Great post and parts really resonate with me. I got addicted to World of Warcraft. It was contrary to my own self image that my brain could do something to me that I didn't endorse, but post WoW I recognized that it did exactly that.
I started sliding down that slope with No Man's Sky but have since corrected (fortunately NMS isn't as well put together as WoW or it might have been worse).
The key for me is running away from something you feel you have no control over feels like a better solution than dealing with the pain. Escaping into a world that has expected behaviors that you can understand is, for me, less painful than a world with people advancing bad agendas for self serving reasons.
The pain is real, the fight doesn't stop, every day you shoot for "well I didn't give in to my fears today, on to tomorrow."
I think it's important to not forget that video games (in particular WoW) are fun to play. They're fun to play like its fun to play sport, exercise etc etc. They are fun to play and that on its own is a good reason to play them.
Everyone has things they feel like they should be or need to be doing every day.
We are allowed to do things that give us joy that take us out of the day to day, it's just whether or not these things start to consume so much of your time that you negate other important areas.
You are correct, they are fun to play. The challenge is knowing that the activity has become unhealthy. Every addict that I personally know thought they had their issue under control until something helped them realize they didn't. I didn't go downstairs at my daughter's birthday when everyone there was singing and she was blowing out the candles. I didn't go because I was 'healing the raid' and me leaving probably would have resulted in a wipe. That was my "wait, what am I doing" moment.
I started sliding down that slope with No Man's Sky but have since corrected (fortunately NMS isn't as well put together as WoW or it might have been worse).
The key for me is running away from something you feel you have no control over feels like a better solution than dealing with the pain. Escaping into a world that has expected behaviors that you can understand is, for me, less painful than a world with people advancing bad agendas for self serving reasons.
The pain is real, the fight doesn't stop, every day you shoot for "well I didn't give in to my fears today, on to tomorrow."