Addicted: How Do You Quit an MMORPG?

I found another interesting article regarding addiction to the internet, or more specifically, MMORPG's on digg.com. MMO's and MMORPG's tend to take over people's lives, they're known for destroying relationships and livelihoods. Unlike substance abuse, addiction to MMORPG's are hard to counter. This article basically talks about the dangers of MMORPG's and how to quit this dangerous addiction. In the past, in China, there were accounts of Online gamers that died after a 3 Day Online Marathon.

I have a lot of friends that are addicted to internet gaming/MMO's/MMORPG's and with this in mind, I thought about the parallel between substance/drug addiction and internet/gaming addiction. Unlike chemical addictions like alcohol, cigarettes and other substances, the addiction to an MMO is not physical. However, it is both emotional and psychological. The MMO tends to fill in a gap hitherto left vacant by an unfulfilled social life. MMOs can, in many ways, bring some sense of false emotional satisfaction to the user. The addiction to MMOs can be difficult to overcome. Being an avid gamer, I stopped playing MMO's because it was too time consuming and reality hit me hard and I realized I have to focus on "real life." But with that being said, Asian countries suffer greatly from internet/gaming addiction and there are actual MMO treatment clinics that opened up in China and other Asian Countries to counter this addiction. Furthermore, another article talks about how the Chinese Government will soon begin a mandatory program which will see all online video game players registering their real information for anti-addiction monitoring purposes. I hope that the US doesn't get too addicted to MMO's or MMORPG's. But if this trend reaches the America's, I won't be surprised if MMO treatment clinics opened up here as well, I always feel like we're the last country to receive foreign/international products/problems. What do you guys think?

Are virtual-game players more depressed?

I'm a daily visitor to digg.com and came across an interesting article that made me reflect on my life as an avid gamer and the lives of my gamer friends and family. The article posed the question of whether virtual-game players were more depressed than those who don't play virtual-games. According to a study by the Northwestern University that surveyed 7,000 EverQuest II players, highly active players get more depressed or that depressed people are more likely to be active role players.

With this in mind, I started reflecting on my life as an avid gamer, a regular at cyber cafe's, and as an "anthropologist" and came to the conclusion that virtual-game players are more depressed than regular people. I'm not saying that everyone who plays MMO's and MMORPG's are depressive people, but I feel that even my friends at cybercafe's are generally depressed people or have some kind of "stuff" going on mentally. On average, we spend countless hours on a computer screen, sometimes not eating, sometimes not sleeping. Why? I feel that depressed people tend to use MMO's or MMORPG's to escape reality. I don't feel that gaming causes depression, maybe aggression when people don't know what they're doing, but if anything, I feel that gaming is an anti-depressant because it releases endorphins in your brain, allows depressed people to form social networks, interact and chat with people, etc.

What do you think?