DaBest

Day 296 No VG - 296 days, no sports news - 0 days, NF - 0 days, SOB - 1 days, NNO59 - 0 days, NIA1030 - 1 days, NLAF - 0 days, NSOC - 0 days, Meditation - 0 days, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 0 weeks, no settings changes - 4 days. I messed up. Saturday started out well enough. Got ready for my day. Went out for a thirty minute walk and I felt really energized. I then went to find a social event I could attend earlier in the day that would help loosen me up for more social activities later at night, where I am still a bit stuck in my head. I then spent around 12 hours doing everything but that on the computer, finding anything to distract me. Sunday morning was a bit more of the same, but I did go to improv practice, though I was fashionably late. I'm still happy I was there for as long as I was though. It got me out of the house and with some friends--it got me out of my own hell. Home is hell. My brain still loves the surge of dopamine from the internet and finding things to get lost in. Dopamine + escapism + depression = love of escapism. I'm also a bit stressed from some work I have going on this week. I want to hide from some of those things and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. I'm just feeling overwhelmed in general. I've stopped embracing the suck as much as I could, and I also don't put anything in this unstructured time which is something to really look forward to on my Saturdays, or at least something to get me out of the house and socializing early on, which is also less stressful to get into. So I'm going to make a few adjustments for next Saturday: 1) I'm unplugging my router on Saturday morning. I'll still have my phone if I absolutely need internet, but I also have the smallest data plan possible so the possibility of abuse is way lower. 2) I blocked a ton more sites on my laptop and phone. Also, for the one time I legitimately unblocked YouTube on my phone a few weeks ago as I was doing "emergency" car repairs, I forgot to re-block it. That's fixed. 3) Again, I added a challenge to some of my blocker settings. Actually, I just added a few more. More steps between me and insanity. 4) Looking to see if I can attend a physical CGAA meeting. 5) Found events on Saturday morning/early afternoon for the next four weeks. In the future, I'm going to have to make time to do these searches after work. My biggest problems right now are fixing the unstructured time, giving myself social things I can look forward to, and maintaining consistency with confronting fears. This should help that. Oh, and I also tried to manage some examination of past traumatic events this weekend once everything went off the rails. Found some empathy and a lesson in there I didn't really expect.

Bravo on the milestone sir! Woo!

Hi @A Single Step, welcome! You have not fucked up your life beyond repair. Hell no. Just like your name states, you are on your first step, and that is fucking awesome! The only thing that happens when you waste 25 years of your life is that your goals are delayed, and often harder, but not impossible. Think of how an investment grows with compound interest--the most important factor is time. Three things that might be helpful after reading your post: 1) Start small. If you're truly feeling like you can't do anything to change, find the smallest "unit" that you can possibly change and try to implement that consistently for a week. For example, if one of your goals was to save a thousand dollars for an emergency fund (not sure where you live, but that amount is likely way too small, just an example), you could cut out one non-essential item (i.e., coffee) from your life. By the end of the week, you could have saved $20. At the end of the year, you would have that thousand dollars. Or if your goal was to get better social skills, a small goal could be to learn how to maintain better eye contact or smile more. Over time, these small habits add up, become something you can be proud of, and will put you in a very good position to start tackling your major goals. 2) Make it hard for yourself to relapse. If you are completely giving up gaming, uninstall games, delete accounts, block websites, etc. Personally, when I'm in my weakest moments, I find it very hard to stop if nothing physically gives me pause. If I can stop the avalanche of bad habits, even if just for a moment, my success rate is way higher. It creates breathing room for your rational mind to try and jump in during moments of irrationality. 3) Experiment. The best thing you can do is experiment. See what happens if you get more sleep. See what happens if you spend more time outside of your home. See what happens if you tweak your diet. Small things can make a big difference with mentality and keeping catastrophic thoughts at bay, Everyone is different though, so it's really up to you to figure out what changes you need to make in order to not game anymore and achieve your goals. For example, my first two points are recommendations, but you may find that it doesn't help you at all. That's fine, but you don't know until you test it. Make a hypothesis, experiment, examine results, iterate, improve. Good luck. You are making a great change and you should feel very proud of yourself!

