latent addiction
Since my youth through uni and until very recently, I have compulsively played games...high school was solotairy...Civilisation mostly, then through Uni, social gaming...Warcraft 2, Starcraft....and then last year, War3.
It was actually social for me, because I was playing LAN games with good friends. But, I went and lived overseas for several years, and while I was away, I rarely played computer games, certainly not nearly as much as I had.
What happened is that there was a large vacuum created in my life, without the time and reality filler. During that time, some of that freed time was wasted with self pity, but some wasn't. Some of that time I used to research SP, read books and rediscover my creative side etc.
Since returning to NZ from Taiwan, I have hooked back up with old friends who have quite balanced lives...but have gaming in the mix. I have to go cold turkey, go totally without, there is no middle ground for me.
The way I see it is that my social phobia won't be forever. Eventually I will get past much of it. Then, what will I want to do with my time? Sit around in a stuffy room with a few mates playing networked games or playing in a band, having interesting conversations and traveling the world? The latter. If I am freed from my social phobia, I can think of many much more interesting things to do...other examples, learning to surf, becoming a cook of exotic foods, writing a book, exploring Latin America etc etc.
So, if there is alot of time that I can't socialise, I try and improve myself in some way. Films and books are the main route to this...to improve my general knowledge, so that someday I can have interesting conversation. I used to know all the statistics about Starcraft...hit points of units, damage types and cooldowns etc. In the time it took to learn that, I could have learn all the countries of Africa. All the time I sunk in W3, I could have learnt the guitar by now.
Ask yourself if you were free from SP, what would you want to be? Start becoming that person now I say. Would you be fascinated by someone you met that knew WoW really well? Would that be an interesting conversation or one that you would want to have? I know I wouldn't. When I overhear people talking about computer games, I cringe. They aren't people I want to know, even though I have sunk so many years of my life into it. I can say that I couldn't do the social things I wanted to, but I could have improved myself in some way. When I learn something new, even if I feel lonely, I dont feel depressed afterwards, with gaming, I feel lonely and depressed afterward, its just life being sucked out of me. When I used to finish a game of w3 with my mates last year, and it would have the "time lapsed", I felt really sad because that was time from my life that was gone forever, and I hadn't really enjoyed it.
-Vincent.
