revslow
Shared on Sun, 11/23/2008 - 08:37So, there's a game to quit smoking, but is there a game to quit gaming? An Italian boy was recently rushed to the hospital after experiencing stroke-like disorientation that a local politician later said doctors attributed to "a strange kind of mental detachment connected to his Playstation," Ananova news service reports.
AP Photo | Blizzard EntertainmentRapid druggies looking for a fix, or just enthusiastic gamers? Fans wait in line to purchase copies of the second expansion World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King at a midnight video game launch on Thursday, Nov. 13WebMD defines addiction by two criteria:
1. The person needs more and more of a substance or behavior to keep him going.2. If the person does not get more of the substance or behavior, he becomes irritable and miserable.
Umm... I think I have a problem. And so does poor Lorenzo Amato.
Ananova: At first doctors at southern Italy's Lecce hospital thought Lorenzo Amato was suffering from a stroke or a severe brain disorder.The teenager couldn't speak and didn't seem to understand anything going on around him. Then doctors discovered he'd just finished a marathon session on his new Playstation.
Video game addiction may well be a serious problem, but the images it conjures up are anything but: Even-more-emaciated geeks "shooting up" with used games, buying bootleg games in the back alleys of comic book shops, pulling out their DS in public for a quick hit.
I doubt video game addiction is any more prevalent than amongst World of Warcraft gamers and their sweatshop-like equivalent, farmers. As I blogged earlier this week, Times Online reported that a 16-year-old Swedish boy collapsed and was rushed to the hospital after a 24-hour-marathon session with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack.
Of course, fear over video game addiction is nothing new. A few years ago, several major news outlets picked up the story that a Dutch addiction treatment center began treating game addicts.
CBS, July 3, 2006: At an addiction treatment center in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, teenagers and young adults begin detox by admitting they are powerless over their addiction. But these addicts aren't hooked on drugs or alcohol. They are going cold turkey to break their dependence on video games. ...At an addiction treatment center in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, teenagers and young adults begin detox by admitting they are powerless over their addiction. But these addicts aren't hooked on drugs or alcohol. They are going cold turkey to break their dependence on video games.
So, is a game addiction ruining your life or the life of a friend? Or are you, like many, a functioning addict?
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