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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhCHvRnTYSk)

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_np-_mhU8U)

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2vkHaHaq-k)

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Be honest about your addiction

The most important thing in getting out of this problem, is perhaps to be honest with ourselves, and with the others. Recognizing to have a problem is just the first step, you need to accept that you need that you truly have something to do about it. It's not easy, but it's the only way, for what I know. Ask yourself if you really have many of the symptoms of the addiction, don't be afraid to tell your dear ones that you have a problem to face, a real one. Yes, they will probably believe you are telling bullshit, I know. But just do it. Eventually after seeing what you are doing, they will figure out and try to help you if they can. Please find the strength to do this. Life can be beautiful, you just need to reach out the cage and live it. You know that objectively you don't need to grab that joypad, or to click on that icon and have that goddamn little game session more. It's just fucking hard to do it. I know it's hard. But you need to be strong and face it. You lived without doing it, before discovering videogames. You can still do it now! Deep inside we all know it. I know it can be scary to face the problem that caused it in the first place. But compulsive gaming is not going to solve this problem, it is just another problem that makes this first thing even worse. I am not saying that quitting gaming will wipe out all problems with a magic wand. It won't. But it will help you face them better for sure! Humans make mistakes, you are not the first and not the last one to do one. And you are not alone. Look up on the internet, there is plenty of people you can tell this story that's been in your shoes. http://www.olganon.org/home (The anonymous online gamers website) Be honest with yourselves, and be strong. I know the struggle is real. One day you can be able to pick up a game again and be conscious that it will be just the fun healthy time of an hour ;)

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Add random guitar solo. Too many coffies... Too many co-co-co-coffies I think I’ve just lost it guys. OH OH OH OH OH OH OH. Ref for plebs: If you’re happy and you know it. If you don’t know this song you had an horrible childhood. This tune was the shit. Primus - Too many puppies Eminem - Just lose it Throw in Billy Joel - Honesty so you can have manly feels moment

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Alternative activites to gaming

There is plenty of fun things to do aside from gaming! All of those present nice benefits that gaming does not and can help improving someone's life in someway and eventually help leading out of addiction. Of course, none of those should be done compulsively as well, but at least they do less damage if so, because the general benefits they give is usually better. 1. READING BOOKS AND WATCHING MOVIES

These ones can enhance someone's thinking about human condition and society, and give them cultural knowledge that is socially appreciated and can enrich their own mind. These activities also inspire and stimulate the imagination. 2. DOING SPORTS OR PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES

Being it going to the gym, playing soccer with friends or taking karate lessons or whatever, doing sport is usually very very good for the both social and physical health. It can strengthen the bond with your body as well with other people. Doing sports is personally the best thing I can think of as an alternative to gaming. And mind that I rarely do it, but indeed I feel like I should do much more! 3. WATCHING TV SERIES

TV Series are quite a social phenomenon, many people find them entertaining, because they can actually be really entertaining, go figure! Even if this can become a compulsive behaviour as well (google fandom), it is a nice way to spend free time as an alternative to gaming for an addicted if he really doesnt feel like doing anything else. And gives them something to talk with people outside of home. 4. HANGING OUT WITH FRIENDS

Nothing better than positive time spent with people that care about you instead of inside your room. For real, social contact can be a great medicine. 5. MUSIC

Play it, listen to it, discover new one, go to concerts... Music can be a great great way to spend the time on, enjoying ourselves and acquiring skills that are widely appreciated. It can be as inspiring as reading, or watching movies, or painting... You should have got it easily by now. Possibilities are endless. Just do something ELSE anytime you feel like playing and you feel you shouldn't. Of course, all those activities take for granted that this someone alreasy fullfilled his daily duties, being it work, social relationships or study. They of course need to be put at the 1st place of the list.

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Refs for plebs: Rihanna - Don’t stop the music T.I. - 24s Uriah Heep - Stealing Muse - Glorious David Bowie - Heroes LMFAO - Sexy and I know it No song, I’m just a walking dead a zombie floatin, but I got your mom deepthroating. Now you have a song. Eminem - Rap God. Queen - Friends will be friends

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Gaming addiction related damages to health and life

Why is “gaming addiction” a problem? Why can't it be compared to any other hobby? What's the difference between playing and watching TV? Everything if done compulsively gets wrong! Yes, that's correct. But indeed, gaming can become compulsive and so end up being of great negative impact on someone's life.

