Friday, August 04, 2006

Hooked

They call it behaviourial abuse. You spend as much time as you possibly can on it during weekdays and you spend even more time during weekends, sometimes till early hours in the morning. You tell yourself you'll just see what the fuss is about and try it out. But you start to be pre-occupied with it, reading about it when you have no access to it, being on forum pages trying to figure out the best way to get ahead, all the time feeling twitchy. When they actually have time to play it, they realise they need to spend more and more time playing it before they can feel satisfied. The really hard core ones skip school to do it or lie to their loved ones.

One child ran away because his parents banned him from it. Another failed his exams and couldn't care less. Some have become aggressive and uncontrollable and have had to seek treatment. Ohters have been checked into the mental institutions. Now, these addicts aren't usually from broken homes or have had a troubled childhood, they're usually fairly well-adjusted and successful as students or grown ups.

Apparently it's a dangerous addiction because it's a quiet one. You don't manifest many physical symptoms apart from feeling twitchy when you spend too much time away from it. Treatment usually begins with counselling to make the addict realise the impact of his addiction and this is often followed by encouragement and ways of breaking the addiction. The most effective cure, unfortunately, is self-control and willpower, which is often inadequate compared to the eerie siren song that calls out, especially at night when the wives or girlfriends are asleep and they think they can get away with a quick fix.

The problem is the quick fix isn't usally long enough and ten minutes lead to half an hour that leads to an hour that leads to even more...It's a new addiction and it's here to stay.

"I won't have a problem stopping; I will miss it a lot"

Brave words.

Some compare it to gambling.

They call it behavioural abuse.

But I call it as I see, and I call it the World of Warcraft.

Same difference.

Thus, I repeat myself.

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Ondine tossed this thought in at 23:15

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