Day 294 No VG - 294 days, no sports news - 3 days, NF - 5 days, SOB - 4 days, NNO59 - 3 days, NIA1030 - 3 days, NLAF - 5 days, NSOC - 18 days, Meditation - 4 days, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 3 weeks, no settings changes - 3 days. Hit all my habits today. Noice. Work started out a little rough but ended well today. We had a very dicey situation which thankfully we were all able to come to agreement on a path forward. I feel better now. When I was meditating last night this thing was on my mind the whole time. I'll actually be able to sleep somewhat comfortably this weekend. I also barely made it in time for my improv performance tonight. Was very much in my head and we did a new format which I had not practiced. The show was very clunky, but it wasn't catastrophically horrible. Afterwards, we went to a bar, and pretty much just hung out for almost four hours. It was actually really nice and we had some kinda deep conversations. I felt oddly open and connected. I also need to start taking this improv thing a little more seriously. No internet tomorrow. A little sad and a little happy about that.

Congrats on quitting LoL cold turkey for two weeks straight! That game can be insanely addictive. Yeah, I agree with @Alexanderle, you can't avoid thinking about it. If you've ever tried meditation and tried not thinking, it's absolutely impossible. Your brain will think about what it wants to for the most part. I'd recommend two things to try, and see how it works: 1) Meditation. This can be very helpful for recognizing emotions and thoughts and being able to not act impulsively on them. 2) Whenever you think about LoL, make your response be to ask yourself what's something other than LoL you want to do. All habits follow the same pattern: cue-routine-reward. You receive some kind of a stimulus, which then makes you do something, which then makes you feel good. For example, and this might not be exact, a loop like you described could look like: Cue--think about LoL/something that makes you think about LoL Routine--play LoL Reward--dopamine, achievement, social interaction (however toxic), victory. It's a lot easier to build new habits to replace old ones. A new habit could look like this: Cue--think about LoL/something that makes you think about LoL Routine--ask yourself what else besides LoL would be fun (gym, going outside, reading, creating something, other competitive hobby) Reward--dopamine, achievement, social interaction (not toxic!), victory (self) Note that the rewards match in both. Unless these desires are lessened (whatever they are, I don't know what it might be for you), the brain will still want the same things, so the goal is to get the same things in a healthier manner. Hope this helps!

Day 293 No VG - 293 days, no sports news - 2 days, NF - 4 days, SOB - 3 days, NNO59 - 2 days, NIA1030 - 2 days, NLAF - 4 days, NSOC - 17 days, Meditation - 3 days, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 3 weeks, no settings changes - 2 days. Got more sleep last night. Going to bed earlier tonight too. Work was busy today. A little stressful too. Hit all my habits today. Makes me happy. I'm going to clean up a bit and go to bed.

Welcome, Erik! You've made a good choice. If you stick with it, it will probably be one of the most rewarding experiences you've ever had. Just be careful during the first few weeks though, as cravings can be higher. After that though, hopefully things will calm down. Good luck!

Day 292 No VG - 292 days, no sports news - 1 days, NF - 3 days, SOB - 2 days, NNO59 - 1 days, NIA1030 - 1 days, NLAF - 3 days, NSOC - 16 days, Meditation - 2 day, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 3 weeks, no settings changes - 1 days. Thank you, @Erik2.0. Good news. It helped today. Didn't break any of my habits today. Some of that was out of pure desire to be disciplined. --- Today was weird. Slept in a little bit so I wouldn't crash on the ride in to work, but still got to work at a reasonable hour. Got very bad news almost right away, on top of all the other things I'm juggling. Handled the initial blow of the situation pretty quickly, but this will be a drag on me for a few weeks unfortunately. I'm good at handling crises, apparently...now if I only applied that to my life, haha. Like I said before, hit all my habits today and I'm going to bed at a reasonable hour once I'm done with this. Maybe I'll even go to the gym tomorrow.

Day 291 No VG - 291 days, no sports news - 0 days, NF - 2 days, SOB - 1 days, NNO59 - 0 days, NIA1030 - 0 days, NLAF - 2 days, NSOC - 15 days, Meditation - 1 day, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 3 weeks, no settings changes - 0 days. @BooksandTrees, I do want to stop hating, and I'll get there eventually, but I think these are just emotions that I've for the most part ran from. In a way, it's learning to stand up for myself years after the fact. I spent years of running away from him. I do want a better relationship with my father, and we have, ironically, with more distance. As long as I'm not calling him up randomly in the middle of the night calling him an asshole, I'm just going to just process what comes up at therapy. The only way to get over is through it. --- Well it's late. Bit of a binge. Accidentally had some sites unblocked. Fixed that and put in a challenge feature I didn't notice on one of my settings. I'm going to track how often I make these easier, if temporarily. Wanted to post to document while I had a moment of clarity.

