There was a time when I played video games far too much for my own good. More to the point, it could be argued that I was an addict. Despite this, it didn't take long until I started to realize that after buying my latest new Xbox games, my ability to think about real life problems had become damaged to a terrifying degree. Not only that, I found out also that I tended to be much more bad-tempered and my tendancy was to be a lot more militant towards other people. It seems surprising now that this state of affairs didn't seem to be related to the kind of video game I happened to be playing, more precisely, playing my non-violent video games didn't decrease my aggressive behaviour in the least.

Another worrying symptom with playing video games seemed to be subsequent to playing for a certain length of time, quite often I would become tired and lethargic after completing a gaming session. This was exacerbated after I had bought new Xbox games and had spent even more time trying to get to grips with the new scenarios.

The symptom that concerned me most in the end, was the urge to play more and more new Xbox games. I began to understand what being an addict must be like. I am completely sure that the video games that I used had taken an overwhelming grasp on me down to a possibly destructive degree. The problem affected my family life, my working life and my social life. On reflection, it's extremely hard to understand how awful my life had become. As luck would have it, I have an aware and caring partner who gave me a great deal of help in working out my problems and I came out the other side a more resilient and enlightened person.

I'm still a video gamer and I still love to go out and buy new Xbox games but, after giving myself a set of rules and making sure that I stick to them, I am now a blissful gamer.

I firmly believe that individuals who matter, such as medical people, family, significant others, school and college staff etc., should start instigating some positive action to see and deal with, these extremely threatening effects of gaming so that they can put an end to this ever-worsening problem from turning into an epidemic on a global scale.