Therapist Repeats "Gaming is Like Snorting Cocaine" Claim

[Lunar Templar]

wow
2 years i've been on these forums o.o how time flys ...

i remeber posting about that the first time 'round
and
...

...

...

he's still a flaming retard with the brain of a dead house fly
2 years later and he's word for word, saying the same thing, really? he can't make up any new bullshit that can't be backed? i mean if your gonna try an troll could at least be amusing about it jeeze

 

[orangeban]

If my parent tried to take my console because of what this guy said I would say

"What? Why?"
"What? That's bullshit."
"Oh come the fuck on."
*sigh*

 

[Callate]

"Spending two hours on a game station is equivalent to taking a line of cocaine in the high it produces in the brain," he told the BBC Radio show 5Live. "It's the silent killer of our generation."

Except that when cocaine kills, it's usually through heart failure and not any kind of damage to the brain.

"Computer game addiction can also spiral into violence as after playing violent games, they may turn their fantasy games into reality," he continued. "It is the fastest growing addiction in the country and this is affecting young people mentally and physically."

...I'm sorry, were we talking about soccer riots? I thought we were talking about video games.

he suggested that parents listening to the program "go upstairs to your kid's bedroom and try and take the game station controller out of their hands." They will react "in the same way as an alcoholic would if you tried to take their booze. It's scary," he said.

Yeah, I know I've been known to go apeshit on people who interrupt my drinking without letting me hit the pause button on my bottle of Jack Daniels... But so long as they let me hit the pause, I'm coo'.

Maybe one of our UK readers can enlighten me: are there any formal qualifications to call yourself a "therapist" in your delightful country? (Sincerely- your country is delightful, whatever the therapist situation.)

 

[Zanderinfal]

Seriously, what the fuck do you people have against gaming? Is it that it's widespread, or that most games simulate violence?

Oh wait.
Both.

 

[Qmonster]

Fun game: reread all of his claims but apply them to some other activity that causes an endorphin high, such as mountain biking. It ends up sounding even sillier. I mean, most people would react negatively if you tore a book out of their hands while they were reading, or took away anything else they currently enjoying.

 

[Beccax]

As I have said in other forums with people claiming to be from my discipline...WTF. There is was so much fail in everything that I have just read.

First year undergrad Psych teaches addiction, now I know its hard for therapists to understand...well anything, but this is not the same high at all, the chemical reaction that is happening in the brain just doesn't match up and quite frankly it hurts me that he is treating people without the basic understanding a first year university student has.

He is an idiot, that is all that can be said. All pleasurable activities produce a high, the problem with cocaine is that it pushes you beyond your limit and you get addicted trying to recreate that leading to excess yada yada yada. If you are getting the same kind of high of a video game, that an outside stimulus is effecting you that much, your brain is already not functioning properly.

Another thing. For something to be a silent killer, it actually has to kill someone. That is known as LOGIC, Mr Pope (if that is your real name) go look it up, perhaps Hume and Kuhn would be a better read than Alex Ferguson.

 

[ADDLibrarian]

My DS broke when I tried to shove it in my nostril..crap, now I gotta go turn tricks to get a new one.

Seriously, wtf?

 

[Master Kuja]

How does this shit even pass peer review?

Just...Where's his evidence? Where's his replicable, well controlled experiments? Where are his brain scans? What's his methodology? Is he aware that assuming playing video games leads to violence is a ridiculous post hoc fallacy that can't be taken seriously?

It scares me that he is allowed to be a practising therapist without even the basic, A Level knowledge that your standard Psychology college student has.

 

[Ih8pkmn]

If gaming really is addictive as cocaine, then why aren't there more gamers being mistaken for crackheads?

Besides, if it really did cause a chemical imbalance, it doesn't affect me; my brain's chemical levels are effed up enough already. And as for that comparison of alcoholics to gamers: I've had my games confiscated before, and, yes I was mad. But as mad as a alcoholic is when you take away his booze? That's just offensive.

Also, the only time gaming has affected my sleep was during a phase where I dreamed about Pokemon in 3rd grade. Go figure.

 

[Gitty101]

What is this I don't even...

Cocaine KILLS. Games are FUN.

Why does no-one understand this?

 

[SteewpidZombie]

If I walked up and turned off the TV while my parents are watching the thing, it would get me a smack across the head and a good yelling, same as if I was to go a take away a book someone was in the middle of reading. This guy is so unqualified to be doing what he is doing, I'm sure that even my own basic reasoning and logic would dictate that people would react that way to virtually everything. If this guy seriously believes that VideoGames are like 'Cocaine', this guy is 'Mentally Dis-functional' in every sense of the phrase.

 

[Sneaky Paladin]

Well Yeah at the end. If someone came into my room and randomly tried to take away my controller without asking I WOULD try and hold onto it, But seriously this guy is a joke if he's trying to get more attention with the same damn thing.

 

[sir.rutthed]

Wait, gaming is equivalent to coke? Damn, he must have some low grade coke then. Seriously, by his logic I should be dead after my 7 hour Dragon Age 2 binge, and instead all I have is a slight headache. I don't know where he's from, but if gaming is the same as hard drugs, this guy needs a new dealer.

