Addicted to the joystick

Tim, 21, a game addict who only wanted his first name used, poses after therapy at Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Thursday, June 1, 2006. In July, Keith Bakker, director of Smith & Jones will open Europe's first detox clinic for video game addicts, offering in-house treatment for people who can't stop gaming.

It's really the same as gambling, or drug addiction (minus the physical part), but a lot less destructive. I freely admit to having a certain amount of addiction - but there is also a burnout factor a person can go through. In the game I play, it requires a lot of dedication and time, and it starts to be exhausting after a while. It burns people out.

But you know.. I try and balance it out with some other stuff. Certainly in the last 9 months or so I don't do social things as much as I used to, but gaming is often better than watching stupid programs on tv. The weird thing is that I "talk to" a number of the people in my Warcraft guild more than I do anybody else - including the bf, but there's never much detail to it. That's strange.

Thank god my job is cake. I absorb a vast amount of information when I'm at work, so it's not like I'm ignorant of what's going on in the world.

Oh.. and Tim there looks a lot like somebody I know.. hmmmm...