First-Person Account Of Video Game Addiction

The Evil Couch writes "Jive Magazine, an entertainment magazine based in Atlanta, has just released a feature article that the editor has spent over a year investigating on gaming addiction. Starting from being on the outside of the gaming community, she has gone from being a somewhat normal person, to being one of the higher level characters in Anarchy Online. 'People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily. I don't have to wear ugly shoes, lose my hard earned money or do the wave next to someone I don't know and that just about makes it a no-brainer for me. It IS after all just a video game, like Neal describes in his great novel, Snow Crash. It is just another amusement park.' Sounds like a happy ending to me."

Comments

This is nothing to laugh at

[ekrout]

Game addiction is a serious problem, one that's almost as wretched, terrible, and harmful for loved ones than drug, sex, or gambling addictions.

Take, for example, the EverQuest Widows page. Their opening paragraph states simply that "EverQuest-Widows is a forum for partners, family, and friends of people who play EverQuest compulsively [who] turn to each other [for emotional support]".

So please catch yourselves before you joke about addiction. All addictions, not just ones related to drugs, are serious problems that must be solved before disaster strikes.

In conclusion, I urge you all to read this heart-wrenching essay in which Jeffrey Stark talks about how a video game ruined his young life.

Truly a sad story. Remember people: games are for fun/entertainment, and are not real life. Same goes with Slashdot!

Re:This is nothing to laugh at

[Fizzol]

>Game addiction is a serious problem, one that's almost as wretched, terrible, and harmful for loved ones than drug, sex, or gambling addictions.

I call Nonsense!

Have you ever lived with someone with an addiction like drugs or alcohol? To say that game addiction is as harmful as alcohol is absolutely ludicrous!

I've been to that EQ Widows site and it's a joke. A bunch of self-absorbed women who have nothing better to do than sit around and bitch about their husbands video games, and talk about the best ways to delete thier spouses characters. It's utterly pathetic.

And again, talk to the spouse of someone with a real addiction.

Evercrack

[prichardson]

I remember this time last year i was just kicking my everquest addiction. I realized that it just wasn't fuffilling at all. My social life was trashed, except with my friend who also played. I wasn't even enjoying the time I did spend playing it. When I canceled my subscription it felt as if I risen to a new level of councousness.

Now I have a lot more friends, have lost 40 pounds and am much happier than I was before.

I still play video games some, but not a lot.

Also, please note the difference between a mental addiction and a chemical addiction. A mental addiction is all force of habbit, like video games or marajawana. A chemical addiction, to nicotine or alchahol is much different and a lit harder to kick.

Re:It can be a lot worse

[Stapler]

Well, MMORPGs are just MUDs with 3D graphics brah... :P

Bad command or filename

[Anonymous Coward]

st-t-t-t-t-top insul-sul-sulting me and and my adddict-ict-ict-iction.

Video game and technology addiction hurt[my story]

[Anonymous Coward]

I suffered for years from video game and technology (i.e. Slashdot-esque geek) addiction. The moderators who are busy now preparing to mod my post as flamebait are likely now doing the same things I once did:

• Spending thousands ($20k/year or more) on gaming, gaming hardware, and gaming 'paraphanelia' (posters, artifacts, clothing items with game logos, etc.) Sure, I guess I could afford it... but imagine how much this could have helped my future retirement? Or could it have paid for school (I now have $$$ in debt) or even fed the homeless?
  
• Ruining relationships with real people. My tech addiction killed a five-year relationship and ended my marriage, not to mention disconnecting me from friends, old and new. It will take years for me to repair the damge, if I can ever do so.
  
• Making me socially inept. I have the mouth of a sailor, the patience of a crack addict and the manners of a mob hit man. This wasn't always the case... but after several years of interacting only with armed players on computer displays, most of my skills for interacting with real people are long gone. Habits are hard to break.
  
• Ruining my education. I was paying thousands in tuition and then not showing up to class. I would end up with my high-end laptop on the campus wireless network sitting under stairs or in utility closets somewhere gaming. I missed exams, papers, and innumerable opportunities, including the opportunity to study abroad.
  
• Setting myself up for withdrawal... Giving up gaming left me with literally nothing in my life. I had sacrificed everything -- everything -- in the interest of the game. I essentially burned every bridge for gaming success. So now, when I am finally trying to give up... what do I have to turn to? Nothing. I must face my debt, my loneliness, and my academic failures on my own. The desire to continue with my gaming/tech habits is incredible. I have started drinking, feeling that it is better to be passed out on the floor than gaming (it's cheaper, too.)
  

I'm not saying that everyone will be affected this way... But I urge you all to be careful. You, in the Slashdot crowd, are easily the most susceptible... and I suspect that many of you are affected already.

Good luck to you all.

Bandwidth Junkies Anonymous

[ryochiji]

If you're addicted to Slashdot, there's a good chance you might be a Bandwidth Junkie. But do not dispair, for there is help!

Read more about the symptoms, stories, and the 12 steps of Bandwidth Junkies Anonymous on their website!

Re:Horse shit.

[jschrod]

Here we see how young (mentally) most /.ers are. And how "high" their education is.

That there are other addiction than physical ones, and that game addiction is one of the strongest one is known since aeons, and has been documented and illustrated so often in literature that one cannot count it any more.

Go out to a real library, and read Dostojewski some time. (He lived from 1821 to 1881. English transliteration of his name might be Dostoevsky.) Go and read his famous book "The Gambler". You might join the thousands of readers who have learned something.

Re:Sounds like rationalization to me...

[The_dev0]

Damn straight. I know this is OT, but I wanted to give you a little insight into the problem. I had a heroin addiction for three and a half years, and finally kicked all chems from my life about 18 months ago. Friends often asked my why people would use heroin enough to develop an addiction, and all I could say was "don't knock it until you've tried it" because, as you say, it is impossible to know without being there yourself. Heroin feels great. I won't go into a long a detailed description of how and why it feels so good, but this is the main problem trying to explain usage problems to other people. You want to use it because it feels unreal. You don't wake up going "oh no, I'll have to score today to feed my beastly horrible addiction", you wake up and say "i'm gonna get some smack today and have it because it feels so fucking good, and I can't wait". It's hard to explain to somebody who has never used just how good it feels. And that's the problem of the addiction, you certainly aren't suffering while you're on the nod. You like it, and use it more and more until you physically need it. People seem to have this false idea that users are almost "tricked" into habits, but believe me, it's all self-inflicted. Once the heroin takes over though, you are a slave to it, and not the other way around. It affects your thinking, your emotions, your logic, your judgment, everything. Your life suddenly focuses on heroin and not the things that are actually important in life. This is much like gaming addiction, in that the more you play and play, the bigger a part of your life it becomes, and due to the nature of time, other facets of your life must suffer to make room for the addiction. Unlike heroin however, gaming does not have a real-world reward (at least on smack you are high). Also, heroin addiction, like smoking, revolves around routine. Just like how the ex-smoker gets hooked on the physicality of smoking, (rolling a smoke/ using the lighter/ ashing the cigarette/ hand-mouth movements) the junkie gets hooked on the routine also, or as others have called it, "the feel of the steel" ie: mixing up in the spoon, preparing the drug, injecting the drug. Gaming also has similar routines, getting a mountain dew, getting smokes, snacks, whatever ready for a nights solid gaming, sitting in front of the computer, etc. It seems to me all addictions have these routines in common, almost like a ceremony before or during the act. Breaking those routines is as (and for some people, moreso)important as kicking the addiction itself.