Cure your smartphone addiction with the methaphone.

Arielle Pardes from WIRED (also News+ link):

Eric Antonow was in a coffee shop with his family when he felt the familiar, twitchy urge to reach for his phone. He patted his pockets for relief—the cool, thin slab was still there. He joked to his family that, like an addict jonesing for a hit, he would one day need a medical-grade solution to detox from his phone. Opioid addicts had methadone. iPhone addicts would need … methaphones.

“It was a joke, but I got two laughs from my two teenagers, which is gold,” Antonow says. “I was like, ‘I’m going to commit to the bit.’”

Here’s a description from the product page at Mindless Toys:

For 60 years, heroin addicts have used methadone to help break their addiction. Now you can step down your dependency on your mobile device with this: methaphone.

Leave your phone without the cravings or withdrawal

We carry our phones everywhere. It feels strange and unsettling when we can't feel them. We twitch, worried we've lost something.

methaphone can help you manage cravings and withdrawal symptoms. It can fill that hole in your back pocket. It can fill that hole in your hand. Opioid addicts have used methadone to help step down from dependency, and now you have this. 

The product does look impressive.

Liquid Glass to the next level.

Although the website is obviously a gag like rentahitman.com, I would say the analogy is more like:

smartphone is to methaphone as an antidepressant is to placebo.