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Coping with Gaming Addiction
Several readers submitted this story in the Washington Post about gaming addiction in adolescents and adults. The main sources of the story are two people who get paid for solving this problem, so they have an incentive to make it sound scary and widespread, but on the other hand, most Slashdot readers probably have a... friend... who spends too much time playing video games.
bah! I just got done playing some Doom 3. And Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory before that. And Neverwinter Nights before that. And others in between, I'm sure, that I've forgotten. Want a free game for linux that will throw you into months or years of addiction, try WolfET. DL both game and 1.02 Patch. Multiplayer only.
http://www.olganon.org/
An interesting theory, but I believe most psychiatrists would suggest dopamine is associated with the reward/punishment feedback loop in the brain.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Cannabis is not addictive. I was a tobacco smoker and it was very difficult to stop smoking for more than a few hours (as any tobacco addict knows).
:D
I stopped smoking cannabis for 8 years and it didnt bother me. I took cannabis all day every day for a year and then stopped one day for three months with zero withdrawal symptoms.
As I am now older I take (not smoke) cannabis for pain relief. Its the herb that keeps giving
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
Here you go... See "Ariadne" and the end of "Norrathian Scrolls".
Perhaps you should learn a little more about addiction before you spew this crap out.
Addiction is based on a genetic predisposition. Some people have it; some people don't. A good test for if someone is addicted is if the consequenses outweigh the benefits, yet the behavior persists.
For example, there are people who drink a beer every day, yet can quit should they need the money, or if their family starts to suffer because of it.
Then again, there are alcoholhics, who are unable to stop even when it costs them their spouse, children, job, and respect of their peers. That is addiction. Is knocking back some booze worth the loss of everything else in your life you hold dear? To an addict, the answer is yes.
The same thing can hold true for an MMORPG. Lots of people play them, and have no problems. In some cases, the game fills a need, and is rather enjoyable (and thus hard to give up, because there is no good reason to.) However, for some people, the game _is_ addictive. People have jost their jobs, and their families, because they could not get away from the screen. That is addiction.
Anything that fills a need can be addictive. Some things are naturally more addictive than others. However, whether you end up an addict is largely based on genetics. Come from a long line of alcoholics? You probably should not drink, as you are predisposed towards alcohol addiction.
You know, alot of these follow ups say how sad you are for being addicted to games... but let me tell you, I agree.
;) (no joke...)
I have been known to smoke, drink, and have a steady ingest of coffee. Not ONE of these affected me 1/1000'th of how much gaming has. I have done many addicting things, and can tell you, gaming is literally the worst.
Gaming is the only addiction I've ever had, and I know it because I felt the symptoms described in the parent post. I just want to say that it is more serious than alot of people believe/want to believe.
I now have quit, slowly, over the past 2 years. I now play the occasional game (when I have time for it.. This is a HUGE difference). I am getting MUCH better grades, and feel alot better because of it. I suggest to any college student: If you are suffering in grades, get rid of the games. You don't realize it now, but it helps. Maybe not as much as it did me, but it sure does do alot.
How did I stop massive gaming? Simple. I installed linux
Codito, ergo sum.
Are you out of your mind? Someone who can spend 16 hours in row doing one thing to the exclusion to basic human functions has anything BUT attention deficit disorder.
Tell me how long attention span would regular person has to have if someone with ADD can spend 16h/day 7days/week doing one thing for months at a time?
Damn people who throw around abreviations they don't understand and damn moderators who dare to label it interesting
Look,...
ADD does not mean that you have the attention span of a goldfish.
It means two things:
1. You are easily distracted by environmental stimuli. (making it difficult to focus on boring tasks)
2. You can go into "hyperfocus" mode, whereby you can focus massively intently to the exclusion of everything else on one thing and one thing only - which most people can't do. Most programmers will recognize this "flow" mode. It's a hallmark of ADD.
Attention Deficit Disorder is a very badly named term.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
" How many times do we have to go over this?
BLAME THE PARENTS..."
No. Let's not. For a change, let's look at the issue as something complicated that can't be explained away by scapegoating somebody for it.
