info-gatherer

Day 15 Very busy day. I realized that the next 2-3 weeks are gonna be busy as hell. I’m going to study all the time and hopefully pass the next exam on 2/28. I need to pass that exam bc doing so will most likely allow me to move to Paris, France, for 9 months.

Day 14 Yesterday I went to bed late (2.30 am) because of a movie. This morning I woke up before the alarm rang. My mind is building a habit of waking up early. Good stuff. bad news is that I have a headache. I had breakfast and read a graphic novel. I’m chilling on the armchair, maybe later I will do something productive edit: i said “yes” to a dinner with an old friend, no social anxiety, no sadness, nice evening, too much wine but it’s ok. Goal: waking up at 7.30

Day 13 Today I journal in the afternoon instead of before going to sleep. It’s 15:37 right now. First time in months I don’t go back to parents home in the weekend. This morning I woke up at the usual 8.30 am. It’s saturday, so the university library is closed. I went to a public “study room” instead. After a week of hard study (10 hours a day) I found out I can’t really take it anymore, so I’m not studying this afternoon. Instead, I’m cleaning the house (my turn is tomorrow but I hope my flatmates don’t mind if I do it today). I have this feeling that I’m spending too much time at my gf’s house, I go there almost every day for lunch or dinner, sometimes both, and her flatmate is probably not ok anymore with this. I noticed a change in her behaviour. I will try to go there just once every two days, and only if invited. Problem is, they cook very nice dishes (XD yes i know i know) and it’s nice not to eat alone every time, so it will be hard to say no. update: I cleaned kitchen, bathroom, living room and even my own room, which really needed it. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading some notebooks that the previous tenant of the room I live in left behind. Her journals, her poems, her stories. I even found a long list of the people she had sex with. Educational afternoon.

Heyy Welcome back! I misunderstood. On 1/23 you wrote that you were “playing with your phone”, I thought you meant playing games Have a nice day!

Day 12 Today for the first time since day 1 I allowed my mind to wander ( just for 5 minutes) on gaming thoughts. I severely restricted my mind from every and I mean EVERY gaming thoughts before today. Anyway, I didn’t feel like I lost control. I stopped when I wanted and focused on studying. 2 weeks ago, doing the same would have been so difficult, near impossible. I’m conquering my mind.

What’s wrong with masturbation? I’m just curious, since I see a lot of people mentioning it. I understand that porn can be a problem, but masturbation doesn’t necessarily have to do with porn. Can you explain?

Hey mate. You’re not going too fast, you’re doing perfectly. When I read your entries I am amazed by the way you implement good habits in your life every 2 days. Not everyone can do that. And yes, you can be a very different person from your gaming self. Will this new person be perfect? Probably not, but nobody is as well

Hi. I just read your whole journal and first of all let me say congratulations for deciding to quit games. I want to give you some advice you might find helpful. There’s two things I noticed in your entries. First of all, you don’t have regular sleeping hours. Yes, quitting games is your main focus, but you should try to set some small goals, one at a time, to improve your overall life. You are not quitting because you want to live a life you don’t enjoy. So I suggest you to TRY YOUR BEST to go to bed at the same hour every day and, most importantly, wake up at the same hour. SLEEPING WELL ALSO MEANS STUDYING WELL. I see you have this habit of binging tv / reddit / yt before going to bed, no wonder you’re still awake at 5 AM. Make it a rule, and respect it: no surfing the net or tv after 22, except for writing your journal. I made this for almost 2 weeks now and I feel like I live every day with more energy than ever. Studying is easier, doing chores is easier, socializing is more spontaneous. I had impossible sleeping hours for three years (in the worst months I used to go to bed at 6 AM and waking up at 4 PM every day) and now I feel reborn. Just do it. Give sleep priority. the other thing I noticed is that you still play mobile phone games. They are games as well, aren’t less addictive than pc games (as many people here could tell you) and you should stop playing them if you’re on a detox. BONUS TIP: As an above-average student for my whole life, I think I can tell why you have a problem with college. 1 You skip lessons. That’s a common mistake. Going to school every time you should effectively reduces the amount of homework you have to do and makes things easier to understand. 2 You can’t focus. Games and sleep deprivation are a big factor, but the habit of checking your phone too often is bad as well. I guess also social anxiety plays a part in that (if you suffer from it). best of luck man, I root for you

