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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?"
step 1, like other posters have mentioned, is to get him to understand that he has a problem (ideally before he gets fired). this involves some sort of intervention. you'll want to plan it before hand for two reasons. firstly, you want to make sure that you've got the right mix of people talking to him; secondly, you as the interveners are going to need some practice. expect that you might get any reaction from "shit, you're right." to "you're just jealous" to overt hostility.
there are several tactics you can use to get your point across. if your friend doesn't let challenges go unanswered, challenge him to put himself in a situation where he can't play the game for a month or two. tell your friend how his addiction is affecting your relations with him (this is particularly relevant if his family or significant other is at the intervention). you need to be careful that when you do this, you're making "i" statements --- "i feel like _____ when you ditch me" rather than "you ditched me, jackass". you know your friend a lot better than i do, so you've got a better feel for what may or may not work well for him. while you're having the intervention, it's really important that you all make it clear that a) you're there for him, b) you're not judging him, c) you're going to help him pull through when he asks for your help, d) this is not something that will be discussed outside of the people in the room. your goal is to make the room a safe space (much easier said than done).
good luck -- you're about to go through a really rough patch.
I know, it's harsh, cliche, and flamebait, but honestly, it worked for me.
I played Asheron's Vall obsessively for 4 years. I spent one entire summer doing nothing but. By the time I quit, I'd accumulated well over 6 months of online time. I dropped out of all my college classes... Two quarters in a row.
My parents did me a huge favor and kicked me out of their home on my 21st birthday. I found an appartment, got a job I enjoyed, and got engaged. Between the job and the fiance, I didn't have _time_ to play for months. By the time I had time again, I'd lost interest. I played about a total of 40 hours of WoW over the course of a month and a half this year, but rapidly got bored, and haven't logged in a single time in months.
I hate to be the Devil's advocate (and I know about the strong desire to play MMOGs because I think I dropped out the first try of college because of Ultima Online), but I have to put a bit of a realism to what you are saying.
... yes i've been unlucky enough to witness an fatal OD in my life)
Addiction to MMOGs is not different than being addicted to TV, Books, or any other form of entertainment. People get addicted to porn, chatting, and surfing boring web sites.
Why? Because life really blows most of the time and usually we hate our jobs and hate our girlfirends and lives... Some of us deal better than others. Some get by with a crutch.
Peronsally, I can't go a week without drinking some type of alcoholic beverage and I get pretty bitter and hateful to people when I go any longer than that... It was either give up drinking or cigarettes and I figure drinking makes me a more socialble person and I don't smell like burnt fire all the time.
Secondly, MMOGs are not chemical addictions and should not be treated as such. Alcohol... Well it can ruin people, but unless you drive drunk all the time its not going to kill you like meth, crack, or heroine (and being from a club scene I've seen first hand people's lives being shot up pretty bad or just being dead
Those kind of things you need to try to go cold turkey ASAP, but MMOGs and non-chemical addictions you need to simply attempt moderation or complement with something else that is more interesting.
You should probaly point out that he might not be able to play online games so much if he looses his job and that you should maybe setup something fun for him. Like movies... Bar hopping... Maybe a concert. Some place where he can maybe meet a girl or other people with same interests. Don't make him do it if he doesn't want to, but maybe ask if there is anything he wants to do other than play online.
Heck... Why don't you encourage a person with an MMOG addiction to meet more players like him at game conventions (like dragon con or penny arcade con) so that maybe he can meet other people that also have the same problem and he can go "Geez.. That guy is really addicted to that game... Oh wait..."
Simply saying... "Hey! You play this game too much! You should be more socialble!" without providing an alternative really makes for a bleak life. He should turn his addiction into something into something acceptable past time and perhaps gain from it.