A Norwegian study conducted by the University of Bergen has looked at links between gaming problems and common health problems. The study compared health factors like head aches, neck/back pain, digestive problems and sleep problems between people with normal or no affiliation to gaming and people with gaming problems.

The study shows that people with gaming addiction are more exposed to all the tested health factors than the other groups.

The table below shows some numbers from the study. It compares the share of people who replied that they never had problems with each particular health factor between the groups "people with gaming addiction" and "people without gaming addiction". Share who replied "never" %

Health factor  Non-addiction group Addiction group

Headache                     28.7%               20.6%

Neck-/back pain            25.8%               16.2%

Digestive problems        51.4%               40.3%

Sleep problems              45.3%               31.2%

Sadness                         43.1%                22.0%

Sleepy in daytime           22.6%                10.4%

Palpitations                     71.4%                53.5%

This is just an example on how it affects physical health. Not to mention the negative impact it can have on social life. Developing gaming addiction can isolate a person and keep her alone in their room for days, avoiding contact with anyone. And as we all know, relationships are like plants: if you don't water them, they will eventually wilt and die. Not to mention the fact that can bring a person to forget about her responibilities: grades at school get worse, being less productive on the job can lead to losing it, forgetting to feed pets... or even  children. Playing until exhaustion. All of these things happened out of gaming addiction, depending how bad they ended up. Extreme cases luckily tend to happen not too frequently. But they are something that might take place if a person is forgotten by other people and left alone in her addiction.

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But hey man free rides just don’t come alooooong... everydaaaaay... Let me tell about my other friend now!

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The archetypes of addictive games and why they can be so

As you readers may or may not know there are different types of games that work with mechanisms that can develop addiction behaviour. Let's have a rundown of the main ones. And let's remember: the games themselves are NOT drugs. Videogames producers are not evil monsters. The problem is the behaviour towards them 1. MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games)

This is the most famous category. The players assume the role of a character (often in a fantasy world or science-fiction world) and takes control over many of that character's actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player online RPGs by the number of players able to interact together, and by the game's persistent world (usually hosted by the game's publisher), which continues to exist and evolve while the player is offline and away from the game. This in particular is the key to why it can trigger addiction: the game constantly evolves when the player is offline, and this will need him to play more time to keep up with the other players, or he won't be able to be as good as them when playing, getting denied of the reward feeling it easily achieved at the beginning. This type of game enhances a lot the symptom of TOLERANCE. Famous examples: World of Warcraft, Everquest

2.MOBA (Multiplayer Online Base Assault)

This is a fairly recent category that has boomed in the last decade. A team faces another team to conquer the enemy base controlling a character. These games can be very very complex to learn and can really teach the player how to work in a team to achieve a common goal. But due to those complex mechanisms, and the big bulk of knowledge required to play them very effectively, they can require a lot of time to pick them up and truly enjoy them. And unlock the characters, in many cases, in order to be able to play it for free. The player will end up playing way too many hours if he isn't very careful in order to become a good one. Also, playing in a random team with people can lead you to play with toxic people and give you a bad gaming experience, pushing you to play more games in order to play a rewarding one. Famous examples: League of Legends, Dota 2, Smite

3.FPS (First-Person Shooter)

First-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre centered on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through a first-person perspective; that is, the player experiences the action through the eyes of the protagonist. The first-person shooter shares common traits with other shooter games, which in turn fall under the heading action game. These games can be very engaging, and often feature unlocking new elements the more you play, and the better you do. The more someone plays, the more he usually gets respected by his gaming peers, because of their ability to win games. These games often are played in communication with other people (as MOBAs and MMORPG can do as well). Being socially appreciated on an online game can fulfill that lacking condition in real life, which may lead to gaming addiction. Famous examples: Call of Duty, Battlefield