Day 11 I really don’t know what to write. Spent the whole day at the library, finished the boring essay which in the end was not boring, tomorrow I’m starting a new one, nobody loves me except my gf and maybe other 10 people that live in other cities and I never call anyway, family included. I’m not gaming, I study, I do sports, I wake up at 8.30, I’m alone and today I feel like chilling on the pessimist side of things

Perfect start! Welcome to the forums

Hey! Today is a bad day for me. I read your “relapse” post and I felt like I was in your exact same spot. Then I checked your journal and... you’re feeling well again! Your life is moving on! It’s been only 3 days and it looks like you’re doing very good. You gave me strenght and confidence. Maybe 3 days from now I’ll write the same things you wrote in your last post. Thank you very much. As a side note, maybe it’s just that you’re fluent in english and I am bad, but when I read your posts I have a feeling that you’re very good at writing. I really enjoy reading your stuff.

Interesting and well-written. I used to be exactly the kind of person that the article talks about, but in the last two years I partially improved that side of my personality. I still have a lot of work to do, tho. I often think I’m missing out on something important, but that’s mostly because I’ve stopped doing almost anything that isn’t studying or gaming. The sentence about reading books in Bali struck me. That’s what I do everytime I travel. I always want to read “a book that was written in the country I’m visiting”. I’ll think about this. Thanks for posting. Day 10 topic: social anxiety Today I noticed that my social anxiety is re-emerging. I stealthly check rooms before entering them, I check the streets hiding behind the corner out of fear of meeting people I don’t want to meet. Today outside the library there were 4 people making fun of someone that looked like me based on their description, but could be 50 other people as well. For some reason in my mind I was sure that they were talking about me. Story: I was heavily bullied when I was younger, from 10 years old to 16-17. Both at school, and from my “friends”... I often got physically beaten, but the worst part was the psychological bullying that made me feel like an outcast. I lived with SHAME all my life and I still have paranoid daydreams of violence or people making fun of me / shunning me; or daydreams in which I beat other people (even innocent) and force them to admit to themselves that I’m superior to them. It’s very hard to live with this. When some people actually makes fun of me and I find out, like when it happens for real, I always feel like all my paranoias are true. I’m always very self-aware, when I’m in a room with other people I have trouble focusing on what I’m doing because I study them and I must be ready if something bad happens. I know I have some problems, something is deeply fucked up in my brain. Gaming was my escape, now I have to feel all the fear, all the pain, I am forced to always be present to myself. It’s so damn hard. This is the hardest day since I stopped gaming. I realized that I live in fear. Goals: mostly met; tomorrow goals same as today + playing tennis in the evening Also, sorry for not commenting other people’s journal. I need a couple weeks to emotionally re-settle in this city.

@BigOlBeartic omg thank you btw Yess I learned how to tag people @hycniejsy Hey Pharmacist! I think that among those “rights” there’s also the right to try to convert / accept to be converted / don’t accept to be converted Day 9 Spent the whole day at the library. 50 pages goal met. I’m happy about that. Then pretty boring dinner with gf and 2 other people. Goals for tomorrow: same as today EDIT: Blizzard finally deleted my HS account. I had my 5 min of “why the fk did I do this, I lost all my cards, all those nights spent playing”. I recovered soon. I need to focus on my life.

Thanks stablish. I’m trying as you said and see if it works

Thanks for sharing. Ye it sucks when you lie to your loved ones at the only purpose of nourishing your addiction. Stay strong. Day 8 I moved back to uni city and spent the remaining 3 hours of the afternoon studying. At the library I met my girlfriend and one of the few friends I have. Then I spent some time with my gf. In the city’s main place a guy and a girl approached us and we talked 40 min about God (they tried to convert us but we are agnostic). We prayed together. They GUARANTEED that thanks to the prayer I’m quitting smoking in 90 days bc God wants it. They were fanatic for sure, but good people with a big hearth. Afterwards I went to my gf house and we had dinner with her flatmate, which is sort of a friend of mine after all the time we spent together. I created a new cocktail, the Bloody Cowboy, a Bloody Mary variation bc we didn’t have all the ingredients for the original. It sucked. We poured it down the sink. Beautiful day. goals for tomorrow: waking up at the now usual 9, going to the library and studying 50 pages of a goddamn boring essay I have to read

