Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with compulsion

Why is World of Warcraft so addictive?

Sully — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:40:20 -0800

Why is World of Warcraft so addictive? I've curious about WoW. I've heard a lot about it - how there's millions of people playing it. But I've also heard that it's ruined lives.

There are some sites where people talk about how WoW has ruined their lives, but they only go into details about how their lives are ruined. They mention that WoW is incredibly addictive, but they never go into detail about how exactly WoW addicts them.

Even the short Youtube documentaries about WoW just talk about how many hours they spend on the game, how they miss classes, or ignore responsibilities. They talk about the fallout from WoW without looking at the mechanics - which is what I'm interested in.

I have to say, I kind of want to try it. I play a lot of single-player games, like Fable 2, Fallout 3, Crackdown. I'm familiar with reward systems, and am curious about WoW's. I mean, to get millions of players, they must have an incredible reward system. But I am also afraid that if I try the game, I will find it so rewarding that I won't want to stop.

I've even read things where people say they've been playing this one game for years - doesn't it become boring? Can someone who has played WoW dissect for me how WoW compels or manipulates you into coming back for more?

Thanks.

Doc, it hurts when I do this

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:52:45 -0800

I'm tearing myself apart, but only on one side. Why and how can I stop it? I've noticed that I am twisting and curling myself into painful stress positions, but only on the right side of my body. My right hand gets rolled under my wrist. Usually, I find myself pressing it against a table or some other solid object. Similarly, I will wrap my right leg around any available pole or table leg, putting enough tension on it that my knee starts to ache after a few minutes.

As soon as I notice one of these behaviors, I consciously shift position to something more evenly balanced, but as soon as I stop paying attention, the limbs start curling in.

Blurt Support

dog food sugar — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:23:37 -0800

Remember this question (compelled to blurt)? Help me, a non-blurter, support my blurting partner. What an eye-opener that thread was for our household. I've always noticed he did this, but probably not as often as I do now after reading that thread. While he found great comfort reading that thread by finding others who do this too, I worry I'm making it worse now that I notice it so much more. Before I used to just ignore it and that's probably best. I don't mean to react, but my reaction seems to be making his utterances more frequent. I want to be supportive, loving, all that!

So tell me - if you have this dynamic in your life, what helps you?

Compelled to Blurt...

Alabaster — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:08:23 -0800

What's with my weird compulsion? As far as I am aware, I am a mentally healthy, well-adjusted, and sane person with no disorders. But I have a strange, fairly innocuous quirk which seems beyond my control and I'm curious about it...

When I think of / remember something embarrassing from my life, I compulsively make some kind of noise. It seems to happen unconsciously, before my censor can catch it and stop myself (it even happens when I am in a quiet or inappropriate place).

It's not especially loud, in fact it's often under my breath. The sound is usually just a quiet grunt, or a word/syllable or two. If I remember an embarrassing conversation, I tend to blurt out a random word of the conversation (as in, I'm replaying the dialogue in my head but then all the sudden one of the words pops out of my mouth). If it happens while I'm reading, I tend to blurt out one or two of the words that happen to be under my eyes at the moment.

It usually only happens when I'm remembering something palpably embarrassing or humiliating from my life -- not for mild everyday kind of stuff. (Again, I had a fairly happy childhood and have nothing particularly traumatic in my past -- I don't think my embarrassing memories are any worse than the average joe's)

So what is this, do I have some kind of low-grade tourette's syndrome? Is there a name for this phenomenon? Does it happen to others or is it unique to me?

sick of the highs and the lows

Juliet Banana — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:05:09 -0800

I have Tourette Syndrome, and I can't stop jumping up and down. Help me rewire my defective brain to channel this activity into something less destructive. I have moderate Tourette Syndrome. I have the whole gamut of symptoms, coprolalia, echolalia, twitching, blurting out my thoughts, and touching/tapping/hitting things. My symptoms have calmed down a lot from when I was first diagnosed with severe TS as a teen, as Tourette tends to mellow out in adulthood, partially due to better ability of the sufferer to identify the "oncoming urge" and control it. I can hold down a job. I'm happy. I don't have to explain it to every single person I meet. The people I've lived with get used to it, and I barely think about it most of the time.

However, I can't ignore this one particular tic and pretend it's not hurting me anymore. Between 3-10 times every day, I stand up and wander around my house, and invariably start hopping up and down as if I was on a trampoline. I've knocked over pots of ink and dishes of coins. It's probably not the best stress to put my second-story floorboards under. I've usually just worked a full shift in heels and then walked two miles home and the last thing my legs need is to hop around like a bunny. I'm sick of it, and I want to stop.

