Gaming Addiction

• My thoughts on gaming addiction!

Gaming has played a large part in my life. It's developed and broken friendship. It's also taught me a few skills along the way. There's one game that stands out above all else. The titanic World of Warcraft, but I'll get to that soon.

When did I start gaming?

We were always behind in the gaming area. We were still on the Mega Drive while my friends were dicussing the latest rumours on the ps2.

Where did the sudden interest in gaming come from?

I remember it very vividly. I liked gaming as much as anyone else at the time, but certainly didn't see myself as engulfed in it as I was. I mentioned already that we were slightly behind when it came to technology, and of course, so was our internet connection! Dial up certainly wasn't appropriate for gaming, but I still managed to grab hold of some kind of wonder from it!
It was a morning on the way to school that two of my friends were talking about Runescape: A game I had thought was called Run Escape until further research. One of them was talking about how he had saved another player from a member of his own clan who had lured him deep into the wilderness where player versus player combat was available. The concept of online play wasn't ever something I was introduced to. I was aware that some kind of multiplayer across PCs was available, but I had imagined that was only for the techie know-hows.
I got into runescape... well sort of. I liked the idea of it, but we didn't have broadband until I was more interested in socialising over MSN (now virtually unused as far as I'm aware!) than gaming. Since then though, the idea of playing single player games no longer interested me. Playing with friends and against others was far more rewarding.

World of Warcraft: Gaming Addiction

 

To me, I still cannot believe this is still not more widely recognised as a problem that many teenagers and young adults can suffer from.
I have, without a doubt consumed more hours of my life on this game than any other recreational activity. There's no way to tell my total hours clocked on this game but if I added all my main characters together, the number was well over 150 days.

But what's the harm in that? Extensive hobbying doesn't hurt anyone. Sure it kept me sitting down for most of the time and my health suffered due to lack of exercise, but I stayed social and can't have done any more harm to myself than if I was addicted to more traditional cravings. The first thing to suffer was my relationships with my family.

Firstly it was Euan and Gavin. Euan was still quite young at the time when I was at my worst, and I do feel terrible about it, but we had very little contact during this time. When I got home from university or work it was straight upstairs to World of Warcraft. During this time, I was unapproachable unless someone had something worthy of my time. I remember Euan scarcely came up to my room and I went downstairs only to have dinner or late at night when everyone had logged off.
I remember mum always saying to him "Don't go up to John's room" "You're not allowed up there!" I don't remember feeling ashamed of that at all. He was an annoying younger brother, but I neglected him so much. I have no idea how he came to have a bond with me.

Gavin must have suffered the most of my relationships. Before this addiction started, he was my best friend. We would always be together and always have something to talk about. Very quickly he became less and less interesting to me and the game took over.
I make it sound maybe a bit more dramatic than it was, but when I had finally come to my senses, Gavin was already a grown-up. I remember one incident when I did begin to realise what I was doing to our relationship. He had been gone for two weeks. He had gone on a school trip and I had barely noticed. Isn't that horrible?


The troubles of the addiction didn't stop there. I became violent and easily frustrated at tiny things. My switch wasn't working properly and was making me lag because mum had unplugged it earlier that day. I was so angry I was downstairs interrogating everyone and shouting at them demanding to be told what had happened. She had to lie to me because she was expecting me to go berserk. She was crying because she was so terrified of me.
I can throw up excuses about that being about the time that I had quit smoking and I was going into university with no friends or that I had a leech of a girlfriend, but the real answer was the game. It was such an unhealthy bond I had with it.
My family was scared of me. I was in real trouble.


Gaming has crippled my education and now I'm having to rebuild the damage. Thankfully it was after my high school exams that I experienced the worst of my addiction. If it had been during, I would have failed and there would be no hope of me ever finding the motivation to go to college to do them again. I stopped going to university because I would rather be at home playing World of Warcraft. Unsurprisingly I failed my first year of university.

How did I overcome this addiction?

If you were expecting to read that I had some glorifying moment of clarity, I'm afraid not. The only thing that killed my addiction was the game itself. Cataclysm was just released and I didn't have any money to buy it. I didn't have a job at this time and couldn't possibly cut back my WoW time for a job! I waited until Christmas to use my money to get my hands on it, but by this time, I was already two months behind. I was off to a bad start, behind in progress of all my pseudo-friends and I lost motivation. The game became less and less interesting until I started a job.
This new kind of responsibility gave me freedom to spend my newly earned money on other experiences as well as letting me meet new people for the first time in nearly a year. I played the game for a while longer until I moved onto a less addicting game, League of Legends. While this still ate up a lot of my time, it wasn't nearly as bad as my World of Warcraft phase and thanks to my job, it never got that far again.

What are my opinions on gaming now?

If I was writing this a couple of months ago, I would tell you I was still a gamer, but I wouldn't call myself that anymore. I play games when Lily isn't home and I have nothing else to do. I'm currently slogging very slowly through Mass Effect while I'm not at work and even that feels like a bit too much at times.
Gaming is great. I developed management skills from my time as a guild leader. I learned how to best interact with different types of people and I even made friends. Gaming has a lot more to offer than most people would think, but it's also a devastating dependance if you let it do what it did to me.

I wish I could end this on a suggestion for overcoming gaming addiction, but the best I can tell you is what I think lead to me getting over this problem: Change.

From when I was a victim of wow-fever to right now, I had changed many aspects of my life. New job, new friends, moved out, started school fresh... Like other addictions, I didn't realise I had a problem until I was well developed into it.

 I got a girlfriend who pointed me in the right direction and I moved out without taking my gaming computer with me while I focused on university. I feel ashamed to write about some of the experiences I've had with gaming and have removed a lot of things I felt glorified my days as a gamer, when in reality... well that's just it. It isn't in reality.