What is your addiction?

Video games. Ever since I was little, games have been a huge part of my life. Even today, I can't play one and not obsess over it. Supposed to be working? Look up strategies and wikis online and get nothing done. Working from home? "I'll play for a quick 30 minutes" turns into "I'm a terrible person, I've wasted my afternoon."

Kids in bed? Run through and jump on the xbox on or open steam.

No work that night? Ignore wife and play til 2am, then wonder why I'm always so tired and down.

Some of happiest memories are from my teens; playing WoW for years upon years with no commitments. Even when I have everything I want, there are times my mind longs for those days again.

It effected my marriage; within a couple of years my wife banned WoW, and I agreed with her. It was torture mission Legion, but was worth it.

After that, we banned online games because I was staying up til 3am trying to beat raids in Destiny when I was supposed to be looking after the kids in the morning.

When I have video games in my life, everything else - playing with kids, being with wife, being out with friends, doing the job I love, etc, pales in comparison to how relaxed and good I feel when playing video games. I can't wait to get home and just laze out. Once I realised this I decided to give them up completely; I gave the xbox to my nephew and uninstalled steam. Within 2 weeks of doing that I was a new person. Symptoms of depression, etc, were gone. Everything else became fun again.

I occasionally download steam on my work laptop and reinstall old games on it when I slip up. I always fall back into that hole, and then climb out of it and delete everything again - this happened last week. Was obsessively addicted to fallout NV for 4 days.

Realised that the times of my life when I'm happiest and most productive are when I have no access whatsoever to any game. It's hard sometimes, especially when new releases come out and the internet raves about them, but I've just started reading books instead.

The sad thing is that I see so many people on reddit who describe similar symptoms, and a lot of the time I just want to say "maybe it's games that are making you feel this way." But reddit is big on gaming, and people don't want to hear that what can be a fun hobby for some can sometimes be bad for you.

/r/AskReddit Thread