4.Sport Games

“You gotta be kidding me”. No guys, I am not. How can a sport game trigger gaming addiction? The same way RPG do: The build a player system. Whatever you have to do, become a succesful soccer, basketball, rugby, (curling?) player, you will start from scratch and will have to play a fair amount of time in order to get your own personal player to become a powerhouse that can dominate games and win titles for his team! Famous examples: FIFA, NBA2K

5. Idle Games

These games are the waste of time and the emblem of gaming addiction itself. I strongly advice against them, because for real, the mechanism behind them triggers addiction extremely easily. Basically there is nothing to do in the game except upgrading things, all the time. There is NO WAY to play idle games in a bad way. There is no loss. There is just endless upgrading. Endless rewarding. For doing basically nothing. Players even often limit the little freedom of choice they have in how to upgrade their stuff in order to optimise the way to upgrade. They can be stopped at anytime, but if someone gets sucked in this... hours will be wasted, that's for granted. Famous example: Clicker Heroes 6. TCG (Trading Card Games)

Games where you can collect cards to play against other players, build strategic decks of cards and have plenty of fun. The fact that can make addictive is the same related to MOBAs and MMORPG: constant updating. A player who doesn't play often will have less cards, and so less flexibility on the strategies he can play out in order to win and keep having the most fun he can squeeze out of it. Rewards will be denied to him and he will have to play more time in order to get the cards he wants. Famous examples: Magic The Gathering, Hearthstone, Yugi-oh

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Don’t be upset. I played ALL of those. And I still do play some an unnecessary amout of time.

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Stories about gaming addiction

We've been already throughout a bit about my addiction experiences and opinions in this project. Today, I will just post stories found around the internet about other people that experienced and sometimes it's still hopeless towards gaming addiction, or has interesting opinions about it. It is useful to read how differently humans react towards a common problem. It helps widening the spectre of knowledge about it. Nick 

Being rather big gamer I see how this theory works. But I don’t tend to game because I’m depressed, I do it because I get bored.

When you’ve been to a friends house and had a great day, done lot’s of things then you get home and you have your “downtime” as they called it above.

For myself, I see gaming as another social aspect, competing online is always fun and imersive. With a headset you can talk to all these other gamers across the world, discuss whatever you like while you gun down hostiles.

2 hours a day of any screen? You must be joking. For a game that’s nothing. You can’t ‘acheive’ much in that space. And other screens? Who doesn’t browse the internet casually or watch videos on youtube? Honestly I do all this cos what else is there?

Going outside? Sure done that, now what?

Reading? How is that any different from loosing yourself in a game, seriously?

You will want to talk to your friends online, it’s cheaper than by phone by far!

So basically, I havn’t seen any major impact on my life or my friends or any other of my friends’ social lives. Though I do think as years go on more and more people are going to start gaming, longer and more agressive, depressed or whatnot that medics may think.

Chris

I’m 16 and I spend most of my time playing games. Yes, I’m depressed. That’s doesn’t come along with me having bad grades or no friends though. I chat with people around me, my parents are pretty great, and I’ve got a 3.8 GPA. Sure I feel socially awkward, but that doesn’t stop me from speaking with people. I don’t understand how you can say gaming is the cause of depression and all these other symptoms. Have you ever thought about it being the other way around? It’s so important to be “normal” these days. So important that the ones that make different choices end up being ostracized, labeled, and bullied for who they are. I’m a teen and I go to a toxic environment for seven hours five days a week. I’m also bisexual. I know plenty about feeling completely worthless. It’s not from the games.

It’s from everything else.

Games give me the opportunity to relax and play around with other people who feel similar.

So I’m sorry if my avoiding the crowd of drunken high-school jocks upsets you. They tend to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed of myself with their hateful words.

Andrew 

I started playing video games at the age of 5, now I am 18 years old and the only thing I like to do in my spare time is play games. The more I play, the more depressed I feel, but when i’m not playing video games I feel deprived and annoyed. I used to have alot of confidence, which has now depleted into feeling awkward even walking down the street. I don’t leave the house much and my relationships with friends have gone due to me being addicted to games and not hanging out with them. I don’t want to say ‘don’t let your kids play videogames or they’ll turn out like me’ as everyone is different, but at LEAST parents please monitor the hours spent on gaming.

