I was playing the Sims2; my eyes felt like burned holes, my neck hurt, my carpal-tunnel screemed at me - but I remained half-asleep. "Just one more thing", I thought, trying to focus. My cat meowing for breakfast made me glance at the window; the light sparkling on the frosted grass was not moonlight, but the rising sun. I had been playing Sims since 8am - the previous day! Oh, I stopped long enough to click on the frig (fix cereal) and the toilet, even clicked on "make bed", and a few other chores. Just another TYPICAL day! This is not good, for so many reasons, Is this even FUN anymore?...I bought Sim3; no that's not even the same game (although it is true that with over 5,000 CC, and many mods, Sim2 was truly my own, customized game).
I signed up for an excersize class, and a sculpting thing. And uninstalled all my packs except the base one - than (DUH!) realized I had deleted my precious Download folder. Now I'm spending time in community sites like this one, which would be OK, but I am so tempted to play the base game, with no CC (OMG).. just to see what it's like. No, really, I can stop anytime. Are there any addiction counselors out there? PLEASE HELP!

Playing Real Life takes more money. And skill-building takes so long... there are no Thinking Caps!

How long have you been playing (in years)?

The situation you described happened to me when I started playing The Sims (1) in 2008: whole weekends were lost, eyes were always bloodshot, always had a dull headache, etc. I finally had to delete the game from my hard drive and throw the dvd away.....TWICE...because I fell off the wagon and bought it and re-installed it again!

Then Sims 2 came out and I resolved that once it was installed I would balance my simulated "life" with my real life. It worked. Probably because I had gotten it out of my system the last time I installed Sims 1.

Now I can go whole days and weeks sometimes months without playing. I get back into it and the most I play is maybe 1 to three hours. No more lost weekends or time. Unless I just installed a new EP then I may get lost in it for a few days then it tapers off and I'm back to controlling my time again.

It does get easier grammapat. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

I've been playing for almost two years, and I could play 24/7. I almost do.

Who needs real life when there's TS2??

I retired in Sept 2006 from an extreamly stressfull job as a Sac county welfare worker, and started playing Sims. So yes, I really AM a Gramma. My husband used to say my hours playing (which were just a hint of what they would become!) was unhealthy, & I was addicted, "It's 11pm!"; he quickly stopped when I responded with "I've worked hard all my life, & after 22 years of stress at the County, I DESERVE TO PLAY!", and the snappy "So what?". And (blush) last night (waiting for midnight and the local illigal fire-works to be over with) played the pathetic, nakid, base game - with no custom content. I had forgotten how SIMPLE it is! But I still played till 2am without meaning to. To "who needs a real life?" - well, we BOTH do dear; Sims was a substitute for my own need to control, as well as having something to figure out. I hope you work out whatever it is you are using this for, because if you do it to EXCESS it is NOT just for intertainment. Thanks to all... My name is Pat, and I'm an addict"...

Treat yourself like your sim. Do you let your sim sit and play computer games all day? No you do not! Sometimes you need to make lists of your daily wants and not play until you've gotten yourself to gold mood.

Sometimes you need to give your husband the disks and say: "Hide them till X criterion is met" (after the holidays, after I finish this project, after I've stopped bugging you to give it back to me every five minutes for at least a week).

There are chemical reasons for game addiction, but sooner or later you burn out. Pace yourself and you'll play less and enjoy it more for a longer period.

Playing with grandchildren will wean you of almost any unwholesome habit, you know.

If you exchange discs with chocolate and and X with the weekend, that's exactly what I did with all the chocolate I got for Christmas. Then in the weekend, when I'm drinking my mid-day coffee I'll ask him to give me 5 pieces. Chocolate + coffee + sims, it's like a mini heaven.

If you feel like playing 24/7, and it's not hurting anybody, then play. This might last for weeks, months but eventually it will get balanced with the rest of your life.

Yo, get a life, dude.

I play all day long (on weekends, duh, I have college) and neither my head nor my eyes hurt.

I can sympathize with you however I wasn't trying to quit playing. I moved across the country at the end of August and although my new residence was supposed to be weeks away from finished here it is 4 months later and I'm still living out of a suitcase with all my belongings in storage. What do I miss the most? My freakin' Sims 2 games, that's what. To be fair I miss my Mac every bit as much since I'm forced to use an ancient laptop that turns surfing the net into crawling the net instead.

I used to be a daily visitor to this site but it just got too depressing as all it did was remind me that I couldn't play TS2. *sigh* They are finally laying the floors down so maybe now it really will be a couple of weeks before I move in. I predict a marathon play session in my future once I'm up and running.

If I don't watch myself, I'll end up playing the whole weekend away. : P Gotta watch that!

Try setting up one evening a week to play to your heart's content, but limit it to that. Or alternately, play for a couple hours and then take a break for a couple hours to read a book or work on another hobby a few times a week.

