• Obsessed players may forget to eat or sleep
• Patient, 23, treated with 12-step abstinence course
Addiction to online games is becoming more widespread among vulnerable young people, according to a treatment centre that has begun running abstinence courses in Britain. As games become more visually enticing and the recession leaves people at home in front of computer screens, therapists are encountering more cases of people obsessed with being online. In extreme circumstances game players can, they warn, become detached from normal existence and forget to eat or sleep as they interact with screen characters such as wizards and monsters. Youngsters can also develop posture problems.
Broadway Lodge, a residential rehabilitation centre in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, that normally deals with alcoholics and drug addicts, has recently treated a 23-year-old for his obsession with online games.
Brian Dudley, the centre's chief executive, said: "He was staying online for seven or eight hours at a time. We developed a treatment for him which followed the 12-step [abstinence] approach, but you can't tell someone never to use the internet again. He had eating issues, he wasn't eating properly. He did very well. He has … the mechanisms now to cope with it.
"The problem is not just restricted to young kids. We know parents who are hooked on these things. It's only a small percentage of people who get addicted but it's also only a small percentage of people who gamble too much. I don't know anybody else who is treating [such cases] in this country. There's no helpline."
Peter Smith, another counsellor at Broadway Lodge, said: "It's not unusual for people to get so obsessed with online gaming that they forget to eat and drift towards an anorexic and undernourished state. You can play online with people around the world, so it can be at odd times of the day – when it's 5pm in Chicago or evening in Japan. You have a relationship with characters in the game that give you an artificial feeling, created by your body's natural endorphins, when you have killed some monster or solved a problem."
"Addiction" is a loaded term among psychiatrists and psychologists, with many disputing whether the dependency exhibited by a few constitutes the same type of physical craving triggered by opiates such as heroin.
Online Gamers Anonymous, a US website, classifies "massively multiplayer online roleplaying games" as the most addictive. "Success in these games is highly dependent on the amount of time you put into them. Playing the game casually will leave you trailing behind others who put in more time, possibly making you feel as if you aren't as good or are falling behind."
Online role-playing games, the site adds, "encourages interaction amongst other people and development of groups, allowing people to flourish socially online, providing an escape for their struggling social life"; however the games could also ruin a "successful social life".
ELSPA The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association denied that playing online games could lead to addiction. Its director general, Michael Rawlinson, said: "Playing video games is becoming increasingly mainstream in the UK and we firmly believe in the positive impact playing games can have."
REACTION:
To start this reaction, I would like to say that I, myself, was a victim of this phenomenon. I wouldn’t say that all those gaming hours I’ve spent were all bad memories that I regret doing them. Yes, those experiences had done me bad but it was not all that. They also contributed to shape the better part of what I am today. Like everything else, online gaming has its advantages and disadvantages.
Online games are fun, trust me. You get to do things inside the game that you can’t do in real life. You can walk for hours without getting tired. You can fight enemies using those skills you have learned. You can be strong. You can actually do whatever you want and be whoever you want to be. You can be a different person. Of course, those normal experiences you do in real-life can still be done in the game. Make new friends. Chat with them. Hang-out. Even have a relationship. There was this love story of two persons; they met each other in the game, fell in love, and got married in real-life.
Online games are not also limited to teens or young people. I know a few 30-ish to 40-ish individuals who are hooked with these types of games. They say it relieves their stress after a long days work. And yeah, I agree with them. When you log-in that character of yours into this different world, you immediately feel the stress go away. It is really hard to explain that kind of feeling. You need to experience it to know it.
Too much of anything is usually a bad thing. Even how positive it is, if it’s too much it is too much. Being someone who had experienced what those online-game addicts had experienced, I can say that you can’t really put all the blame to them. I mean, who doesn’t want to be someone strong, to be someone you have never been, to be someone you have ever wanted to be, and to be someone without flaws or imperfection. Especially, when you are not recognized in real-life or you are neglected. You can be the god of this virtual world in which you can do anything you want without anybody stopping you. Once you get a hold of those things it is hard to let go. Perhaps those are the reasons for their addiction; at least those WERE my reasons.
The sad thing about this is that you already know what is happening or what will happen and yet you still continue. Some manage to let go and moderate the possession of that virtual power, but some end up in news articles or news papers. I am glad to hear that people are aware of this phenomenon, that perhaps this could be more of a problem than drugs. I remembered the days where I didn’t eat dinner just to play all night. Woke up late, eat a piece of bread for breakfast and started playing again. I know that there are more people out there doing those kinds of things or even worse. I just hope that they wouldn’t be confused on which the real-world is and which the virtual one is.
"Economic growth in the fourth quarter was primarily underpinned by a strong expansion in the manufacturing sector," the government’s Ministry of Trade and Industry.