Monday, March 19, 2007

Gambling Addiction Goes Online

People have been getting addicted to gambling for as long as it has been around, which is a very long time. But recently, many online casinos have been cropping up. These are even more dangerous to someone who is prone to addiction. The online gambling outlets provide easy access to funds, and motivation to continue going. Many people gamble away their life savings online. So if you feel that you are developing an attachment to the online gambling sites, you should take action right away to ensure your financial freedom. You will be glad in the future when you aren’t bound to the sites.

The best way to avoid being addicted to online gambling is to simply avoid it all together. When you consider the possible gains compared with the possible risks of online gambling, you will find that it is almost never worth the effort. So rather than gamble online, you should spend your time learning skills that will help you earn a legitimate living. These include web design or programming, which will both help you to earn much more money than you could through gambling. You will find that this constructive use of your time will be much more rewarding, especially since you are avoiding more harmful things at the same time.

If you’ve already gotten started on the slippery slope of a gambling addiction, you should cut it off while it is still young. When you first get involved in online gambling, it may only seem like a quick run just to see if you can make any money. Many of the online companies even let you try out trial runs that let you use their money and see how good your odds are (they are usually rigged to make you more confident in using your own money). This will just lead to you making deposits from your own bank account, and quickly becoming addicted to the point at which you will continually bet more money.

If you see this happening, you should be panicking. Gambling addiction has ruined the lives of many people. You should even consider getting help from a psychiatrist who can help you get rid of the urges to gamble. Online gambling is no less real than a regular casino, but it is definitely easier to get more money to play with. Therefore you should be much more careful about it.

Addiction to the Internet

The internet is a huge place filled with tons of interesting information. Once you start browsing around in the enormous archives, you will find that it is very easy to become lost in the various interesting sites that you come across. Once you realize the true extent of the interesting and entertaining sites, it is easy to want to come back to the internet on a daily basis. Checking your sites every day can become quite a habit that is hard to break. Internet addiction was not taken seriously before, but it has become more recognized by professionals as an actual ailment.

Internet addiction can be physiologically explained by the body becoming physically accustomed to being in the position that you are in when you browse the internet, as well as the things that your eyes experience. It begins to perceive that as normal, and if you don’t get on the computer it will begin to think that something is up. This may be what subconsciously leads you to spend more time on the computer, but often the problem is more psychological than anything. It has to do with the internet addict feeling that there are no other things to do, and feeling that the internet is the only thing available.

People who have this view of the internet often begin to neglect other things in their lives by somehow blocking thoughts of them, and staying inside the world of the internet. This is when a full-fledged addiction is in place. It’s usually not a matter of someone being so entertained by the internet that they don’t want to leave. Instead, it is just a matter of people doing it as a default activity. So in order to break an internet addiction, the best thing to do is to replace it with something else. Pick up a new hobby or find new friends that you can spend time with rather than sitting on the computer.

Once you have figured out something to keep you busy instead of being on the computer, you will just start to do it instead. When you feel like logging on to the computer and wasting your time, you can pick up a great book and start to read for a few hours. It is not only healthier physically, but will give you the chance to expand your mind and become a better person for it.

Addiction to Internet Forums

Internet forums are fun places to visit. Depending on the site, you are dealing with a group of people who are very intelligent in a certain field. When you get a bunch of these people together on one large internet message board, the collective knowledge makes for some interesting debates and conversations. Visiting an active message board, you will see new discussions spring up all the time, and heated debates taking place. By just posting one reply, you can involve yourself in a debate, and feel like you need to keep returning. By returning for this debate, you’ll get involved in more debates, and before you know it you will be addicted to checking the forum every day.

Once you are addicted to an online forum, you may find yourself checking back on a regular basis just to see if there are any new additions. You may want to find out about all the latest happenings with all of the users you are familiar with. But take some time to think about the principles behind forum addiction. You are spending your precious time making efforts to communicate with people you don’t know, and probably will never meet. Ask yourself if it is truly worth the time that it takes to keep up with these people.