Glad you got a plan down. Seems like a solid path forward. I might steal from it a bit.

Absolutely gangster. It's true no one else cares, but if you're there at work might as well be good at it than not. Not a lot of people get that, sadly. Good for you, man.

Yeah man, that's quite a predicament you have yourself there. I think with the boredom aspect of it, that might change as you develop your skills in 3D modeling, if you choose to continue with it. Improv didn't start getting fun for me until I started to put the pieces together in a coherent manner, and that took nearly a year. That said, if it is causing you to relapse into watching porn, maybe table the hobby for a bit while you get porn under control. You could always go back to it later, and I'm sure there's some other artistic outlet that could fill that void in the meantime. The porn issue does seem pretty important though, and if I were in your scenario, my cost-benefit analysis would be in favor of avoiding potential cues for the porn habit. Same reasoning behind quitting video games really, in my opinion. Also, I want to add I think you're brave for opening up and sharing as much as you do. It's a real boon to the forums here. I think a surprising amount of people can relate on some level to what you're going through, and it's helpful for others to consider and contemplate.

The truth 100% right here^^^ This is the good fight. Thank you. Also your art is dope! I can tell you've put a lot of work to in the past.

Day 290 No VG - 290 days, no sports news - 2 days, NF - 1 days, SOB - 0 days, NNO59 - 1 days, NIA1030 - 1 days, NLAF - 1 days, NSOC - 14 days, Meditation - 0 days, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 3 weeks. Thank you all @BooksandTrees, @ElectroNugget, and @Erik2.0. I really appreciate the support, and it's all sound advice. I read your posts earlier this morning while I was at work and it was a good reminder to be an ounce kinder with myself. I can report it went a long way to helping me get back on the right track today and didn't completely derail my workday. --- Stayed up very late last night/this morning too. Slept in a little bit and showed up to work late. Otherwise, I was reasonably productive today. Discipline was better today too. Had therapy after. We post-mortemed the past two weekends that I had, because my unstructured weekends are usually the killers, and even when they are structured, it often falls apart. Writing this out now, I need to find a better way of organizing my weekends. The post-its have been helping to reduce overall anxiety, and the lack of internet on Saturdays helps me keep a bit of focus, but it doesn't do much for pre-conditioning my mindset to want to go out at the end of the day, nor does it make me feel confident in my abilities to be social and go out and take some risks. Maybe if I had a lower-stress social event to go to earlier in the day, it would make going out easier at night, where I put more pressure on myself. Not to mention I can put less pressure on myself and the outcomes. That said, the discipline has to be there, or else none of this will stick. I remember listening to a Jocko Podcast of some Russian troops I believe in Kosovo. The Russian troops got rocked despite their training and technological advantages. When asked when things started going wrong, one of the survivors commented "It started when the men stopped shaving." I will continue building these habits until they stick and how I view myself changes. Only goals for this week are getting a normal sleep schedule again and meditating more than I've been. Therapy was also weird because I almost cried again. I brought up the fact that I've been really angry whenever I thought about my father as of late even though he hasn't done anything recently. Talking about my father made me angry and sad at the same time. I'm a little surprised how much unresolved stuff is there. My mother was a raging alcoholic, who has now been sober for 15 years, yet there is far less pain thinking back on that compared to my father. I feel like I should say something to him for my own sake, because he's already proven incapable of understanding before, but I also vacillate on whether or not it's worth it, would go towards making a better relationship, or whether or not it would just be out of malice and spite. Again, thank you guys for your messages. It means a lot to know that we aren't all in this battle alone.

