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?"

Comments

I've been there

[Southpaw018]

I was addicted to a MUD my freshman year of college. My parents were the ones who rescued me. And I do mean rescued. This is a heartbreaking situation. You cannot help those who are not willing to help themselves, and that is the first step: getting your friend to realize he needs to help himself. Next step: getting him to realize you can help him, too.

Think traditional addiction programs - interventions, counseling. Contact a drug addiction counselor or psychologist who specializes in addiction in your area; many of the techniques involved in breaking addiction are universal. Avoid AA-type pseudoreligious programs. They have been proven not to work (no flames, please, go google the study yourself).

Keep in mind that this is not an easy process. It took me two solid years to bring my social life back to where it once was; now, another four years later, I'm "addicted" to wow in that playfully, not clinically, addicted way. But stand by your friend. Understand that your friendship means less to him than the game does. Addiction is powerful, and ugly, and hard to understand and overcome. But he's got guys (girls maybe?) like you to help him. He's better off than many.


Good luck.

Re:I've been there

[tansey]

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]"

Re:I've been there

[smallfries]

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?

Re:I've been there

[KDR_11k]

1. Get a beer
2. Drink
3. Get another beer
4. Drink
5. Drink a few more beers
6. Try playing Everquest drunk
7. Piss your guildmates off until you have no friends left in the game
8. Accidentally trade your entire high-level gear for two healing items
9. Get angry at computer and break it
10. File class action lawsuit against Sony Online Entertainment to get your items and computer replaced
11. ???
12. Profit

Re:I've been there

[Anonymous Coward]

If the 12 Steps were about personal responsibility, they'd read something like this:

1. We admitted that our use of alcohol had made our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that we could restore ourselves to sanity.
3. Made a decision to make that happen.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have get rid of all these defects of character.
7. Made a decision to make that happen as well.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought the support of friends and family to continue this indefinitely.
12. We tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Which would also make them non-religious.

You asked for it...

[Tackhead]

> How do you help someone who is actively throwing their whole life away to play a game?

You buy 'em a better video card, another stick of RAM, you order a pizza, and you say "yes" whenever he asks if you wanna go on a raid.

Or did you mean to help him do something else? :)

Good luck on that.

[rob1980]

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.

Any way you can

[shashi]

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.

I agree

[selfdiscipline]

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.

Something, But Not Your Soul

[airos4]

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.

What worked for me

[LearningHard]

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.

Dont lash yourself to the mast...

[Lanoitarus]

...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

I disagree

[Lanoitarus]

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.

Ah, the dopamine bullshit

[Moraelin]

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.