Hello, I have a couple questions: 1) How can I save the Respawn guide on iphone 6 (last iOS version) without having to download it every time? 2) Are there website-blockers for iPhone? I want to block specific websites, just to be sure. The best thing would be a blocker that works on Safari and Chrome, since I use both. thank you

Day 7, evening Topic: looking forward This afternoon I started reading the Respawn guide and decided to delete all my gaming accounts, as recommended at the end of chapter 2. I already: -Sent a ticket to delete my LoL accounts, my main offender; hope they answer soon -“Deleted” Steam with TF2 and Skyrim Then had dinner and went visiting my uncle. He lent me his guitar, which I’m bringing to uni city tomorrow. I had dinner. Now I am going to: -Delete my Hearthstone account -Delete my Mobile Legends account -I can’t delete my WoW account since I share it with another person, but I didn’t use it for years and I don’t know the password anymore Deleting lol acc was expecially though, I kept thinking: 1 omg what if I change my mind 2 I’m losing everything I built in the last years 3 (this one helped me a lot going through it) well, if I ever relapse, at least I’m gonna try a new game 4 omg what if I change my mind 5 omg omg 6 omg 7 Selling it would be a better choice But I’m happy about my decision. I made a choice in my life and I’m sticking to it. It’s been 1 whole week not only without gaming (which is not that unusual for me, as you already know if you read my story) but also without checking websites, streamings and any gaming-related stuff. This didn’t happen for years. I’m the cleanest I’ve been in years. I even skipped fast whenever I saw a gaming advertising in websites. This week was overall easy, but I know that sooner or later cravings will come. I’ll let them come, I’m not scared. I will be clean at the end of the 90 days.

Day 7 Today is a hard day. I feel guilty. I woke up at the usual 9 o’clock for the 4th or 5th day in a row. I’m proud of this goal and I look forward to turning it into a permanent rewiring of my “biological clock”. But here are the bad news: I still waste my time. All my time. Today I watched TV. That’s everything I did since I woke up. I didn’t watch TV for years, but this week I did. Looks like staying away from videogames is not enough. Tomorrow I’m going back to university city. I’m pretty sure that this means the end of my long days of apathy. Now I’m going to print the Respawn guide, which I bought last week and didn’t read yet. I’ll bring it with me. After that I’ll try to find a meaning for this day. I’ll take a walk or go visit my grandparents or some other stuff. Thank you for reading. EDIT: I have something to add. At lunch, my parents said that they noticed I have “changed”. I wake up early every day. My little brother, with whom I share my room, added that I don’t play games anymore. He noticed first because I used to wake him almost every night, since I played until late. Now he can sleep soundly every night, without having to worry about his 23yo addict brother that is wasting his life.

Day 6 Went out with my sister, a friend of mine and a friend of her for a walk to the seaside (my sister organized it). We had some relaxing chat and played baseball with a stick and some pebbles. We’re going out again in the evening and eat japanese food, which I love. Pleasant and chill day. I made a short list of some books I’d like to read in the evening instead of watching streams. What happened to me is (not so) weird: since I became a philosophy & literature student, I started reading much less. You know, it’s not as funny when you HAVE to do it basically as a full-time job. Reading was my main passion when I was younger, and it always felt like relax, never work. With university, things changed. Ofc I still read a lot, but not as much as before. And most importantly, I enjoy it much less. Anyway, I did the list. It’s better than gaming and helps in building my future. This is probably all for today. Love you guys

I always had (and sometimes still have) a similar problem with my father. It’s just that he’s always been a strong and authoritarian figure, always telling me what to do, what not to do, screaming in my face every day. I remember when I was a child promising myself I would hate him forever. Then I learned acceptance and forgiveness. I remember one other time, I was probably 14, he asked me: “I noticed you don’t talk to me, you don’t like me. Is there a way we can fix this?” I told him no, and after that I could feel something cracked into him. He didn’t care anymore as much about me. He was resentful. We never talked about that again. Anyway, I’m telling you this bc I know the feeling of embarassment/guilt that comes with being in the same room with my dad and trying to have a conversation and finding out that we have nothing to say to each other. In the end parents aren’t just parents, but people, too, with their needs and their feelings, and even if they’re more experienced, they still can be difficult at times. Well I tried to give advice but it looks like I’m pretty bad on this topic. P.S. my day also suffering from depression (more precisely anxiety / panic attacks / screaming while sleeping).

