Hello, my name is Michael, and I am addicted to video games.

Now everyone say “Hi, Michael!” Good. That felt real.

For a long time, I bullshitted myself about my video game problem because, like any drunk,I could always point to people who had the addiction  far worse than I do and say “I can’t be an addict, I’m nothing like (latest Korean to die of video game addiction because he forgot to eat)!”.

But by that logic, nobody truly has any addiction except the person who has the absolute worst case of it.  And we know that isn’t the case. The world is full of addicts.

So that line of justification is total bullshit. Ejected.

The real measure of any addiction is the effect it has on your life, and I have taken a good long hard look at myself and realized that an awful lot of my problems at school have everything to do with my video game addiction.

Time I should be spending doing classwork (which I also enjoy as long as it’s just writing stuff) I spend playing video games. Video games consume my life. I know I am addicted because I have found myself obsessed with maximizing my video game playing time at the cost of deep cuts into the things I actually should be doing.

It’s gotten to the point that I spend nearly all my non-school waking hours playing games. That sure seems like a sign of addiction to me.

It’s not hard to see why. Like I mentioned before, when I am playing a video game, I am happy. Neither anxiety nor depression plague me because I am fully absorbed by the game. Time passes very smoothly in that time.

I get a (false)  sense of accomplishment as I progress through the game as well as being able to get away from myself and live in someone else’s skin for a while.

Someone strong, and competent,. and powerful. Someone who can fight evil and win. Someone who strides confidently forward into the future, sure of their capabilities and ready to take on the whole world in the search of justice.

So basically all the things I hate about myself, reversed. No wonder I play video games instead of living my life.

But like all addictions,. it sucks the vitality out of you and displaces more and more of your life until it hollows you out and you enter the realm of the deadly knowledge that there is a cure for emotions.

It hasn’t progressed anywhere near as far with me. I am pretty sure I could never be a person who does nothing but play video games and chat online again. I would grow restless and angsty and depressed pretty fast.

My recent five day break from classes between terms was approximately one day too long. Last Monday, I was already growing restless and bored. I wanted to be doing something, goddamn it! 

But still, the addiction creeps in. I think the fact that I can play the latest games and at a high resolution rate makes it worse because the experience is so much more real than any games I played before the new computer. It makes it so much more immersive and thus more addictive to a person with an escapist personality like mine.

I used to say I have an addictive personality, but that made it sound like people get addicted to me, and that would be scary and weird.

And the real problem is the need to escape. The ability to step out of the frame whenever you like that comes with certain combinations of intellect and character encourages one to think in terms of hpo to escape your negative emotions.

I mean, if you had the ability to instantly teleport to anywhere in the world as many times as you like, how much time would you actually spend at work. Or doing anything anything you don’t enjoy. When escape is oh so easy.

Far too easy.

I can only surmise that healthy people lack the mental maneuverability for such escapist behaviour and thus are forced to deal with things instead of escaping.

Way better way to live. But escaped into my kind when I got raped  at the tender age of three and I have been doing it ever since.

It is my primary mode, and it’s not something I can change about myself. At least not directly. If I got to the point where I feel safe in the world, I might come out of my shell.

Until then, I will be the dreamer who lives in his head and invents magical things there then tries to show them to the world.

But he sucks at marketing himself. That’s gotta change.

Anyhow, back to video games. Yay, I made it back to the point!

I can’t go cold turkey with video games. That would leave me with far too many empty hours in my life. Hours I could spend doing productive things, I suppose.

But I am afraid I wouldn’t. I’m afraid all that would happen would be that I sleep way too much and get really really depressed. Too depressed to go to school, even.

It’s too big a risk to take.

Tapering off a bit is possible, though. I took the first step today by doing my blog before I eat supper, thus freeing up the entire evening for school work.

Which involves the solving of a mystery. Because I have no idea what work I am supposed to be doing.

All I know is that I got an email saying I have “pages” due tomorrow. Pages of what? For which class? How many pages? Is it new work, or updating old work? Who do I submit it to? What percentage of my grade is on the line here?

These questions are rather vital. I would love to spend this evening writing. It’s harder and scarier than playing video games, but it does wonders for my mood and the sense of accomplishment is entirely genuine.

But I have to know what to write!

So I will do my best to figure it out from the school’s Moodle and various other sources.

I might even ask my classmates on our Facebook page.

But only as a last resort. I ask them stuff way too much.

I have to try as hard as I can to figure out myself first.

Growing up is hard to do and happens in little baby steps.