Matt

The comparison of socially isolated gamer teens to book-reading, socially isolated teens, is flawed due to the differences in the two activities. Reading a book acquaints you with the intellectual and literary culture of the world; it provokes thought and imagination and can lead to creative action. “Hey I liked that story; maybe I’ll try to write one myself.” Reading hopefully makes you a brighter and more empathetic and sympathetic person. Video games promote hand-eye coordination and problem solving, to an extent. I’d argue that playing a good video game is more interactive and engaging than watching an average TV program or movie, but less engaging than active reading. Given the choice between raising a kid who is a socially isolated reader and a socially isolated gamer, I’d choose the reader. I was that book-reading kid, myself. Now I’m a thirtysomething adult who spends anywhere from 20 to 30 hours a week playing World of Warcraft as an escape from my own depression and social anxiety. I also still read, but not nearly as much due to my game playing. I wish I’d had parents sensitive enough to see that my bookishness was a manifestation of a larger issue: depression and social anxiety disorder. Instead, we all avoided any discussion of unhappiness and I became an adult who still avoids the unpleasant facts of my life by escaping into fantasy. Knowing this about myself is effectively worthless, at age 37.

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*pixels, not pixerl *pulsing, not pulsg Credits to: Myself. I really got too far this time....

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How to get out of gaming addiction, or at least trying.

Hello, you finally realised you have a problem. Playing more than 5 hours a day isn't giving you any benefit and it's accumulating problems over problems, and you can't continue this way. But you can't stop. Ikr? So, here is some stuff that can help you fight against your addiction. 1. SEEK FOR HELP You don't have to fight your addiction alone, and most importantly... you can't. Having someone to support you against your problem is very important, because it can give you external feedbacks on how to improve and see things clearer. If possible, like for any kind of addiction, it may be a good idea to find a sponsor. Someone that you often keep in touch and is willing to help you quit with your gaming disorder. I would avoid making someone too close to you a sponsor, it needs to be someone who can be relatively detached from you. Getting a partner, a close friend or a relative in the sponsor role will strongly put their emotions into your relationship, worries, stress and stuff. This emotional impact makes them terrible sponsors and will hurt your bond. Instead, try to spend and cherish time in other activities with them anytime you can. Connections with people are the key to snapping out of gaming addiction, because that's how all addictions work, one falls for them because of isolation, or for fear of isolation. I recommend watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg 2. GET KNOWLEDGE Surf the internet to find informations about your problem, compare experiences and whatsoever. There are plenty of websites made by people that went throughout your shit and came out on top in the end. You can't go to war with a water gun. Knowledge is one of your strongest weapons. If you realise you are presenting a precise symptom of gaming addiction, you can fight against it much clearer and easier. And it will also lessen your sense of guilt and helplessness. You are not alone, you are not the first to fall into it, and you will not be the last. 3. SCHEDULE

You need to arrange your time. Try to make a plan for the day, which of course includes gaming, and fill it with other stuff you might want (or NEED for fuck's sake!) to do. This is a very useful thing to do not only for fighting addiction in general, but also for things like working and living! That way, you will realise how much you are missing out because of gaming in a much more impactful way. If you stick with it and do your best to respect the schedule, your life will improve much much more! 4. DON'T PROCRASTINATE

Yesterday you said today. JUST DO IT. “I'll just play a bit, then I will surely do this...” You know it always ends up bad. Anytime, ANYTIME you get this thought into your mind, it means you are about to start your compulsive gaming. Fight against it, try to. You are thinking that's wrong and you are right. Follow your good conscience. 5. MAKE GAMING LESS ACCESSIBLE Those are little things that may help. Hide your games icons, put your console where you can't see it. Get things out of easy reach. Out from the sight, out from the mind. If you find a moment of lucidity and you know you are wasting too much time on a game, uninstall it! This will require you to reinstall it to play it everytime, and will make you think twice about waiting to play again and so on, do other stuff. If you play because you are bored especially: waiting to reinstall is boring! Time to do something else! 6. SEEK FOR ALTERNATIVES There must be some healthier way to help me forget about my problems that can be more useful and rewarding in life than playing! And yes, that's right. I will dedicate an entire chaper of the project about this!