Day 289 No VG - 289 days, no sports news - 1 day, NF - 0 days, SOB - 0 days, NNO59 - 0 days, NIA1030 - 0 days, NLAF - 0 days, NSOC - 13 days, Meditation - 0 days, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 3 weeks. I'm struggling right now. My barriers and habits I've built up feel like they're crumbling. I walked past a GameStop yesterday and felt really drawn to it. Probably the most I've felt pulled towards gaming in months. Friday binged, which was bad. Saturday started off well enough--took care of some chores, took ANOTHER nap. Actually felt reasonably well. Didn't go out and instead internet binged, despite having successfully avoiding the internet for the first 3/4ths of the day. Felt like shit. Woke up this morning and binged again, and I have to sprint off to improv shortly. My thoughts are very negative right now. I can only think of how dominated my life has been by forms of betrayal...from my parents, from my "friends." I just want to not hate myself and be confident. I don't want to feel alone all the fucking time. I feel broken. I just want to hide and not get hurt. I'm just tired of all the pain self-inflicted and not. I'm still like the child I was so long ago and it sickens me. I need to go now.

Hi @Hayns, welcome to Game Quitters! If you wanted to hear stories about people quitting, then yeah, you came to the right place! Me personally, I gamed from 7-27. I never thought it was a problem despite my anger issues while playing until I turned 18, when I woke up one day, and played for about eight hours straight without eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, or noticing time passing. I deleted everything off my Xbox 360 and took it apart and put it in the closet. Things went well when I started college, and I didn't really game all that much since all the system's were my roommates's. I also didn't have much time to either. However, I started to watch walkthroughs and streams, which is basically just porn for a gaming addict really. After college, I offered to play a game of LoL with my severely depressed and severely gaming-addicted former roommate as a means to keep in touch. I was instantly hooked, and went through several bouts of installing and uninstalling. This repeated for a long time. Watching gaming and being otherwise addicted to the internet was part of why I ended up leaving grad school early. I was broke and with few friends, and even fewer social skills. I joined Game Quitters at that time, many years ago, and left a while after. I got a job and things got a bit better now that I was making some money. However, I keep watching gaming, and periodically reinstalling LoL and playing for 16+ hours straight at a time and feeling like a coked-up zombie. Eventually, things reached a head last spring, where it was all I could think about on my drive home. I would start chaining together several days with 12-16 hours of gaming. At that point, I came back on Game Quitters, installed a bunch of website blockers. That's when I realized I was really depressed and anxious and that I was using gaming to cover that up. Because of the website blockers, I started to do really well in staying away from anything gaming, but that was when all the emotions came pouring back. Coupled with work stress, I started having suicidal thoughts for the first time in a long time, and I went to go get a therapist. I felt TERRIBLE. Eventually, the feelings subsided, and I've had probably one of the most painful, but also one of the most rewarding and growth-filled years of my life. Now, I'm (apparently) killing it at my job, starting to go out again, making new circles of friends, and performing improv comedy on a regular basis. As a loner who was sucking at their job (admittedly, after a promotion), anxious, depressed, and unfunny, to say that I would've predicted this last year would be a huge lie. Moral of the story: often times we use gaming to escape from reality and what scares us. By doing so, the scary thing becomes scarier and takes a larger toll. The only way to get through this is to embrace the pain you will feel from giving up gaming and having all the emotions come back, and use the pain and anxiety to direct our course our action. One must approach their demons to get through them. If you can do this, the rewards are amazing. Don't throw it all away for gaming. Throw gaming away for everything else. Good luck on your journey!

Hi Matthew, welcome to Game Quitters! Are you looking just to stop buying packs, or are you looking to quit gaming altogether?

Your posts hit me in a weird way. That feeling of crippling depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts... yeah man, been there done that. I feel for you. I won't lie to you, if you do it right and you do keep away from the games, this year will feel like absolute hell. If it doesn't feel like that, you're probably doing it wrong and trying to escape in some way. My best advice to you is to focus on the things that make you feel the worst and attack them. I feel like that only thing that has helped me through all of this is focusing on the pain and scary things in my life and starting to overcome them. I lose sight of this sometimes, but when I actually do follow through, I feel like the best I have in years. Anxiety is your radar, and video games are the radar jammer. Good luck. We are all rooting for you!

Sorry, I didn't see this. My phone tracks itself. I'm cognizant of it but I don't pay it too much heed unless it goes up or down an hour a week. I use it a bit for actual work things, but I've still gotten it down by about 1-1.5 hours a day since starting up on this journey again. I don't track PC time (it's still high), and I don't have a TV so I don't waste more time there. Good for you on your goals. Those goals are good to fight escapism.

