How To Help a Friend With an MMO Addiction?

sammydee writes "I have a friend who is addicted to an MMO (Pirates of the Burning Sea). On a typical day, he will wake up around 9am, browse the forums for a bit, then go online and stay online all day, playing until about 3am the following morning, taking only toilet breaks and stopping to eat ready-meals. While the rest of the house works hard revising for exams, this friend will be playing his MMO instead. Now, I am pretty confident that this comprises an unhealthy addiction; unfortunately, I have no idea what to do about it. Any attempt to physically prevent him from playing the game would most likely result in an outburst of anger and possibly physical violence. Attempts at telling him he has a problem have been met with derision and angry retorts. Slashdotters, what would you do to help out a friend in this situation? Perhaps you are a reformed addict yourself — if so, how did you break out of the habit? Or maybe I should just leave well enough alone and allow him to continue? Any thoughts are gratefully received."

Comments

Re:violent?

[rhyder128k]

COME. OVER. TO. THE. UK. Seriously, you'll love it here. We're turning it into a totalitarian extreme socialist state. I've no doubt it will soon be permissible to use force to stop people from playing a computer game too much, if it's deemed "not good for them".

Re:Appeal to His Original Priorities

[Zero__Kelvin]

"I used to live in a bad part of the Franklin neighborhood in Minneapolis. As I pulled up next to my house, two squad cars were parked in a V in my front lawn with their cherries on. I had just worked until 2am at a parking garage on the U of MN campus. There was an adolescent in front of my house being stared down by a policeman. As I walked up the cop was staring him down and holding a bag of weed saying very loudly and very forcefully, "... yeah? And what skills you got? What has this shit been doing for you? How long have you been using? What are you going to do when you're a grown up providing for yourself?""

To which I would answer: I am a Software Engineer making six figures, and when I don't want to go into the office I call them and tell them I'll be working from home; no questions asked. Anyone who thinks Marijuana is a bar to reaching success is either woefully ignorant or phenomenally stupid. Steve Jobs and Mitchell Kaypor are two well know highly successful people who have both dropped acid, by their own "admission". The last three presidents smoked weed, and at least one was a coke-head. Next.

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[furbearntrout]

/s /jerk /insensitive clod! HTH HAND :-)