I SEE myself attending meetings. I'm standing at a podium, in a small room at a community centre, in front of a group of people. My hands feel clammy and there's a build-up of nervous phlegm at the back of my throat. I cough a little.

"Hello, my name is Umapagan and I am an addict." The crowd responds, in perfect unison, "Hello Umpamagan." A sea of voices, all of whom pronounce my name incorrectly.

"It has been 72 hours since my last fix."

It used to be so much easier. Back when I was in control. I used, but only a little. Only with friends, sometimes with family, but only ever casually. I wasn't an addict. I could give it up whenever I wanted.

Besides, in the old days, it was never so readily available. I mean, the regular, everyday stuff, you could get from your dealers and distributors. Heck, it would be delivered, right to your doorstep, every morning. But if you wanted something different, special, specific, you really needed to know where to look.
But not any more. Today, it's everywhere. It's on television, it's on the Internet, it's on every street corner. It's on, all of the time. Its siren song surrounds me. And I am powerless when faced with its chant.

It used to be that I was always quite content with the daily paper, the occasional magazine, and the news that would come on every day, at the regularly scheduled and agreed upon times. They served as a natural partition to my daily routine. Breakfast was with the morning paper, dinner was always followed by the evening news, and for all of those hours in between, those private moments on porcelain, there was Time and Reader's Digest.

I was satisfied. I was wrong. There was a monster inside me, one with an insatiable appetite for information, one that I had unwittingly awakened. My everyday sources soon weren't enough to quell its cravings. It needed more. Newspapers and magazines, the BBC World Service and CNN, websites and blogs, it thrived upon the perpetual punditry that they offered. The more I fed it, the more it needed, and slowly but surely it began to consume me from within. It was taking over my life. Hyde would soon overwhelm Jekyll.

They say that the road to recovery begins with the admission that you are powerless over your addiction, that your life has become unmanageable. They say that this realisation, more often than not, occurs only once you've hit rock bottom.

For me, it happened last week.

My right hand is switching and scrolling through the 20 odd tabs on my Internet browser. The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, Slate.com, Al Jazeera, IWF Inkwell, Ha'aretz. I begin to lose count. I'm hitting refresh every few minutes. I don't really believe that anything has changed since the last time I clicked, but I don't want to the take the risk.

My left hand is working the remote. CNN, BBC World, Al Jazeera, and back again.

I've got mail. It's a news flash.

My phone bleeps at me. No. It doesn't really bleep. There is nothing high pitched or electronic about it. Only the melodious 13-note rendering of Francisco Tarrega's masterpiece, Gran Vals. It tells me that I have a text message. It's another Reuters update.

There is a stack of magazines on my table. I'm fighting a losing battle, to finish each one before the next arrives. The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, National Geographic, Prospect, Time, The Economist. I have no money left and my subscriptions need to be renewed. I need to be renewed.

The fax machine begins to make that screeching sound and I scream.

When they find me the next morning, I'm on the floor, in a foetal position, rocking back and forth. I'm surrounded by televisions and radios, by laptops and mobile phones, by copies of The New Yorker, still shrink-wrapped in plastic.

I realised then that I needed to do something, and right away. It had to be something drastic. I needed to be detoxed, I needed to go cold turkey.

So I decide, that for 72 hours, I would cut myself off completely. For three whole days, there would be no 24-hour cable news, no newspapers, no magazines, no websites, and no weblogs. The great disconnect. If anything, I hoped that it would at least fight off this crush that I seem to have on CNN's Campbell Brown.

Day 1: I don't know what to do with myself. I lie in bed until about 10am. Following my morning rituals, I sit down in front of the computer. The mouse hovers above my browser bookmarks. But I hold back. I don't click.

Instead I spend the morning playing solitaire. I'm losing three games to one. I'm convinced that the version on Windows Vista is a lot harder than the one on Windows XP. I spend the next few hours uninstalling Vista and reinstalling XP. I was right.

I read a book. I read another. And one more. I wonder what Wolf Blitzer is doing right now? I miss his beard. I think I might go to sleep.

Day 2: I wake up feeling somewhat refreshed. I'm sleeping a lot better. 10 whole hours, uninterrupted. The screams of a hundred thousand Myanmar voices aren't keeping me up all night.

Ignoring the chaos of the world has had an unforeseen effect in that I seem happier. My complexion is improving. My skin has a glow about it. I'm not as angry or as cynical. I don't feel the constant need to engage in arguments involving Hillary Clinton's chances. About whether or not she would have come this far if Bill was never president. I let it go. It doesn't really matter.

I might go outside for a while. I'm not afraid of going outside any longer. Maybe ignorance is bliss after all.

Day 3: I've got a song in my heart and a spring in my step. The world seems so full of possibility. After indulging in many distractions and procrastinations, I finally sit down to start writing this piece. Hours go by, and nothing. My mind is everywhere. I can't write. I seem to be cured of my melancholy, removed from that maudlin state in which all writers reside, which all writers need. I pick up my copy of Swann's Way in an attempt to channel some of Proust's suicidal sadness. It doesn't help. I stare at the empty page. I only have to wait five hours until it's midnight, until I can turn on the news.

It's midnight. I turn on the television to find that Hillary Clinton is still running, that the junta in Myanmar is making life difficult for aid workers, that there was an earthquake in China. My heart sinks. My mind focuses.

Hello, my name is Umapagan and I'm a news junkie.