BooksandTrees

I wanted to point out that relapse isn't a relapse unless you binge it. I'm taking the approach that if you sleep 8 hours a night for 3 weeks, but one of the nights you sleep for 3 hours, you won't be effected by it in all facets of your life. If you get 3 hours of sleep per night for most of those 3 weeks, then you will be delirious, fatigued, sick, etc. and your life will be in a worse spot. Take this time to reflect on bigger goals such as the reasons you've quit and don't crush yourself in moments like this. Reflect on your journey so far and use failure as sparks to push forward because that greater thinking will lead your path.

Great response. Thank you. It's kind of strange that I started thinking about this after watching the movie No Country for Old Men and seeing the monologue at the end. I get frustrated because I'm depressed and just finished school and can't understand the feeling of raising a kid and bringing them back to school after I got out. I'm nowhere close ti having a kid obviously and it would be 5 years after birth that they'd be in school, but it's time. I think maybe it's depression talking since I'm not really happy or experiencing love yet.

I feel such an emotional disconnect with myself as if I've lost who I am or if I was ever anything in the first place. Straight lines go straight when curved lines meander. I guess it just means every line has a direction and the purpose for that line just happens to be cause and effect - or maybe just momentum. I look back at the path and try to put together the pieces that caused momentum and helped further the path. But I also look away and laugh at a YouTube video where somebody uses a soundboard to disrupt and harass Ventrilo voice chat rooms. I'm grabbing for sentimental pieces to put in my pockets when the pants I'm wearing don't necessarily have pockets and the place I'm going might not even require me to need pants in the first place. I'm trying to understand what makes people decide to have children. What is their goal for the children and their involvement with that person's life? Biologically, we are meant to reproduce often to keep our species alive, much like other animals and organisms. I ask this because I took the path to becoming an engineer and established professional. I went to school until I was 27 and finished my masters while working full time. I now had the ability to finally date and live life. But I'm filled with wonder about what happiness and love are and if I truly understand it. I remember loving my mom and the world. I remember being obsessed with building, action figures, hockey, and creating things. I've always had deep thoughts in my mind and wanted to create things after deeply thinking for hours. Is that normal to critically think and fantasize for hours? Did any of you pace back and forth or find moments of bliss and clarity when the night covered the world and we were alone in quiet with the stars above us. What could we create and what will we get once we are there? I hold onto thoughts of happiness when I'd play kickball at school and come home to watch Dragonball Z and then Ed, Edd, n Eddy. They had friends and I didn't once school ended. I was alone and didn't spend time with any of the friends I'd made. I lost all of those friends once high school ended. I kept all of my friends on RuneScape added on my friends list past the point where they'd quit. I held my online friends so dear to my heart and they didn't feel the same way for me. I still remember all of the names of my RuneScape friends dating back to 2004 because they were all my only friends and the most important things in my world. I used to pace around my home for hours daydreaming about being the 4th Ed in the show Ed, Edd, n Eddy and try to come up with scams and shows to be in. I used to pretend I was a character on Dragonball Z and gain power levels to help fight enemies. When I got too powerful and numbers meant nothing, I restarted the daydream and would repeat this for hours. Video games let me talk to anyone I wanted at any time of the day. I am lonely. Humans are lonely. I want people around me at all times. I want friends all of the time. I want to lead my troops on missions for things that don't involve killing or conquest. I just want to lead my troops to the store and get groceries for a barbecue on top of a mountain that we need helicopters to reach while escaping from nothing. I want to lead my friends to college at a massive complex university built for several thousand students and stay there forever as I do fun activities and see things that give me purpose. These are the dreams I have ever night. They make no sense. I lead my group of 2-10 people on beautiful missions in outlandish settings for a prize of insignificance and meaninglessness, but I was with them, the scenery was beautiful, and we enjoyed the journey. I spend so much time being angry at the facility I'm in and blame the people in my life for the anger I feel when I just don't seem to see the mystery, adventure, and intrigue that life seems to give me in my reminiscent dreams of things I've never experienced enough to reminisce about. It's like I live two lives: my real life and my unconscious dream life. I'm never happy or satisfied. I don't just do things for the feeling of it. I just chase goals and speed through the journey without smelling the roses. I don't think this is a mindfullness issue either where I focus on the food in my mouth to truly taste the steak instead of swallowing it for sustenance in order to do my next task because I won't be hungry anymore and can focus on the next thing. Or maybe it is. I rush the dinner, get angry about cooking the dinner, eat the dinner, and rush to work on something I'm frustrated with because my dreams are to see the end product and I get angry at the steps along the way. I hold onto the memories of me as a kid watching TV but look back at how long ago those memories actually were. It's because I don't relax and see it when it's there. I don't taste the food or enjoy the journey. I'm treating my life like a Netflix show, binge watching it to get to the end like a lifeless zombie instead of appreciating the characters in each episode regardless of whether they're going to be in the next one or not. I ignore the settings the show takes place in instead of noticing it. The line I chose meanders because the ball rolls up and down embankments and takes the path of least resistance. I think it's important for me to experience the ball rolling instead of understanding the importance of the structure of the path and why it shaped the direction when the path is still being made and can is held by a universe we know so little about. If you reached the end of this long post I would surmise that my point is I think too much and don't experience the journey. Time for a deep breath and some mindfullness. Matt

