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Comment by KeytarHero | Hacker News Reader

Incredibly cheap in terms of financial cost, but not in terms of opportunity cost of the time you lose.

Admittedly I haven't read the article because Vice is blocked at work, but I imagine video game addiction is a lot different from other addictions since it has to do with something you do rather than a state you're in (not to say it's necessarily worse - just different). Serious addicts can play video games for several days straight, whereas I don't think doing drugs for several days straight (at least without doing anything else) is common among even the most serious addicts (though admittedly I'm not an expert in this). I think it would be very difficult to be a "high functioning" video game addict.

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>I think it would be very difficult to be a "high functioning" video game addict.

There's plenty of them, just like there are high-functioning alcoholics.

Suppose you could define the degree of addiction as the amount of interference the addictive habit inflicts upon a person's life. By that logic, a busy, high-functioning person who plays 20 hours a week may in fact have a more damaging addiction than the person with tons of free time on their hands playing 80 hours a week. Of course, if the latter person has all that free time on their hands because addiction interfered with their life at a much earlier stage, then that's worth considering.

I guarantee you there's a ton of high-functioning video game addicts though, probably even right here on HN. Founder depression in particular can play right into such things.

I think you'd be surprised on both counts. Chasing a dopamine hit in a game is seeking a "state" as much as a thing to do — after all, you do things because of the way they make you feel, right? And multi-day drug and/or alcohol binges are actually very common.

But certainly you're right that the loss of time/opportunity is far from cheap. Although with someone who has the means to be addicted to something like a game - implying a computer, power, a place to stay - one might speculate that they have more to lose, materially speaking.

> whereas I don't think doing drugs for several days straight (at least without doing anything else) is common among even the most serious addicts

Let's use alcohol as an example. For someone who has been drinking heavily for a while coming off alcohol can be dangerous, even fatal. This means that people have to permanently drink, or risk death. To qualify for a medically supervised in-patient detox in England you need to drink 40 units per day. That's one litre of spirits at 40% ABV. (34 US fluid ounces of 80 proof liquor). That's 9 cans of Special Brew per day. That level of drinking is not rare.

But other drugs are similar. People addicted to opiates sometimes resort to acquisitive crime or prostitution. That suggests that they need, not just want, the money for drugs and that drug use is pretty much continuous.

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