Bio: Brad Dorrance started Canada's first Online Gamers Anonymous support group in 2008. He writes about his experiences with video game addiction on his blog ExGamer.net.

My story: U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt once said, "Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds." This rings true in a powerful way for me, especially when I reflect on how I allowed video games to rule my life.

My story of PC gaming addiction really begins almost 30 years ago, with arcade games, pinball machines and the early home video game consoles. I remember getting an Atari system for Christmas in the early 1980s when that console cost nearly as much as the Xbox 360 does today!
 
Fast forward to 1999. I'm university-educated, about to be married and recently promoted at work. Gaming has been something of a constant companion throughout my life, but I haven't owned a computer or console for a very long time. After graduating from university, I had occasional weekend Play Station "binges" where I'd rent a console and play non-stop from Friday to Sunday, but my internet access was extremely limited and I had no idea what I was about to get myself into.
 
My employer provided me with a brand new IBM laptop in the summer of 1999 -- for "work," naturally. I remember walking through a local mall, past a popular video game retailer, entertaining the idea of loading Quake 2 onto the laptop. I didn't resist very long or very fiercely, and before long, I found myself playing obsessively.
 
I finally beat the single player game at 4:30 a.m. on July 24, 1999. Why such a vivid memory of that date? It was my wedding day! My puzzled, concerned father walked in at 4 a.m. to find me bleary-eyed, determined to kill the Strogg boss. He gently but firmly reminded me that I had to get up at 7 a.m. to get ready for the ceremony. I promptly dismissed him.
 
Early in 2001, the stress of my work took its toll on me and I was forced to take a medical leave of absence. I had a golden opportunity to refocus, take stock of my life and refresh for the ongoing challenges of my job. Unfortunately, I had convinced myself and my wife that we needed to switch from dial-up to broadband Internet access, and I spent weeks sequestered in our basement playing Counterstrike.
 
Not long after this, I discovered Anarchy Online [a popular multiplayer online role-playing game], and this was the beginning of the end of my career. As the stress got worse, my gaming got more and more severe, from an hour or two a day to eight or more. Ultimately, I was forced to leave my job and began gaming as much as 12 hours a day.
 
As my first online role-playing game, Anarchy Online seems to have been the hardest to
quit. Each time, I thought I was done for good. I realize now I had never really quit before, because I was never really into recovering from this addiction. I quit because I felt a superficial guilt over my behaviour, or just got bored with the routine and wanted to try a new massively multiplayer online game (MMO) or online 3D shooter experience.
 
This addiction has cost me so much more than I can ever quantify, but when I finally stopped buying accounts, game currency and new computer hardware upgrades in December of 2007, after being online for about nine years, I had $23,000 dollars in debt on my credit cards. My hardworking wife left for work early in the morning, and I would go to a local computer store and buy all new components -- motherboard, video card, RAM, CPU -- and rebuild the inside of the PC without her knowledge. This went on for ages, whenever I needed a new "fix," usually when a new high-end MMO was being released.
 
A week before Christmas, 2007, I couldn't live with myself anymore. The crushing guilt of my addiction was destroying me. But rather than own up to what I'd done, I took a massive overdose of prescription sedatives and woke up in the hospital. I spent a week committed in a local psychiatric facility, facing what some people call a "crisis of truth."
 
The biggest challenge after being discharged from the hospital was trying to find something to occupy my time. Early in January 2008, I found myself in a familiar position, parked in front of a flickering monitor, transfixed on an online role-playing game I had discovered a month before landing in the hospital. I felt weary and frustrated, finally saying to myself, "I just can't do this anymore." With that quiet resolve, I cancelled my account, deleted the game from my computer and began the healing process that continues to this day.
 
I rediscovered Online Gamers Anonymous, an organization I'd had intermittent contact with for nearly five years, and founded a men's 12-step meeting that just may have saved my marriage. I began to deal with my compulsive behavior, which included gaming, and internet pornography. Some people see the 12 steps as a linear experience. For me, it has been a complex, sometimes frustrating, but always challenging journey. I am very much a work in progress, not yet complete, but pressing on, one day at a time. My blog, ExGamer.net, was born in July 2008, an expression of my joy and grief just six months after quitting. It has evolved over two years to become a portal for people interested in facts and opinion on video game addiction.
 
My blogging experience provided me with great opportunities to speak publicly about gaming addiction. This experience has been empowering. A television producer I met in September, 2008 said it best: "You've found your voice." If I can help people to speak about gaming addiction in a serious way without demonizing gamers and software developers, I have done what I need to fulfill a responsibility to give back and help gamers and their loved ones recover from the effects of excessive gaming.

AUDIO

Listen to Brad discuss video game overuse in Canada here.

Listen to Brad weighing in on video game advertising here.

Listen to Brad talk about the video game industry and what he'd like to see from it here.