prime_marco

Hey I actually reached 101 days yesterday! We're basically an elite group at this point so we should give ourselves a fun group name, like, ''Game Quitters Legends''. Anyway, here's what I've learned over the last 101 days or so: 1. You need social support to make massive changes in your life. Joining this forum & talking to you guys made me remember that I can't be awesome without social support to push me in the right direction. As a teenager, I thought I could do it all by myself, especially since I felt that people in my life were actively trying to stop me from achieving my goals, but now, I've realized that if I'm going against the world, I might as well recruit the world to help me. 2. Don't try to quit any other habits when you're getting rid of an addiction, just focus on refraining from the one thing. Also, you have to want something with every fiber of your being in order to get it. That intense focus & drive is what will make you successful at anything. 3. There's no shame in going online if you can't find the support you need in real life. This is what brought me to this forum; I wanted to make these changes in my life, but nobody in my real life was supporting me in them. And hey, it's 2015, not 1995. 4. Writing stuff down on the Internet, where it stays forever, actually helps massively in forcing you to stay with your commitments. It's almost like you're promising the entire world you're going to do something; that level of accountability kind of forces you to do what you'll say you'll do; it helped me cut down greatly on all of the excuses I was making to myself & others, stop lying, get to the bottom of my problems, & start overcoming them. 5. Self-improvement is a process: it takes time, and you have to be willing to stick with it, no matter how frustrating it gets. If you do, the end payoff will be bigger than you ever thought. 6. Making mistakes/relapsing is not the end of the world; as long as you're not dead, you can always bounce back. This is actually my 3rd attempt at quitting games; my 1st & 2nd ones lasted just under 30 days each. This forum gave me the courage to get up & try again. Peace out! Btw, check out some new pics of me trying on new clothes at the mall (to celebrate 100 days & make sure I achieved it, I went shopping for new clothes):

I already did that, but I get too many emails from too many sources, so every time I get an email, I check this website, even though 90% of the time, it's nothing to do with this website.

Thank you Zane for suggesting this! By the way, great to see another '96 baby on this forum (November)! It's because I'm having private convos with Cam, & I'm trying to get notifications when he replies (like my Twitter & Instagram apps).

Just bought the Challenge. And so it begins.

Feeling great, on day 5 now! Had a weird dream last night where I was playing basically every video game I ever liked, in order of when I got the games.

Thanks guys for the warm welcome! I talked with my little brother, my parents, & everybody else who used to game with me about this & they said they were perfectly cool with it. Currently on day 4 of my current gaming-free period, trying to get past the first 90 days

Hey welcome to the community bro! I know it's really hard to quit games, but this is a really positive step. What helped me permanently quit all gaming was deleting & trading in all of the games that I could, & throwing out the rest (I actually did this, haha). If you still have games in the house, I suggest you do this you'll feel much better

Hey Ryan! It's awesome that you managed to recognize how much of a problem you had. Speaking of selling your games, how are you gonna do it? Are you gonna sell them on eBay? Craigslist? Kijiji? That could be a business idea & something new you could do with your life :)

Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Marco from Toronto, Canada. I'm an 18-year-old dude, and this is my story. It's long, so brace yourselves. As a toddler, I was introduced to gaming by my cousin, who had a Nintendo 64. When I turned 6, I got a GameCube for my birthday. It changed my life. However, my cousin used to always beat me at video games. So, I started practicing really hard to beat him. Other than that, I didn't game that much as a kid; I was too busy going outside, playing sports with my friends, playing piano, & taking taekwondo & swimming lessons to do that. In 5th grade, I even had a job delivering newspapers. But when the 2008 recession hit, everything changed. My mom lost her high-paying job, & at one point, we had only $300 in the bank account. My school got a new principal & vice-principal who hated my guts. In 7th grade, I got bullied by the hockey players because they saw basketball as a sissy sport. I got into lots of fights, was kicked off my school's basketball team & all of my other extracurriculars, & nearly expelled from school & arrested. My parents also became way overprotective & strict. In the end, the school decided to sentence me to detention for the rest of the school year. That's when my problems started. began to play video games because that's all I could do; I couldn't go outside the house alone, nor could I visit my friends or have them visit me. On top of that, I got an ingrown toenail which lasted for 3 years & effectively derailed my NBA & NFL dreams. I was miserable. In Grade 8, I learned how to handle my conflicts peacefully, & won back the privileges of staying home by myself and doing my old extracurriculars. However, I was not allowed to use social media, date, hang out with friends after school, go to parties, or even talk to girls for the next 2 years. I started over when I began my freshman year of high school & again became one of the most popular kids in school, but due to my parents' Gestapo-like house rules, they quickly gave up on inviting me out anywhere. So, I kept playing video games. After my injury healed in my sophomore year, I began training to play football for my junior year. During my sophomore year, things turned around, as I won back all of the privileges I used to have. My junior year totally rocked: I had an 88% average across all my subjects, reached the provincial semifinals with my football team, partied every weekend, got the hottest clothes, & started a business flipping used items on Kijiji. I even gave up video games for a while, I was so busy. Senior year looked like it was gonna be even better, as I had been voted Valedictorian, & my business was taking off. However, early in my senior year, I got sick & lost my starting position on the football team, basically never playing that season. I also failed my driving test twice during the summer between my junior & senior years, & my dad had it delayed until he decided I was ''ready''. Finally, around Christmas 2013, my mom looked inside my room's drawers, & found, among other things, condoms, numerous party invitations & pictures of me with girls, & when she did, I was immediately grounded indefinitely. My parents nearly forced me off social media, but I held on. The combination of all of these factors made me depressed, & I began to play video games 3-5 hours a day. Madden's ''Superstar Mode'' & NBA 2K's ''MyCareer'' were the big ones. My grades dropped to 85%, I gained a reputation as an unreliable businessman, & lost my social life. I also stopped working out. In March 2014, I made the decision to give up video games completely & tried to trade in my games. But because there's a law where I'm from that says that you can't trade video games until you're 18 (I was 17 at the time), I couldn't do that. So I decided to try to quit video games for the first time, during which time I tried to use my business to sell off all of my old video games. These ventures only lasted about a month, as I was forced to stop doing this by my parents, who have a rule not to give away video games that they bought with their money. So, that ended, and I was forced to take a work placement job at Fortino's provided by my school during May 2014. I absolutely hated it, & showed it by always showing up late & hanging out in the break room for more time than I actually worked. I was not invited to come back for the summer. These events sent me further into a depressive spiral that summer, with me playing video games basically all the time after a massive garage sale in July where my video games were spared. After that, my first year of university started in September. I managed a 3.00 GPA (75% overall average in all my courses), but had no social life, no extracurriculars, no hobbies, nothing. Still, I kept playing video games. In April, I was getting ready to do my final exams. Instead of studying, I played video games throughout exam week. After realizing this, I decided to trade in & give away my games, & stop playing permanently. This was despite miraculously passing all of those final exams. On April 21, 2015, I did just that. When I told my parents, they were at first really upset with my decision. But I told them why I did it, & they understood. Ever since then, I've been video game free (except when playing with my little brother & his friends). Right now, I am doing summer courses to lighten my course load for next year, I am back to working out, & I'm starting to talk to old friends again. I also managed to get my full driver's license (in Ontario, you have to go through 2 levels of learner's permit, which you START at 16). However, one problem still persists. My little brother (11 years old) is basically playing video games all the time, & when he asks to spend time with me, that's basically all him & his friends want to do. I've repeatedly told him that I've moved on from gaming, but he keeps arguing with me about how it's not bad. So yeah, that's me.