Detox Clinic Opening for Video Game Addicts

Blue6 writes "An addiction center is opening Europe's first detox clinic for game addicts, offering in-house treatment for people who can't leave their joysticks alone. Video games may look innocent, but they can be as addictive as gambling or drugs, and just as hard to kick, says Keith Bakker, director of Amsterdam-based Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants." I'm pretty sure the amount of time I've spent in the world of Azeroth in the past year counts as addiction. Someone tell my parents I still love them, while I mine this ore.

Comments

Re:I think the editors need to go to a clinic

[grammar fascist]

Seriously. You'd think they'd try their own search or something :P

Why would they do that? It gives us the opportunity to repost smart things someone else said in the other discussion without getting modded Redundant.

For instance, I might state:

- I'm sure Jack Thompson will use this to leverage his arguments
- It'll be sandwiched between two hash-bars on Main street
- They'll just be trading a gaming addiction for another kind of addiction, like AA does swapping alcohol for Jesus
- Most "12 step" programs are quacky and don't work
- That if you're in Amsterdam and you can't find anything more interesting to get addicted to than games, you really do need help
- Gaming isn't a "drug," but it does stimulate pleasure centers and thus can be addictive (like sugary foods, I guess)
- You could probably pay Chinese and Korean powerlevelers to shoot you right up through that 12-step program for a small fee

But I'd just be karma-whoring.

Re:addictions

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

can't we technically qualify anything as an addiction?

I read recently that the concept of addiction is not a well defined one. One persons addiction is anothers mild indulgence. Frequently addiction is only applied to socially undesireable or prohibited indulgences. For example, despite its frequent use to excess, users of alcohol are rarely described as "addicted", and are instead given a specific label of "alocoholic".

The argument I read traced the origins of the concept of addiction back to the the Enlightenment. Essentially, the author argued that the concept of addiction was a direct successor to the concept of demonic possession. Where previously someone was regarded as being posessed as an explanation for their behaviour, now in the new, rational world, they were described as being "addicted" to a substance or behaviour.

People often tell me I'm addicted to video games. These same people can spend up to six hours a night, three nights a week, consuming alcohol and other substances. Some smoke, some watch an hour of football seven days a week. Some buy dozens of specialist magazines, spend hours on hobbies, go to car shows. Most watch ten times the amount of television I do.

There's always been a question of when an avid interest ends, and an addiction begins. In my expierience, nine times out of ten, it begins in the eye of the beholder.