The banality of gaming addiction is why it's so hard to stop

With alcoholism and drug addiction, you spend a lot of money, get a DUI, piss all over yourself, feel like shit constantly, go through withdrawals.

With sex addiction, you get fired from your job because you're jerking off where you shouldn't. You're contracting diseases and having sex with prostitutes and getting arrested or something.

But with gaming you're just kind of sitting there enjoying yourself and just neglecting other areas of your life. It's such a banal form of addiction, but that's what can make it so serious and so hard to quit. At least with other forms of addiction there is a lot more sort of smacking you in the face constantly and reminding you that you should quit. But gaming keeps you addicted while you can feel perfectly content just binging endlessly.

After a certain point I feel like I can tell when I am gaming because it's fun versus I am gaming because it is an addictive response. After a certain point, it's just an addictive response.

You just wake up one day realizing you've neglected a lot of other areas of life that are more important. But it feels so innocent to go back to it, and it's not like it's actively killing you in the same way as other addictions.