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Game Addiction Clinic Swamped
Via the Gamers with Jobs Press Pass, an article on The Australian site claiming that the Dutch gaming addiction clinic is swamped with fearful parents and glaze-eyed children. From the article: "Although experts are still debating whether excessive game playing counts as an addiction, Mr Bakker has no doubt that the symptoms are the same. 'If we see a car burning outside, we don't sit around wondering what to call it,' he said. 'It is not a chemical dependency, but it's got everything of an obsessive-compulsive disorder and all of the other stuff that comes with chemical dependency.' Tim, a 21-year-old from Utrecht, said he had hardly left his bedroom for five years because he was so obsessed by his computer games. "
I personally have met someone who was addicted to World of Warcraft- he stopped going to classes to play, would fall asleep at his chair while his characted rested, and unless he's changed since I graduated, has probably flunked out of college by this point.
However, for all that, I don't think that gaming addiction is all that common- compared to alcholism or compulsive gambling the number of gaming 'addicts' are trivial. Also, gaming is less physically harmful than alcohol or drugs, and much cheaper to indulge in than compulsive gambling.
I suspect that the same people who are susceptible to compulsive gambling are also the compulsive gamers, so research on the larger, more important issue (compulsive gambling) might also help compulsive gamers.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
There's more and more research emerging to support the hypothesis that any addiction to a substance without physically addictive qualities (i.e. crack and its ilk) are all rooted in the same dopamine reactions. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1669601/p osts is a short synopsis of a story I read in long form in Chicago magazine about a woman who took a drug that affected how her brain handled dopamine and ended up with a massive gambling addiction. Stopping the meds brought back her original problem but allowed her to almost effortlessly quit gambling.
All of these non-chemical addictions seem to have the same core symptoms. People do something that makes them feel good. They do it often and begin to notice other things don't feel good anymore, then they notice they need to do this new thing more and more to keep the good feeling coming. Just because our brain makes a chemical doesn't mean it won't acquire a tolerance to it.