To Peni: funny, since I DID find myself checking my mood and need bars, LOL. That bit is going away the fastest. SOB: my grandchildren are in Idaho, I talk to them every week or so, and vidio cam (which THEY got bored with) but haven't seen them in almost 2 years. I promised I would see them this spring, inspite of my indination/horror at the airports ("Would you like a groping with your cancer?")

I remember (when I was your age, yes I can remember that far back) comeing home from work (Orange County General Hospital), going out with friends to eat and party -- until 6am when I went back to work. My eyes felt a tad scratchy. Youth can handle excesses.But I can't/should'nt be playing EVERY DAY, and always into the morning hours.

Last edited by grammapat : 2nd Jan 2011 at 07:31 PM.

[QUOTE=ani_]If you exchange discs with chocolate and and X with the weekend,

Funny. But, you see, the whole POINT of my rant is that it IS hurting me. Irregular sleep hours are a contributing factor in heart attacks and strokes in the elderly. As is inactivity. And the 10 MOOR pounds I've put on (on top of the 60 extra pounds I'm already hefting around).

Y'all are funny!

Oh yea, housebuilding. Always expect over-budget, and delays, if not outright disasters. My 4 month build turned into a year, and then he "forgot" to put a bathroom in upstairs. This was a house I was haveing built in Idaho, while I lived in Sacramento; learned a lot in hind-sight.

Well, there's your problem right there: You can't see your family and you can't control what's going on with your new house. You want to feel in control of something, so you sim, substituting the dopamine fix of imaginary progress for real progress you feel you can't make. I do this, too, on a smaller scale; most people do. As a short term strategy, escapism is refreshing and beneficial. Like most human behaviors, it's only when you let it run amok that it becomes a problem.

Excuse the amateur psychologizing here. I'm offering advice out of experience and a wide reading on similar issues; take what you need and leave the rest, like the song says.

You need to find a way to gain control of something and make some real accomplishment, to solve actual problems, even if they're only small ones at first. The satisfaction of real accomplishment will shake the need for the dopamine fix and end the problem. Don't go looking for new dopamine fixes in the form of other games, food, TV, or whatever. Try to accomplish something real every day, even if it's only cleaning a room.

You may need to talk to a professional. You are depressed, with legitimate reasons, and this is manifesting in addictive behavior. The fact that the behavior involves a computer game isn't relevant. The underlying causes and many of the side effects are identical to addictions to tobacco, psychoactive drugs, alcohol, shopping, whatever. Unless you have a history of clinical depression in your family, don't go a second time to anyone who wants to give you antidepressives right off the bat. Your problem is with your situation, not your brain chemistry, and once your situation improves your brain chemistry will, too. You want anyone and anything that can help you find coping strategies that work for you. That could be a support group, a counselor, even a friend who's had similar problems. Hell, the Better Business Bureau might be able to fix you right up by telling you how to get your contractor to behave like a professional instead of like a teen-ager left in charge while the parents are gone.

Until you can get on top of your feelings, you probably should avoid the game, and this message board, entirely. If that's too stressful, find ways to cut back. When I'm having trouble controlling my behavior, I set a timer when I decide to perform a work avoidance behavior like an asocial game, newsgroup reading, or escape reading. Once the timer goes off, I have to stop and do something constructive. After accomplishing a goal -- it's important to make them realistic; on really bad days it might be "sweep one room" or "change the litter boxes" -- you can play again for another set period of time. These probably shouldn't be more than an hour, and as you get better you can reduce them bit by bit. You can accomplish an astonishing amount of simming in 15 minutes if you know that's all you've got.

After awhile, you can accomplish bigger and bigger goals, will grow interested in other projects, and will be able to play occasionally and in an appropriate way. Unless you're a "one drink, one drunk" personality, in which case you'd probably already know it and would sound very different when you talk about it here!

Take care and don't be too hard on yourself. You can make it better. Your loved ones will help you, because they love you and they want you to be happy.

As others have said - this game (anything, really - be it food, drink, TV, gaming, etc.) is good in small doses for unwinding and relaxing. But I think more of us find ourselves overindulging than we'd care to admit - for me, I do get those days where I've been playing, look up and realize I've burnt an entire night on the Sims (and I haven't done the homework, the laundry, the shopping, the dishes or the readings I was supposed to have done three days ago). Never a good feeling - and that's the first step: recognizing that something is out of control.

By the sounds of it, you've tried cutting it out entirely. You've tried reducing the temptation (after playing a fully-loaded game, I agree, the base game just isn't quite as appealing - but when you're craving it...).

Peni has some good ideas: after a number of sleepless nights and panic attacks in my early years of university because I'd procrastinated doing essays by playing Sims, I now have a policy in place during the university terms. For me, what works is alternation and prioritization: I prioritize what I want and what I need, and then alternate between them (for example, I may decide that I'll do my readings right after class ends, do my shopping when I've finished the reading, play Sims for a set amount of time depending on what I have yet to do, complete a lesson plan and a response entry, surf around MTS for a bit, complete a plan of attack for the big project, and then do dishes before I go to bed - which is not at 4am). My time management still leaves something to be desired, but things haven't been handed in late since I came up with that strategy...

