True junkies.

I began playing an online video game several years ago at the urging of some friends. They swore that it was better than sex. (like they ever got any). I plunked down my 50 bucks and my first monthly fee of $11.95 and tried out this virtual world.

These types of games are called mmporg's (massively multiplayer online role playing games). My friends invited me to their guild and I got down to playing.

The game was exciting, difficult and fun, we would all log on and go into dangerous places and kill monsters.

If you died, your guy appeared naked at the nearest city and you had to run back to your corpse un-armed. If you didn't retrieve your corpse within a certain time period all your costly equipment disappeared and you had to start all over.

After playing for a while I noticed my friends began to change. They became absorbed into the game and rarely came out of their homes for our usual Tuesday beer night, professional basketball game or just to hang out.

A couple of my friends had their girlfriends leave them because they were tired of competing with the game for attention

A couple of other friends lost their jobs because they no longer showed up to work.

One guy was so bad off that a group of us went over to check on him. We walked into his house and noticed all his furniture was gone and he was alone in an empty bedroom with his computer on top of a cardboard box.

He had lost his job, girlfriend, and had sold all of his furniture to pay for this electronic crack. I noticed that he had gone down to about 95 pounds from a diet of Cheetos and cigarettes.

We set up an intervention one night and ripped the Internet cable out of the back of his house.

He couldn't afford to pay for the repair and soon lost his house and had to go back to live with mom and dad.

Actually four friends, all educated professionals around 30 years old had to go back to live with their parents after this video game obsession ruined their lives.

And they still didn't stop playing...

I still liked the game but I could no longer bring myself to play it with these guys anymore. How could I condone their behavior? This game was my hobby but I still took care of my family, kept my job and had a life.

Then I started reading news stories about people actually killing each other over in game items (these are virtual pretend fake swords and armor that they earned in the game), One guy stabbed his room mate for selling a game item. The divorce rate for game players skyrocketed.

Every time I logged on someone was chatting about their wife or husband leaving them over their game play.

I ended up quitting the game myself when I finally got tired of it.

It become drudgery and stressful instead of a relaxing diversion.

I happened to be looking around on EBay one day when I noticed that a set of boots my character had were being sold for $600

I was shocked that someone would pay what was a weeks wages for me at the time for a pair of boots that existed only as electrons in some stupid game.

I went online, took inventory of everything I owned in game and posted the items on EBay.

Not really expecting much, I didn't check my email for a few days and when I finally did every item sold. I logged on, delivered the goods and got my money through paypal.

That month I received a check for about $4500 It just happened to be enough for the down payment for our new house.

Immediately I logged back on threw on some junk armor, went out and fought an won all my equipment again and sold it.

I tried to convince one of my game junkie friends that his game bank alone was worth over a quarter of a million dollars and he should sell out. He refused, he flatly stated that selling "in game items" was immoral and only losers traded their game gear.

Soon Ebay banned all transactions of virtual property for all Sony subsidiaries.

I soon lost track of most of my friends. I can imagine they are laying in some back alley behind a Starbucks dressed in rags clutching an old laptop still playing that stupid game.