Gethsemani said:
Get in touch with your GP. They can assess the situation and determine if you need specialized help breaking out of the habit. That's really all the advice I've got, because it can be really hard to break out of detrimental habits on your own.
Social isolation, erratic sleep patterns, signs of anhedonia, observably destructive behaviour leading to noticeable loss of living quality... It's kind of obvious counselling is necessary if only to potentially identify key other worrisome attributes.
dscross said:
I got very ill last year and started using single player video games as a way to escape from the reality I was facing. I'm starting to feel a bit better but I'm spending too much time on games and I literally can't stop. Has anyone else suffered from this and have any tips to break away?
It's kind of hard to form a treatment plan if people don't know where you are, but you might want to see what counselling services there are nearby if you're personally struggling to feel motivated once more.
Moreover, by some of the accounts you've given in the thread, can I ask how old you are?
There is some things I might suggest if you cannot afford counselling, have you tried other forms of social gaming escapism? Like contacting a board/P&P roleplaying gaming groups in your area?
Social isolation is kind of deleterious on its own, and even if you feel like solving a possible addictive agent will help with other aspects, perhaps the most immediate problems you should be looking at is reinforcing those social skills and providing an outlet that both reinforces things like maintaining a schedule to meet with other players, to improve and reinforce social skills, and to increase social networking.
And board gaming groups may be a good mitigator to that social isolation and anhedonia. Providing stimulating evenings, while also helping you meet new people, and making new friends, and creating new activities to enjoy that require effective time management and discipline to travel and meet people routinely somewhere.
To put it pointedly, the problem with videogames as an addiction may come from a desire of immediacy of reward. Which is problematic ... and in the cases of heavy users of videogames (and internet addiction) is this enculturated state where you get addicted to the immediacy of stimulation. So from what you're describing, you're saying you spent a long time of boredom and personally became distanced to more long-term goal orientated actions that provide longterm personal investment and reward.
So building new friendships, building up an expectation of longterm investment for longterm reward output... known as 'operant conditioning'. Videogames present a challenge because the reinforcement of videogaming is
instant, and the punishment for addiction is slight but incremental.
So perhaps to fulfil that desire for escapism, while conditioning one for less immediate reward patterns, that help build other rewarding behaviour patterns and attributes. Like maintaining a routine schedule, building new friendships, and improving socialization and prosocial activity.
Maybe joining a local board gaming circle might provide that structural infrastructure to better behaviour patterns, and helping said groups run a game? Or volunteering to teach a circle within said group a new 'game night opener' board game you found?
In the meantime, I do suggest talking to a counsellor of some form. Because there might be other problems at the core of this depending on age, environment, your personal and family history, and so forth.