What’s the thing with the cold shower? Looks like everybody in this forum has cold showers Btw yes I’ll try yoga, there is a state-funded org that offers sessions almost for free in uni city. I’ll let you know how it goes Day 5 (actually 6 since it’s past midnight) Not a day to remember. I finally start to get bored staying at my parents’ home. Yes, I will miss the comfort (decent heathing system, good food, private spaces, shared meals with human interaction) but it’s time to go back to uni city and seriously work on my exams (and meet my gf; really miss her). In uni city I live in a shared flat with some other people. A guy from Egypt, a girl from Japan and a fellow italian girl. I shared many flats with a lot of different people in the past 5 years. Sometimes it went very bad, sometimes very good. This time, in between. I don’t have almost any contact with them, we share the very occasional chat in the kitchen but most of the time we live our separate lives and don’t talk to each other. No hard feelings, just indifference. My flatmates told me they’re setting up an internet connection. We hadn’t one before. I feel ok, didn’t get scared at all by the news. I’m very positive I’m not going to relapse until detox is over. Instead, I see it as an opportunity. Being a BIG FAN of art house movies I will finally have the chance to try and join those (in)famous “private trackers” and do some illegal torrenting. My goal is to eventually manage to join Karagarga, which is a pretty obscure website and very difficult to access that supposedly hosts the biggest library of art house movies in the world (like the whole world). I’ll have to start with trackers that are easier to join and then try to hop somehow to KG. It will take some months, but (I hope) little effort: just leave the pc on and seed stuff, preferably 24/7. If it’ll take too much time and resources I guess I’ll just let it go, but I want to give it a shot and see how it goes. Speaking of movies, I just finished to watch Der siebsten kontinent by Michael Haneke, which I found emotionally devastating but also thought-provoking. Seeing the total wreckage of institutions like family, work and modern society that Haneke managed to depict so well in his first movie I’m even more incited to make some lasting changes in my life and save myself from the “evil” that roots in this world. I don’t wanna end like the protagonists of the movie. Anyway, now I’m going to bed bc I don’t wanna miss on the 9AM clock. Even accounting for different timezones you’ll probably read this tomorrow in the morning so... Good morning. Have a nice day

Hi Bear, how are you? Dropped by to say I got inspired by you to set goals instead of just straight up not playing

Hey Last 2 weeks I barely got out of parents’ home bc I didn’t feel well. I’m almost completely recovered now and Monday I’m going back to university city. I don’t do sports, except some months ago I started to play tennis once a week. Stopped for the christmas holidays and didn’t start again yet. Being a very hard smoker, sport is difficult for me. I’m thinking about pairing tennis with some kind of meditation or yoga, once a week as well, provided that the teacher won’t try to fill my head with new-age ideology I think I will stick with it. Day 5 Goal more or less met. Woke up at 9 sharp. Except, I didn’t do much with my time after that. Had breakfast, then lurked stopgaming subreddit (I know, I know...) then played the guitar for an hour. Didn’t start studying yet. I’m going to start now (past 11 AM here).

Thank you J(e)RK. I think that I’m enjoying more everyday’s life since I stopped gaming and checking gaming websites. I’ll keep walking this path. Day 4 I think it’s come time to think about goals. Bear’s journal was very inspiring on this subject. I am going to take care of something I tried very hard to fix in the past years, without success: my sleep schedule. My goal is to wake up every day at the exact same hour, and go to bed at approximately the same hour every night. I’m gonna engage in a step by step process. This morning I woke up at 9, which is quite early for my standards. Yesterday I woke up at 9 too, because of the dentist. So my goal for tomorrow is: GOAL Waking up at 9.00, getting out of bed as soon as the clock rings. Having breakfast. Having a shower and being dressed by 9.30. If I manage to do this, I’ll make it a long-term goal. I’ll come back here in a few hours and write something more. EDIT: After just 10 minutes of study I fell asleep on the floor, at 5 PM, and woke up at dinner time, 8.20 PM. I feel very strange and confused. I never sleep in the afternoon, nor on the floor. I feel slightly depressed and demotivated. But I know I must stay strong.

This is big. I believe you just helped me to better understand the very definition of addiction. It’s not how much time you play, but where your thoughts keep going. Fellow day 3 here, keep up the good work