The Video Game Drug

I'm coming out guns blazing here - video games are a dangerously addictive drug and a cancer in our society.    The main function of a video game in the vast majority of gamers' lives is to escape the pain of this real world that we live in. And what better way than to enter into a world in which we can be all that we ever wanted to be and more. There are fewer risks in the gaming world, and greater rewards. I grew up playing video games my whole life - starting with the original Nintendo and working my way up the ladder. In high school I found myself playing hours upon hours everyday - and outside of the games I would be thinking about how I can customize my characters or solve the next problem. If you asked me at the time if I thought what I was doing was healthy, I would tell you its totally fine, I am a completely healthy person with normal social skills etc. That would have been a true statement, except for the fact that I was not learning to deal with the real problems that life brings about- I only learned how to cope with these problems and not to truly embrace them and learn from them. I have since quit video games entirely, which was not a fun task, and I haven't played them (at least the single player games) in over three years. Video games taught me that in the face of discomfort or emotional hurt to seek some way to forget my problems. When I took video games out of my life, this in turn caused me to find other coping mechanisms. Even though since then, I have been learning and growing in new ways, mentally these games have hurt me significantly - I am a procrastinator, and often times become upset at others if they impede my "new" coping mechanisms (in the same way I would get very angry if I wasn't allowed to play games). Obviously there are other factors that have helped shape me into who I am today, but I believe that indulging myself in video games for years and years created many negative effects in my life, and I believe that a plurality of heavy gamers have had the same experience, but for the sake of losing them aren't willing to even come close to admitting that these games are a drug, a crutch, and a debilitating coping mechanism for them.