For a little background on what the heck I'm on about, please see:

http://open.salon.com/blog/the_noun/2009/06/02/facebook_free_-_the_first_24_hours
http://open.salon.com/blog/the_noun/2009/06/01/into_the_facebookless_void

Common symptoms of withdrawal include confusion, disorientation, and agitation. Check, check, and check.

I now understand why Day 1 wasn't so bad. And let me assure you, it was not simply because I was too busy to look at Facebook.

It's because every urge to creep, and snoop, and indulge my voyeuristic tendencies, and make snide remarks, and publish witticisms in my status field, and procrastinate and distract myself all swarmed me at once. The index finger on my right hand has a serious case of PCS (Phantom Click Syndrome) and I actually feel physically off. I fidget. I open browser windows for no apparent reason, stare at them, then remembering what I was about to do, I close them again. Yesterday I thought to myself, "Maybe I'm not at bad as I thought. I've probably just overreacted." Wrong. Today is a completely different story.

Something that bothers me that I hadn't expected was all the email that FB sends me, notifying me when a friend engages in some activity on my account. It's all directed to my oldest-ever email address (my 15 year old Hotmail) and gets sent to the 'junk' folder. Even so, when I emptied the junk box as I do every morning, I couldn't help but notice them. Trying not to read them, I hit the delete button, but not before I noticed that Jane invited me to... I'll never know. At least not if it happens within the next 334 hours. I should probably resist the temptation to look at that folder again and let the junks take care of themselves. But for a brief period, I did try to justify to myself that reading the notifications was not cheating--I was simply checking emails. The lies we tell...

I just hope the idea that withdrawal symptoms generally only last 72 hours is not a lie.