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Help for an MMORPG Addict?
A worried comrade asks: "A friend of mine has had what many of us (his peers) are starting to consider a serious problem that we are becoming very worried about. He is addicted to World of Warcraft, and not in the same way the rest of us are. While most of us are able to disconnect from the game to take care of our own affairs, he plays to the exclusion of his friends, his job (he calls in sick a lot, it is starting to get noticed) and his life. How do you help someone who is actively throwing their whole life away to play a game?"
Do *not* try to hook him up with a girl. Friends of friends tried this tact on an addicted co-worker and his failure to relate to the poor girl just drove him back to the game. My personal preference is to convince him to ask the game masters for a temporary ban. Then take care of him for the withdrawl period.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Don't just make them quit - find something to replace the MMORPG with. Doesn't have to be a girlfriend, doesn't have to be an offline game that you only play for an hour at a time, maybe it could be a previous hobby or forcing them out of the house every night to visit with friends. Just something that'll keep their mind off of the game.
I also see people who are online in games constantly and I don't understand how anyone could possibly put up with the game for extended periods of time without taking any real breaks. (Going to the bathroom doesn't count.)
Whatever you do, do something. Don't just stand by and watch. MMORPG addiction can be every bit as destructive as other types of addiction, like alcoholism. Unfortunately, since it's "just a game" too many people turn a blind eye and believe that this merely anti-social behavior will work it self out. I know, because I've been there. I did the same things when EverQuest first hit the market... I played 60+ hours a week, and I often called in sick to work just to keep playing, which was how I lost my job. Luckily I wasn't married at the time, or I probably would have lost that too. In my case, it actually wasn't the MMORPG that was the problem though. Like any addiction, it was a method to fill a void in my life. I was suffering from depression due to some undesirable situations in my personal life, and I turned to the game as a substitute for real life. It became addicting because I had much more power over my life in the game than I did in my real life. You may want to make sure your friend is doing okay in other arenas; there may be a secondary reason why he spends so much time in the game.
The problem is not that the game is too fun or addicting, it's that RL isn't fun enough/meaningful enough/engaging enough.
MMOs provide an easy path, with clear rewards and punishments. RL doesn't usually provide any clear feedback on how you're doing in it.
Oh, and hallucinogens can be good for treating addiction.
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Incite and flee.
Do something, especially if you can think of something constructive that may help. But please, do NOT tie yourself into this so much that it takes you down as well. Many times I have seen people fighting addictions - drugs, alcohol, compulsive gambling, and yes religious cults and video games. I've also seen many cases where the people who care about the addict go through a hell almost as bad as the addict themselves, running on a combination of guilt and disappointment and a lot of other factors when the "treatments" don't work immediately or at all. Yes, he has a problem. Make sure it stays as HIS problem, and doesn't become your crusade.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
I was half-way sold to even cancelling the credit card my account used to be on. I had to make it as difficult as reasonably possible to become recidivist.
As cheesy as it sounds, the "death ritual" described above was cathartic and a way to say goodbye to my character. A way to realize none of these items truly mattered for a meaningful life. That it doesn't hurt to peel away like this.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Wait, wait, don't tell me .... back to the RPG?
Finding God in a Dog
It always irks me when I read about poor real life friends being abandoned in favour of an online game, but not for the reasons you might expect. See, I've abandoned plenty of real life "friends" and made friends online too, but although I met plenty of my online friends via various games (especially MUDs), the games were not the reason why my real life friendships began to suffer. If anything, it was because the people who I had previously hung out with just didn't click with me anymore, and playing a game was a way to distance myself from them. If any of them had attempted an "intervention," I would have been pretty damn pissed -- meeting me in real life does NOT give anyone the right to try and pry me away from my chosen form of entertainment. It's my life, and I get to choose who I want to be friends with and what I want to do in my spare time.
Incidentally, my life has never particularly suffered as a result of the small amount of game addiction that I have experienced. Maybe my marks would have been a bit higher (I usually get low to mid A's and high B's, with the odd A+ for flavour) if I'd spent less time gaming and more time doing homework, but realistically, if I hadn't been gaming or wasting time doing other hardcore nerd stuff, I would have been out dancing, getting drunk, and having random unprotected sex like the average university student -- not exactly my cup of tea.
Quite honestly, having a chance to play a game, interact with people all over the world, roleplay, and gank the hell out of a bunch of noobs is a LOT more important to me than getting laid or frying a bunch of brain cells, even though the latter activities might be more "normal" or even "healthy." If gaming makes me happy and sex/drinking doesn't, my former friends don't need to intervene... if they truly care, they need to let me be happy on my own terms.
There are certainly people who do need help breaking a game addiction, specifically the ones who are actually depressed by the prospect of losing aspects of their real lives, but the point I'm trying to make is that not all game addicts either want or need help. I'd rather let people be happy doing what they love than force them to take part in more socially-accepted activities that I know they're going to hate. Maybe they will lose their jobs, marriages, and friends, but if they're still happy, why does it matter? Isn't it better to be unemployed, alone and happy than rich, married, and depressed?
(Sorry for being so incoherent, but I hope you'll get the idea -- I'm at work, and I'm sleepy from skating during my lunch break and spending the rest of the day coding, so my brain isn't exactly working at full capacity.)
You're right that destroying your account doesnt prevent a new one, but it so throughly and irrevocably destroys your progress that is presents a very serious obstacle to resuming play, wheras your drinking example doesnt. If you burn all my booze, i can go buy more thats exactly the same. If you destroy my 60 priest with Tier 2 epics, thats months and months setback that i cant buy. ...except on ebay, i guess. For a #$%^ton of money.
