me to get moving. (It hasn’t.) I have 12 hours to send in a completed draft, and now I’m on a Wikipedia binge that began with Barack Obama’s dogs and has evolved into the highest-profile unsolved murders in the U.S.

When I ask Isabel Starkey-Jones, a Barnard College senior, if she has any closing remarks for our interview, she sighs and pushes the remains of her sandwich around with a finger. She deliberates for a long moment, searching for some sort of resolution or summary. "I'd have to think about that," she finally admits, "because I don't want to say, 'You'll get better,' because that's not true, necessarily. I don't want to end this that way. It's horrible, and I know it's horrible, and I know a lot of people don't get through it. So I'm not going to say that."

At one point, before I became one of Columbia's premier dealers of my drug of choice, I was a junior in high school taking A.P. U.S. History and I had put a six-page research paper off until the night before it was due. Because I was in our school musical's pit orchestra, I had only between 4 and 6 p.m. to concoct my paper.

I was chairman of the department of art history and archaeology for four years. Like most administrative jobs in academia, that of department chair consisted of sitting at a desk reading and writing email messages. Incoming messages included announcements from officials in Low Library, requests from colleagues and students, and exchanges with my superb office staff about the everyday running of the department. Many other messages, which did not require responses, concerned conferences in remote cities I could not attend, products I could not use, and statements from political figures I did not support. Gradually, as the messages multiplied, I discovered that I had become addicted to receiving them: The ping emitted by my computer announcing the arrival of a new message triggered an instant compulsion to read. What if an old friend had unexpectedly written to me? What if I had won a book prize? What if my son's school was announcing the date of the spring fair? I needed to know! These were not things that could wait. Anxiety over possibly missing something took control of my mind. I lived in a constant state of distraction. My powers of concentration, never acute, were sadly diminished by my obsessive desire to communicate instantly with people all over the world. Normally outgoing and sunny, I became morose and secretive. In short, my brain was being taken over. Fortunately, the end of my chairmanship allowed me to break free. With the support of family and friends, rest and fresh air, as well as a diet of simple healthful food, I made a good recovery. Though lapses do occur, I like to believe that I have kicked the email habit, restricting myself to occasionally scanning my inbox at set times during the day. Applying my regained self-control, I have resisted suggestions from friends that I acquire a cellphone for calls and text messages, fearing that a new addiction might replace the old. Email almost completely destroyed my mind, and a cellphone would likely finish the job. In addition, my lack of manual dexterity would make it extremely difficult for me to use such a device. (I also can't get the hang of using the word "text" as a verb.) Having been through my own valley of despair during my email addiction, I understand the compulsion to stay "connected," but I continue to wonder—especially here on campus—what urgent situations make constant use of cellphones so common. Are people in the early stages of intense love affairs that require more-or-less non-stop exchanges of endearments? Are they monitoring the health of a hospitalized relative or friend? Are they staying in close touch with their stock brokers? I am curious, but too timid to ask. In the only space at Columbia over which I have some sway—my own classroom—I ask that students disconnect, that they refrain from using laptops or electronic devices of any kind. I make this request not only to eliminate the ever-present temptation to check Facebook, tweet, text, or blog while listening to me lecture, but also because in an art history class focused on discussion of projected images, there is only room for one glowing screen, and it needs to be the big one up front, toward which all attention should be directed. Compliance with my requests that a digital-free zone be maintained in my classes has been almost uniformly good-natured and complete. Office hours have been a little different. I recently had a visit from a student who came to discuss a paper assignment. While talking to me, this person paused to receive a text message and was about to respond when I suggested rather sternly that he was simply too busy and his life too full to be wasting his time talking to me about something as frivolous as art history. Softening, I told him about how I had shaken off my email habit and spoke reassuringly of how he might be able to control his excessive texting, perhaps with the help of cold showers. My unease with nonstop digital communication is, I know, a symptom of the great generational divide that separates those of us who made our first telephone calls on rotary dial phones from young folk accustomed to round-the-clock use of sleek, app-rich devices that even the producers of "Star Trek"—a favorite show of my 1960s-era youth—could not have dreamed up. The danger, it seems to me, of always being connected electronically to people who are not present is that it leads to ignoring those who are—exceedingly rude behavior for members of any generation. In a community like that of Columbia, where we are both energized and distracted by the ceaseless diversions of New York, quietly paying attention to each other, disconnected from the background static of e-this and i-that, could make life richer. There is much more to be said about the menace of electronic devices in civic, social, and academic life. (Don't get me started on the subject of sonic leakage from iPods on the subway.) But I'll stop here and just take a peek at my email, because you never know... Robert E. Harrist, Jr. is the Jane and Leopold Swergold Professor of Chinese art history. To respond to this professor column, or to submit an op-ed, contact opinion@columbiaspectator.com