I experienced a very long and severe bout of depression (with very short term highs) for the last ~2 years and in that time I’ve spent an insane amount of money on microtransactions in phone games. I know it’s been driven by working from home, alone, all day every day, but I’m still mad at myself. I don’t want to divulge how much I’ve spent, but I’m finally coming out of the depression and I’ve realized how much I have spent on these games and I’m honestly shocked, upset, angry at myself, and angry at the game developers who obviously design these games to make it incredibly tempting and easy to spend $1 here or $5 there so it’s easy to lose track.

I’ve been looking online for resources on how to help stop the behavior, and unfortunately there’s almost nothing out there. I did find a website that talked about this form of addiction and it mentioned it is common among depressed / BPD individuals because the microtransactions provide little dopamine boosts, which is what people get addicted to.

Honestly, I’m just curious if anyone else has struggled / is struggling now. Is this common for BPD? Im not looking for an excuse, I know that I’m an adult and my choices are my own, but I feel like it would help me process this situation and come up with solutions to stop permanently if I had some context, or others I could talk to about it.

I hope this is okay to post. Thanks for your time if you read this.