I consider myself a recreational gamer, but as much as I love gaming, it is more of a hobby rather than something I consider an integral part of my life.
That doesn’t mean I won’t spend many an hour pressing buttons and twisting analog sticks to pass away the time and of course enjoy myself while in the process with a large grin on my face. However for those who take gaming to the extreme and choose to pee in bottles rather than leave their televisions and consoles, there is now hope:
There is a problem with video games; some of us get hooked and the ride does not stop. Smith and Jones is an addiction clinic in Amsterdam, set up by a man more qualified than most to talk about addiction. Keith Bakker was himself a drug addict, but is now more used to treating hardcore cravings. He has recently experienced a flood of enquiries from addicts to video games.
Tim is 21 years old and has just come blinking into the light after an addiction to video games that lasted nine years. His daily routine once consisted of playing 18 to 19 hours a day: “I slept for three hours because I couldn’t sleep. Because when I was playing all day when I wanted to go to sleep I saw all the pictures in my head. [It felt like] I was stepping in the real world [when] I was playing in the games. If I had to go to the lavatory I’d pee in a bottle…
So the next time you consider yourself hardcore, check you have your empty bottle beside you for emergencies…. ewwwww.
Link: Addiction clinic opens for gamers
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I’ve heard of that whole pee in the bottle thing and that’s just plain nasty! I don’t care how addicted someone is to video games, that’s just not right. :o
With that said, I saw a special on TV once where this guy was so addicted to games (namely Halo 2) that he still lived with his parents at the age of 25 and played pretty much all day and all night. Lost something like 6 jobs in a row because he never went to work. Pretty ridiculous.
Me, I love to play games too, but I know when to stop and I do get up and go to the restroom for pee breaks. :d
Dear god, you think you\’re into gaming then you read that. Does this make pee\’ing into a bottle the practise of those with l33t skills only :-?
I have recently started to compile a list of the different “addictions†I have been reading about on some of the blogs. So far I have encountered the following dependencies: drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, oil (as in petroleum), gambling, food, exercise, love, video games, comment addiction (i.e., checking the comments on one’s blog), window shopping, thrill seeking, yarn addiction (not a misprint!), Internet addiction, blog addiction, Technorati addiction, information addiction, addiction to technology, MySpace addiction, knitting addiction (no joke!), addiction to Bloglines, taco addiction, and now gaming addiction.
While most of the horror stories I’ve read about pertain to the more “typical†dependencies such as alcoholism, drug abuse, porn, and gambling, your blog and others are starting to share the headlines. While your post about the Smith and Jones addiction clinic in Amsterdam was disturbing and your post about the 21-year-old who played video games between 18 or 19 hours per day was shocking, the absolute worst Internet-based addiction story I have heard so far is the following.
In 2005, a 54-year-old male addict, unable to take a break from his online world, died from starvation. How is this possible you ask? Easy. For 7 weeks before his death, he posted comments into one forum after another every 30 seconds, while refusing to eat anything.
I’m sure that the addiction stories will get even more bizzare as more and more people become addicted to the Internet, but for now, this story is so weird that it seems like it was written for CSI Miami rather than a true-to-life commentary on Internet addiction in our “enlightened” age.
DenMan7
http://www.About-Alcohol.com
It seems you can get addicted to almost any behaviour. I know what the gaming addiction is like having enjoyed a particular PC game and then felt compelled to keep playing it until I completed it. Once I completed the game, that was it so maybe mine was short lived. I do think that internet , gaming and even blogging addictions are due to a need for escape from the real world.