To preface, this post isn’t a bash on gaming. I’ve been gaming since I was 3 years old on the NES. It was (and still is) a part of my life. That said, while I turned out ok in the end, I would play games every free moment I had. I’ve spent thousands of hours in World of Warcraft during the TBC-WotLK era. My pattern would be school-home-eat while playing wow-sleep thinking of wow-repeat. My whole social circle formed around WoW and LoL/dota2 later. I would often listen to music while playing. Of course, we grew up and we became distant over time. I more or less ended up with barely any friends.
I don’t play games much nowadays because it’s simply better for my own mental health. I still play but with a lot more moderation - occasionally booting my PS2 or playing a run or two of Binding of Isaac. Most of my free time goes towards creative hobbies.
15 years later, whenever I hear music from that time, I get jittery and think about the fun I had in wow. I’ve fallen into that trap. Private servers galore, I used to play in them back then too, they’ve gotten even better since then. I start playing, ditch all my other hobbies, go out only for work, and in the end not have fun at all, and spiral into depression. The itch barely gets scratched. This cycle has been repeating over and over. I don’t want it to happen again and I just got the jitters again.
I don’t want to stop listening to music I like just because monkey brain associates it with WoW.
Play Skyrim instead of wow, or something other than an MMO. Most mmos are literally designed to do that to you. Hell most mmos now days won’t reward you unless you play them like that. Don’t play MMOs. Single players are great for just 30 min sessions whenever the hobby gets boring. I recommend Dave the diver.
Great points.
To add for OP: I’ve found that I can scratch the “play and progress with friends” itch with games like Torchlight II, which doesn’t have the same kind of addiction triggers.