“My name is Ami, I am 33 years old, and I am addicted to Facebook.”  

I make this crack often, but I never actually believed it in any literal sense.  I had no doubt that I could quit but many of my friends and family saw me as a textbook addict: a fiend foaming at the mouth for a fix every hour.  

When I told my husband that I would be writing an article on giving Facebook up for five days, he was beyond doubtful that I could do it.  

“You are supposed to stay off it for five days?” he asked via text message (clearly laughing, sneering and pointing, even though I couldn’t see him).  “Yep, that was my pitch.  I’ll probably get a lot done.” I replied, defiance in my tone.  

“There is no way you could do that, in my opinion,” he replied.  

I was actually kind of shocked to hear him say this.  My husband and I are two peas in a pod; we think alike and generally have similar opinions on almost everything.  A value we share is honesty, however, and I should thank him for being totally honest with me, as much as it stings.  

In response to my suggestion that my husband thought I would cheat, a friend stated, “You’re too stubborn to cheat it.”  She is a “friend” I have never even met in person and yet at that moment I felt she knew me better than my own family, my own husband.  I am incredibly stubborn and I was banking on that stubbornness to get me through.  

By the afternoon after announcing I was going to be leaving Facebook for five days, I was pretty much ready to chuck the PC out my kitchen window (that’ll show… er… no one).  I was frustrated by the doubt that oozed through my monitor.

Before I removed the Facebook application from my phone and any notifications, I wanted to document how I was feeling so that I could keep track of how my moods evolved over five days.  I came up with pros and cons to Facebook.  

Pros:  Contact with other parents, contact with older students, contact with family that I usually only see on holidays, and contact with great friends, old and new.  

Cons: Anxiety, agitation, people generally ticking me off, and massive time consumption.  (Hmmm… the cons list really makes me think a break is perhaps a good idea)

My state of mind before giving up Facebook?  Annoyance with those who had little faith in me.  I wasn’t thinking about the pros that kept me on there every day.

Day One came and went without issue and I was feeling quite confident that five days would be a piece of cake.  

By Day Two I was suffering from “alien hand syndrome,” my hands seemingly taking on a mind of their own, trying to open tabs, trying to check for notifications that weren’t there.  Despite my mind saying, “I don’t care.  I’m not dying to know what is going on there,” my impulses apparently thought otherwise.

Despite my crazy hands on Day Two, I was insanely productive, churning out assignments left and right (one of which I did completely wrong, so take that with a grain of salt).  Part of me thinks this was due to the fact I felt that I should be more productive, the other part of me thinking it was because I spend way too much time on Facebook when I could be doing more productive things.

Day Three was a breeze early on, in part because I wasn’t feeling well by afternoon.  My head started playing tricks on me, suggesting I wasn’t well because I was suffering withdrawal from Facebook.  I hadn’t seen any babies crawling on the ceiling yet and I wasn’t shivering in a corner, so I guessed the illness was legitimate.

By evening, Day Three, I was bored out of my freaking mind.  I was home alone and left to my own devices and it was harder than any previous moment to stay off of Facebook.  But I made a commitment and I was determined to stick with it.

Day Four was an indifferent repeat of Day One.  I had hit the peak of insanity on Day Three and was on my way down the bell curve,

Day Five?  I was a fiend, foaming at the mouth, ready for my fix come 10:20 p.m. – exactly five days to the minute since I left Facebook in the dust.  They say admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?

My name is Ami, I’m 33 years old, and yeah… I’m addicted to Facebook.  But I can stop any time I want!