My Gaming Obsession Has Cost Me A Lot

This essay is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

My earliest memory of gaming was when I was around seven or eight years old, playing Super Mario World with my uncle. He said he remembers feeling sad for me because I would just run and inevitably die at the very beginning level. A couple of years later, my mother’s boyfriend, essentially my stepfather, ended up taking his own life. My mother was never really the same. Even though she was alive, she wasn’t all there for many years after that. Video games are the one thing I remember making me feel comforted. I’ve been using video games as a coping mechanism for 20 years.

By the time I was 15 or 16, I was playing PlayStation 2. It was socially acceptable to play video games for hours on end, but I started to notice that I didn't care how I was doing in school. I decided at a very young age that I was going to drop out; school wasn’t really for me. I just felt like an outcast. I knew I was intelligent, but I hated the social construct and academic structure of school.

So I started playing video games more and more. I was failing school and spending hours on X-Box 360. I wanted to become a professional gamer. During my morning shower, the first thing on my mind was, How am I going to get to the top ranks today?

I lost my first love because of gaming. I was 19 or 20. We were wildly in love with each other. At first, I gave her the time she deserved and she gave those feelings back to me. I actually moved in with her because my home life was so stressful. I lived with my grandmother and my two half-siblings. The house was so dirty, and all I did was stay in my room and play video games out of habit. So I moved in with this girl, but after the honeymoon phase of our relationship, the same thing happened at our house: I ended up building a gaming computer and just reclusing in our bedroom and playing Counter-Strike. I was getting really good, but for what? I don’t really know.

It was so pathetic in hindsight, so ridiculous. She became unhappy because I was spending more time on the computer than on making an effort to have a meaningful relationship. So she dumped me, which makes total sense. I was really, really hurting. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with this girl. That's when I really started to think, Whoa, video games are overlapping into my life in negative ways.

When I play video games now, I can no longer shake the feeling that I am wasting valuable time.

After that, I dated girls on and off in my early twenties. I was never a bad-looking guy and I always had pretty decent luck with girls. I could get in short-term relationships, no problem, but I wasn’t in anything long-term for a while after that. Ever since that first breakup, I learned how to be an individual, not totally codependent. I never threw my heart over the fence again because I knew how bad it could hurt.

Then there were the years where gaming and drinking mixed together. I started drinking a lot. I'm very predisposed to addiction; I’m a product of two people who have addiction problems. I love alcohol deeply, but I don’t love that it causes me to make decisions that absolutely do not serve me. Drinking and gaming is something I can get sucked into until the early morning hours.

This combination cost me my last job. I was working at a call center, and I was burnt out and miserable, so I was coping with video games and playing them until 9 a.m. when I had to start work at 11 a.m. Playing video games felt good. They were fun. There are no bills to play in video games. And when you play them, it makes you feel like you are somebody. It attaches onto your self-worth. You can develop and grow a skill that doesn't translate into the real world, but you can be praised for it among your peers. And when I would drink, it would enhance my immersion in the game and my ability to not care about the outside world. It would let me enjoy video games as much as I did as a kid.

When I was 24, I met my now-girlfriend at a New Year’s Eve party. We’ve been together for five years. Recently, gaming has crept back into my life in a way that is not good at all. It’s a cycle I’m really trying to break. One night I blacked out and said really mean things to her, like I didn’t need her, I could literally be fine without her. I almost lost her because of that, and she’s one of the best things that ever happened to me. I remember just waking up and thinking, I have to change something. 

I’ve been unemployed for four months now. I’m pushing away my girlfriend. She loves me so much, so she puts up with a whole lot. I’ve been trying to make more effort to spend every minute I can with her. I do love her deeply and she loves me more than anyone I've ever met. I'm realizing now that our relationships with people in the real world are worth so much more than playing video games with others who are also, for the most part, coping with the stresses of real life.

Video games, in the end, are patterns of light on a screen—red, blue and green pixels arranged in a way that stimulates your brain and releases dopamine. They’re wonderful forms of entertainment, and one day, I hope to return to them in a healthier way. But for people like myself who are prone to addiction, they can become a safe place where progress in the real world can stand still.

It’s easy to become trapped in your own limitations and comfort zone. I have realized that video games no longer serve me. Most times when I play them now, I can no longer shake the feeling that I am wasting valuable time. Every hour is one I could have spent growing a skill or furthering real-life hobbies. I know this, yet it’s still an addiction, and my brain inevitably craves it.

Lately, I’ve had a paradigm shift in my thinking: Life is going to become my video game, and I am going to win—or, at the very least, try as hard as I have to win in virtual worlds.