non-substance addiction--my experience

Have you ever heard of video game addiction? It's very real, and very damaging. I wasn't addicted to video games, but something similar.

It was a gradual process. I was introduced to a video of a series, and became obsessed with it. Over a period of weeks I began to notice that I felt rather depressed for some reason, but it was kinda mild in the beginning. I think that's when I began developing withdrawals. I don't know what triggered it all--family stress, maybe? My family wasn't the best environment during that time, we were under a lot of stress and fought often. But in spite of that the year before I became addicted was actually one of the best years of my life (with the year I had been addicted being by far the worst), so it's weird.

Then the withdrawals starting getting worse and worse. I noticed that it was in coincided with how often I engaged with the source of my addiction--I would experience euphoria while indulging in the addiction, and be severely depressed when away from it. Also, to me nothing mattered but the thing I was addicted to--and the idea of it not existing filled me with a sense of sadness and dread. And if I couldn't be at the source, I would imagine the characters in my head. I could be at the grocery store, and I would imagine the characters being at the grocery store and interacting with each other. I could be reading my Bible--which I no longer got any enjoyment out of, rather it made me depressed and anxious--and in order to make it at all pleasant I would have to imagine the characters reading the Bible and reacting to what they read.
(Though there was one part of the Bible I could read without a sense of dread--Psalms had A LOT about depression in there, and I related to all of it. So I found that comforting.)

At my very worst, I was sleeping all the time, because being awake was too painful. I had constant withdrawal depression, and I would fanatcise about killing myself and wish that I had the courage to go through with it. The only time I felt at all happy was when engaging in my addiction--and when I did that and got my dose of happiness, it would leave me in a state of denial where I was convinced that I didn't have a problem at all.

It was around that time that I asked a friend to pray for me. I had tried probably hundreds of times to just quit, but none of them worked. I would always give in because either it was too painful not to engage or the allure was too strong. But after asking my friend to pray, I was finally able to stick to quitting.
It wasn't fun--not at all. I spent about two weeks in the most miserable withdrawal state. I hated going to church because it made my withdrawal symptoms intensify--it just reminded me that my addiction wasn't pleasing to God.
But, it did work. After those two weeks of keeping away from my addiction went by, I began to feel more normal, less depressed. I felt like my chains had been broken, finally.

I still lived with depression for a couple years afterwards, I think the addiction caused an imbalance in my brain that it took a while to heal from. (And God basically told me as much, at one point, that the addiction had left a large open wound that would take time to heal.) But it wasn't as severe as it had been, for the most part--I did have a couple intense depressive episodes that weren't very fun. Otherwise my depression was more on the mild to moderate side at that point.
I'm healed now, by the grace of God. Just took time.

 

Well this thread was more for the purpose of education/spreading awareness than for advice. For me this stuff happened a decade ago. I'm also able to partake in what I was once addicted to, without falling back into addiction. So I consider myself fully recovered.