Fighting Music Addiction: An Experiment

Lately I’ve felt like I really want to accomplish more with my time. Sort of like a growing pain, like my consciousness is trying to expand and it’s running up against barriers in the form of time and distraction.

One thing I’ve noticed, is that as much as I love music, I’ve been listening to it too much lately, and it’s been really taxing my concentration.

I listen to a lot of long music files, remixes that go half an hour or more, or entire albums, and a weakness I’ve gradually become aware of is I won’t want to stop what I’m doing if I’m in the middle of a song. Say for example, I’m at my computer, and I get finished with whatever stuff I need to get done, but I’m in the middle of a song. Well, I can’t just walk away in the middle of the song, can I? But I can’t just sit there either, so I go check out some other website… and then the song ends, but now I’m in the middle of a website… it’s a vicious cycle!

I’m coming to grips with.. or at least, I’m becoming willing to consider the possibility of.. myself being addicted to music.

“But, music is good and wonderful!” Yes, I’m the first to agree. The thing is, everything must be done in moderation, and I haven’t been moderating my music very well!

This sort of goes along with my Nimbus Quest. The goal of the Nimbus Quest is to achieve good state (joy, confidence, courage, the state of “being in the zone”) at all times, or at least as much of the time as possible. Many men have attempted the quest, and the path is strewn with their corpses, but I may persevere because I’m taking a radical new approach to the goal. You see, everyone agrees that to accomplish the Quest, you must learn to ignore negative state from outside (the bad feelings that come with rejection, failure, uncertainty and so on). But what I’m doing is adding the opposite side of the coin, and trying to ignore positive state from outside. The idea is that if the state boost does not come from within, then I don’t truly own it. Say a publisher accepts my paper, and I allow it to boost my state. Then I lose power over my state, because the publisher could change their mind and take it away.

One source of outside state-boost is music. Listening to good, fresh music is a MAJOR state pumper for me. When I find something new and good I’ve never listened to before, sometimes I literally feel joy in my heart like it’s a physical surge of energy. Problem is, you can’t listen to the same music over and over, and still have it be fresh, it gets old and you have to find new music if you want to keep that state. When you listen to music as much as I’ve been doing, it’s impossible to keep fresh new music stocked all the time.

So I’m gonna experiment with cutting the music out. It’s not a permanent change– yet. It’s an experiment, and I’ll do it for maybe a month and see how it goes. Then I’ll start experimenting with rationing music so I’m not listening to it almost every waking hour, like I was until now.

Of course, it’s impossible to remove music from your life completely. It’s everywhere. I’m just talking about not listening to it on headphones for its own sake. If I’m watching a movie with music in it, obviously that’s cool, same with music in a store or club. But while I’m on the computer, I’ll stay away from playing music files.

In one sense, I’ve already done the experiment. During my Japan trip, I wasn’t listening to music (besides whatever music was naturally in my environment) just because I couldn’t. I didn’t have my laptop or headphones or mp3 player. And, during the Japan trip, I really felt like I reached a higher level of consciousness, awareness and clarity. It’s still heightened now, but it’s not as strong. Of course, travelling halfway across the globe, means there were a lot of conflicting variables, so it would be a mistake to conclude solely on that experience, that I should give up music. Music is just one of the many variables that changed when I went to Japan.

If you google “music addiction”, there’s virtually nothing about it. This kind of surprised me. There’s like literally one forum thread from 2005. And a bunch of sites which use “music addiction” in a different sense, e.g., “Check out this new band I found, they’re my latest music addiction”. I guess it’s because music is very benign as far as addictions go. You don’t hear of “music heads” wandering the streets, selling their bodies to get their next fix. At least not the streets around where I live.

I’ve actually already started the experiment. I started it a couple days ago, and already, I find my eyes wandering toward my beautiful headphones, my mind itching to turn on some sweet sweet music. It actually surprises me, because it seems like the addiction is stronger than I thought. Or maybe, I should use “music habit” instead of “music addiction”. It’s the sort of thing where if I wasn’t thinking about it, I might casually flip some music on without even being consciously aware of it.

Something else I might experiment with is that Mozart/Beethoven classical stuff. I’ve never really tried a lot of it (though I really like a few pieces like Canon in D or Moonlight Sonata). But I’ve heard all the usual stories about how it makes you smarter, gives you the ability to shoot lasers with your eyes, etc. Worth a try. But that’s for a later day, for now, no music!

In a few ways, I envy you, my dear readers. Besides being beautiful and intelligent and wonderful people, you also have the advantage of being able to watch me do these crazy experiments, so if they turn out disastrous, you don’t have to do them yourself.

Keep an eye on the blog and if I seem like I’m forgetting about the experiment, bug me in the comments. Glowing Face Man, signing out.

Here are the other articles on music addiction:
Drilling Flashcards Without Music
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 1
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 2
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 3