Articles like this always drive me nuts. When I was working on EverQuest Companion, one of the chapters was devoted to game addiction. My research for it entailed reading approximately 300 pages of psychology papers, interviewing people affected who had family members addicted to EverQuest, interviewing a psychologist who is working on game addiction (something only a handful of people are working on in North America, by the way), and reading a book by Doctor David Greenfield (who has so far conducted the largest study on Internet addiction). The research for that single chapter was massive, and longer than the entire manuscript for the book.
When I read this article, though, I can tell that all the reporter has done is interview a psychologist and throw in some pop psychology. And, as a result, a lot of wrong impressions have been given, and expressed.
Let's begin by dispelling a couple of myths:
1. There is a certain personality type that is more susceptible to addiction.
WRONG. The larger studies have actually confirmed that this is not the case, and that any personality type can become addicted. The only determining factor that seems to make any difference in how easily one becomes addicted is technical knowledge - it's easier to become addicted to the Internet if you know how to use it.
2. It's actually a simple matter, and there is one cause.
VERY WRONG. Every case of addiction is different in some way.
3. Game addiction doesn't really exist, and it is just people being lazy.
WRONG. Game addiction is a psychological addiction, and it is not only very real, but can be very damaging.
So, from my research, game addiction can be defined as this: a coping mechanism gone horribly wrong.
Computer game addiction is very similar to gambling addiction, but it is a coping mechanism. It just isn't a good one. There is no single reason for computer game addiction, simply because everybody who becomes addicted has a different trigger.
For example, in the case of Shawn Woolley, his trigger seems to have been mistreatment at work. He had epilepsy, had been playing recreationally and had a massive seizure, and then his boss (whose wife had epilepsy) forced him to work overtime even though Woolley could barely function. Woolley stormed off the job in disgust, and the addiction started shortly after.
(I know this because in my research, I got a full timeline from Liz Woolley, who is actually very grounded in reality. All of those problems that Woolley was suffering were actually symptoms of the addiction - the one thing that just about never shows up in articles about the case is that the Woolley family spent around a year and a half trying to get Shawn help, and NOBODY would recognize that it was even possible to get addicted to a game, and those who did only treated the symptoms, and not the addiction.)
The addiction cycle works something like this: You have the trigger. For argument's sake, let's say you're a student and you have a late assignment. This is very stressful, so you play some game X to relieve it. But, when you finish playing, since you were playing a game instead of finishing the assigment, it is now even more late, and the situation is worse. This causes even more stress, so you play a bit more to relieve the stress. And thus it becomes a cycle, and soon you need to play the game just to feel normal.
It isn't a simple issue, and there isn't a broadstroke cure. It also isn't some sort of disease, where everybody who plays a certain game will probably become addicted to it. That's horsesh*t, quite frankly. In fact, statistics collected by Nicholas Yee regarding EverQuest indicated that more people believed they had a problem than actually di
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
So, some people can't cope with the real world.
Shocker: There has always been people who can't cope with the real world.
And if some of those use video games as an escapism; it is somehow the video games fault. Remember, this crap is taught by the same legion of psychologists who the last two centuries have given us such fantastic therapies as lobotomy, electro-shocks etc. I am so not impressed.
Never seen anyone work so much they died or were unable to hold their own in society
Are you serious? There are tons of people (typically men aged 35-50) who develop health problems, up to and including death, every year due to working too much and the stress that causes. My coworker developed esophagitis from overworking; a manager in my brother's team had a heart attack.
Here is a brilliant article that goes into the genetics of addictions, basically people in the usa have 2 main versions of the dopamine receptor called the a1 and a2 alleles, people with the a1 allele have on average 30% less dopamine in their brains and are more inclined to addictive actions that raise dopamine level (eating, smoking, drinking, drugs, maybe gaming). In the usa the distrubution of dopamine a1 / a2 alleles is 20% to 80% respectively. However when you read many studies of addicts they have the a1 receptor 50%+ of the time (some cases like a study on alcoholics that drank until cirrhosis of the liver its 80%+ that have the a1 allele!). Oh and if your father was a hardcore alcoholic its very likely the gene was passed on to you. Anyways, here is the link to the article. http://www.recoveryemporium.com/Articles/AmSci.htm