I need help finding an alternative activity that won't knock over my possessions and hurt my legs. I have all this excess energy, and I need some way to burn it. I know most of the people reading this don't have TS, so please bear with me while I describe what it feels like to have a tic.

The (very) basic neurological mechanics of Tourette Syndrome is that the brain produces an excess of dopamine and/or has difficulty regulating it. In a normal brain, you think, "I'd like to pick up that apple," and your brain shoots off a paltry little dose of dopamine that has a message attached to it: "Raise arm, close fist, lift apple." If you have TS, it's like having a defective firehose for dopamine receptors. My brain randomly shoots off large doses of dopamine with absolutely no message attached,and my body picks the easiest way to burn it off, something completely random, or an action I've performed many times before, or saying a word from my ever-changing-lexicon of swears and nonsense.

Over the years, I've gotten better at feeling the burst of dopamine before I perform the action, but I don't always. Have you ever absent-mindedly grabbed the handle of a blazing hot pan on your stovetop? Before you had time to think "this is hot" or "that was stupid" or "I need to move my hand," you jerked your hand away, instantaneously, without thought. That is how it is possible for someone with TS to perform an action without being fully aware that they are doing it. Half the time I don't know what word is coming out of my mouth until I hear it.

You've probably also experienced how the burst of dopamine feels. The absolute best way for me to describe it is "shuddering revulsion." Have you ever been walking along the sidewalk, and out of the corner of your eye you realize you are about to plant your Converse directly into the rotting corpse of an unfortunate cat or squirrel? Chances are you staggered backwards, your skin crawling, your heart racing. Chances are your thought process was not very long or complicated, just "get the hell away." That is how the "oncoming urge" feels: restless, twitchy, shivery, every nerve alive and blazing and alert, uncomfortable, breath sped up, heart rate up.

The oncoming urge differs from tic to tic. Sometimes I don't feel it at all and a word just slips out of my mouth. Sometimes I can feel it coming quite distinctly, and I'm able to CHOOSE how I want to use up the energy, usually something non-offensive and easy like tapping my fingers on a tabletop. And sometimes, instead of an all-at-once huge burst of dopamine, there's a slow, steady, restless stream of excess energy.

The jumping up and down is a slow and steady tic. I have ALWAYS had some form of these tics, that are much more physically involved and prolonged than your average tic. When I lived in sunny California, I used to burst out my front door barefoot and run around and around my block until, panting and sweaty, it wore off. Now that I live in a city where shoes and jackets and locking the door is required, I've outgrown the need to go outside. I need immediate gratification in the form of physical activity before the need is satiated and the creepy restless feeling wears off.

It starts with me sitting, normally. I start feeling restless, and I think, it would be nice to get up, and walk around. I've tried just staying put, but I just get more restless and antsy and fidgety and anxious and it's torturous, so I give up. As I'm wandering from room to room, without thinking, I start jumping up and down. Most of the time I don't realize I'm doing it.

There are a few ways I've been able to stop or prevent it. I'm looking for more. If i can identify the oncoming urge, I can channel the energy into something less hurtful (I used to smack my fist really hard onto tabletops until I learned to just tap until the urge went away). If I'm in a job interview or something, I might be able to stop them outright, or do something that normal people do (throat clearing, head shaking). But deciding to not have TS anymore is like deciding you're never going to urinate again. You might make it a few hours, but eventually you're going to think "why am I torturing myself" and give in, or just forget. I can't simply will myself to stop having tics, but I can possibly train myself to have a DIFFERENT slow and steady, involved, prolonged physical tic besides jumping up and down.

Things I have done that have helped:

+Trying to burn the phrase "JUMPING IS BAD" into my brain so that when I'm mindlessly hopping up and down my rational, concious brain can butt into my blank thoughts and say "JUMPING IS BAD, CUT IT OUT, STOP." And I do. The problem is, I don't even realize what I doing when I start jumping, so it takes a while for me to realize I'm doing it, much less that it a bad thing.

+Smoking. Nicotine has been proven to help control tics, and the "going outside" requirement fulfills a need in me. I've actually started running/hopping with a cigarette in my hand before and given up after about 5 seconds; smoking calms me down a lot, and smokers aren't exactly known for their physical prowess. The cons should be obvious; Tourette won't kill me, smoking will.

