“I feel so ashamed about last night.”

“I know, what we did this whole weekend just makes me sick.”

“I hope we haven’t alienated everyone we know.”

My two friends and I had this hushed, sheepish conversation Tuesday morning, vowing moderation, restraint and a desire never to lose another part of our lives to this addiction.

Despite appearances, we are not druggies or recovering alcoholics or nymphomaniacs. We are not in thrall to anything seedy or untoward. We are not doing anything illegal.

So why the bleak morning-after? We lost a weekend to “Lost.”

In a fit of blind addiction we rented the entire first season, all 24 episodes, and watched them within one long weekend in multiples of four. I say “multiples” because we once watched eight in a row.

Find my behavior abnormal and absurd? You shouldn’t; much like my beloved island-stranded survivors, I am not alone.

Ten of the the Amazon.com Top 25 DVD sellers for Oct. 4 were television shows, with titles like “Battlestar Galactica — Season 2.5” out-stripping box office champ “X-Men — The Last Stand.” And that’s not even accounting for internet downloads, legal and otherwise, of popular shows that are rapidly becoming the viewing format of choice.

The inevitable question then becomes: Is this a top-down trend or the voice of the viewers? Who’s benefiting from the DVD craze?

The networks can make a killing off DVD sales — when you move around one million units at about 40 bucks a pop (as the first season of “Lost” did), you don’t mind so much that a few thousand episodes were ripped off Limewire. With re-runs and syndication rights no longer proving the goldmine they once were, executives have to look elsewhere to compensate for lost share points and ad revenues.

That decline, however, belies a deeper trend away from procedurals such as “Law & Order” toward serialized shows such as “24.” While a couple TNT-screened episodes of “SVU” back-to-back may grab your attention for an evening, a day in the life of Jack Bauer is not for the casual viewer and, therefore, can’t be effectively syndicated or rerun. The show is best enjoyed, I’ve been told, in real time. As in, 24 straight hours of “24.”

Which leads me to my point: Television seems to have advanced beyond the constraints of an 8-11 p.m. world. I would argue that marathon viewing (the ability to pause, rewind and re-watch) is desirable, if not necessary, to fully enjoy today’s primetime offerings.

Andrea Bailey (COL ’09) agrees, “A lot of shows’ plots now are so complex that you need to see them from the beginning to see what’s going on.” Bailey found herself having to “catch up” with edgy FX hit “Nip/Tuck” in order to watch the second season.

Jessica Stewart (MSB ’07) feels the same, asserting that “it’s much better to watch on DVD. It’s like a never-ending movie. The show flows much better in DVD format.” She’s currently hooked on “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy” in primetime, shows she only started watching after renting both on Netflix.

While Stewart demurred on how many consecutive hours of either show she’d seen, she did admit to having “watched the entire first season of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ in the two days [she] unpacked [after] being abroad and [before] repacking for [Georgetown],” adding, “It was great.”

In an simpler time, about seven years ago, this rather staggering commitment to a TV show never would have been possible. Pre-millennium marked the age of imperative viewing, of “Must See TV,” where your presence in front of the set at 8 p.m. sharp was essential for Friday morning’s proverbial water-cooler gossip. Now, however, most people can blithely disregard the prime-time schedules.

For many, this is a matter of convenience, not an adherence to some broader philosophy about serialization or network greed.

“In high school, I sort of watched ‘Friends’ and ‘Will and Grace.’ I only did it when it didn’t conflict with my schedule,” says Megan Abbot (SFS ’09). Once she got to Georgetown, she continued to watch an episode here and there on DVD of “The West Wing,” “Sports Night” or “Alias,” but only a few episodes a week, she says. Abbot adds that it was more about the quality.

Abbot’s discerning television palate, however, soon turned to less “quality” tastes, as in “The O.C.” “This summer, I was working two jobs. Between, it was the perfect time to get lunch and watch an episode.” She laughs, “They were like pills you just pop.”

Despite her later turn to more mainstream fare, Abbot’s experience with “Sports Night” is a telling one. The much-lauded but short-lived Aaron Sorkin show has found a whole new audience on DVD, much like “Freaks and Geeks” and “Family Guy” before it, though the latter’s staggering success on video triggered a return to primetime.

Technology like iTunes has also played a huge part in bringing shows that networks may have once abandoned back to the top of the ratings heap. The digital triumph of NBC’s “The Office” is an industry legend; the critically acclaimed show was falling behind in share points but, after being offered for sale on the Music Store, became Apple’s most popular video. Its season opener for this year claims the current top spot as the store’s No. 1 downloaded TV episode. Abbot has joined in on this trend as well, taking “Lost” episodes to the gym on her video iPod.

Initially, Abbot’s experience seems rather disconcerting and appears to confirm the view that the network has won. TV has morphed from a harmless nighttime entertainment to a non-stop multi-platform, multi-media machine, drawing us in with addictive new products, and then compelling us to consume at every turn. Are these supposedly convenient new formats just an elaborate marketing strategy to trick us into spending $34.99 on a network show we could have watched for free?

Many viewers, of course, do just that; illegally downloaded episodes of “The Sopranos” or “The Simpsons” are easy to acquire and almost impossible to trace, which make them a mainstay of many a broke college student’s hard drive. In an effort to both combat this trend and cash in on it, networks such as NBC and ABC have begun streaming episodes of new shows such as “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” or “Six Degrees” on their official Web sites.

But what of community? What of the water cooler? If the television was the hearth of post-war America, does the above trend destroy one of our last remaining collective experiences? There is, after all, something exhilarating and comforting in knowing that 15 million other men and women are tuned in at just the same moment as you are. In this age of already excessive personalization (Jessica Simpson created a version of “A Public Affair” where you could insert your own name into the lyrics, for God’s sake), have we broken yet another link with each other to our own quest for convenience?

I would argue no. While there is a small tragedy in the loss of so-called “appointment TV,” the greater loss would be in sacrificing the quality of today’s television for the more simplistic offerings of the past. Even stalwart “Friends” feels stale at moments where its single-camera approach and canned studio audience laughter lacks the biting subtlety of mockumentaries like “The Office” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I loved early “ER” right along with the rest of America, but the show now seems irrelevant when compared with cutting-edge programs like “Prison Break.” I certainly wouldn’t compulsively watch the medical drama in my precious spare moments or download episodes to re-watch or feel a need to “catch up” if I’d missed one.

That behavior might better describe my “Lost” viewing. My friends and I have toned it down a bit since our shameful average of six-a-day, but our obsession certainly hasn’t waned; almost nightly, the five of us gather round my laptop to watch the second season off my iTunes and spin our conspiracies about the castaways — Was that Libby we just saw in Hurley’s flashback? How did the smoke monster have images of Mr. Eko’s life? Why can’t Jack and Kate get a damn move on and make out again?

Feeling a little confused, dare I say, lost? No worries, you can catch up. It’s out on DVD.