![]() Public health experts now are starting to take stories like Scott’s more seriously. It wasn’t until 2012, when he totally quit games (with the help of support groups like CGAA), that he turned his life around, improving his relationships and work, and getting back to his other hobbies. ![]() I know better than to get back into it.”īut Scott would eventually relapse - letting games dominate all his priorities once again. “It’ll just be a little bit here and there. “I’m going to try it again, but I’m not going back to that old craziness,” he told himself. His social life evaporated.Īfter years of this, Scott found help groups online in 2010 and tried to moderate his gaming. And he said gaming addiction began the same way: with a sense of despair - that “life just seemed pointless in a lot of ways.” Then came an escalation of use that over time crowded out the other things in his life. Scott had previously battled alcohol addiction. “Even when I wasn’t gaming, I was thinking about gaming,” Scott, who asked I not use his last name, told me. He was, he said, “obsessed” with the escape that they offered him. Scott played online card games like Absolute Poker and Bridge Base Online, and massively multiplayer online roleplaying games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI. And increasingly, he found himself playing instead of working - a problem for someone who was paid by the hour and was honest in reporting his hours. Something else had consumed his attention: Scott just couldn’t stop playing video games.Īs a computer programmer working from home, it was easy for Scott, now 45, to turn on a game at any time. As he put it to me, “I was falling down on my job.” His bosses were increasingly unhappy with his performance, and he was struggling to earn enough to support his wife and son. ![]() Scott knew he needed to focus on his work.
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