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Posted on 7 Aug 2007 at 16:47

 

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Mel Croucher kicks the habit of a lifetime and hangs up his phone.

I'm declaring here and now that I'm clean. I've sorted myself out. I can handle it. Keep reading, and learn from my amazing story. I'll teach you how to kick the habit for yourself.

At its peak, I was spending thousands of pounds feeding my addiction. I didn't realise I was slipping into dependency until it was too late. My craving grew until I was unable to function without a fix. I know it was utterly pathetic, and I admit that my first waking action was to jolt my system with the familiar but sickening buzz of habit and ritual. And once I had surfaced for the day, I needed a regular hit, usually several times an hour. My paraphernalia got used and abused and I became indiscriminate over my suppliers. Sometimes I didn't even bother to check the gear they sold me. And it goes without saying that once my suppliers had got me hooked, they increased the cost of my habit and ripped me off mercilessly.

It wasn't always like this. In my innocent youth, I didn't know anyone who had access to a private telephone. There was a tickertape machine on display in the bicycle shop, but nobody was prepared to fork out three shillings a week to subscribe to it. There was also a public telephone no more than a five-minute walk away, and for four old pennies we could talk to long-lost friends and distant relatives, apart from the fact that we didn't know their number because they didn't have a phone. Back then we communicated by letter, with several postal deliveries a day. In case of emergency, birth, marriage or death, we invested in a telegram at three pence a word. But, oh boy, when it changed, it changed fast.

Fax and figures

I rented my first personal telephone line and dedicated number about 40 years ago, for business purposes. Before long I was seduced by glamour and I invested in a telex machine, which had more buttons than a church organ and was almost as musical. By the 1980s, I was ready to move on to the hard stuff. When fax machines became available, I got myself a second phone line so that it wouldn't interfere with my vital phone calls. As my habit increased I thought I needed an ex-directory third line, for those private moments. Obviously I was an early adopter of one of those brick-sized phones, powered by a hernia battery in a suitcase. Ah, how I remember the first rush of using radio frequencies instead of wires.

I also embraced satellite and cable networks, even though they gave me nothing more than I already had. I thought that having a phone in the car was mandatory, and I also thought I really needed a spare mobile in case of network problems. When email shrunk to pocket-size I was right up there with the best of them, consuming designer drugs with street names such as BlackBerry. As I have told you, at its peak I was spending thousands for the privilege of being interrupted wherever I roamed by junk calls, inconsequential piffle and spam. It was insane. I was insane. Everyone around me was insane. There was only one thing to do. I decided to go cold turkey.

I switched my landlines to answerphone and my mobiles to voicemail, and I stopped answering phone calls. The sky did not fall in. The world did not end. I soon realised that I didn't need multiple lines, handsets and contracts at all, and I cancelled the lot. In the ensuing silence I pruned my contacts book ruthlessly, and I trained myself not to open any texts or emails unless they came from a source on my white-list. I discovered I needed to check messages only four times a day, not four times every waking hour.