Like Fenris, I get hooked on computer games for long periods. A new game can get me thinking of little else for weeks at a time. Luckily for me, my husband is also a gamer and understands what it’s like.
That being said, lezlers’ SO sounds like he has an addiction to EQ. His game is affecting his work and his relationships. The fact that he actually said he couldn’t be with someone who would make him choose between two of his loves is terribly sad. No object should ever be held to the same level as a person. Never. No excuses. Equating a girlfriend with a game? How could that ever be right?
There was an article about Everquest and addiction in the local newspaper today. It starts off in a bit of a sensational way, but is pretty even-handed. It’s definitely worth a read if you’re interested in the topic.
Oh for the love of pete, if ONE person on this message board killed themself, would that make the message board responsible???
By the logic of the above linked trash, playing professional basketball leads to drug addiction, football will make you slit your exwifes throat, playing in a grunge band will make you blow your head off.
I give up, the internet is the work of the devil, I quote: “You either die, go insane or you quit.”
Yeah, whatever. :rolleyes:
You all better stop posting, you will die or go insane!!!
Actually, if you read the entire article, it has plenty o’ professionals saying “yeah, the games can become immersive, but we wouldn’t characterize them as addictive.” I thought the article was pretty objective, and very interesting. It does start with a bit of sensationalism, but as Kayeby points out, if you read farther down, it makes some good points.
You’re being REALLY defensive about EQ. So uh, how much time a week do YOU spend playing?
Brayden,
I have NO idea. Sorry.
Thanks everyone for your responses. The game hasn’t been turned on since Friday night (it’s now officially the workweek so we don’t see eachother anyway) I don’t agree with whoever said that there’s no way it could be an addiction. While it may not be a chemical addiction, it most certainly can be a psychological one. When it interferes with other area’s of your life in a negative way but you just…can’t…stop… that is an addiction. I’ve been reading stories about marriages breaking up, people losing 20 lbs because they can’t stop playing long enough to get food, people failing out of school ect ect.
Kelli,
I’m not saying everyone is like this that plays EQ. Just like not everyone who drinks is an alchoholic. But can you seriously look at the situations i’ve just described and tell me that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to be addicted to it? There’s nothing chemically addictive in marijiana but there are still some people out there that are DAMN addicted to it. It’s a psychological addiction. They become crazy when they don’t have it. I’ve seen it. Just because it hasn’t happened to you or anyone you know, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Lezlers, your remark about the addictiveness of marijuana is apropos. I used to be very defensive about that. “Sure, I smoke it every day-- but you can’t be addicted to pot.” (FTR, I don’t still don’t consider that I was ever “addicted” to MJ- it didn’t interfere with the rest of my life, and if circumstance dictated that I not smoke, it wasn’t a problem. Coffee is another story.)
Other chemicals that people tend to consider “addictive”, which, in fact, are not physically addictive at all:[ul][li]Cocaine[]Methamphetamine[]The dreaded “Crack” cocaine[/ul][/li]
The Merck Medical Manual has this to say about Cocaine:
The “tendency to continue” is easy to understand – if the person enjoys using cocaine. Many people can use these drugs, enjoy them, and no harm comes of it. Other people make them the center of their lives and often sacrifice a lot to the habit. It’s not a property of the chemical that brings people back to it again and again, it’s a property of the person that inclines them to repeat the experience all the time.
For me, the attractiveness of my game (Starcraft) had a lot of the same physiological effects as an amphetamine binge: Increased heartrate, agitation, excitement, cold sweat, disinclination to sleep, eat, or bathe-- All that good stuff. And don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed the hell out of it. I enjoyed the various drug binges of my youth, too. And if someone I knew was in danger of losing something of value, such as their job, their credit-rating, or fiancee, to any of those things, chemical or digital, I would do my best to give them a hand.
Some of the posts here have reacted as though folks are saying “Games are bad – People shouldn’t play them.” Not at all. Games are good, healthy recreation, the way most people approach them.
Everything’s good in moderation. (Even moderation.)
