Turning a corner in my life

[Sid554]

I haven't been on these forums for a long time now, and I realized the reason was that I've lost my passion for console gaming. What once was a large part of my life has now become a distant side note. I recently went through a life-changing series of events, and PC online gaming was directly responsible for it in a sense, but it brought me back into the real world. Now I'm happier than I have ever been, and it's all real, not virtual. Gaming was my escape, near an addiction, and it wasn't something that made me happy. So I'm glad to now be saying good-bye to it. Don't know why i was motivated to post this, and to any people this annoys, my apologies.

[Qjij_jijQ]

THeN... FAreWeLL?

[MADRUCKIS]

believe it or not, its a natural thing

the more games come out, the more addictive some become. And the more people start losing grip on real life happenings

I got over my "addiction" two years ago (you can probably still see some of me obsessing in the Everquest forum) I lost a good year to it, and decided just to drop it cold turkey. It took me some time to just forget about it.....and it took some realization of what was in front of me the entire time I played, waiting to be with me and so on...but I got over it. Some people dont know...dont realize how addictive something like that can hang on you....it really is like a drug, and addiction.
Last year I slightly thought about going back, to see my old guildies, play some of the new quests for a while and I came across gamers anonymous. It bugged me out that such a thing existed so I looked into the things they did and for whom they catered to. A good chunk of their population were people who devoted their lives to Warcraft and Everquest (nicknamed Evercrack for a reason) and thats when it hit me. I gave up the online thing just because.....I decided to. But I didnt recognize my addiction.
I bought a mini screen for my ps2 so I could play everquest even while watchin tv. I skipped work and school to level up, I even had an odd online relationship with someone who was my "wife" for everquest. I read up on the people on GA and thats what they did...same symptoms. Youu even have weird stories of people dying or getting locked up for losing their minds to online gaming (whether the stories hold up I dunno)

so I'm glad you got out of it, I'm freagin glad I did. Reality is F'd up as is....online stuff is an escape I dont need anymore

[Meiko]

I guess you were wrong considering gaming only as an escape. Gaming can be fun also if considered as a simple hobby. You don't have to n ecessarily give all this importance to it. Play whenever you feel it. If you have something you like to do more, leave gaming for another time, but don't consider it as a lifesaver.

[Redpyramidhead]

MAD, I suppose if gaming really was screwing your life up that much and you couldn't control yourself, it is a good thing you stopped, but c'mon... videogaming is not like a drug. In my opinion, though,there are much worse things (SUCH AS DRUGS) that people could be wasting their time doing instead of gaming. Gaming is a little different... it can almost be argued to be a perfectly legitimate hobby to the average person... just like being an enjoyer of films or novels. We need entertainment in life and we don't need to pretend otherwise. Sure, those of us skipping work and school or missing out on time doing things more productive or spending money we don't have on games or what have you... maybe therein lies a bigger problem. If one can't divide up their time for play and other things one may do for "escape" with time for productivity, than maybe something bigger is going on. I know I have had trouble in the past keeping myself focused on being productive and still do to this day because I am easily distracted by wanting to do other things. But relatively little of that time is spent worrying about playing videogames instead compared to the other things my mind tends to drift to..... wow I really do have an attention problem... my mind drifted just now... uhhh ummm....... yeah... what was I talking about? I don't know... In fact, I'm wondering what the point of this thread was to begin with... wtf? You come in here like your a regular Sid (only 200 posts? and who are you again?) and you say your "back" (when did you leave?) just long enough to say you despise gaming in a *cough* *hack* GAMING FORUM?!? hmmm...

Ok... umm... I am done... tired and stuff... just wanted to type I guess.

_RED_ stuff

[Infernal Mass]

I guess you were wrong considering gaming only as an escape. Gaming can be fun also if considered as a simple hobby. You don't have to n ecessarily give all this importance to it. Play whenever you feel it. If you have something you like to do more, leave gaming for another time, but don't consider it as a lifesaver.

quoted for truth

[MADRUCKIS]

MAD, I suppose if gaming really was screwing your life up that much and you couldn't control yourself, it is a good thing you stopped, but c'mon... videogaming is not like a drug.

oh but it is, and thats what made my mind flip when I read up on the Gamers version of AA

see, why does a person do drugs. Escape, feel better about themselves, maybe become a new person and do things they could/would never do. Thats online gaming as well. Well, it was my thing for Everquest anyways

kind of hard to explain because you've kept gaming a hobby, I look back at whatever kind of Gollum thing I was turning into and scratch my head and wonder as well

its unexplainable but at the same time, there are people who say "Yeah drugs are just a hobby of mine; something I just do whenever I'm bored or just for leisure." and some of those people are the junkies

*shrugs*