In Association with Amazon.com


Internet Addiction

Hello.

Your name was given to us by a spouse or family member who is concerned about your Internet addiction. At Internetaholics Anonymous, we can help.

Yes, you--we're talking to you. You, looking at this screen for hours on end, online. You, bleary eyed. You, an addict. Have you looked in the mirror lately? Been outside? Know what day of the week it is? Have you checked downstairs to see if your family still lives with you?

We're a non-profit society of recovering addicts like yourself that provides support and counseling through weekly (off-line) meetings designed to help you cope with your problem.

We feature a twelve-step recovery program and in extreme cases, interventions. Although it is our firm belief that you are never "cured," you most certainly can recover.

We have designed a brief checklist to determine if you are an addict. Do you:

1) Have twitches of the hand when you walk by your terminal?

2) Check e-mail more than five times a day?

3) Spend more time chatting than eating or sleeping?

4) Surf aimlessly with no direction, if only to be online?

5) Leave your name and information at countless sites if only to hope you'll receive a reply one day from a company you'll never do business with anyway?

6) Log on before important personal habits, such as meal preparation, hygiene or bodily functions?

7) Have red, swollen eyes that hang halfway out of your head?

8) Spend hours online on a holiday from work, where you'd usually be griping about your carpal tunnel syndrome?

9) See smoke arising from your computer or WebTV box?

10) All of the above?

If you answered yes to four or more questions (or chose #10), you have a problem. Please call us at Internetaholics Anonymous at:

1-800-LOGOFFNOWFORPETE'SSAKE

We're here, we're free, and we're confidential. The first step to recovery is admission that you have a problem.

Call us today. That is, if you can power off to free up your phone line.

Signs That You've Had TOO MUCH Of The 90s

You try to enter your password on the microwave.

You now think of three espressos as "getting wasted."

You haven't played solitaire with a real deck of cards in years.

You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

You e-mail your son in his room to tell him that dinner is ready, and he e-mails you back "What's for dinner?"

Your daughter sells Girl Scout Cookies via her web site.

You chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven't spoken to your next door neighbor yet this year.

You didn't give your valentine a card this year, but you posted one for your email buddies via a Web page.

Every commercial on television has a web-site address at the bottom of the screen.

You buy a computer and a week later it is out of date and now sells for half the price you paid.

The concept of using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase is foreign to you.

Cleaning up the dining area means getting the fast food bags out of the back seat of your car.

Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they do not have e-mail addresses.

You consider 2nd day air delivery painfully slow.

You refer to your dining room table as the flat filing cabinet.

Your idea of being organized is multiple colored post-it notes.

You hear most of your jokes via email instead of in person.

Blonde's Mail Box

A blonde went to her mailbox several times before it was even time for the mailman to make his rounds.

A neighbor noticed her repeated trips to the curb and asked if she was waiting for a special delivery.

Her reply: "My computer keeps telling me I have mail".

Where do you want to go today?

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