Managing real life and the game is a personal decision - what works for me may not work for others. It works for me because I now can turn the game off when my time is up, go back to work, and not click that icon again - alternating between work and play lets me unwind and refocuses my concentration on the work when I go back to it.

Since you've said you're retired and took up a couple of classes to try and avoid Sims, I take it that you aren't on any sort of set 'schedule' anymore - have you thought about finding a good, relaxing volunteer position that might take you out of the house (and away from temptation) a few days a week? It doesn't have to be a great and awe-inspiring humanitarian thing. Some places are looking for people who are able to just come in and spend a few hours: maybe it's reading stories to preschoolers at the local library, coming into a local elementary school to assist teachers with a noon-hour club (I know the school I was student-teaching at this fall had a noon-hour knitting club for their 4th-graders that my cooperating teacher had some grandparents come in to help with things like teaching them how to do a stitch, how to put the yarn on the needle, etc...). If you're involved with a church or some other form of community, maybe there's a stay-at-home moms group who would love to have a grandma come and just chat with them, or play with the kids. Some of those kids may have grandparents who live in different cities/states, and would adore having a 'local grandma': I have a set of 'local grandparents' myself, and they're amazing.

Nobody's saying 'go back to work'. I do agree that you spent a lot of years serving and helping society and you deserve your break. But you said it yourself: as it stands right now, this is not healthy. If it means getting out of the house and away from the computer, a small bit of volunteering might just be the ticket.

I agree! There's no 'kaching' or 'motherlode'! We can't even use the Elixer of Life! This is a travesty! I DEMAND A REFUND!

When I was depressed near the beginning of last year I spent too much time simming. When I started to feel better it had gotten to be a bad habit. My roommate called me on it and although I sim a lot I don't neglect things that need to be taken care of to do it.

You've said it yourself, you are depressed; fix the depression and the over-simming will take care of itself. While you're working on that here's a few suggestions myabe some of them will help.

edit> The poster who suggested volunteering had a good idea.

Also try reducing your sim goals. Instead of playing until the toddler grows up, play until you finish teaching the toddler to walk.

Also do you play in windowed mode or full-screen. In windowed mode you can watch the clock better,surf the net and not get as absorbed.

My roommate and my sister sim on my computer and I almost always let them play whenever they want no matter how much or how little I have played or want to play.

i quit sims for such a long time, then i had a sleepover for my 15th birthday and my freind had it on her laptop, i HAD to play it, now im hooked again XD Oh well i LOVEEEEEEEEEEE sims and il never give it up, i cant play for days on end, but i think about 5/6 hours max is all i can do, i get bored playing with the sims i usually just make houses lol, or if im in a bad mood, ruin the lives of my sims, poor little simmies <3

Maybe it's not depression, just too much free time and nothing better to do. She needs to find something to keep her busy a few hours or so every day. Going from a busy schedule to no schedule at all can make people feel strange at first untill they adjust to their new life style.

What I'd do for 'boolProp testingcheatsenabled true'. Neighbor, do you mind if I force error you?

At least we wouldn't be obsessed with grilled cheese when we use the aspiartion changer in a bad mood.

Or even the Lifelong Happiness book! I have to watch myself to keep from making everysim read that book - they're so much easier to manage when the slightest dip in aspirations doesn't generate periods of worry, obsessive pursuit of fun objects, breaking down into tears when the bathroom floods, etc. And if I could get one for all my friends IRL, I would do my best to get them to read it through. If you're worrying about something, you're not doing anything about it, and your life can go to hell in a handbasket if you avoid it too long. But you can't do anything at all if your fun bar is orange.

Before anyone calls 911: no, I'm not depressed. The brain-chemistry explaination has been WAY overdone, and is loosing popularity. Much good advice. The house building was 2 years ago, and compaired to the molested grandchild, retarded ADHD grandchild, I disowned my son 15 years ago, used to be married to a batterer, etc, etc --it was no huge deal. I am a Rieki master and healer, and a wise old wicken; I know how to live in tranquility. BUT YOU GUYS ARE RIGHT! I need to occupy myself with something that seem meaningful TO ME> Your sweet advice is welcome; I tend to just want to kick my butt.

Hehe, I had school when I first got it in '05 but it did cut into my schooling, and it was the only thing I really looked forward to. It got worse once I was out of school, but I never had bloodshot eyes or headaches due to playing.

Now I work so I usually only play on the weekends, but never all day and often I have to go out and do things, do chores, etc.

I wear sunglasses when I play PC games. Weird, yes, but I do it and I'm proud of it. It also prevents my eyes from getting irritated, believe me.

There's nothing wrong with eating cold cooked turkey that's been properly preserved. However, it is a bad idea to eat stuffing, if you have any susceptibility to bacteria, as the innermost portion of the stuffing will never heat to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which bacteria dies, in a bird the size of a turkey. Eat dressing, prepared outside the bird,instead.