Corkaine is more than just a game…it’s a game on a mission to get people addicted to spending more time with each other in person playing games instead of getting addicted to bad habits. Corkaine is also on a mission to bring awareness to our addictions and to do something about them.

When we use the word addiction, people generally think of substance abuse addictions, which usually involve drugs and/or alcohol. However, addiction can also come in the form of behavioral addictions such as gambling addictions, sexual addictions, internet addictions, work addictions, phone addictions, and dozens of other types of behavioral addictions.

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of addiction is “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming.”

In other words, we are all enslaved to some habit in one form or another, which to us means that we are all addicted to something.

Drew Restivo, founder of Corkaine, has friends and family members who have been affected by substance abuse addictions, particularly drug and alcohol addictions. These addictions are some of the hardest things to go through because these addictions don’t just affect the person addicted, but they also affect everyone else around them.

After personal experiences with loved ones, one of the most complex parts of trying to help a family member and/or friend with their addiction was getting them to realize that they had an addiction in the first place. It is estimated that 95% of those who need alcoholism treatment do not feel that they need treatment, according to www.AddictionCenter.com. That’s a huge percentage of people! We love drinking craft beer, but we don’t think we have a drinking problem ourselves.

That’s when we got to thinking….if 95 out of 100 people with alcohol addictions don’t believe that they need treatment for their addiction, then something is wrong. Are they not aware of addiction signs, or are they just not taking hard looks at themselves in the mirror? Are we not looking into the mirror ourselves? If so, are we also part of this statistic, and do we not realize our addictions?

Take the addiction of sitting in front of a computer for hours, for example. We sit at a computer for hours, and it’s never crossed our minds that we might be addicted to the computer. Did you know that it is now estimated that sitting down for long periods is often worse than smoking and kills more people than HIV, according to the Mayo Clinic, described in an article we read on HuffingtonPost.com? Do we give up computers altogether, or is there another solution? One solution that comes to mind is the creation of the standing desk. Since we cannot give up the the addiction or necessity of being on a computer, the standing desk is a tool that can be used to help with the potential negative aspects of a computer addiction.

Another example of a dangerous addiction that is often ignored is phone addiction, especially when driving. Did you know that distracted driving (phone calls while driving, texting while driving, etc.) in the U.S. was responsible for 37,461 lives in 2016 alone? That’s a 5.6 percent increase from 2015, according to NHTSA.gov. One solution to this problem is the utilization of Bluetooth with cell phones that allows for hands-free talking and some voice-to-text capabilities. However, Bluetooth technology is not necessarily a solution to the texting-while-driving addiction problem. Hopefully, one day soon, technology will come out that completely replaces texting while in a vehicle, but for now, the solution to this addiction is to go cold turkey and stop texting while driving. You will be saving lives, including your own.

There are many addictions out there, and we all are addicted to something, but is there enough self-awareness and self-reflection going on in each of us to recognize these addictions so that we can do something about them? Or are we too stigmatized by the word addiction that we associate the word addiction with only drugs and alcohol?

These are some of the questions that we hope Corkaine will help raise awareness of. We also hope that the word “Corkaine” gets people to create more open conversations about addiction in general. We can’t speak for everyone, but when we looked inside ourselves and recognized some of our addictions, we found that one of our biggest addictions was the need to be “online constantly.” This constant need is an addiction, and it resulted in us not spending nearly as much time “offline” with friends and family as we used to. When we refer to spending time offline, we refer to socializing in person, not just on social networks. Humanity has always spent time together since the beginning of time, and this has only recently (within the last 15 years or so) started to change. This realization was very eye-opening for us. We saw this same “online addiction” everywhere we went, and it wasn’t just us….everywhere we went, we would see people walking around and glued to their smartphones. We saw people crossing the street while paying more attention to their phones than the cars passing by. This type of addiction is a problem. Many of us (including ourselves) are spending more time online nowadays than offline, and we want to do something about that.

The solution to this problem (to us) is to spend more of our time doing things we love (like playing games) with people in person (offline) and spend less time on our phones, our computers (online), and in solitude. However, this is easier said than done. Socializing online is a lot easier and requires little effort. Getting together with people in person is more challenging and requires much more effort. That’s when we asked ourselves, how do we get people to socialize in person more often when socializing online is a lot easier and requires less effort? The answer to this problem is to give people more reasons to socialize in person. There are many reasons to choose in-person socializing over online socializing, but the most exciting reason for us to get together is when we play games. No, we aren’t talking video games (even though we love those too). We are talking lawn games, sports games, board games, strategy games, and other types involving in-person social interaction and activity.

We love playing games, and we want to play more games with people more often, but to do this, we felt that we needed to create a new game ourselves that would be better than most of the games on the market so that people got together more often and played longer. That’s when we started working on the idea of our new game.

After months of working on our new game, we finally created a game that fit our model perfectly. Once the idea for the game was created, we needed a name that fit our mission of bringing self-awareness to addictions but also reflected our game, which is played with corks, cups, and our game board. That’s when the name Corkaine was chosen. We also felt we needed a slogan that fit our mission, and “get addicted to a better game” was perfect. After almost 2 years of prototyping and multiple game changes/improvements, Corkaine was finished, and we started selling our first units in June 2018.

Our mission with Corkaine is to bring awareness to our addictions and to encourage people from all walks of life to spend more time with each other in person by playing better games more often. Playing better games, like Corkaine, brings people together more often and keeps people together for longer. With over a dozen different games that can be played with a single Corkaine game set, the fun never ends.

Do you or do you know someone who is suffering from addiction? If so, there are addiction support groups that are here to help. We think the Addiction Group is a great resource for more information on addiction and support groups. Here are a few very helpful articles that you should check out:

List of Addiction Support Groups

How to Help an Addict Who Doesn’t Want Help