It was a nice restaurant and the couple seated at the next table seemed to be doing all right for themselves. They looked prosperous, successful. Reasonably content, even. But they weren’t saying a word to each other.

It’s not that they were uncommunicative. From the time they ordered until the moment their food arrived, they pecked steadily at their smartphones, texting other people.

They were communicative, all right. They just weren’t communicating with each other.

They sat together, their heads two feet apart at a cozy table in a nice restaurant, yet they might as well have been in different states.

Each one was so busy messaging folks who weren’t having lunch with them that they didn’t visit with the person who was.

I smugly wondered if they were texting their marriage counselor about communication issues. I was making mental notes for a column on how smartphone users can be so dumb when I got an email on my own phone and lost my train of thought.

The idea floated back to the surface of my information-saturated consciousness on Wednesday, when The Dallas Morning News ran a story about technology addiction.

Reporter Caitlin Johnston wrote that the explosion of technology in our daily lives is causing many of us to get lost in cyberspace. We’re finding it increasingly tough to put our gadgets down and focus on the real world that’s revolving in real time around the real people around us.

Counselor John O’Neill has a term that perfectly describes the condition. He calls it “together alone — a situation where we’re surrounded by people, but everyone is so engaged in their technology that they might as well be by themselves.”

Researchers said the brain sensors that give us pleasure from excessive doses of alcohol or drugs or gambling also can be stimulated by technology overuse. Addiction can result and techies who suddenly stop using their gadgets can actually suffer physical symptoms of withdrawal.

A clinic in the Seattle area is now offering treatment for tech addiction. The cost: $14,500 for a 45-day program.

Technology, of course, is merely the carrier of the virus, not the disease itself. The root of the problem is that as a species, we humans get a nice buzz out of stimulation and we can get in a habit of constantly seeking it out.

The 1960s mantra of “If it feels good, do it” still has plenty of followers and always will.

Texting and Twitter

We do it, all right. Sometimes we do it till it hurts. In the 1960s, it was Mary Jane, free love and acid. Now it’s Facebook, texting and Twitter.

While it may be human nature to constantly seek pleasure, a couple of millennia of religion and philosophy suggest it’s a good idea for us to keep that nature under control.

There’s even guidance to be found in old movies. Maybe not in “Animal House,” but in classics such as “African Queen.”

In that wonderful film, Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart fall in love as they take on Nazis and nature on a harrowing riverboat trip through the jungle.

Bogart, playing the part of world-worn boat captain Charlie Allnut, gets into a conversation about his drinking with Hepburn, playing the part of straitlaced missionary Rose Sayer.

Curing addiction

“Man takes a drop too much once in a while, it’s . . . only human nature,” Charlie says. And Rosie responds: “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

Counseling and 12-step programs may help fight technology addiction. But the best cure is prevention — keeping the bug of human nature from ruining our lives in the first place.

At the risk of starting fights at breakfast tables all over town, I have a suggestion.

Why don’t all of us with cellphones, tablets and other electronic gizmos make it a point to turn the things off for a few minutes every day and have an actual, face-to-face visit with a loved one?

Think of it as eating chicken soup during flu season. It can’t hurt, right?

Here’s to moderation. And here’s to Rosie, who reminds us to rise above.

Donnis Baggett is publisher and editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald . His email address is dbaggett@wacotrib.com.