AMA Journal of Ethics^®

Like most extreme behaviors, excessive videogame playing functions as a cover or adaptive mechanism for underlying anxiety and depression. Compulsive gaming, like all pathological solutions (alcohol, drugs, gambling) makes a bad situation worse.

One of the many doors money and power often open gives access to opioids where they would otherwise be withheld without strict oversight and management. Elvis Presley provides perhaps the most famous example of unmanaged access to drugs.

An older generation was far more likely to understand itself and its social world in terms of sin and virtue, vice and godliness. Lack of self-control and weakness of will were moral failings to be avoided. That sort of language has fallen on hard times.