3 posts tagged “addiction”
When I moved away from Kansas six years ago, my boyfriend at the time started drinking heavily and started experimenting with drugs. First it started off with weed, then over time progressed into shrooms and the more serious cocaine. It was out of character and not the personality of the person whom I loved so much, but I suppose it was his way to deal with the things that were going on in his life. I have never dealt personally with addiction as I’m one of those people who have never touched a drug (aside from what is prescribed by doctors) in my life, so I can only imagine what it is like to deal with addiction. I saw the toll that it took on him, on his family and those that cared about him most…it saddened me and angered me but I was there to help in the best way that I could.
Luckily with a supportive family and supportive friends, he was not against the idea of going to a drug rehabilitation center. A center like Stone Hawk Rehabilitation Center is what saved my ex boyfriends life and allowed him to turn himself around. Although the center he went to was located in his home state, Stone Hawk is a 58,000 sq foot center located in Michigan approximately 1-1.5 hours from Detroit. It is surrounded by a scenery of hills and large oak trees and is near a lake which helps create a serene environment for addiction recovery to take place.
Stone Hawk provides treatment programs for drug abuse as well as alcohol abuse. Their programs do not involve drugs or medication to treat patients but rather a natural way of combining the knowledge of proper nutrition and nutritional supplementation. Treatment is not based off psychiatric help or medical help but rather social education. It is also important to note that those entered into the rehabilitation programs at Stone Hawk are treated as students and are taught a new way of living rather than zombie like patients put on medications and talked down too.
I urge you, if you know someone that is close to you that is dealing with an addiction problem to speak with them about drug rehabilitation as it may be their key to a new life without addiction!
I always tend to read the news on Yahoo and CNN when I'm up late at night and as of lately, I've been seeing this articles of the possibly of "calling excessive video-game playing a formal psychiatric addiction." I'm not exactly sure what to think of this. I realize that today's children, teenagers, and young adults stay in doors more and use the TV, computer and video games as their form of entertainment rather than going out in the yard and playing tag or I don't know working in the yard if you're an old teen/young adult. However, to put video gaming into the same category or at least compare it to alcoholism is kind of extreme in my opinion.
A lot of young people, college students and even some older people have been playing the online video game World of Warcraft since it's release back in 2004. I mention WoW as the game of choice, because it seems that any time an article about excessive game playing comes up WoW is mentioned, anyways... I, like most of the people have played, have put off school, friends, family, being outside to play the game instead; I have been holed up in my room for many hours just sitting at the computer playing. Does this mean I was addicted? My mom would say yes. My family would say yes. I would say yes to a degree because I always have/had the choice to stop...I wasn't playing the game because it was something that I absolutely NEEDED (not like an alcoholic NEEDS his beer), I played because I was bored, I had nothing else to do: what is so wrong with playing a video game (whether it be for 10 minutes or hours) after going to classes all day (college student) and/or going to work a PT job afterwards?
Everyone has their own personal reasons for playing WoW, as they do for playing other video games. If you're a younger child, then the parents need to take more responsibility and turn the damn TV off when they think enough is enough. Encourage them to go outside instead or just take the games away completely. As for those of us that are older and enjoy gaming, it really isn't as extreme as these articles are making it out to be and I wish they'd stop. Like I said, a lot of us do it because we're bored or after a long day of classes/work it's OUR way to relax and chill out...you just have to make the decision for yourself when to stop.
World of Warcraft was released in November of 2004; I had played part of the beta because the guy I was dating at the time had access to it. I figured since he was so into gaming, if I liked this game I would buy it and we could play together giving us something else to do and another different way to 'spend' time together. I got the game when it was released in 2004 and have played it religiously for the past 2.5 years (almost 3!!). Today is the day that I cancel my account for the last time never to reactivate it again; I have cancelled it twice in the past 2 months only to be convinced by some gaming friends to reactivate it...NOT THIS TIME!!!
It sounds really cheesy when you think of someone spending all their hours of the day locked away in their bedroom (or where ever your PC is located), pounding mercilessly at the keyboard, with a headset with mic attached glued to your head at all times. But the reality of the matter is this: gaming addiction is no different than any other addiction and is just as hard to break. Do I think I sound weird when I say that I had a gaming addiction to WoW? Of course I do, but the reality was that I did...and I had for the 2.5 years, although the time spent in the game had been drastically reduced at the beginning of 2007. I, like most WoW players, spent all my free time on the PC, raiding "hardcore" until 3-4am sometimes (beginning around 7-8pm EST). I put off spending time with my family (don't really have any friends to put off, and no that wasn't a result of the game) and decided to skip out on many activities, along with failing out of my first semester of college because I felt obligated to be there for a raid and not to let my guild down.
Cheesy, stupid, dumb, illogical I know what it sounds like especially if you've never played a video game as such but the truth is there are millions of players who are in the exact situation I was. I cannot hate the game completely because I met some amazing online friends via the game along with my current boyfriend, so for that I am thankful. However, after 2.5 years of gaming continuously only to lose interest in it in the last couple of months per drama filled environment and the release of The Burning Cursade expansion it is time to hang up my hat and never look back. :)
