You can choose to believe what I'm going to tell you or you can refuse.When any fruitless behavior takes over other interests and impairs social/academic/occupational/ athletic functioning and interests, it is essentially a clinical addiction just like drug abuse or alcholism. I'm not even kidding. Excessive video game use is THE biggest and most underdiagnosed problem in the lives of teenage boys. It ruins way more opportunities than most people admit or even realize. It is an enormous, societal-level problem, and you're no exception to it.Many kids will fail the grading period due to that video game. Countless kids fail out of college every semester because of video games. I had 5 close friends in college who dropped out because of these games. Game manufacturers want this to happen, because it sells their games. Kids are truly consumed by it. It is literally no different than drug addiction, in terms of what it does to other areas of functioning and what is potentially sacrificed to support the addiction/dependence.You can quit football if you want. You can let your grades drop. You can disregard whatever hopes for college you may have. Those are your choices. You admitted that Halo is a problem. Your next step is to decide whether 1) you're going to let the problem determine the rest of this year, and therefore potentially affect the next few years and beyond, or 2) you're going to get help or do whatever else you need in order to keep this behavior under control.I used to play a LOT of video games until I realized how much it was really getting in the way of my normal life. When I quit, I quit for good. It was one of the best things I ever did for myself. Now, I'm a therapist and a lot of my work is done with kids who are failing school and playing hours of video games daily.
