I've stumbled across while searching for what to do about my gaming addiction, but in reading the site I have slowly realized that I have been addicted to a number of things and gaming is just the latest.
My gaming addiction currently centers around a game called Perfect World but it wasn't always so... many years ago it was EQ (way back) and only the threat of losing it all stopped me (maybe someday I'll share that story), and while I have not fallen completely in the trap (I do realize I am caught at the moment) I have (and my wife has, yes she noticed first) noticed my decline back into the obsession that is gaming.
As I said, gaming is my current addiction and I have realized that I have been addicted to one thing or another for the past 12 years (as long as my marriage), I've been asking myself now for the last couple of days since IaEU(tm)ve stopped playing (deleted my characters and had a family member change the passwords) that it is hard, but I also keep wondering why I keep getting addicted to things an looking elsewhere to create a reality for myself. I am not blaming anyone or my marriage but like I said, I am slowly seeing a big picture here that I have never seen before.
I am lucky in that I have never gotten into substance abuse or addiction or who knows where I'd be today.
I'm hoping at some point to use the 12 steps or something to help me set myself on a better path, but I think that I need to be able to see all my addictions and the stem before I can ever truly get to the bottom of what is causing my addictions.
I'm hoping that by talking through it, sharing, reading, etc that I may rid myself of the guild and sadness I feel in general. I realize part of it is leaving the game behind but I also am realizing that I'm sad/depressed because I feel powerless against all the addictions I have had... trading one for another as I realize I am addicted.
NTH
What I have learned from the 12 steps is that addiction is a disease. I have a lot of baggage (bad childhood-abusive household-physcial defects,...etc) that could explain why I became a video-game addict and a drug addict. In fact I used all that bad baggage to justify gaming and using to others and myself saying stuff like "you don't understand man, if you had my life you would use/game all the time too".
But to be honest, I truly believe that had I had a perfect life I would still be an addict, because I was born with this disease. Cancer patients and diabetics don't get stuck on trying to find the root of the sickness. They usually try to find a cure to the sickness. And that's how I look at my addiction today.
Today, even after having done some extensive work on myself, having healed most of my "baggage" and wreckage of the past, addiction is still in me. It is still looking for a window of opportunity to attack me and I feel it. All I can do is use the spiritual kit which is the twelve steps which will provide me a daily reprieve from my sickness. It was hard for me to swallow that I will never be rid of this beast. But it is my truth, and I don't have the energy to fight the truth anymore.
Welcome, need-to-heal. I hope you find some measure of recovery help here.
I will agree with Detruss above that self-knowledge is not necessarily the tool you need. As addicts, we tend to spend a lot (too much?) time asking ourselves what the root cause of our addiction is, why we are the way we are, what we could have done differently, etc. The thing is, while interesting, none of this by itself will help overcome addiction. I believe the Big Book when it says that self-knowledge is not enough.
I would say that if you are not averse to working the steps, start with that first, and the self-knowledge will follow.
An addictions counselor told me something really interesting the other day. He said that, for the passengers on the Titanic, it was a whole lot more important to get off the ship, than it was to figure out why it was sinking! That could wait until later...
Jane
I used this space as a start because I didn't know what else to do.. i just put down what i was thinking and the rest seemed to flow. I don't really think I'll ever see why I become addicted, I was just rambling. I feel so lost at times and my wife just doesn't seem to understand. We've had councling and the end result was that there is something wrong with me that she can't identify with so she just gets angry and I feel ashamed which pushes me out of the addiction of the moment. I've tried councling on my own and it works for a time but something else comes along and addicted i become. I don't know if its my drive to get things done or just my nature and I am not even sure if you can call constructive things addictions but in some of the posts I see people throw themselves into RL things like hiking, etc and even then my wife will call me an addict.
Thre is also a joke I've heard in AA that is built off this
Q: Where where all the alcoholics and addicts sure to be found as the Titanic was sinking?
A: In the engine room trying to figure out why the ship was sinking.
Lise mentions it--the Big Book points out that the great delusion is that our fine reasoning or moral or philosophical principles can some how wrangle our way out of the addictive gaming. The reality is that in spite of our many moral and philosophical principles, we became addicted gamers. The reality is that our best thinking turned us into addictive gamers.
It really breaks my heart every time someone new shows up at the site, they tell their tale, identify as addicts, and several days into withdrawal, when the malady is doing everything it can to encourage them to start gaming again (because the malady only says one thing over and over again, "(insert justification of any kind) and *that's* why we should die some more and game again!") and the new person thinks that what they are hearing is their fine logical mind at work.
Maybe not knowing or perhaps forgetting that our fine logical minds got us here in the first place--and since the problem centers in our mind, it isn't likely to be a source of good information for quite some time.
Cheers, Desire to Stop
ALL quoted text (unless otherwise stated) comes from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (with wording sometimes changed only to make it more relevant for gaming addiction). I will include page numbers.
Hoping & praying for a measure of recovery for all of us today.