Bad-news junkie goes cold turkey

David Sherman

I’ve gone cold turkey. Gave it up. Killed the apps. Deleted the barrage of newsletters that track me, unsubscribed to the rest. I’m a junkie in rehab. I’ve stopped reading, watching and listening to news.

Not only do I have time to read, shop, play, cook, talk, think and walk, my blood pressure has dropped. I’m wrapped in an unfamiliar cocoon of calm. I’m in recovery from 10 or more years of the Donald swallowing my well-being and a lifetime of reading, reporting, discussing disasters and stupidity I have no control over.

My vocabulary is now bereft of, “Did you hear this?” “Did you read that?” “Do you believe this?” “Unbelievable!” Now, I believe it. I just don’t want to know about it.

My benign neglect has metastasized to Canadian and world news. I don’t know what heinous crimes Justin Trudeau has committed – I was too busy reading about the heinous crimes perpetrated by the U.S. monarch-in-waiting – but son-of-Pierre has become a pariah. The country’s majority believes peace on Earth and goodwill to all will be delivered by someone named Pierre Poilievre. He was magically de-nerded – new coif, contact lenses, good tailor -- a year or two ago and now holds Canadians enthralled.

Last I read, immigrants are now an endangered species, our border is now a pernicious boundary that endangers Americans. The fact who American border guards let into the U.S. has nothing to do with us is curiously irrelevant. Our Trump acolytes have made their problems ours.

Poilievre’s nose, as well as that of Alberta premier Danielle Smith, will have to be surgically removed from Trump’s ass when he keels over from an excess of steak and ketchup. But, maybe not. They like it there. Along with hockey great Wayne Gretzky.

Gretzky’s brain damage can be attributed to the rigours of our national sport. One can only be crunched into walls at high speed so often before becoming a Trumpite. Just as Sylvester Stallone had too many shots to the head playing a partially brain-dead Rocky. Turns out he wasn’t playing.

Cutting the umbilical cord to the happenings of the day, as interpreted by 100 sources, is a trial. I’ve spent most of my life working in the news trenches, starting at 17 as a copy boy at the Montreal Star when the moon landing enthralled the world. Ending as a copy editor at the Montreal Gazette when Barack Obama “ended racism” and then writing for a variety of newspapers and magazines until the internet blew it all up.

I lived and breathed news – hard, soft and the chewy centre. The world’s crises, large and small, were my crises and hence, that of my burdened partner.

She devoted her professional life to a large restaurant, made hundreds of people a week happy by ensuring they ate and drank sumptuously, celebrated life and love and walked away with happy memories and lighter pockets.

I and my colleagues fed people misery. The penchant continued over dinner, where I’d heap a sauce of man’s lack of civility upon my partner. It was not the best recipe for happy co-existence. 

How can one breathe without news of wildfires, flooding, carpet bombing, tornadoes, hurricanes, school shootings, Boeing greed, rising seas, political insanity and attendant incalculable suffering?

That’s before breakfast. By bed time, there was nothing like an updated recital -- called in the news biz a “writethru” -- of the daily calamities to lull one into a pleasant night’s sleep replete with gritted teeth and rapid heartbeat.

It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there, so time to leave the light shine on the life-affirming.

Does unplugging from the daily horrors make one a less than perfect citizen? Perhaps. Does unplugging from everything one has no control over make for a more boring person? Perhaps. But, in our little burg in the mountains north of Montreal, we’re in good company. No one talks about what they read in the Post/Times/CNN/Politico/Guardian/Atlantic/New Yorker, etc., etc., etc. Yet, conversation flows.

Some play music after dinner. Some talk about ski trails. Some talk of family, the town’s theatre, the senior’s residences under construction, invasion of remote workers, changing demographics. All talk about their lives or the ones they care about and are close at hand. Some talk of what’s on the table and how it got there.

Kitchen-sink interests, some of which, unlike melting Arctic ice, we can influence. 

Maybe having removed oneself from the big city, one removes themselves from the big news. I slipped and read a headline of Ontario wanting to remove bike paths in Toronto. Cyclists are threatening to tie the premier to a street car.

I also saw a squib about a man raising money to build tiny homes for homeless at a cost of $10,000 each. He’s raised enough to build two. Only 30,000-35,000 to go.

There are good people doing or trying to do good things everywhere. There are heroes lost among the villains but they make for less sensation, less clicks. We’ve been transformed to cookie containers, walking bytes of data, our gadgets overflowing, the better to fulfill our destiny as consumers.

So, after waking every night at 3 a.m., hoping to read Trump had a massive cardiac infarction, I now limit myself to the weather forecast and sports, the drama of young men and women winning and losing games, careers and obscene contracts.

If someone wants to pay a baseball player $700 or $800 million it is mystifying but a sign of the times. It has nothing to do with me and doesn’t pump up the blood pressure. Instead of CNN, I can watch a hockey game, feel inflated or depressed by the outcome but recover by the next no-news day.

I fume less, considering taking up cribbage. Maybe gin rummy. The guitar still soothes me, writing engages me.

I’m a news junkie survivor. I’ve had slips. It’s part of surviving addiction, part of the rehab process. As the years are counting down to the inevitable finale, do I need a daily compilation of tragedy?

How about those Canadiens and their new goaltender?