If you have decided that you want to break the addiction, then I applaud you .Most people are willing to live on with things in their lives that could stand to be improved, but refuse to do anything about them. To quit the forum, the best way to do it is to delete your account, delete any bookmarks to the site that you have, and push it out of your mind. If you don’t have constant reminders to go back to the site, you won’t think about it as often. This is a great strategy when dealing with any internet addictions.

After you stop going to the forum, you should figure out some other thing to spend your time with online. In the time that you would have been posting on the forum, you can start to take up other hobbies. Learn a foreign language, learn a programming skill. These things can be extremely useful, and they are certainly more satisfying than posting on forums all day. So look into some possible things that you can use to take up your forum time, and finally break your habit.

Computer Game Addiction: Socially, Physically, and Mentally Unhealthy

Ever since computer games were first widely popular, there have been some people that take it a little too far. This is particularly apparent in online games. People are driven by the desire to get higher statistics, make it to the next combat level, or gain more reputation with the rest of the players. It is an epidemic that has been around for a while, and doesn’t seem to have an easy solution. If you struggle with computer game addiction, there are several ways that you can beat it. By logging off of the game, you can get back to your social life, and get back in shape both mentally and physically.

Breaking the bond between your mind and the game may seem like a hard thing to do at first, but you need to put it in to perspective. By devoting your time to the game, you are ignoring the more important things in life. You could be going out and enjoying yourself like you should be, but instead you are sitting at home and trying to get more virtual money or virtual statistics. This is the best way to convince yourself to quit. By putting it into perspective, you see that you are sacrificing time with friends in order to change a few pieces of data on a hard drive at the servers of the game headquarters.

You can also try the cold turkey approach, in which you will completely stop playing the game. That’s it. You can delete your account, break the game disk, or even sell your computer. Any of these things will cause you to no longer be able to play the game. They are drastic measures to take, but you will feel liberated once you no longer feel the need to spend your time on it. By stopping completely and erasing the work that you have done so far in the game, you will show that you are truly free from the game and that you no longer feel any importance in your character’s statistics.

Ultimately, beating an online game addiction is just about how much you want to do it. If you want to quit the game then there will be nothing stopping you. But if you are content to beat around the bush and talk about how much you want to beat the game and then never do anything, you will do exactly that.

How Do Computer Addictions Occur?

Being addicted to computer usage is a very common occurrence. Many people spend hours and hours browsing the internet without actually being productive. You may not realize that you are addicted to the computer until it is actually unavailable. When you spend 8 hours on a computer every day, you may tell yourself that it is just because there is nothing else to do. But when you are away from your computer for a long period of time, you may begin to feel the true signs of being addicted to it. A computer addiction can stem from many different things, so you should try to avoid it if it hasn’t already happened.

When you sit on the computer for long periods of time without doing anything else, you are training your brain and body to expect this. Being away from the computer for long periods of time will feel unnatural, and may even cause headaches or nausea. Your brain will also be conditioned to not find any other ways of keeping itself busy besides watching a computer screen while you do whatever it is you do. It is much more dangerous than it sounds, and can result in many health problems stemming from the sedimentary state.

Computer addiction can also occur from a computer game that is particularly addictive. These require hours and hours to be poured into them from the player, and can cause major addictions. People feel that they need to constantly play their online game in order to raise the statistics of their character, or beat all of the quests currently available. This is not only very unhealthy, but it is also unproductive. If you are going to be addicted to the computer, you might as well spend your time doing something that will improve you!

The computer addiction could also come from work that requires you to be on a computer for long periods of time. You may not enjoy the time you spend on the computer, but it definitely becomes a part of your daily life, and may start to feel more and more natural. Your computer habits may leave the workplace and head home, where you will start to spend more time in the computer. Getting addicted to the computer is a slippery slope that can be caused by many factors.