life help: Dealing With An Addiction Withdrawal…. - Help.com

Talk to people in real life if your addicted to social interaction. It’s the methadone to your heroine addiction.

Full marks to you for recognising and acknowledging a little-discussed addiction. You are absolutely right. Interenet activities, gaming.. they can become destructively overpowering.

The important thing is to fill your time as much as possible with activities that are positive and give you the “buzz” that you now lack. By that I mean take up sport, find a new creative hobby, join an interest group in your locality rather than “online”. Try something new - there’s nothing quite like the sense of achievement you feel when your first effort at making a cake or painting a picture or building something is completed!

If you miss the friends you made in WoW, you could find out what ELSE they enjoy and maybe broaden your discussions. Talk to them outside of WoW.

Set a reasonable “time limit” for WoW conversations. Then either move on and talk about something else, or leave the conversation.

Gradually you will find it becomes less of a need and more like one of many healthy interests.

Good luck.

Depends how old you are - there actually are programmes to rehabilitate you if you cannot do it yourself - Mas

I’ve always had a weird avoidance of talking about “the game” in real life.

But in-game, I also make the distinction rather often of not talking about “real life” either.

I think it’s important to have a variety of friends on and off the computer, and I’m very glad my closest friends are actually NOT gamers, because then I don’t have to tell THEM I don’t want to talk about the game outside of it.

I’m a bit of a nerd but only a bit of one. I still have the facade of a cool chick (who trains karate and has a black belt) when I’m not sitting in front of the ‘puter in my jammies poisoning unsuspecting quest mobs.

Valdesta
http://wowgrrl.com

Ahh, I hear ya!

One thing I’ve learned about my obsession with World of Warcraft is that it’s part of my personality type, and in order to mitigate that, I turn that personality trait towards things that are healthier and more fun for me whenever possible.

Truly, joining a martial arts club was one of the best things I did for myself - not for the ego boost of eventually obtaining a black belt but because of the healthy lifestyle of those involved and because it was one of the few places in the world where learning to be confident in a positive way is encouraged, instead of looked down upon as “arrogant”.

What I’m saying is this: If you got intense about WoW, you need to find something else that you can get equally intense about, because part of your personality is about intensity, and the WoW was just what you got intense about.

Hope that isn’t too confusing :)

Valdesta