The difference seems to be whether its social or alone. I've never spent anything on microtransactions/f2p, but I've certainly spent money on alcohol. It's a world of difference spending $100 in a night with good friends, and $50 on a night alone at home.

Alcohol recovery meetings are absolutely full of people who have to say "I thought if I wasn't doing it alone it wasn't alcoholism." The social context of use is only one factor, it can't be used by itself to determine if the use is a problem.

IDK, it's not really relevant to my point I don't think. It sounds bad to me too but you're not going to argue an addict into believing they're addicted, even if they are. My understanding of gambling addiction isn't that sophisticated but I think that sort of use still puts them firmly in the minor leagues of use.

Anyway though an essential mechanism of addictions is that they are dynamic. You can interview large groups of users of any drug (and also probably gambling) who will attest to its benefits in their lives. Even if they are currently correct, some of them will later become full blown addicts. It doesn't mean they were wrong at the time, just maybe overly confident about why it suits their lives.

A common AA dark joke is that "high-functioning isn't a type of alcoholism, it's a stage in it." A lot of normal users will end up addicts, a lot of mildly problem users will progress. AFAIK the same patterns show in gambling addiction which is imo one of the major problems with these super accessible entry points into it.

> They said they've spent "thousands" on a single mobile game. We might just have different standards, but that's past "social drinker" status to me.

Assuming “thousands” means 5000, thats 416 per month. Taking an average cost of 10/drink (5 for beer, 15 for cocktail - this skews higher in major cities, lower out of major cities, lower still outside of cities), thats ~8 drinks a week.

I regret choosing to continue the GPs use of "social drinker" to establish the "level" of spending.

If you spend thousands of dollars on a mobile game, that is dramatically outside the average (of my experiences).