Cyber Junkie: Escape the Gaming and Internet Trap

In Roberts's sober personal account of addiction, he reveals a modern society completely inundated with electronics. We are embroiled in stimuli from texting, chatting, social networking, casual gaming, and massive multi-user role playing games that allow us to trade real life for highly stimulating virtual realities. For the majority of users, these stimuli provide a brief, entertaining diversion from the quotidian. But for some, it results in destroyed careers and relationships, and ruined lives. A recovering "cyber junkie" himself, Roberts outlines the ways in which game addiction occurs and manifests, and provides step-by-step strategies for concerned family members and friends who want to help their addicted loved ones recover. While cyber addiction is a decidedly modern phenomenon, the steps to recovery will be familiar to anyone with an even passing knowledge of AA, and readers will be forgiven for mistaking his intervention advice as something taken from a substance abuse tale. Roberts's tale shines most when salaciously highlighting the myriad forms that cyber addiction takes, and when explaining the seductive allure of modern stimuli. Readers who can move past skepticism about cyber addiction will find Roberts's tale disturbing and enlightening. (Sept.)