Either way... I feel his pain and understand your MUD story from college. I think the only reason I quit Ultima Online is when OSI changed the game so much that it was no longer fun... *grumbles* Til this day I am so tempted to go back.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I was majorly addicted not just to mmorpg but to games as a whole. This period lasted for several years of my life during which I ignored my school responsibilities (I was in college). I also managed to lose a decent job at this time. Thankfully my girlfriend helped me. We started dating before the addiction started. During the addiction nothing mattered and finally she told me that if I didn't straighten up she was gone. I loved her enough that I managed to control my addiction and while I still play a good bit I still leave time for school, gf, friends, etc. I have also recovered in school and after this semester will be 12 hours from graduating with a dual major in both Finance and Economics.
It takes different things for different people. Lots of things were tried on me but the feelings I had for my girlfriend (now fiance we are getting married this summer) are what won the day for me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous# AA.27s_Critics
From the wiki:
"Specific criticisms sometimes put forth by AA's critics (some of whom go so far as to call AA a cult) include:
* There have been at least three randomized clinical trials that studied the effectiveness of AA. Specifically: Ditman et al. 1967; Brandsma et al. 1980; Walsh et al. 1991.
o Dr. Ditman found that participation in A.A. increased the alcoholics' rate of rearrest for public drunkenness.[1]
o Dr. Brandsma found that A.A. increased the rate of binge drinking. After several months of indoctrination with A.A. 12-Step dogma, the alcoholics in A.A. were doing five times as much binge drinking as a control group that got no treatment at all, and nine times as much binge drinking as another group that got Rational Behavior Therapy. Brandsma alleges that teaching people that they are alcoholics who are powerless over alcohol yields very bad results and that it becomes a self-fulfilling prediction -- they relapse and binge drink as if they really were powerless over alcohol.[2]
o And Dr. Walsh found that the so-called "free" A.A. program was actually very expensive -- it messed up patients so that they required longer periods of costly hospitalization later on.[3]"
I've dealt with this myself. I started playing while I was working in order to pass the evening, and because some of the people in the office played. When layoffs hit, I (and several other players) were canned - lower productivity - we stood around and talked about where to get good loot. Spent 15 months unemployed, collecting insurance for being subject to layoffs, playing 14 hours a day. One day I stopped dreaming of people and only dreamed of avatars. I woke up, logged in, and gave away my account, cancelling the future payments. Then the depression hit, I was totally alone with nothing in my life. I'd lost touch with all of my friends, hadn't spoken to any of my family in 6 months. My insurance was running out and I'd be evicted if I didn't find a source of income. More than a year of my life had just gone. I eventually got evicted in my last month of the lease, coming home from a restaurant (alone) to find the locks changed. I'd managed to pack up one vehicle load of possessions before the rest was seized. I realize now that my friends had at first tried to invite me out, but I would decline more and more in favour of the raids, and eventually, I'd just decline and wouldn't even raid. They stopped calling after a while and it was my fault alone that I'd lost them. Sometimes I get the old feeling that I got when I was playing that game and shudder mildly at the thought of returning. Then it passes as I go give my girlfriend a hug and we go see a movie or something. Never again. This person needs help, and the worst thing you can do is stop trying.
...just let the Sirens kick you out.
My friend had a better approach than deleting his stuff. He download a out-of-date version of WOWglider (a blatant hack), knowing that blizzards hack detection system would catch it immediately, and left it running overnight. Came back in the morning to find his account permanantly banned by blizzard.
Why strap yourself to the pole when you can get the
While I agree with you that most addictions can only be treated by changing one's lifestyle (introducing new hobbies, finding new interests, setting goals for yourself, meeting new people, etc.) I disagree with you on the difference between a chemical addiction and a non-chemical one.
Most chemical addictions are rooted in the release of neurotransmitters such as endorphines, serotonin, dopamine, etc. which control the pleasure pathways in your brain. These things are responsible for emotions of happiness and general feelings of euphoria (physical and psychological). Ultimately, one becomes addicted to sex, videogames, TV, internet, reading, working out, and all other addictions because of similar biochemical processes that these activities cause. The only difference is that with drugs like meth and heroin, the effect is more dramatic, and the reward is more instantaneous.
