The dangers of ‘maladaptive daydreaming’

At the beginning of the spring term of my second year at university, a French boy called Xavier looked up from where he was sitting, on the floor of my friend’s flat, and announced that his New Year’s resolution was to give up fantasizing. Xav was deep in unrequited love with my friend so we assumed at first that he was simply through with pining, but that was not quite what he meant. He wasn’t taking a break from romantic fantasies, Xav said, so much as all the pointless wallowing in imaginary scenarios in which he came out top. Wishful thinking, you might call it. He was spending too much time doing it and he would from now on resist the temptation.

Back then Xav’s resolution struck me as extremely interesting and impressive. I hadn’t realized that people could or should summon the gumption to control their own minds. I tended to follow mine down every mental alley. I was partial to fantasies in which I became a famous musician or perhaps a painter. They were delusional but, as I remember it, the pull of those fantasies was surprisingly strong, like the tug of a tidal current. It gives me a glimpse of what it might be like to suffer from maladaptive daydreaming.

The term maladaptive daydreaming (MDD) was cooked up only a few years ago by Eli Somer, a clinical psychologist at the University of Haifa, but the problem seems to have been growing slowly since the turn of the century. It’s a decent bet that MDD will spread during 2025 and that by the year’s end we’ll be discussing it as the new calamitous mind virus, which is why I bring you this early warning.

Somer’s proposed definition of MDD is “extensive fantasy activity that replaces human interaction and/or interferes with academic interpersonal or vocational functioning.” What it boils down to is that an alarming amount of young people have begun to immerse themselves completely in self-gratifying imaginings, and some have lost the ability to snap out of it.

A paper in the National Library of Medicine defines MDD like this: “A strategy to cope with distress that leads to uncontrollable absorption in fantasy, social withdrawal and neglecting aspects of everyday life.” It uses a pseudonymous patient, Peter, to explain: “Thinking about something, I automatically create a scenario. For instance, I become this multi-millionaire, giving an interview. People admire my wisdom, respect me and make way for me. I move around my flat, listening to music and getting really high. I live these delusions for a few hours, daydreaming about that life: driving cars, car racing, sex. Time goes by and I am not really able to control it. I sit at my PC and daydream day by day. I start in the morning and realize it is already night. It started by the second grade but did not bother me then so much. Now I fear I have wasted my life and opportunities.”

Another MDD addict discussing the phenomenon online says: “I practically live inside my head. I’ll spend hours immersed in my daydream world. I’ll lie there as if catatonic and I don’t even control it. I mean, I’ll control the story but I can’t stop myself getting lost.”

The word “daydreaming,” in the context of MDD, is a misnomer. Daydreaming in the sense that we usually understand it means to let the mind drift; to allow semi-submerged thoughts to rise into consciousness. Like night-dreaming, this sort of daydreaming is part of an invaluable process of sorting and ordering the perceptions of the day. Compulsive fantasizing the MDD way is not useful or healthy, and as ever it’s probably a product of the internet.

It might seem on the face of it that MDD can’t be screen-based malaise. But most of the maladaptive daydreamers I’ve snooped on have suffered from compulsive social media use before they became lost in fantasy land. And for many of them social media use is a trigger for fantasy. They scroll though the perfect, entirely concocted lives of others as presented on Instagram or TikTok and the feeling of uncomfortable inadequacy it provokes in them is what prompts the need for an ego-boosting fantasy.

For some, the fictions on social media are the inspiration for their own MDD. “I feed my MDD with TikTok and Pinterest,” says one user cheerily. “They help inspire my MDD.” If you thought it was bad watching your children stare zombie-like at screens, imagine looking at their glassy stares and absent smiles and knowing that they’re immersed in some long-running mental fantasy to which you have no access and which you can’t unplug.

There are no proper studies on MDD yet, and no decent therapy, though you can bet that there are pharmaceutical companies waiting in the wings. But the daydreamers themselves, like my wise friend Xav, are waking up to the dangers. “Don’t you think making up fake scenarios and reimagining yourself in a positive light in your head for extensive periods of time might make you depressed?” one asked on an online forum. Another replied quickly: “This! To me it’s similar to the effects of pornography. Addicts lose the ability to be turned on by their real-life partner.”

There has been much made in recent years of the depressing East Asian trend for dropping out of life or “lying flat.” Tang ping means a person has simply decided not to compete, not to have a job or any romance but simply to retreat into their minds. Lying flat is a form of giving up on life. I hope I’m wrong to think that maladaptive daydreaming might become the Western version.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s February 2025 World edition.