At the end of Naked Lunch William Burroughs includes a letter to his doctor in which he clinically and with some detachment describes all of the drugs he has taken and the various treatments he has undergone and assesses their efficacy.
I thought I'd do the same about PS3 addiction. For the last year we have tried a range of treatments; mostly of little effect. Michael continues to display all of the symptoms of addiction. His dogged determination to resist all attempts at a cure. His stubborn and subtle attempts to evade treatment and get around cures and punishments would be noteworthy were they directed toward something more useful in life
Disappointingly when we refer to the impact on his schoolwork he turns round and produces a term report showing significant improvement in effort and attainment with no discernible lessening of his addiction. This somewhat undermines our position.
We shift our attack and instead refer to our desire for conversational interaction with him on a regular basis. This produces a puzzled look of incomprehension and a grunt. We explain that the art of conversation is a two way process. We had to amend this definition to stress that his part of the process needed to involve more than one word responses. So far we have had negligible success. The only two things that animate him are shooting people on PS3 and the possibility of seeing naked breasts on TV.
We are resigned to a somewhat tedious struggle of wills for the next few years.
In the meantime we will continue to hunt for any commercially available cryogenic service to put him in suspended animation for 4 years until he is 18
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