So yeah, its not perfect, but its a hell of a big obstacle. Worked for my friend, anyway.
Asking someone to remove your shortcomings - be it a god or whatever - is not taking personal responsibility. It's asking for someone, by definition, to fix you.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Ah, I never get enough of the drug-scare where anything that's a chemical -- even normal brain mediators -- is suddenly scary and to be avoided.
Get this: dopamine is just a non-specific "I'm happy" signal in your brain. No more, no less. It's not some dope hit as a reward, or whatever bullshit you may have heard from ignorant scare mongers. It's _the_ natural "I'm happy" signal that the brain uses. (Some drugs immitate its effects, yes, which is why they also make one happy. But that's the correct relationship: drugs are a substitute for the brain's normal chemicals, not the other way around.)
It's also non-specific. It doesn't fire just for MMOs, it fires every time you're glad about something. When the village gossip-monger found a good listener, or when the amateur photograph finds a cool thing to photograph, or when the Slashdot karma-whore sees that he's been moderated +5 Insightful... guess what? The exact same kind of dopamine response is involved. And not just in humans. When your cat is glad that she found a nice comfy place to sleep in, or when your dog is glad that the pack leader (i.e., you) gives him attention, yep, it's dopamine again.
And yes, you're sorta pre-addicted to it from even before you were born. Everyone seeks to do the things they find pleasant, as opposed to the things they dislike. And yes, the dopamine levels immediately start to decay so you'll have to find the next fun thing to do, instead of being happy for your whole life that you once played a game. Go figure.
Natural selection used that kind of stimulus to keep one doing the "good" things, as opposed to randomly doing dumb things. E.g., wolves have to feel glad about getting back near the pack, so they don't get spread.
So the only way to not feed that scary dopamine addiction would be to avoid having any fun in your life.
There is no such thing as being "addicted to MMOs" strictly, as is the case with other drugs. When you're addicted to, say, Alcohol or cigarettes, there is only one substance that can satisfy the addiction. In the "dopamine addiction" anything fun will work just as well.
Again, it's just that humans (and all other animals) are pre-"addicted" to doing fun stuff, and to avoid non-fun stuff. _Any_ fun stuff will do. Sure, some get in a rut about how they get their fun, but then non-gamers find their own ruts too. (E.g., the village gossip-monger can get stuck on looking for the next listener, or the Slashdot karma whore can get stuck on refreshing the page.) But from the dopamine point of view, _anything_ fun will trigger it just the same anyway. That's all.
And saying that "These games are designed to create that kind of response" is just a pretentious way of saying: games are designed to be fun. That's all.
It's not just computer games, and it's not just humans. Most animals have their own games, tailored around what natural selection pre-programmed them to find fun.
E.g., cats are predators, so the natural selection advantage was to be pre-programmed along the lines of "go chase something that moves and, if needed, fight it." So that's what they get, surprise, a dopamine hit for. So they have their own games where they wrestle each other. (When it looks like your cats are beating the living snot out of each other, chances are good that that's their idea of a game, not actual fighting.) Or everyone has played with their cat by making her chase something, be it a piece of paper on a string or a spot of light or whatever. Yep, that's dopamine for your cat. Somewhere in her feline brain there'll be a "yay, I chased it and caught it! I'm happy!" response, which means dopamine.
E.g., rabbits are prey and their fun stuff is along the lines of "yay, I successfully ran away from some menace". So if you observe them, you'll see that they actually play games along those lines. They actually chase each other, effectively playing the role of a "menace" for each other.
Etc.
So, yes, humans are pre-addicted to fun (_all_ humans, including non-gamers), and games are designed to be great fun. It doesn't sound as pretentious and pseudo-scientiffic as the "addiction to dopamine" bullshit, but that's really all there is to it. Big whopping surprise there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Joking aside, it begs the question; whats so wrong with this guy's life that he'd rather live in an MMORPG? Maybe his friends shouldn't be asking how to save him from the game but rather what it is about his life that the game saved him from first?
You've responded quite harshly to an insightful post on the subject. The OP made a comment that 12-step programs are psuedo-religious and cultish, but in defending them you've acted in the dogmatic way that those criticisms suggest. Purely out of interest, and not to start a flamewar here, what are the 12 steps of your program?
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Maybe they will lose their jobs, marriages, and friends, but if they're still happy, why does it matter? Isn't it better to be unemployed, alone and happy than rich, married, and depressed?
It matters because that contentment is temporary. Ten years later, when they've failed out of college and can't get anything other than a dead end job due to no qualifications and a string of firings due to not showing up at work, their future is going to look incredibly miserable. I have little sympathy for people who ruined their lives by having only looked at their immediate happiness instead of their long-term happiness and success.
Money won't make you happy, but poverty will make you miserable. People who can be happy while alone and penniless are rare in this world, and they're never people who are so wrapped up in some material trapping (like a game or booze or drugs) that they can't function in the real world.
Interventions always make the people involved angry and upset, but it's worth it to keep someone you care about from ruining their lives.
Quite honestly, having a chance to play a game, interact with people all over the world, roleplay, and gank the hell out of a bunch of noobs is a LOT more important to me...
I already didn't like you for suggesting that people be left to rot for their short-term happiness, but you're also a griefer who gets off on making the game miserable for new players too? What a prick.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Needless to say, when the port was turned back on, the Evercrack addictions came back in full force.
Personally, from seeing where the Evercrack addicts ended up after they quit, I think the addiction is really a symptom of problems that only trained medical professionals can help.
Perhaps the best thing you can do for your friend is guide him to a professional. (And accidentally cut his cable connection an hour before each appointment!)
No, I will not work for your startup