Hello everyone. My name is Tom, and like most everyone else, I'm here to join a community of like-minded individuals whilst breaking my addiction.
Like Cam, I was introduced to StarCraft when I was 10 or 11 years old. My friends and I would just play casually through the campaign and then talk about it at school. Then WarCraft 3 was released, and that's when I think my addiction began. I wanted to be a top player, and played a bunch in middle school and high school. In fact, I think that was the only game I played until SC2 was released. I joined an amateur WC3 team, which led to me getting into a top 3 team in North America. The manager of the team wasn't the greatest individual. He just wanted to take the best players from the team and move on to WC3L, which he did without telling any of the other members. It was around this time that I quit WC3 and moved on.
Anyway, when I went away to college, I was very social and gamed a little bit on the side. When I moved out of the dorms, my gaming addiction had come back full force. I would alienate myself from my friends, smoke weed and drink by myself... It also destroyed my relationship and GPA. However, I didn't drop out, but it took me and extra 2 years to graduate (6 years total) with only a Bachelor's. I was fortunate enough to have networked in college, which landed me my first and second jobs as a software engineer. Now I'm working for a top 100 Reuters tech company, and I am proud of that, but still believe that I hit a lucky streak given my lack of self-control when it came to gaming.
My career is going so-so at the moment. I have a healthy relationship with my boss and co-workers. Outside of work though, I don't have much of a social life. I just turned 28 in January. I've lost contact with many of my friends from college, and have even made up lame excuses when some of them would invite me out. I'm afraid that some of those relationships are beyond repair.
I've been playing casually playing WoW for a few years now, and just feel that my life is stagnating. I haven't grown as an individual at all since I have graduated from college. I want that to change. My focus right now is making new friends, finding a girl that's right for me (or at least date), furthering my career, and taking the steps laid out by Cam to rid myself of the addiction.
Right now it feels like I have no purpose, and I want that to change. I hope that 2/11/2018 will be a day that I can celebrate. My journey begins here, right now.
Thank you for reading this,
Tom