Over at TechCrunch, former alcoholic Paul Carr lays out the amusing story of his decision to go cold turkey on Twitter while researching a book. It seems that Carr decided Twitter was “creating a string of disconnection, context-free updates, rather than the kind of consistent narrative you might find on a blog.” Eight months later, Carr found himself on assignment for a month in Las Vegas. He was supposed to be writing a daily diary for the Huffington Post, “and, like all HuffPost authors, I was expected to provide a working Twitter account…”
So there went that plan. “I knew what would happen of course. Ordering me to rejoin Twitter for a month is like ordering me to go back to drinking for an hour.” And the horror begins: “My Vegas trip is over but my Twitter addiction is back with a vengeance: almost 1000 tweets in the past month.”
Friends, enemies, publicists—all happy to have him back in business. “As was the case in my drinking days,” writes Carr, “I’m surrounded by enablers.” The similarities don’t end there, however: “I really didn’t miss it. Again, there are parallels with my other big addiction: People frequently ask me whether I still crave alcohol, but the truth is that most of the time I don’t. When I was drinking, I couldn’t imagine getting through a stressful day—or a stress-free day, or any other kind of day—without the option of a beer. Within a week or two of quitting, though, I couldn’t understand what all the fuss had been about.”
Carr, looking for the happy ending, decides that if he could “put a positive spin on my falling off the digital wagon, it would be this: It has given me a vivid reminder of why I won’t be returning to social drinking any time soon.”