Dear game quitters, I have been lurking on the forums for a while, before I finally now decided to get involved myself. Before I start, I would like to pay respect to the founder of the community, Cam. The work you are doing is absolutely amazing and looking at the journals and stories people share, it is clear that your initiative is helping people. A big thanks to all the people that have shared their stories. Every contribution is an inspiration to people with similar struggles, just like myself. I have to be honest that I have written this introduction several times over the past month, but I never submitted the post because I was afraid of coming forward and putting my story out in the open, available to everyone. I guess, to some extent, I have been a bit ashamed of myself. I am a video-game addict. Though I haven’t gamed for 4 months, I still think about them and I still catch myself arguing with myself, whether they are really that bad or whether my addiction is real. Over a 10-year period, I had spent every single free moment I had available on online-games and I am/was not really sure whether I was ready to just throw that away and start this new chapter of my life. The change is scary. On the surface, video-games never really caused me to neglect anything (apart from myself, which I’ll come back to). I finished school, got through University and I even obtained a PhD (neurosciences) about a year ago. Subsequently, I even found myself a nice job. I am happily married and I recently became a father about 4 months ago. This is when I realized how much video-games really affected me and what role they played in my life. Becoming a father is the most intense and complex emotional experience I have ever had. I slept less than ever and my stress levels went through the roof. In this situation, I would game to cope. The problem was that there was simply no time in my new life. I was forced cold turkey. For the first time in my life, during the first week of two of my fatherhood, I was facing full blown anxiety. What should have been the most beautiful time of my life turned into a nightmare for all of us. At first I didn’t realize the role of my past gaming-behavior. I am not necessarily attributing everything to games, but it has become clear that through gaming I learned to block, ignore or shut out negative emotions, stress or problems in my life. In a sense I never learned to deal with life or confront problems. This is why I ended up here as I hope to learn from others and share my insights.