15 Nov 2021 - Graham
previously: in a silent way
Perhaps I could have seen all this coming. You see, I’ve been addicted to video games before. And the pattern of my addiction was almost exactly the same.
In high school, I started playing a game called Dofus. Dofus is an MMORPG (a massively multiplayer online role-playing game). It’s like World of Warcraft but cute. Instead of Warcraft’s orcs and demons, Dofus is populated with blobs of jelly and semi-vicious sheep.
One morning, senior year, I woke up with a sore throat. I usually hate being sick. But when I realized that I felt bad enough to justify staying home, a wave of relief washed over me. You see, I fancied myself a bit of a Ferris Bueller. But unlike Ferris, I did not spend my day off making good trouble, appreciating high culture, or wooing my love. No, I spent that whole unsupervised morning in a corner of Dofus accumulating pixelated sheep parts.
By the afternoon, I’d earned enough to finally buy this one blue hat that I’d been lusting for. Buying the hat was a rush. As soon as I equipped it, however, I was struck by buyer’s remorse. I began to feel nauseous, not from the illness but shame. This was how I spent my freedom?
Still, I returned to the game the next day. I had done so much to earn that hat. It would’ve been a shame not to use it.
This conflicted cycle of guilt and obsession dominated my thoughts. My high school journals are exclusively filled with resolutions about the game. On one page there’s detailed plans for leveling up my character. On the next, “DOFUS!” immediately follows “biting nails” under the heading “Bad Habits.”
When I got to college, my conflict become a crisis. In my dorm room, I discovered that every day could be like that sick day. I had imagined college would be full of interesting parties and fun classes. It was. Yet I found myself choosing Dofus over both.
Or rather, I still went to parties. But at them I’d notice, mid-conversation, that I was drunkenly talking about the game. I shut up in embarrassment and noticed, unsurprisingly, that my conversation partner was looking around for an excuse to walk away. I let them go because I was at a loss for words. I was dulled by alcohol, but even more I was dulled by the game. Dofus was all I thought about, so it was all I could talk about. With conversation so treacherous and flirting downright impossible, parties seemed more stressful than fun.
Easier to stay in with the game. In fact, Dofus seemed easier than everything.
For a week, I did nothing but fight jelly blobs. I kept at it because each time I killed a jelly, they disappeared in a poof that gave me a millisecond of joy. And when had I killed more than a thousand jellies, a celebratory horn sounded. I’d leveled up. Yes, it was a purely virtual achievement, but it was also hard-earned and measurable growth.
Life was more ambiguous. No animation played to indicate that I’d actually made a new friend. Nor could I calculate the exact experience value of reading for class.
I had eagerly looked forward to the flexible schedule and self-direction of college. But I was not using my new freedom to explore diverse interests or challenge myself. No, I was spending my energy and attention only on Dofus, chasing its easy dopamine hits and quantifiable accomplishments. This single-minded pursuit was making me boring. I was bored by myself. I was disturbed by the widening gap between who I wanted to be and who I was becoming. And I was deeply frustrated by my inability to stop.
I tried and tried to play less. My failure proved a hypothesis: I lacked will-power. This hypothesis quickly became an excuse: I was weak, so why bother resisting?
But my problem wasn’t inherent weakness. In fact, my capacity to play for hour after hour demonstrated the strength of my will. I often skipped meals and delayed using the bathroom to play more. I did the same virtual thing over and over again late into the night, far past the point of exhaustion. What is this, if not willpower?
My real problem was: I didn’t want to stop. Sure, I wanted to play less. But I didn’t want to give up the game. I didn’t want to lose the little bumps of satisfaction. More importantly, I didn’t want to walk away from my investment in my character and the world of Dofus. I won’t be dramatic and say it was like dying, but to leave Dofus was to leave a whole world and even a part of myself behind.
When I think of “rock bottom” I imagine it literally: a drunk laying on boulders moaning with pain and regret. But rock bottom is actually this: the recognition that you must choose between the addiction and everything else that matters to you. This sounds dramatic, which is perhaps why it’s a hard place to reach.
The less dramatic way to say it is that I cannot play just a little bit of Dofus. I quit only when I acknowledged this as fact.
Here’s a tasty, lazy recipe:
D. Graeber who died this past year (Jubilee the Dog is named in honor of his work) has a posthumous book out soon that RETHINKS EVERYTHING. Here’s a kind review. Let me know if you want to read it together.
This week’s Sidetracked featured Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way. Here’s the recording. For the live experience, tune in tomorrow (and every Tuesday) from 2-3p AKT: https://kruaradio.org
next post: fetch the bolt cutters