I agree Larry, everything in moderation. Unfortunatly, a lot of people find that difficult, if not impossible. I tend to have trouble doing things in moderation (coffee, smoking, mj, ect.) which is why I try to stay way from things that can become addictive, chemically or phycologically. I experimented with different things in college but I would never do anything more than once, no matter how much I liked it because I knew I had self control issues. Even now, every couple of months I have to do a caffeine “detox” I’m constantly quitting smoking (i’ll start, stop, start, stop, it’s a constant battle) and mj. It’s not easy to do things in moderation, especially when you enjoy them, but you really have to for your own sanity. That’s why I think it’s funny when the b/f will give me shit for things like caffiene, mj ect. I usually just come back with “lay off the Evercrack!” He sees no connection between the two though.
lezlers, be glad you are finding this out when you did.
Trust me on this one.
I played EQ. A lot. I enjoyed it. But I didn’t let it interfere with my real life.
My wife didn’t want to play, because I was already high level, and she didn’t want to feel like she was holding me back… but when a new game came out, and she could start from ground zero with me…
No shit. I am not kidding. My wife of 10 years dropped me for a CHARACTER in Dark Age of Camelot.
Some people simply cannot handle a virtual world, and keep some sense of what is REAL, and what is animated pixels. Apparently, I had the poor fortune to marry one, and then lacked the wisdom not to expose her to a drug she could not resist. Didn’t make it any less painful… knowing how screwed up this is may have made it WORSE. Having to answer, “She left you for WHAT!!!” about 10,000 times didn’t help the healing.
Thank your supreme being of choice that you find this out NOW, rather than later, when it would be far, far worse…
Anyone know a cute, smart, eligible 25-35 female who doesn’t think much of computer games?
Be my guest. Someone invited him to a gaming session once and he leeched on, and until recently, no-one has been quite annoyed enough by him to kick him out. However the time he invited us over to his parent’s basement for gaming (“No! Seriously! I wanna have you guys over for a change”) and he spent the entire evening playing Everquest and telling us to “keep it down, I’m trying to play here” was pretty much the last straw for several of us.
Be my guest. Someone invited him to a gaming session once and he leeched on, and until recently, no-one has been quite annoyed enough by him to kick him out. However the time he invited us over to his parent’s basement for gaming (“No! Seriously! I wanna have you guys over for a change”) and he spent the entire evening playing Everquest and telling us to “keep it down, I’m trying to play here” was pretty much the last straw for several of us.
As soon as I can file off anything to more closely ID him, I have a post I wanna make…
Huh? She left you for a character? I don’t understand. Was it a person that played a character? Is she with a two orthree dimensional person now??? Please explain more.
Yeah, she’s with the person who played the character now.
But she had never met him at the time. I heartily believe that it was the character she fell in love with.
If you are with someone who is having trouble keeping straight the lines between a real life and a virtual one, I would heartily advise running away, fast.
Ummm…I don’t think Lezlers blamed the game for her relationship problems, as she readily admitted that she knew that it was him, not the game. Moreover, I don’t see any evidence of anything being blamed for “society’s ills”-well-outside of the “ill” that is Lezlers’s relationship at this point!
There is a fine line between hobby and addiction. Additionally, people have different tolerance levels regarding this sort of thing. Personally, I would much rather be a golf widow than an Everquest widow. I believe that hobbies which involve physical exertion and most of all real time, 3 dimensional interaction are somehow more “valid.”
perhaps Lezlers feels the same way.
At any rate, she is expressing a need within her relationship, as well as a desire to cut down on some behavior that is clearly, by her accounts, affecting his quality of life.
If that makes her a nag, then maybe being a nag ain’t such a bad thing.
I think “obsession” is more accurate than “addiction”, but I suppose that’s quibbling. While some people do tend to go on half-seriously (or perhaps completely seriously) about “Evercrack”, I don’t think there’s anything inherently addictive about the game, or those like them. I have played it, for what it’s worth.
Some people do become obsessed with it or with groups of people they meet in the game, and take things to an unhealty extreme. Inviting someone over and then playing while they’re there is certainly rude. I don’t think long sessions of playing are necessarily bad, but doing that repeatedly, to the point where non-game stuff suffers, is.
