EPTStarcraft 2 took me down for 4 months. However, it was a delightfully happy 4 months, as I was basically being paid at the same time. Call me a douchebag; I won't deny it. Those were 4 months where I did not feel able to make a real difference anyways. Instead, I drank and fed myself daily on Starcraft 2. Emotionally, I was floating in bliss. My friends were very supportive and told me many times to quit, basically whenever they saw me preparing for another gaming stint at night. Nor did family (whom I kept in the dark) give me any pressure. Starcraft 2 was a world where I can vent my emotions in being in a slow career and not seeing the end of the tunnel. It was right place for me to be to rage about what a wrong place I was at in terms of my career. In my real world job, I was feeling like a revolutionary forced to be a socialized builder of things with theoretical and often-times uncertain value. In Starcraft 2, I was Jim Raynor - the rebel commander with a heart of gold. My real world job suffered immensely. I let people down. I let myself down. I wasn't even that good at Starcraft 2 (I was probably only top 25% percentile). However Starcraft 2 filled this emotional void - this great need. I played 3v3 over and over. The anonymous commaraderie, the adrenaline rush, and the ego-stroking feeling of "being the commander" kept me hooked for more and more. After an eight-hour stint of Starcraft 2 that lasted till morning (when the birds start chirping), I would always kick myself for having "wasted" a whole night - revelling in the guilt of my debauchery. Needless to say, I never really wanted to quit in the morning. Maybe I could have tricked myself by writing down a note to myself for when I woke up about the evils of Starcraft 2 and therefore prematurely stopped my addiction. Anyways, I didn't. In the afternoon, I woke up again after having slept like a baby, did some basic maintenance on myself (which is not much at all), I may have had to attend some functions (where I typically dozed off - 5 hours of sleep was too little) then I would kick up Starcraft 2 late at night - whatever "guilt" I felt in the morning was all gone.
The people who helped guide my struggle against gaming included a shrink. He basically told me to go home and see family. I did that and even though my mom was a dragon lady, I managed to break it to her. Our family was not too poorly off, so she dumped in some major cash to invest on me and my living situation. I moved out from my roommates and started to focus on my job again. The funny thing was that the lost of rapport I had with my boss got amplified when I actually started performing again. I had doubts and self-doubts before, but when I was "reborn" from the Starcraft 2 high, I started to do what I felt was important, losing focus with what boss felt was important. So actually Starcraft 2 did not make me lose my job. It was the clarity after the Starcraft 2 high that allowed me to figure out what I really wanted to do and the guts to change at the age of 23. After the four months, it took me about another four months to perform without withdrawal symptoms. My dad took my many Starcraft 2 accounts away (I kept buying new licenses and then giving it to him the night/morning after the binge). I took every opportunity to play, such as at gaming cafes.
In the aftermath of my entire gaming experience/addiction on Starcraft 2, I attended a church group, started believing in Jesus again, and read a lot of books on religion. It was a time of spiritual and personal growth. I felt gaming was a wake-up call from God telling me that something that I was doing was wrong. Maybe it was exactly God, but it was one of the laws in which He had made the universe that I was breaking. I felt that after the experience, I grew as a person. I finally knew what I really wanted and cherished. I had known before, but the process of getting to the same place was long, hard, and uncertain - the last was the major kicker. I now know what I should do and am going to do to be able to cherish both the process and the end result. I owe all of this to my Starcraft experience.
