1) Based on the info you have provided, it sure sounds like someone is messing with you to an unusual extent over the internet. Hard to tell exactly why, or what exactly they are doing, but there are plenty of plausible reasons why it is not crazy to think that it is happening and to act accordingly.<p>2) Taking drugs is a very dubious practice at best. Prescription drugs are drugs. They mess with your normal functioning in ways that sometimes mask certain problems, almost always at the cost of causing worse ones. The list of known side-effects at normal dosages is usually bad enough, and those are just the ones that are known. The people who make them are only motivated to find a product that produces a certain effect. They are not motivated to learn what the drugs actually do. The people who push them do so for reasons that rarely have to do with promoting your real health, mental or otherwise. The people that think they are helping are the worst. For every problem that drugs might help you with (temporarily and at too high a cost), there is almost certainly a better way.<p>2a) What goes for drugs goes for any person in the mental health field, whether they push drugs or not. It also goes for anyone recommending professional help from someone in the mental health field, especially when they are very nice and emotionally supportive and want to help and are sure they have (or will find) the answer for you. Many people enter the mental health field because they have questions about their own mental health that they want to answer. They do not find answers. They find a system where they can gain status and make a living by making sure that other people do not find answers either. This is a harsh and sweeping statement that cannot be properly justified without going into issues that are beyond the scope of this post, but suffice it to say that the entire mental health field is based on assumptions which are completely wrong and do not allow it to even get a whiff of what the real problems and the real solutions are. If you value your sanity, stay as far away as possible. Take it as one person&#x27;s opinion if you like, but that&#x27;s what I have to say about the mental health field.<p>2b) I have an aunt who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, went on drugs, and has spent most of her life in institutions. She had serious problems (possibly before and certainly after entering care), but I agree with the poster who said that mental health issues are often family politics issues in disguise. I told my parents things that they did not want to hear, and they did not think there was anything wrong with going to a mental health professional and asking if they could do something (read: possibly get me committed) without even trying to talk to me first. These are parents that I thought I had a good relationship with, but I discovered (the hard way) that there were just certain that they do NOT want to hear. Obviously I do not recommend doing or saying anything even remotely threatening to anyone, and particularly not to parents or family members. I do not even recommend saying things that family members do not want to hear (even if they are true), if you can possibly avoid it. I recommend staying as close to your family as you reasonably can. However, you have to realize that they do not necessarily have your best interest in mind when they give you advice, and that your natural inclination (if you are like most people) is going to be to trust them even if you shouldn&#x27;t. If they attempt to manipulate you or try to get you to think that you are crazy just because you think something unusual is happening, when it is pretty clear that something unusual is indeed happening, then be very careful and do not let them become the ones who determine what is real and what is not real for you, or pressure you into mental health channels, or anything that would commit you to something that is not actually going to help you.<p>3) The better way (than drugs) might involve investing less of yourself in technology and the internet. That&#x27;s a decision that you have to make for yourself, but the tech industry, and the internet part of it especially, is already borderline insane. Some of the people who participate in it the most intensively (though probably not the most visibly) are criminally insane. Even &quot;normal&quot; behaviors within internet culture ingrain ADD type thinking and behavior. Rather than take drugs to mask a behavior, ask yourself what is causing it. It is certainly possible to have some involvement with the internet and not suffer any apparent ill effects. I still have some involvement with it. But I used to live on it. That is becoming normal behavior for more and more people, but in fact it is insane-making.<p>4) Exercising is a waste of time. It might provide an alternative to drugs that is somewhat healthier, and it might help you get off the internet, but it does not address any of the real issues. For many people it is just another obsession. Most people would do much more for their health just by paying more attention (and putting more effort in)to not eating more than they actually <i>need</i> to eat.<p>5) Having gone though a similar experience to the one that you relate (perhaps a bit more extreme, hece the length of this post), the best step I can recommend, based on my own experience, is to get a job as an employee (preferably low level, preferably with minimal prospects for advancement) at some job that pays the bills, and spend the greater part of your day doing what someone else tells you to do. A job that does not require you to interact with very many other people is fine, and less stressful, but a customer&#x2F;service job is OK too if you can do it. Some of these kinds of jobs are hectic, but ideally you want the most boring such job that you can get. Don&#x27;t be a trucker, or another job where you&#x27;re not dealing with a boss for long periods of time. The idea is that you are doing what your boss tells you to do and&#x2F;or what the customers are asking you to do as much as possible, that you are not what you want to do, and that you continue doing this as long as possible. It might sound counter-intuitive to tell you to listen to your boss and to random customers and do what they want after I&#x27;ve just finished telling you not to listen to your parents or mental health professionals or do what they want, but the difference is that with a job (especially a boring job) it&#x27;s just a job. There are no family politics. You are not attempting to create something out of nothing. You are not trying to become rich or famous. You are there because you choose to be there and because there is a job to do. The customer wants a simple thing from you, and your boss wants a simple thing from you, and none of them gain much from trying to mess with your head. It&#x27;s just a job. You are also not falling into the habit of becoming a leecher in a system that is designed to support a leecher lifestyle, which is what happens to people who fall into institutions hoping that someone else will solve their problems.<p>Getting a job like that and sticking with it long enough might be too big of a step for many (most?) people, but it&#x27;s what I did and it has worked very well for me. There are also very good reasons why it can be expected to work in general, but these are beyond the scope of this post. If you do it, and reflect on it, you will start to understand it yourself anyway. And that is the real reason to do it, because the question of what is sane and what is not, what is normal and what is not, is a non-trivial question--very non-trivial. Unfortunately you cannot trust the answers that you get from most people, including the ones who ought to know. But you cannot simply trust yourself and leave it at that either. It is worth spending a great deal of time and effort to get it right.