It’s more than boredom. Ennui is a restlessness, a detached dissatisfaction with life. A soul-sucking downward spiral of lost productivity and cheap dopamine hits. There is a huge wave of distracted children and listless, unfulfilled adults right now. Seemingly benign in the short-term, I believe the long-term consequences of this pernicious, insidious plague are as dangerous as any blight civilization has yet faced. Ennui is the new pandemic.

What’s Wrong with Us?

45 million people in the US are currently on anti-depressants. More than 17 percent of all US children are on prescription stimulants, like Adderall and Ritalin. 43 million people regularly take prescription anti-anxiety medication. And that’s just prescription meds.

About 79 million people in the US report regular use of marijuana. That’s just the cohort that reports cannabis usage - and of course, well over half of adults in the US - more than 211 million - regularly use alcohol to “take the edge off.”

These statistics are sure to be significantly underreported, when you consider the prevalence of illicit substance use that has become a part of American life.

What’s even more alarming is the fact the these numbers are increasing (with the exception of alcohol consumption which is about the same as in recent years).

I am by no means doubting the existence of depression, anxiety and ADHD (although I contend the latter is grotesquely over-diagnosed). But I see dozens of people weekly as a counselor, and my growing impression is that the incidence of bona fide mental health disorders is not increasing at a rate consistent with the rise of discomfort and dysfunction in my clients.

In other words, there is another factor at work. Something else is responsible “for the variance,” to put it in research-speak.

Escape

These self- (and prescribed-) abusive practices are not accidental. People are engaged in a desperate search for something to make them feel happier and less anxious, if only temporarily.

The statistics I have referenced are for the US, but Americans are by no means alone in their plight. The need to “check out” by almost any means necessary is a truly global issue.

What the hell is going on?

The drastic rise in the use of psychoactive chemicals is driven by a need to escape. We need to “unwind” after work, and “take it easy” on the weekends. We need to have a “social lubricant” to be able to talk to each other, especially to members of the opposite sex.

Our tendency to turn to prescription medication is not accidental. Pharmaceutical companies spend $35 billion dollars (US) on advertising each year. They run the hospitals and clinics and heavily influence the way physicians (and other primary care providers) are trained. They have the power to tell providers which substances to prescribe, on pain of professional ostracization.

If this seems far-fetched to you, do some research. Listen to insiders from Big Pharma describe their experiences. Read about docs who dare prescribe meds outside the institution’s Formulary. Talk to your friends and family about what substances they take (prescription or otherwise) to “escape from the pressures of life.”

But as dark as all of this is, there is another way to escape, a self-soothing mechanism that dwarfs all the rest in terms of reach, consumption and harm.

Cheap Thrills

The digital realm has given us many ways to effectively escape, to enable our frantic search for the next dopamine hit*.

You think drug use is prevalent? Buckle up.

Every hour, over 30,000 hours of video are uploaded to You Tube, every day. Let me do the math for you: more than 3.7 million new videos go up on You Tube every 24 hours.

It would take tens of thousands of years for you to watch all the videos on YouTube, even if they stopped uploading right now. Here’s the problem: if you are careful and lucky, you have about 75 years to be conscious.

But let’s be more practical. How many hours each week do you scroll all of the social media sites you follow? How many hours do you binge Netflix, Hulu, Disney+? How many playing video games? How many watching porn?

There are 168 hours in a week. If you sleep 8 hours a day and spend an average of 8 hours a day working, doing your household chores, commuting, cooking, shopping, etc. that leaves 56 hours for your free time.

The average consumer reports 40 or so hours per week in electronic distraction from the “real world.” If you are anything like the people I talk to each week, this figure is also drastically underreported.

Even if you are that average person, you have about 16 hours a week to have a life. If you have (maybe) 50 years of your life left, that is less than 248 weeks left. Prorate accordingly.

Read that again. If you are healthy and in your 20s, you will be dead in about 248 weeks of “free time” after your distractions.

For those (tragically skewed towards younger folks) who are at the top of the distraction continuum, it is common to trade sleep time for screen time.

And there is a price to be paid for that.

What’s The Matter?

The cascade goes like this:

Life, for the average young person looking to move out and start an independent life, is beset by a double-whammy. The middle class has disappeared, leaving a way-too-expensive barrier to a sustainable future. This creates an internal state of, “Why bother, I can’t afford to do anything anyway.” Add to that the depression and anxiety that inevitably follow, and cue the drugs and distraction.

Now, disheartened, distracted and stoned, it becomes exceedingly difficult to focus on life. As in “what should I be doing?” So nothing is done. Progress stops.

This is a sure-fire recipe for low self-esteem. All that’s left is to be an “influencer” on the Internet - or worse. When that route leads to dead ends, depression and anxiety worsen, more medication and distraction ensue and the mental health “death spiral” deepens.

Devastation

So here we are. Over-medicated, sleep-deprived, high on computer distraction and low on exercise, empathy, purpose and self-esteem.

Make no mistake: this is a life-and-death issue. Fentanyl, for instance, is only a problem because people are ingesting it (knowingly or accidentally) with other psychoactive substances in their search for escape.

Obesity is still a major factor in all-cause mortality, as are sleep deprivation and isolation.

On a societal level, there has been a significant decline in productivity in the last 20 years. This leads to decreases in economic growth, worker compensation, and improvements in living standards.

Do you see a correlation?
 

Help Yourself

You may be surprised to learn what I believe is responsible for this most serious pandemic.

The heart of the problem is existential. Not political or economic or climate-induced or a result of AI.

The issue is meaninglessness. “What’s the use” leads to nihilism and hell on earth, personally and collectively. This is the pandemic of ennui.

The cure is simple, but not easy:

Choose a purpose, even a short-term goal, and pursue it.

Make it a difficult task, worthy of your time.

Such that you have to grow:

So you are rewarded for mastering a scarce ability
To feel the massive intrinsic reward of a job well done
To become resilient and smart
And to feel excitement and a sense of accomplishment

And for god’s sake limit your mindless social media crawling.

Let me know how you are doing. I’m rooting for you.

*If enough of you, my dear readers, request it, I will be more than happy to do a deep dive on neurochemistry, especially the power of dopamine to drive behavior.



I am a creator (musician, writer, live-streamer and podcaster), entrepreneur, educator and counselor.



To learn more about how to use these concepts or to inquire about working with me, you can contact me through my website, the comments section on my Substack or Medium accounts or The Authentic Life Blog page. If you have found value in this article, follow my Instagram account for daily insights, or my X account for occasional tweets. To support this community, you can Buy Me A Coffee or donate through my Patreon account.

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- JWW