Addiction is described as a state in which the body relies on a substance for normal functioning and develops a physical dependence. The term has spread however to cover all forms of compulsion or obsessive behaviour.

My familiarity of this state of being came with invention of MMORPGs or massively multi-player online role playing games. World of Warcraft was my particular poison. At one point I was averaging 9 hours per day over a one year period. That equates to about 136 days out of 365, spent online playing a video game. Addiction, obsession, compulsion, oh yeah, I had them all.

From time to time I would be accused of being an addict, for which nobody could provide any data to support. I enjoyed playing, and stopped whenever I felt I wanted to. Stayed away without feeling the "need" to play. There was no way I could be addicted. That's when the dreams started. Every night I dreamed of raiding horde towns and acquiring my flying mount. I dreamed of which arrows I could buy for my bow and what armor would be most fashionable in the town of Ironforge. It was time to do some of my own research.

The source of addiction

As I began my research, I found many point/counterpoint articles on the topic of gaming addiction. For the life of me I could not find any data to support that gamers could in fact be physically addicted to their game. It seemed that the only driving force was desire or lack of anything better to do.

The most information I could find was all on the topic of chemical addictions and how they work. Once a body becomes accustomed to having certain chemicals present, it can react violently when those chemicals are no longer as abundant. The easiest example is that of a heroine addict. Many of us have seen, or heard of the effects of a chemical dependency. Not pretty.

The difference between chemical and psychological addiction

It wasn't until I stumbled upon a movie called "what the Bleep do we know?" That I was able to make a connection here. The part of the movie that caught my eye was about peptides and endorphins. It explained that the body will produce certain chemicals that will create a range of emotions and effects. One example was how a single thought could start producing a system of chemicals that would produce an erection in mere seconds. This had some amazing ramifications on the topic of addiction.

We have all heard of terms such as health freaks, clean freaks, and nutcases of various habits and past times. I am a knowledge freak myself. I feel sick and frustrated when I have gone more than a few days without breaking open a book or browsing Wikipedia.

For the most part we do not count these habits as an addiction. This is because the people involved still seem to operate well within our social parameters. The fact of the matter is however, that social conduct is the only differance between the heroine addict and the clean freak.

Getting the endorphins flowing

As we participate in our past times, we develop a metal bond with our physical actions. For actions we enjoy, our brain produces chemicals that give our body a bit of a buzz. As we do these actions more and more often, our body will produce more and more of these chemicals until the body is accustomed to them. This will often result in the feeling like you haven't done that action enough, and you will want to do it more often. In the case of the gamer, getting the buzz after 1 hr of playing will soon turn into 2 hrs... then 3 and so on.

Harmless addiction?

Is there such a thing as a harmless addiction? Thousands of addicts operate within social norms everyday without intervention or treatment. As a WoW addict my health suffered, but that was the limit of the damage. Of course I didn't get much else done in that time, but I countered that with not having much else to do.

All this pondering leaves me with a few questions. Should all addictions be treated the same? If not, how do we judge who to treat? What are the qualifications for mandatory treatment? Should we chastise the athlete in the family for an endorphin addiction?

Hope you enjoyed this post

Scott