Mental Health & Gaming

[Snowy]

I think I am pretty fortunate, I have never fallen foul of mental health issues (at least I don't think so!).

I do have a somewhat addictive personality, and came very close to developing a dangerous cocaine habit in my 20s. It just happened that I was around and the right age at the birth of acid house and the rave scene, and I had a lot of fun at various illegal parties and with the drugs that came with it. I am not saying this to glamourise either it or me - hell, drug use is pretty seedy in general - it is just part of my past. Anyhow, a pitying look from a good friend that I was not meant to see but did gave me the wake-up call that I was already sliding on a very slippery slope, and I managed to step away from something that could have been catastrophic.

I have had my moments when gaming - Dark Age of Camelot and WoW properly hooked me in back in the day. Generally though, gaming is my downtime where I can switch off my brain and not let the stress of work persist once I am home.

I think that the advent of the internet will change social interaction more yet than it has already. As others have pointed out, spending time getting hammered in way overpriced pubs and clubs is a waste of time, money and brain cells. While I do like to get out for a beer and a meal from time to time, my preference would always be a good single player or co-op game with friends.

[Asherons]

I had a friend for 2+ years in asherons call and helped him build one of the biggest guilds on the servers at the time. It was really work keeping up helping people level,quest, defend the weaker players from PKs, and recruiting and processing new members to join. anyway one day I logged in and he started accusing me of killing a bot they had set up to help guild members. Saying I was on an alt of mine and killed the bot because it was a person who I had recruited to the guild. At the time I got offended by it because I thought it was garbage that he would accuse me due to how much time, effort, and money I had put into helping his guild be successful. But we had a falling out and I got kicked out of the allegiance and it was a big ol drama filled event.

Turned out he was in the middle of a manic episode and hadn't slept in days and was in all honesty going a bit crazy. I'm friends with him again now but for him he can't really play games anymore because he gets too addicted to them and has to monitor himself basically.

If I had known at the time he was bipolar and going though an episode I would of approached the accusations differently. But at the time I only talked to him about in game stuff. One of his reasons for accusing me was because I didn't know his real life name even though I been gaming with em for years.