Edgar Allan Poe wrote that he took drugs, since “it has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom”.

Chuck Palahniuk wrote: “I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He’s taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise.”

There is a huge industry in getting people off drugs and alcohol – R100 000 for six weeks in a rehab, plus counselling costs. The European and British governments care very much about their addicts. The Dutch government sends them to South Africa, all expenses paid, to rehab in the sun. People who take drugs cost a great deal of money. The physical damage they cause (smashing up cars, burning down houses, drug-related theft, gangster violence) and the emotional wreckage left behind is very draining on society.

The illegal drug pedlars are hardly worse than the legal drug pedlars. I am now in my 60s and those of my friends who smoke cigarettes or pipe tobacco are already starting to drop – three in the last two years. When they dish out free cigarettes at social functions, what do the cigarette people think? How can they live with themselves?

There is another form of addiction that is easing its way into society, almost unnoticed. It is electronic addiction. Let us pause for a moment – how would you feel if you spent a week without any form of electronics? No WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, News24, email . . . could you do it? To those who are in their 60s, it is actually no big challenge. Not too long ago, Wally and I went fishing at a place with no electronic services. At the end of the day, we pulled our chairs up to the fire and Wally said: “All good.” And, pointing at the fire, he said: “African TV is on.” So we chatted for an hour or so.

The electronic providers are as merciless as drug dealers. When you buy the cellphone, every function is set to consume as much data as possible. Any alert which tells you that you are about to top up your data with another R500 or so bundle is switched off. You get updates to apps you did not even know you had.

But there are some people who really like all the apps – all the updates. They live for WhatsApp and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat, Tencent, Facebook, Telegram, Pinterest. If they could, they would do nothing else but operate the keyboard of their cellphones day and night. One questions if they are, in fact, addicted or just fixated. If we say that addiction is a habit which (a) costs money (b) dominates the actions and thinking of a person above all else (c) is difficult to break and (d) results in general ill health, then the electronic habit is an addiction – only the ill-health effects are not as serious as for chemical drugs.

The questions are: (a) Will electronic addition get worse? (b) In what way? The questions are easily answered – the Next Big Thing will be three-dimensional projection from electronic devices. Invisible beams will project on a person’s cornea, which will allow greater electronic experiences than at present. The degree of information transmission will be far greater than today. Is electronic addition a problem? I argue, yes, since it can limit the intellectual growth of people of all ages. Makes them dof, like dope. Perhaps an obtuse concept, I know. Who cares, anyway? Give me African TV any day.