+Being quite tired. I've gotten the "hey, you should go walk around!" urge while climbing into bed exhausted before, and was able to resist it because the absolute last thing I wanted to do right then was get up and jump around.

+Identifying the oncoming urge, and saying "I'm going to go walk around. That's all I am going to do." As I walk around I try to remain very concious of the fact that I am just walking, that's it, no jumping allowed.

Things that probably won't help:

+Medication. The side effects are not worth the benefits for me. I'd rather hop like the Easter Bunny than vomit everything I eat, or lose control of the muscles in my hands, or pass out a half hour after taking my pills. Tried it and hated it.

+Nicotine patches. They're too expensive OTC, I don't have health insurance, they're generally only used as medication in people with more severe TS than I currently have. I'm worried that the dosages meant for quitting smokers would be too strong for someone who only smokes occassionally.

Things that might help (please add to this list!)

+More exercise. As mentioned, these urges come even when I am very tired, or my legs hurt; I am only able to resist them if absolutely knackered. The problem isn't that I'm naturally a very active, energetic person; the problem is that I have Tourette, and I would continue to have it even if I ran a marathon. However, if these urges came after I had worked out for the day, I might be able to tell my brain "I'm exhausted, fuck off" or "I already did that today at the gym, I'm done for the day." Part of my need is ritual fulfiillment, but I also need something that can be done anytime, anywhere, when the urge strikes me. I already walk everywhere, though; I'm a little worried I just might be piling onto my soreness.

+Posting a big poster in every room that says "JUMPING IS BAD" to help me be more mindful and stop sooner.

+Deciding on another, similar, safer ritual/activity. I need ideas for this; it has to be able to be done indoors in a small space, with no prep.

I know I'm crazy, but what kind of crazy?

JeremiahBritt — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 10:56:26 -0800

Hard to describe restless feeling in small of back seems to cause/be related to irritability, compulsions. I first noticed this when I was a child, and it happens anywhere from once a week to once a year, normally at night.

When I was ~ 10, I noticed a small wart on the inside of my calf before going to bed and planned on telling my mother about it the next day. But as I lay in bed I, passingly, thought about cutting it off with scissors. While this should have been as ridiculous as thinking about cutting off a foot to treat an ingrown toenail, it stuck in my head somehow.

I noticed an almost itchy restlessness in the small of my back. It is hard to describe, but it is like the prickly sensation you get when you feel you are being watched, except much stronger, maddeningly so.

I tried to ignore it, to forget about the wart, but it got so bad I was hitting myself in the back and thrashing, almost like I was throwing a tantrum, trying to get it to stop. It wouldn't and I ended up sneaking out of bed around midnight, getting an eXacto blade and some rubbing alcohol and cutting the wart out.

Since then I've never had a compulsion so drastic, normally something like a sharp toenail I have to cut, but it is certainly not the run of the mill "this is bothering me I have to deal with it" neurosis like checking to see if you've shut the oven off. It happens for the littlest annoyances (a mosquito flying around) or for big problems (college exams) but not all the time and not predictable.

Sometimes, like now, I'll get the feeling with no particular worry or thought in my head and, without a compulsion to complete and focus on, it makes me very irritable and rude.

Can someone please tell me what is going on? I'm certain it's psychological, but I can't figure out what it's called or what causes it. It's not a specific compulsion and, while I like to keep my desk neat, I don't (as far as I know) exhibit any other OCD tendencies such as counting, cleanliness or orderly lining up items based on size. It also doesn't appear for the same things, but any number of fixations without a pattern I can see.

This is the first time I remember it happening in more than 6 months.

Is there a term for unbidden standard thoughts? Can I train myself to stop thinking them?

jack_mo — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:20:12 -0800

When I perform some everyday tasks, or walk past certain locations, I think the exact same things every time. It isn't just me, is it? Is there a term for these unbidden little standard thoughts, and can I train myself to stop thinking them? [examples inside] For example: every time I walk past the local bakers, my mind recites verbatim a conversation I had with the woman behind the counter on the day Labour won the 1997 general election. Every time I make toast, I use a special buttering method (!) taught to me by my Grandad, and my mind first repeats the time I was taught, then the time I told a friend about it sometime in 1996, and then - for a touch of meta-whatever - I always think about why I'm thinking about all this yet again in exactly the same terms as when I first noticed the phenomenon.