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A little handul of tips to everyone out there struggling with gaming addiction. If you don’t understand them, it means you luckily are not a game addict! Woo-hoo

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How to help a game addict

Living with someone struggling with gaming addiction can be a truly exhausting and disheartening experience. Stressful and disappointing. And the worst thing is that if someone is really deep inside of it, he probably knows, but he's helpless about it. I will now tell you some considerations and tips about how to relate to a dear person to you which may suffer by gaming addiction disorder. 1. DON'T BE JUDGEMENTAL

Or get mad at him/her. Gaming addiction finds its stickiness because of the constant feel good reward mechanism. If a game addict finds himself inside a stressful situation, he will cope with it in the easiest way he knows: playing more until the bad sensation goes away. It's counter-intuitive, I know. But humans in general works this way, not only game addicts. You will never convince anyone they are wrong in something by telling them they're a bunch of idiots, that they just waste their time, the way they are living are pointless. They will just flat out ignore you. And eventually completely stop caring about what you have to say. Game addicts are often afflicted by their own sense of guilt, just reminding them they have a problem and yell at them won't produce any positive effect. 2. TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE REAL PROBLEM IS

Gaming addiction is the consequence to a problem which becomes a problem on its own. You need to figure out somehow the reasons that led the person you care about into playing all the time to avoid them. And be wary, that can be also shockingly unpleasant, somehow the plant that grows it's the one that has been reaped. Parental or relationship mistakes can be quite common reasons for example, you need to be prepared to face them as well. Don't be surprised (it's an example) if a son plays games all the time because his parents fight between them all the time or get divorced, it's a way he copes against the pain that the situation makes him feel without trying to meddle in it because of being afraid of worsening a situation. Stress, fears, anxiety, guilt. It can be anything. Life isn't easy for anyone, some people sometimes can be too weak to cope with it alone, and end up in playing videogames non-stop 3. GET KNOWLEDGE ON GAMES

Have you ever been yelled by a game addict to shut the fuck up or go away, in unexplicably and unjustified anger, even if you just came asking normal things without any negative intention? If you live with one I bet it happened at least once. This often occurs because this person is busy doing something actually really complicated when playing. A distraction of seconds can fuck up minutes and maybe hours of playing. Imagine someone constantly asking you stuff while you are cooking a complicated recipe. The concept is the same. This is why you need to understand what they are playing and how it works in basic mechanism. By knowing it, you can understand easily when it's the right moment to show up and giving them task, distracting them and getting them away from their gaming binge. Some games can be saved in any moment, this means you can convince kindly the addict to save and quit with some good reasons and diplomacy. Others require you to end a game session. You need to know when this will end more or less, or to wait for it. Then, strike after the end of it. Knowledge is power. When you know the elements of the addictive properties tricking your dear, you can figure out all the ways to work around it with higher chances of success, and he WILL realise it. Especially if you behaved in a bad manner towards it before. And you need to get them out of particular games that strongly impacts their activities. You can also check the time they effectively spend playing on a game in many of those, so you can figure out how much are they lying to you about the time they play. Because they do if they are addicted. And they are not lying if the time is reasonable, in this case you don't need to worry! 4. BE POSITIVE AND PROPOSITIVE

You need to make the game addict that real life can be much more rewarding than his gaming activity. And this has to begin with attitude. Try to involve him in doing things and to make them worth experiences. If you can afford it, try to get him into something else they might actually like and be supportive towards it, make yourself sure he doesn't goes back to old ways by showing positive feelings towards anything else that isn't a time wasting activity such as gaming. 5. DON'T SUPPORT IT

I said that you don't have to show your anger and disappointment towards game addicts, but you NEED to NOT support their gaming activity. Like the fight club. Never talk about the fight club. It's the first rule. Understanding the pleasure they get out of playing and giving them  positive feedbacks will worsen the situation. They need to understand that playing more than 2 or 3 hours (dangerous gaming time depends on the free time they have at disposal) it's a negative thing for them and they need boundaries. Remember that gaming itself is NOT a negative thing at all! But it needs to be done in a healthy way.

[thegnegno-blog]

A little handful of good rules to follow to help someone with his problems