I'm probably going to get a lot of flak from people, and I know that most people reading this will probably pass a lot of unfounded judgements about my character by my revealing this, but I do think I'm more knowledgeable about addiction than a lot of people because of my first-hand experience, and I appreciate how serious a problem an addiction can be, so I'm gonna share a little of my personal experiences.
When I was in junior high, and high school, I used to be really addicted to counter-strike. I mean, I would spend 6+ hours a night playing CS, often neglecting to do my homework till 3 or 4 AM. I had other interests such as programming and reading, but around 9th and 10th grade videogames began really consuming my life. So I understand the overpowering grip of a videogame addiction. Luckily, I was able to kick that addiction before I left high school, so while I saw my roommates in college cripple their social life, and ultimately dropping out of school because they became so utterly unhappy with their day-to-day life, I did not suffer from the same pitfalls.
However, at some point in the past 2 years I became addicted to heroin and opiates. I used to "chip"--as they call it--meaning, shooting up once a week or once a month only. I had no physical dependence to the drug, and in fact it played a very small role in my life. I was actually chipping for quite a while before I actually descended into full-blown addiction. Nowadays, I can't stay clean for more than a week at a time. I have to go through withdrawal to even get that far, but even after I fully detox and lose my physical dependence, I still relapse.
Now, a lot of people think that heroin is poisonous to your body, or that most heroin users inevitably OD and die. That's not true. Heroin, like morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone(vicodin, percocet, etc.), codeine, etc. are actually rarely ever physically harmful unless combined with alcohol or other respiratory depressants. Even at high doses, they don't really exhibit any toxic effects on your body. They actually lower your heart-rate and blood pressure, and are arguably healthier for you in the physical sense than alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine even. It is unlikely that I will ever die from using heroin, or that I'll loose my arm like in Requiem for a Dream; I have pretty good hygene and adhere to safe injection techniques. Heck, I'm probably better at administering an IV injection than most trained nurses. So long as I continue to use sterile saline solutions, don't re-use or share needles, and avoid doing stupid things like injecting pills, I'm unlikely to suffer any physical consequences from my heroin habit other than perhaps I'll age a little slower than other people (a side effect of chronic heroin use).
But the reason why this is an addiction, and not just a habit, is because it has consumed my life. It takes up all of my energy (constantly trying to acquire drugs, support my habit, get new needles, avoiding withdrawal), and when I'm not on heroin, I'm thinking about it. Even before I started doing heroin I abused other drugs such as weed and alcohol, and my social life has been negatively af
Which would also make them non-religious.
I've been waiting to tell this story and this seems to be an appropriate venue.
I'm friends with a married couple. I'll call them Jack and Jill because one of them reads slashdot and I don't want to give the secret away.
Jack is a WoW addict. He works part time, plays 50+ hours per week. Is a member of a raiding guild and is always coveting that next purple, orange or whatever colored item.
Jill, his wife, is frustrated over his addiction. She bought an account just so she could spend a little more time with him. She leveled a character to 60 and occasionally raids but she enjoys RL more than the game and so resents having to play the game in order to spend time with her husband.
This is the part I thought was pretty cool.
Jill is the techie of the household and uses a linux based router/firewall/webserver/etc for local networking. As Jacks addiction grew worse she started checking out the ports used by WoW. Inititally she just started monitoring them in order to find out how much time he actually plays but later she realized she could throttle the connection (introduce lag) or block it completely (gee, the WoW servers are down again). The result is that when Jack has been playing WoW all day and Jill wants to go to dinner she either severely throttles the connection or cuts it completely. Jack thinks the blizzard servers are fscked up, wastes some time trying to log in and eventually gives up and joins Jill for dinner. Now Jill gets to occasionally go to dinner with Jack, to the movies, to a party. I kind of like it because I'm good friends with Jack and I get to see him occasionally now and then.
I'm not blind to the deception of this act. Yes it's kind of creepy, but so is not showering, playing wow for 20 hours straight with quick toilet breaks. While it doesn't get rid of the root problem of the addiction, it has prevented jack from completely losing all RL socialization.