The Growing Realm of Addiction

My skin crawls when I see articles such as this one. The opening of a "gamer addiction" center, to help people of all ages kick their addiction. I agree that people can be addicted per se to playing games. I think anyone with an addictive personality can be addicted to anything really. But I get worried of the increasing medicalization of addiction - and not in the psychological sense, but in the physical one.

Some show withdrawal symptoms, such as shaking and sweating, when they look at a computer.

I wonder where the rehab centers for ex-athletic children are. The ones who undoubtedly suffer from a decrease in strength due to the diminished quantity of excercise. I remember when I was doing yoga and working out weekly, if I missed a week let alone two, my muscles felt cramped and I had an increased desire to stretch. Yes - I am stretching the point a little far, but I cannot imagine anyone going into the shakes from not playing a good stretch of WoW. Distraction thinking about missing out on the 'haps' in the game maybe - but the shakes?

And I wonder what constitutes "addiction" if you don't have the symptons? Is it purely defined by "I used to play alot and now I don't want to?" or must it be accompanied by physical symptons. "I'm sorry sir, you arent REALLY addicted to video games - you don't exhibit enough of the symptons to fall into that category".

The article gives a (ludicrous) example of a guy who played games and smoked pot. Thinking he had a drug problem, went to drug rehab. But alas! Silly man! Twas not the drugs!!! it was the video games:

Hyke van der Heijden, 28, a graduate of the Amsterdam program, started playing video games 20 years ago. By the time he was in college he was gaming about 14 hours a day and using drugs to play longer.

"For me, one joint would never be enough, or five minutes of gaming would never be enough," he said. "I would just keep going until I crashed out."

Van der Heijden first went to Smith & Jones for drug addiction in October 2005, but realized the gaming was the real problem. Since undergoing treatment, he has distanced himself from his smoking and gaming friends. He says he has been drug-and game-free for eight months.

I guess it all just goes against so much literature I have read, along with many of my friends and colleagues. No one has to claim that video games are perfect, and all good things come from moderation if one were to be pragmatic. But to make claims such as the one below makes me very sad given all the social research about online communication that is out there.

"We have kids who don't know how to communicate with people face-to-face because they've spent the last three years talking to somebody in Korea through a computer," Bakker said. "Their social network has completely disappeared."