I was addicted

Well I guess my story is a rather common one.

It started back in 2003, I found a game on the internet named Runescape.

I thought it was a great game, nice community and a couple of my friends enjoyed it too. Unkown to eveyone I began staying up most nights, missing out on school work to play online after a couple of years I decided to become a member of the game, paying a £3.20 monthy subscription which my partents payed for me, and I did a few jobs around the house to pay it off.

In 2005, I stopped playing Runescape and moved on to Ultima Online a game with a £9.99 subscription. This was when my addiction became noticeable to not only my family but my friends too. Nearly every night I was up playing untill the early hours. During the Summer holidays I became a diffrent person, I was never out during the day as I was usually in bed asleep. then I wake up in the late afternoon and go straight onto my PC to play Ultima untill the early hours of the night.

I even notied changes in my own personality, I was alot more "Moody" having bad mood swings if the internet cut off or went slow. Around April 2005 I left school and was getting ready for collage in september when a job opportunity appeard for me. So instead of collage, I went into working and gaining my qualifations as I erned money. This is the time when everything went bad. I was 17 at the time, erning around £120 a week. I decided to return not only to Runescape, but also a wide range of other pay to play games, this included, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, StarWars Galaxy's theres a couple more but I've forgotten the names.

I worked out, from my £120 pay I was paying around £20 for bus fairs to work, that leaves me with roughly £100. At least £50 was being payed out on Gaming subscriptons and then the other £50 was getting wasted on Gold or Items. I worked for nearly a year with nothing to show from it, Other than a bunch of accounts that are worthless.

I quit my job in April 2006, and with that I didnt have a source of income to feed my addiction to the online world. My family and friends thought it would be the end of it all but unfortunatly I began to play on "Free Servers" instead. Meaning I didnt need to pay and could play for no monthly fees. At first I began to play in secret, and didnt tell anyone about what I was doing. Everything was Ok for a while, I thought I had control of my addiction untill I began staying up all night and sleeping all day again. Then everything came back, the mood swings, the staying up all night and sleeping all day, not going out to see friends, Somtimes I was even making up excuses not to go out, just so I could stay in and play online.

August 2007, I admitied my addiction to my family and friends, I decided enough was enough. I sold off my Ultima Online and World of Warcraft accounts, purposfully got my Runescape account banned and destroyed my installation disks for World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online, Starwars Galaxy's and a few others. Then reformatted my PC and got rid of it and replaced it with a new PC that has no graphics what so ever. This was my choice, in my opinion these games ruined a good 5 years of my life, I was more devoted to games that I didnt do well in my GCSE results and dont have many qualifactions.

I dont blame the game companys for my addiction, nor do I blame my parents. I just feel that it needs more attention as it can really hurt people and since its not somthing thats usually heard of, not many people will think its even happening.

As of August 2007 I have not once played a MMORPG and never will for the remainder of my life.

From the time I began work, to the time I finished, I should have erned a little over £12,000. And I have none of that left, its all was spent on Gaming.

Xiosis.

(Steven)