Simpson Trial Junkies Face Withdrawal Psychologists Say Those Who’ve Been Watching O.J. Full Time May Have To Get A Life
On Day 1, A.O.J. (After O.J.), America will reach for the television remote control.
Click. Click. Click. Then, click-click-click-click-click-click-click. The O.J. Simpson trial will be over. People’s hands will start quivering and they will break into a sweat.
Psychologists expect panic to set in, followed by depression and a yearning for the time we were One Nation Under the O.J. Trial. Vicious rumors are circulating that people must return to their real lives.
“Anybody that would watch O.J. for eight hours a day is an addict of some kind,” said Fredrick Koenig, professor of social psychology at Tulane University in New Orleans.
“Any kind of routine that gives us gratification is a habit,” he said. “What makes it an addiction is … when it is harmful for you - if they watched O.J. to the neglect of something else.”
You mean like watching the trial continuously at work, or buying extra television sets for the bathroom and kitchen to catch every nuance at home? You mean like the people who divorced spouses who - imagine! - wanted to have sex rather than watch O.J.?
“It has taken over a certain percentage of people’s lives,” said Robert Butterworth, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, who early in the trial devised a 10-point quiz to measure whether viewers were obsessed with it. Among the questions: Have you ever missed social events because of the trial? Have you found yourself daydreaming about the case when you weren’t watching it?
“There were couples who were breaking up because of the trial,” said Butterworth, who has spoken to many O.J.-trial fans on talk radio. “One guy said between the wake and the funeral of his mother’s funeral, he ducked into a side room to watch the trial.”
America had a brief taste of what life in the A.O.J. era would be like on Tuesday, when Judge Lance Ito cut off live television coverage because the camera focused on Simpson’s hands as he was writing a note.
Across the country, people glared malevolently at their televisions sets and joined in the anger of apoplectic commentators.
Not everyone will be disappointed, of course. Some will be ecstatic that they won’t have to listen to colleagues on some fascinating new tidbit about the bloody glove.
The thought of a re-trial would make O.J. junkies delirious with pleasure, of course, but psychologists have advice for them if this was really the end.
“Court TV is going to follow it with the Menendez trial or whatever,” said Dorothy Singer reassuringly. Singer is co-director of Yale University’s Family Television Research and Consultation Center. But, she admitted, “It’s going to be tough to follow this act.”
Koenig urged sterner measures: “You can go cold turkey and stop watching it and get your life back in order, or do it slowly and do the O.J. follow-ups, or do substitute activities, like re-runs of Perry Mason.”
If all else fails, there is talk of a nationwide self-help group something along the lines of OJ Anonymous.
“People can come and say ‘I’m John and I miss O.J.’,” Butterworth said.