Comment by b6 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by b6 | Hacker News Reader

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Stuff like this resonates a lot with me, because I'm interested in Buddhism, and Buddhism is very concerned with suffering, and how people deal with it.

Maybe we don't like to think it's so, but things like this could happen to anyone. It's set and setting. Combine a certain mindset, and suffering, and an environment that supports a certain unwise way of dealing with that suffering, and stuff like this happens. Maybe your thing wouldn't be eating. Maybe it'd be heroin. From the Buddhist perspective, it's the same thing -- doing something unwise to get away from pain, even if it traps you in a local minimum.

This is why I meditate, and why I encourage others to try it enough to get what it's about. If you can get some kind of distance from your pain, to see it as just feelings that shouldn't be confused for oneself, you can be sort of like a firefighter, putting out suffering in yourself, helping to extinguish suffering in others, and never ever fanning the flames.

I think it's easy to ridicule this guy because we wouldn't destroy ourselves in the same way. But ask yourself whether you might be a certain unlucky one-two combo away from feeling so desolate that you just want the pain to stop and don't really care how.

I recently finished "Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked", which I thought was an important read given my role in designing apps and products.

One argument the author makes is that generally it's not that people merely lack willpower, it’s that “there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have.” And you could certainly extend that to food.

I'm reminded of one of my very intelligent friends in school who practically disappeared one year from all social activity and academics... because he got addicted to WoW. I have a very addictive personality with regards to games, especially RPG's/adventures, and have refused to ever play WoW because of the fear of addiction.

As much as I love computer games, I also recognize that video gaming have irrevocably resulted in stunting my social and personal development. I don't blame video games so much as recognize my vulnerability to gaming. Just like how alcoholics can't just have a sip, well neither can I. I know that if I play even a simple game like Hearthstone, I'll go down a rabbit hole that will take months to crawl out of. I'll stop doing certain regular activities, like studying, seeing friends, pursuing my long-term career, exercising, meditating, etc.

We talk about substance abuse and deride the addicts, but we also have a growing number of people who have behavioral addictions to their smartphone, games, news websites, e-mail, social media.

These addictions can arise when a person can’t resist a behavior, which, despite addressing a deep psychological need in the short-term, produces significant harm in the long-term. Deep gaming sessions for me tended to correlate with a certain unhappiness, specifically loneliness, and lack of fulfillment in my life. For one of my friends, gaming is a drug that placates the fact that for years, he has hated his job and has had issues finding a new one.

That's when games with a definite end are good. After vanishing into them for a finite time you're done. What also works are old-school LAN parties where you only play with your friends present.

I would upvote your comment multiple times if I could - compassion is something that I see expressed all too rarely online.

I remember reading an interview with a psychologist who worked at a clinic dealing with videogames addiction in the FT Weekend magazine many years ago. He said almost all addiction is rooted in trying to escape pain or suffering. For a lot of the patients addicted to videogames it was an escape from loneliness and other problems.

http://www.onbeing.org/programs/bessel-van-der-kolk-how-trau...

"One way of doing it is taking drugs and alcohol, and the other thing is that you can just shut down your emotional awareness of your body. And so a very large number of traumatized people who we see — I’d say the majority of the people we treat at the trauma center and in my practice — have very cut off relationships to their bodies. They may not feel what’s happening in their bodies. They may not register what goes on with them. And so what became very clear is that we needed to help people for them to feel safe feeling the sensations in their bodies, to start having a relationship with the life of their organism, as I like to call it."

[Also interesting, but not related: that psychiatrist found that yoga helped reset the connection between mind and body for those who had experienced trauma.]

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