This is for some reason one of my favorite articles I've read on HN in awhile. Probably because it is so (personally) profoundly true, and reads almost like poetry.
I sort of read it as something you'd clinically describe to your psychiatrist as the point at which you think you went off the deep-end. I do the very same thing, and their reaction to doing it cracks me up to no end, and I love how it's written!
I felt the same. The personal note, has touched me in a way I cannot remember. We are so used to search stuff, read about stuff and buy stuff, that we forgot how the buying process was not so direct little years ago.