RNava98

Thanks for all the responses! Something I don't see discussed often is game-related dreams. During the day, I have almost no desire to game. But since quitting, I've had at least 4 or 5 dreams where I gamed and thought that I was going to have to restart my detox. It's really something!

I see quite a lot of overlap between the Game Quitters community and the NoFap community. It makes sense, both communities are centered around abstinence from activities that are quite common. I've tried the NoFap thing a bit, but I don't really buy into a lot of the ideas that community espouses. Go on the subreddit and you will people claiming they've acquired superpowers or celebrating simply being looked at by a female. And it seems like a large portion of them do it thinking that if they stop masturbating, girls will swarm towards them? I wouldn't down somebody for doing NoFap. I'm not saying there isn't any benefits to doing it. I just don't think that NoFap is a necessary thing for everyone and I'm off-put by the cult-like nature of their subreddit. What do you guys think? Any Game Quitters that don't buy into NoFap? Any that want to defend it? I want discussion, not anybody attacking anybody. And if you're going to make scientific claims, please be prepared to back them up. Thanks!

Hello, this my first post here. I'm trying to test the waters with some light discussion. I guess I'll give some information and background to what I ask in the title. By every indication, I'm pretty sure I was a gaming addict. I would spent at least 40-60 hours a week at my PC playing games. I helped administrate a gaming community and although I didn't think of it as a job, I treated it like one. I did this throughout my first semester of college (university?). So on top of my classes that I often didn't go to and my homework I was never doing, I was doing my full time gaming "job". I remember hearing that the difference between passion and addiction is that passion gives you good results and is healthy for you. I got nothing in terms of results from my gaming "job" besides some good friends, but I did get the unhealthy consequences. My sleep schedule was non-existent, I didn't think about what I ate, I rarely exercised, my grades were mediocre at best (I dropped one class due to doing so poorly), I'm 19 and I don't know how to drive (I do have a license though oddly enough), I've never had a job, I have pretty much no confidence, pretty much all my friends are online or from high school, etc etc.. One night, over winter break, I had an epiphany of what a loser I am and am going to be in the future if I don't make drastic changes. After a little bit of googling, I found Cam's article and it became crystal clear what I had to do. I spent a couple days making preparations to leave my community and then I quit. It honestly wasn't that hard. I had tried to moderate my game usage a couple of times in the past, but none of the attempts were serious. Never before had it been clear to me that I had a major problem that needed to be handled. And once I realized it was a problem it wasn't very difficult to kill it. A few days later I went back to university for the new semester and left my gaming PC at home. Since then I've been taking things slow and trying to improve myself in a couple of ways. I've been making an effort to identify and eliminate other bad habits that were left over from my gaming era (The easiest to eliminate was my wearing of cargo shorts on a regular basis). I'm still not where a person should be at my age, but I'm much better off than I was a month ago. I'm happy (though not content) with what I've changed so far. Okay after that rambling mess, what I wanted to talk about is cravings and urges. I haven't had them. I'm 31 days into the detox, but I don't really have much of a desire to play any games. I still think about them sometimes and I've even had a couple of dreams where I was playing them and I thought I had ruined my streak. But I think that is just because they've been such a large part of my life until this point, I don't really have much else to remember and thing about. Is my addiction not real if I am not having withdrawals? Don't get me wrong, I'm not thinking about going back to gaming. I just don't understand why I don't miss it. The only thing I miss about it is all my friends that I had. They were awesome people that I loved "hanging out" with. And I kinda just left them and didn't say goodbye. I had always prided myself as someone who could do without people if I had to. I didn't think I needed them because I'd go through my "real life" not interacting with them. I didn't realize how much gaming had supplemented my need for social interaction until I came back to college having quit games. That was the first time I truly experienced what it was like to be lonely, it was awful. Sorry, this turned into a lot more than I was planning on it being. Feel free to discuss my original question or anything else I wrote about. I'll do my best to respond.