Since the anime first came out in around 1998 or 99. (My first episode was "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak," during the series' first run through dubbed. That should give you an idea of the exact date.)
So, I'd say around nine or ten years. And I blame my addiction on the cheesy humor. I mean, the entire battle against the talking Gastly? I still think that's the best battle that ever took place in the anime (but that's just me).
That is one of my favourite Pokemon episodes, and that's one of the reasons why.
But anyway, I first
heard about Pokemon when someone came into my fifth-grade class and talked about violence, then TV shows that provoke it in kids. The first show he mentioned was Pokemon, which most of the class knew about but not me. Days later, a student in my class brought in some Pokemon stuff for show-and-tell, one of which was a Pikachu plushie. Days later, I saw some kids sharing Pokemon cards, one of which was a Ponyta card. (So Ponyta was the second Pokemon I knew about--how odd.) Things continued in this fashion--I just learned about different kinds of Pokemon. I was drawn in by the idea of cute little monsters, probably (besides, I had already gotten into the Kirby video games, and if they don't have cute little monsters, nothing does).
After fifth grade ended, I watched the TV show for the first time--the first episode I ever saw was the third episode, "Ash catches a Pokemon". From then on, I watched the show every day, eager to know about all the different kinds of Pokemon. I made it a small goal to know about every Pokemon in existence; I did this through watching the show and the Pokerap that followed. (I still remember how the Pokerap went to this day.)
*Bonus: I admit to having first learned about psychic powers by watching the episode "Abra and the Psychic Showdown". Before then, I didn't know what the word "psychic" even meant.
Shortly after that, I became interested in collecting Pokemon cards. The first four cards I ever had were Abra, Ponyta, Starmie, and a psychic energy. I became very interested in collecting these cards, but over the years, I found nobody to play with. I abandoned collection of these cards shortly after Ruby/Sapphire came out.
About a year after I became interested in Pokemon, two things happened. One, after seeing the first Pokemon movie, I created my first Fakemon, a penguin Pokemon named Peppy. (ARRRGH, Game Freak stole my idea when they created Piplup years later!) Two, for my twelfth birthday, I got Pokemon Yellow (I already had a gameboy), and fell in love with it. Although I got stuck in three places: trying to beat Brock, trying to get into Saffron City, and trying to beat the Elite Four. I ended up with a wonderful team with Hypno as my best Pokemon, and Butterfree, Dewgong, Dodrio, Seadra, and Pikachu were also on it. Unfortunately, my nephew deleted my game by attempting to use a Game Shark on it...
Years later, I continued to watch the anime, but by the fourth or fifth season I began to lose interest. Admittedly I did regain interest slightly by the sixth season or so (and nearly fell in love with Harley), but after that... well let's say I never ever saw a Pokemon episode with a Sinnoh Pokemon in it (besides Munchlax and Bonsly and Mime Jr. and Lucario, who appeared before Ash's arrival in Sinnoh).
But my interest in the games has never ceased. I have owned every mainstream video game except Red and Blue and Fire Red, and still play Emerald and Diamond and occasionally Pearl, while on rare occasions visiting my old Crystal game. I created loads more fakemon and even had a well-thought-out-but-never-written Pokemon fanfic to go with it.
Although I see that I'm in danger of stopping playing the video games (I'm teetering on whether or not I should get Platinum when it comes out), although I have stopped watching the anime and collecting the cards, and although my Pokemon fanfic is no longer Pokemon, my interest in Pokemon is currently fueled by my participation in four Pokemon RPG's, and my interest in the concept of cute little monsters with magical powers, kept inside little round compartments.
