Oorgo

Hi, My Name is Dave and I'm an Addict

I'm addicted to music. And Coffee. And video games that deal with D&D/Space/Fantasy... anything where grinding is involved and I can get into an emotional attachment to my character. Oh and sex.. yeah sex... that's the good stuff.

My music addiction is a funny one, it sits in the background, in the depths of my psyche, not being obvious until I haven't been practicing for a while. It comes on gradually: a day or 2 is fine but much past that I start getting owly, lashing out for no good reason and then gradually drifting into depressed. If it goes on too long it will get more and more difficult to pull out of the funk, I will have to actually perform somewhere, or play with someone else to jolt my system. Even worse is if I AM practicing but have no venue or ability to perform, like when I was living at home in St. Paul after college for a year.

Coffee? Well yeah, it's an addiction that I don't like to admit: chemical addiction to caffeine. I go w/o coffee until 1 or 2 pm and I start getting a nasty headache that nothing will fix, not tylenol, ibuprofen, codeine, nothing but coffee. Even coke doesn't have the fix in it enough to ease the pain.

Gaming? Well that's pretty obvious to most that have read any posts here. Escape into a world where I have kickass powers and no worries about everyday things like bills, bill collectors, housework, yardwork, world issues. I can maim and slaughter or sneak and stab, let out that pent up aggression. But gaming leads to the shame spiral. You play for a couple hours, it feels good until you stop and realize you spent 2 hours and did nothing of any real benefit to anyone. In fact you wasted 2 hours that you could have spent doing something that would give you positive feedback from say: your family, your own self (i.e. cleaning), your peers (practicing/working on your trade). So then the next time you play you are hiding from the stuff you should have done last time, and once again it's fun while it lasts, but the guilt just keeps getting worse, and pretty soon the self-loathing come into play, along with lowered self-esteem. I have stopped this futile practice, it has cost me years of my life.

Sex addiction? Well maybe that's just not getting enough... oh wait... no I didn't say that... I did NOT say that... if any one asks, it was not me.

Why did I make this post? I don't know... maybe I'm happy I've bypassed an addiction, blocked it at the root, squashed it into the dark recesses. Maybe I posted this because I know others doing the same thing right now, existing without improving. Hiding from their problems with a fake sword and a powerful spell, or a gun and a car, or a spaceship and a corporation of like-minded folk.

Posted by Oorgo at May 27, 2008 05:37 PM Permalink - Category: Ponderings | TrackBack