Brick-Breaker: Video game addiction

I used to feel so superior to people who played video games for hours on end…wasting their life away indoors, staring at a screen, avoiding real human interaction. What losers! Uh, yeah. Not quite. I sure don't feel that way now that I've had a taste – well, a large meal – of the game Brickbreaker on my blackberry.

I don't know how I got into playing this game. I didn't even know I had it on my Blackberry and all of a sudden I am addicted to Brickbreaker! I have not played video games since my dad gave me a roll of quarters and took me to the backroom of the bookstore in my childhood neighborhood that had the first PacMan. Me and Atari were pretty good friends, but I hadn't been remotely interested in video games until about 2 weeks ago when I found Brickbreaker.

I read this article about video addiction (http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/mar/21/tom-bissell-video-game-cocaine-addiction) and have heard my boss Dr. Judith Wright speak on this topic many times but I always thought I was above this! It really is an addiction – there is no morality in it…it is just very easy to get hooked! One game was not enough for me; I had to play until I could get a higher score. It made no sense, except that I could connect this to the personal development work I've done in recognizing my "soft addictions". I know that I started playing when I felt like I really couldn't control some of the events that were happening at work, where I was feeling incompetent – at least I could feel competent and successful at Brickbreaker.

However, I really do get know how there are chemicals that are released in my brain that keep me playing game after game even though it is not really fulfilling. The other problem is that I've wasted about 4 hours in the past week playing this. 4 hours may not seem like a lot, but it really is – that is 4 hours of sleep that I have been complaining about not getting, a social outing with a friend that I can't find the time for, or writing the blog that I committed to writing last week that I couldn't fit into my schedule!

I really empathize with the author of that article, and see how easy it is to get addicted. It is no big sin, just something to be very aware of. I'm looking forward to our Soft Addiction Solution weekend tomorrow to help me understand more about my brain chemistry and how I got so addicted to Brickbreaker. I think it's pretty phenomenal, and if I can understand that, then I will be able to understand how I've gotten addicted to other things like moods and thought patterns that I'd like to be free from.