According to the Center for On-Line Addiction, warning signs for L4D addiction include:
- *Playing for increasing amounts of time (without sex)
- *Thinking about gaming during other activities (including sex)
- *Gaming to escape from real-life problems, anxiety, depression, (and sex)
- *Lying to friends and family to conceal gaming (during sex)
- *Feeling irritable when trying to cut down on gaming (and sex)
- *Carpal tunnel syndrome (from masturbating)
- *Sleep disturbances (not sex)
- *Back, neck aches
- *Headaches (due to lack of sex)
- *Dry eyes
- *Failure to eat regularly or neglect personal hygiene
This 12 step program will help you overcome your L4D addiction and set you on the path to new and different games.
1. HONESTY: Admit that you, or your character (unless it's Coach), are powerless to overcome your addictions and that your life has become unmanageable as a result of Valve software.
2. HOPE: Come to believe that the power greater than ourselves or a bottle of pills can restore you to health. Zoe is not coming to revive you, either.
3. TRUST: Decide to turn your will and your life over to the care of your higher power and succumb to the witch for one last time.
4. TRUTH: Make a searching and fearless written moral inventory of yourself and your game library. How many remain unopened? How many remain neglected?
5. INTEGRITY: Admit to yourself, to a higher power, and another human being the exact nature of your wrongs. This can be via Facebook or Twitter.
6. CHANGE OF HEART: Become entirely ready to have a higher power remove all your characters and game saves. Deletion is the only answer.
7. HUMILITY: Humbly ask a higher power to remove your disc from your console.
8. BROTHERLY LOVE: Make a written list of all gamertags you have harmed with friendly fire and become willing to make restitution to them.
9. RESTITUTION AND RECONCILIATION: Wherever possible, make direct restitution to all gamers you have harmed via Microsoft Points, except when to do so would injure them or others addicted to the game.
10. ACCOUNTABILITY: Continue to take personal inventory of the DLC you've bought and never played, and when you are wrong promptly play it.
11. PERSEVERANCE: Ignore (and continue to ignore) your L4D friends list. Earnestly seek to understand your higher power, no matter who may be on Xbox Live any given day. Continue to give yourself credit for earnest effort, however imperfect or weepy.
12. SERVICE AND SPIRITUALITY: Having had a spiritual video game awakening as a result of these steps, share this message with others who excessively play L4D as a replacement for human touch and practice these principles in all you do.