Day 287 No VG - 287 days, no sports news - 3 day, NF - 14 days, SOB - 0 days, NNO59 - 1 days, NIA1030 - 0 days, NLAF - 0 days, NSOC - 13 days, Meditation - 3 days, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 2 weeks. So far the work week went reasonably well. I also audited last year's paystubs and found out I'm owed a bunch of on-call pay that my boss forgot to put in. It's kind of laughable. This week was very profitable. I also avoided going on the news outside of my window today. Finally. I stayed up late almost every night this week including tonight. Tonight has been a bit of sleep procrastination and internet bingeing since I won't have it tomorrow. I'm going to get a good night's sleep now, get up, write my post-it, and go from there. It will be nice to get away from the computer for a bit.

Day 286 No VG - 286 days, no sports news - 2 day, NF - 13 days, SOB - 13 days, NNO59 - 0 days, NIA1030 - 3 days, NLAF - 6 days, NSOC - 12 days, Meditation - 2 days, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 2 weeks. Stayed up late last night working on a spreadsheet to help me figure out my true weak points as a person, in order to determine an ultralearning project. Most of these weak points are things I've been avoiding for years, so I think there's value to this. Finished it up today, it's pretty elaborate. It's hard to quantify subjectivity. Work was okay today. I got through a lot of small items. It's weird how the stress just dropped off like a cliff. I felt lost at one point today. It was weird. Still checked news at work a little bit. I recognize the irrationality in checking early. The news will compile by the end of the day. Just relax.

Take this for what you will--I am not a masturbation scientist (that sounds like a horrible job) nor do I claim to be up to date on said research. I am an engineer though, so the best advice I can give to you is...experiment. Try it, see what happens. What are the benefits? What are the negatives? Everyone is wired a little bit differently, so your experience can be different from everyone else's who posts here. For me, when I'm on No Fap, I feel way more energy. I feel more focused. I feel more attracted to women and wanting to engage with them. I lift heavier in the gym. When I'm...uh...not on No Fap, I feel completely lethargic, craving sweets and unhealthy food, craving the internet, craving sleep, and being an anti-social loser on the day of, and subsequent days feeling less and less so the further in between relapses. I hate feeling like this so I make it a point to do the best I can in avoiding masturbation.

No reason to feel ashamed. You should be happy you didn't game on those three days that you would've gamed. That's a victory! You became a better version of yourself, which many people don't ever try to do and settle for mediocrity. In the past, a lot of my gaming relapses were often triggered by watching gaming content on YouTube, or going down an internet rabbit hole. Once my brain got a taste it kept wanting more and more, and it still does at times. One thing I suggest you try, is setting up a hurdle to gaming that will give you pause before you relapse. For example, say for something like LoL, uninstalling the game, which would then force you to reinstall and wait a few hours before it starts back up. As another example, you can setup internet blockers for certain websites that may trigger the desire to game. If you make the old habit harder to perform while you're still rational and not in the grips of wanting to game, you might be able to decrease the amount of relapses, which will then give you more time to develop the habits to truly keep you away from gaming.

Dude. I can't tell you how many times I've felt like I've wanted to do that while gaming or on the internet. Escapism is bliss. Reality is suffering. The problem is, the only way to suffer better--not even necessarily less--is to focus on reality and have a purpose. Weirdly enough, the times I've felt best since leaving gaming for good was when I've faced my fears in real life and overcame them. These are the most in-tune moments I have with reality, and oddly enough, I'm practically blissful after. It's a weird dichotomy.

Day 285 No VG - 285 days, no sports news - 1 day, NF - 12 days, SOB - 12 days, NNO59 - 0 days, NIA1030 - 2 days, NLAF - 5 days, NSOC - 11 days, Meditation - 2 days, No Internet Saturdays - 0 week, Post-It Weekends - 2 weeks. Went to bed at a reasonable hour last night. Felt good today. Work was okay today. Not as productive as I would've liked. Kept getting distracted by people. Tomorrow I need to start making myself scarce again. I did win a job award worth a couple thousand dollars though, so that was nice. Ironically, I'm not over the moon because of the money. Means money isn't my priority right now. Good to keep note. I did check some news while at work. This has been decreasing over the past few days though as I get back into my routine. Gonna go stretch for a bit, meditate, and go to bed.