My Binge Experience
By Lizzie Ruprecht
Hey readers! I’m Lizzie, a sophomore at Guilford College and I am going to share some of my personal experiences of media bingeing. I learned about bingeing as I was actually doing the binges through articles on the topic as well as chapters out of books on emotion and psychology. One of the most striking things I read, pre-binge sessions, was on a comparison between singing in a church choir and using heroin. Both have the ability to alter moods, and this struck me as shocking. Now post-binge, I totally understand how external, sensory stimuli can affect me in such strong ways. While I was doing the third binge, I played a video game called Plants VS. Zombies for sixteen hours in three days. During this time, I recorded my emotions and thoughts in daily journals. I remember one moment feeling totally engrossed in the world of extreme, defensive gardening, and looking up at the clock to see over two hours slipping away with absolutely zero awareness of the clock. About ten minutes prior to this shadowy two hours, I had been appalled that I had to keep playing, and looking at the clock about every eight to ten minutes. These extreme waves of contradicting emotions show how external stimuli has a truly unique ability to alter moods. 
I experienced a type of this pull during the reading binge as well, but it felt very different. While I was reading, time definitely took on a different mask, and I felt almost euphoric physically. I was much more in this world, but I was also deeply connected to the narrative teleology that Philip Pullman presented in the novel His Dark Materials. During our group binge sessions, I offered to read outloud to start everyone off, and my group was very fond of this idea. So I began reading, and stopped thirty or forty-five minutes in to see how everyone was doing or if anyone wanted to read, but everyone said they were really enjoying me reading out loud and asked me to please continue. As I read, I was minimally aware of the library around me, or of the bean bag I was sitting on. I was in Pullman’s world, really didn’t even recognize my own voice. It seemed to heighten motivations for my group, as well as pulling everyone into the storyline. The television series binge was the first binge I undertook, and also the most difficult to me. I think this has to do with the plotline of the shows my group and I watched. We started with Marco Polo, which seemed to move very slowly, but have an enormous amount of characters, and in my opinion had pretty horrible acting. The second series we watched was Vikings, which was so much more enticing to all of us. The differences between these shows had to do with a number of factors including the pace of the narrative arcs within each action-packed individual episode, convincing acting, and a more distinguished hermeneutic progression throughout the series. (All of my group has continued to watch this series, after the binge was over) 
What I am taking away from my binge experience is a new way to relax and get away from everyday life. I think I would cap most of these binges to a one day event of six hours, or two days of four to five hours, just for my own personal satisfaction. I noticed that when I am totally captivated by the fictional world, I come back to “my world,” with a different perspective, because I was literally allowed to leave the normal world for a period of time, and dedicate my thoughts to something other than my own head. The only other activity that seems to have the same type of hypnotic quality, by means of totally engaging my thoughts, is my homework. But homework is something I have to do, and I am also under significant pressure of how I perform. With binge media, I have the same level of fascination, but subtract that negative stressing of total veracity. I binge for myself, and it helps me to relax, but I do remember the grave warnings of too much binging from all the articles I read. Multiple people have quite literally binged to death in Taiwan and other parts of Asia in Internet cafes. I hold myself to a standard that when I binge, to remember that what I am doing is not real, and the real purposes are entertainment and satisfaction. The real world is where I reside, participate, and designate my energy and life, while the fictional world is a imaginary parallel universe, used to satisfy alongside the world we live in.
Please feel free to check out my Instagram posts throughout the Binges here:
TV- Marco Polo/Vikings: https://www.instagram.com/p/BAQCZ0zoYVg/
Book- His Dark Materials: https://www.instagram.com/p/BAf2Op-oYfQ/
Click for picture URL’s
So could there be two types of bingeing?? (BTW interesting spelling!): the first is the "pull type", where you are drawn into a story, and become immersed, acknowledging that story-telling has always been part of the human tradition. And the second is the "push type" which is like the intense focus you muster for homework, cramming for finals, etc. My sense is that our 40 hour/5 day work-week tradition reflects this "push type" of bingeing as most people work to live, showing up based on societal expectations (e.g. as opposed to loving your work!) and those that push too hard, end up with stress that too often get channeled into unhealthy behaviors. Perhaps the ancient Greeks had it right all along -- "everything in moderation".
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