Why do you play tetris?  If you're on this site, chances are you're more than a casual player.  Or maybe you are.  But the casual players aren't who my question is directed to.  I'm asking this of the people who take the game seriously.  Even if it's just the love of competition.  If you care if you win or lose.  Enough to devote the amount of time you do to the game.  However much that might be.  I surprised myself recently looking at my stats.  On average over the past year, I've devoted about an hour a day, every single day, playing the game.  Just on tetris friends.  Not counting facebook or my ds.  During that time I've gone through quite a lot.  I was deployed overseas, dealt with the death of my father, missed my first complete holiday season with my family, turned 22, said goodbye to several friends, came back to the US, had relationships begin and end, made some huge life decisions.  But still, I always seem to find time for these falling blocks.  I've been finding that I play the game to escape the pain.  Like a drug.  An escape from my reality.  You see, I am in a very tough spot in my life right now.  And tetris helps me escape from it.  When I focus on the matrix and the blocks as hard as I do, my mind can't focus on anything else.  I can't quite decide if this is a good thing, or a bad thing.  In a way I feel like I'm running away from everything.  But at the same time, right now I just have to grind through where I am.  My situation may or may not drastically change in the near future.  But that is irrelevant.  Lately I've been wandering if I would play this game as much as I do now if I wasn't in such a rough spot.  Is it something I really truly enjoy, or, like a drug, am I just addicted to the game and the escape it provides?