 

[DementedSheep]

That is stupid.
"go upstairs to your kid's bedroom and try and take the game station controller out of their hands." They will react "in the same way as an alcoholic would if you tried to take their booze. It's scary,"
Um...I would react the same way I react if someone took my book away from me as I was reading, turned off the tv as I was watching something or intentionally screwed up something I was trying to do (witch is what you would be doing if you took a controller away from someone in the middle of them performing a difficult task on a video game), like say I was building a card pyramid and some ass knocked it over. of course I?m not going to be happy about that. In fact I would most likely react less violently to someone taking a controller off me than if you tried to take my sketchbook off me as I was drawing. Is drawing like drugs now aswell?

I have seen some WTH reactions when someone interrupts their kids video games but in most of those the kid was a jackass and drama queens in the first place and that has nothing to do with the video games. Video games just make a nice scapegoat so that people don't have to acknowledge other problems like bad parenting. If a kid is playing a game in the middle of a class then the parents have not been teaching their kids discipline. If it wasn?t for the games they would likely just have found another way to screw about.

You do get some people utterly obsessed with video games to the point where its harmful, you can?t deny that but you get that with everything. You get people obsessed over pen and paper rpgs, books and movies. There are plenty of people obsessed with their hair, an actor or their car to a level which isn?t healthy. Hell I?ve heard of person who became addicted to lettuce and even went thru the physical symptoms of withdrawal when they tried to quit. Lettuce! You cannot ban or regulate everything because a few people have a problem.

As for "endorphin high in [kids'] brains," leading to a "chemical imbalance" that disrupts behaviour and learning.
And why is that? Because they are produced during excitement and video games are exciting and fun. Thats the point. You get an endorphin high from exercise or love aswell. Oh no all these things must be bad!
Every emotion you feel is a ?chemical imbalance?

 

[ultratog1028]

Go into your living room and turn off the TV whilst people are watching it, it will piss them off as well. Or take a book off them whilst theyre reading it... Scary stuff eh?

I was about to say something along those lines.

 

[sb666]

...What?

Like...what?

"If you take a kids videogame station away he will react like an alcoholic would" what kind of bullshit is that? You might as well say sex is corrupting this generation! "Sex causes an endorphin rush in the brain, therefor it is EVVUUUUUUULLLLLLLLL!"

If someone stopped you in the middle of sex, i´m pretty sure you´d be pissed to.

well im guessing he likely thinks sex is evil

 

[Faladorian]

Okay here's what I think:

As enjoyable as cocaine + not deadly like cocaine = video games are good for rehabilitating cocaine addicts and keeping people from doing it.

Good, right? Except that it wouldn't fucking WORK because he's wrong.

 

[Windown95]

Has a video game ever directly killed anyone (as in, not died due to neglect of survival needs)? I'm fairly certain the answer is "no".

Has Cocaine? Yup.

I fail to see the parallels here and I completely fail to see how video games are a "silent killer".

To make his point, he suggested that parents listening to the program "go upstairs to your kid's bedroom and try and take the game station controller out of their hands." They will react "in the same way as an alcoholic would if you tried to take their booze.

I'd probably react the same if somebody walked up to me and snatched, to arbitrarily pick something, an ice cream out of my hands. That doesn't mean ice cream is bad, it just means I was enjoying my goddamn ice cream!

Buh. This story melts my brain.

I think one person died from play WoW to much, but yeah for the most part no.

 

[ultratog1028]

Okay here's what I think:

As enjoyable as cocaine + not deadly like cocaine = video games are good for rehabilitating cocaine addicts and keeping people from doing it.

Good, right? Except that it wouldn't fucking WORK because he's wrong.

Perhaps Earning Achievements would work for coke addicts.

 

[Daveman]

Did he say how if you turn the TV off when somebody is using it, or the radio or a book or literally ANYTHING else then somebody will get irritated ranging from "what are you doing?" to "I'm going to stab you" depending on who it is? No? So just video games? Big surprise there...

He's right... it is scary to see kids react negatively to somebody being a dickhead. This guy clearly needs to take a long look at himself. Kids flip out when they lose their savegames, right? This is because they have invested a lot of time and effort into that game. Let's see whether he flips out if one of his research papers deletes itself when he's close to finishing...

As for sleep deprivation etc, I've been suffering from it a lot lately, and I do it regardless of whether or not I play video games that day or even that week. It's actually because of the anxiety over my work and my social life and my dog having cancer and being about to die (my dog that is, not me). So yeah, let's ban all those things (especially the cancer).

I mean yeah, gaming makes you alert, you need to give it focus. That's why I stop gaming 2 hours before I go to bed to relax myself again. It's the same for me not having caffeine after 5 hours before I plan to go to bed. It's just common sense and nothing for anyone to panic about. What's more it all affects us differently. My mate has a can of diet coke most nights shortly before going to bed, and he sleeps like a baby. I'm sure the same varying tolerance will apply to video games.

Actually, as it's 2:30 now and the only reason I'm up is to comment on this we could argue that this psychologist guy causes sleep deprivation! BAN HIM!