Dominic Piacentini
Last semester I took a break from the wonderful world of Wooster. Although my semester abroad in Tanzania was undeniably the most incredible four months of my life, I began to realize my chemical dependency on the visual medium. The day the final season of Breaking Bad premiered on AMC was the same date I left the country. My rehab had officially begun.
The logistics of my program left the television unavailable and the internet impractical. I made it through the next four months in a permanent state of wonder only sobriety could stimulate. Had How I Met Your Mother overcome its increasingly poor performance? Had Sons of Anarchy continued to raise the intrigue and entertainment beyond that of previous seasons? How many of my favorite characters had finally met Death?
On one unfortunate occasion, I was scrolling through Facebook on a lovely Monday afternoon. I happened to see a post shouting about the previous night’s Breaking Bad episode and a phone call. I spent the next couple of months speculating possible scenarios involving meth and phone calls. Who was talking to whom? What were they talking about? And why was it so important? Needless to say, my imagination got the better of me.
I was able to sustain myself with a couple hits of Legend of Korra scattered throughout the semester. During the last week of the semester, we found one of Tanzania’s premier movie theaters. We promptly took advantage of this and watched Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Carrie, Thor: the Dark World, The Counselor and About Time all within the span of a week. Although not all of the movies we watched were necessarily good, this oasis of visual ecstasy sustained me through the close of the program.
After the last week’s movie marathon, I returned home and relapsed completely. The fate of Walter White and Dexter Morgan were at my fingertips. For a week, I did not get up from my couch. I did not see my friends. The only function I seemed capable of doing was hitting the play button on my television or computer. Then all of a sudden, it was gone. I had overdosed. I had used up all of my stash within a few days of being home. There was no more Dexter, no more Breaking Bad, and How I Met Your Mother had fallen into disrepair. I was left with an empty feeling and an urgent need for more. Readers, my addiction to television has returned full force. The sobriety of my African rehab failed within the first night of me being home. I’ve lost hope of complete recovery, but frankly I couldn’t care less. My consumption of television is only onward and upward.