I used to live in Wash Park in a darling Victorian where I could walk to Café Europa, Thai Basil and the Mayan, and Tango on Friday nights at the Mercury Café, but all that was a few years ago before I went crazy.

I blame the local Denver and world news for my demise.

Even if it was my fault being a news junkie (two days sober now), is it fair that while pregnant during the infamous Denver Snowfest of 2006 every story was about women forced to give birth at home or in parking lots, or that the news continually reported on lead poisoning in toys, the rise in autism, food recalls, domestic violence stories, and general fun-loving stories about the overall atrocities in Colorado and throughout the world?

Nothing can make a soon to be mother more proud of choosing this time to bring a new member of the tribe into this world. It is sad to say that the continual bad news is weighing many more of us down now.

I knew then that if I did not turn off my television, quitting my job, becoming a shut-in, and being suspect of everyone and everything were sure to follow, so after a few discussions with my husband we made some drastic changes.

We got rid of our Comcast.

Oh, and we also traded our Denver urban life for one in a small rural town in the Rocky Mountains.

What?

Yes, so I guess I also have the media to thank for this wonderful life.

Without their stories of suburban Republican soccer moms in their Hummers, and the challenges of the Denver schools; had I not seen reports on the bottom falling in the Denver real estate market, or the continual stories of children getting abducted or hurt in and around Denver, things might have been different.

Can there be a better place than the Rocky Mountains to cure you of your news addiction? Who wants to stay inside when you live in a year-round playground? I can’t think of a better cure for panic attacks than waking up to a view of the Continental Divide.

I suppose time (and my news sobriety) will tell whether a different kind of insanity creeps in, but I just could not continue to ignore our vacation home tugging fervently at our sleeves promising adventure, no local TV news, less stimulus and people (we thought that meant less drama, ha!), and the feeling that raising our son in a place where instead of buying books to teach him about animals, we could just point to them on our ride home from school.

Who needs the TV news anyway when our sweet little town is a microcosm for the world.

We have the age old clash between the old and new with the old-timers resistance to change and the newly planted city yuppies pushing for it. Thankfully the fight is much more civilized and simply plays itself out in the op-ed section of the newspaper.

If you are worried about the milk vs soy controversy for your children, you can buy a quarter share of a goat and switch your family to goats’ milk. Instead of trying to force yourself to watch O’Reilly to see how the other half lives, you can attend a dinner party with your Republican neighbors and learn to like them anyway. And, rather than watch more news about how this country is in the toilet, you can volunteer at the local food bank to make things a little better.

I am not going to lie though, I will miss Andrew Romanoff and Barack Obama on the news circuit.

Perhaps when I am strong enough I will permit myself to read a few stories in the Onion and watch a Daily Show or two.

A host still has to be well versed with retorts at her dinner parties, right?