I just talked with my friend for 4 hours this morning and she said pretty much the same thing. A lot of this is me pointing blame onto others due to faults within myself and it's tough to face them. I'll keep running from my problems and my life if I don't stop and face them. I need to keep going. I agree. I'm right here. This is the burning hand, it's right in front of me. I can use water to make it worse or use vinegar to neutralize the burn. All of this hate is coming from within and it's so difficult to love myself when I've hated myself for my whole life. It's time to change that and I want to face these issues so I can move on and create these things that I want to create without being paralyzed.

We will see. I feel like I already ruined my life by not getting the job and stuff. If I had a stable place to live in and some emotional support I would have created something by now or at least learned something. I'm miserable.

Life is getting to a boiling point for me. I absolutely cannot live with my mother anymore. She is a deranged agitator who instigates arguments, leaves the area, then tries to turn things around saying I started them. Luckily, I have prepared for this since my father did it to me as well. I am a master of mind games and I won't be hurt again. I keep saying how I made a mistake quitting my job and giving things up, but I did not. I was unhappy there as well. I hated being pigeonholed into mundane tasks and not having my managers know me even though other department managers loved me and all of my other coworkers loved me. Cries for attention went nowhere in that place and I was tired of being ignored. If I return to engineering it will be on my terms in an office who appreciates me, communicates well, and gives me responsibility. Back to the main story: I am done living with my mom. I will make an effort to find a place to live and create a new life for myself. I will recreate my life as the person I know I am and see the world through the eyes I want to see it through. I will try to follow my goals and make my dreams come true, or I will get an engineering job again in another part of the country and pursue my dreams slowly in my own time, but with the courage I've gained through the year or two I'll have spent trying to chase them. I'll hopefully establish hobbies and a lifestyle that makes me happy. Maybe I'll meet a woman who isn't a lunatic like my mother. I'll have a kid who isn't a manipulative piece of shit. I actually don't want children. I want to live in a home I love, near friends who treat me well, and find a woman who loves me for me and lets me love her back. I will perform comedy, create a cartoon, write a book, enjoy my superhero/anime/scifi lore, exercise, rock climb, and create art through drawing/painting/animation/and music. I am going to dominate life greater than anyone I've ever met. I am going to leave my entire family behind as they have proven to be completely worthless to me. I'm tired of having anger and hatred be my guiding energy through crisis and I won't let it anymore. I am letting it go. I'm done living with gamers as well. No more reclusive introverts who hide all day and are afraid to grow up or live life. This is over now. I'm going to keep my good friends, meet happy friends who are engaging and enjoy life, and find a woman who loves me for me. Maybe we can watch hockey or batman together. Create art together or just share things we enjoy together. Or maybe I'll do none of that and create a life some other way. I know I can do it and I'm done here (not the website). Matt

Thanks for the support. I'm not going to date and I'm still just very angry about my old job. Lots of shady things were happening there as well and I'm just trying to move on from those as well. My mother is sick and unfortunately the only way to heal is to move on from her for now. She's hurting my feelings and making me upset and then blaming me. It's volatile.

I just feel so angry because I turned away my dream home for this and I'm too depressed here to do my passion projects now. I'm just sitting in bed crying like an asshole and once I'm done being sad I'll get so angry that I smash everything in sight like a lunatic. I'm so dumb for giving everything up. I can't even do it now. People are shit and life is terrible. It's this tease that one day you'll be happy and that one day doesn't exist.

I'm struggling a lot recently. My mother is trying to get me to make her life better and do things so she feels better when I need the help. Whenever I tell her about the problems I'm having and would like to discuss them she starts fidgeting and getting stressed out. Within 10 minutes she says I talk like my father and leaves the room to go have a cigarette. If she ends up staying in the house to talk then she completely sidetracks from any advice she's giving me. She'll give me advice for 5 minutes and then ramble about something unrelated and then start talking about shit she needs to talk about. I get angry and ask what the point of the conversation was and she realizes it has nothing to do with why we originally spoke. I'm in a fragile spot because I just gave my career away to attempt to write a cartoon and create an online media business for myself and it's hard to do this when she's being so fucking annoying to be around. It's crushing me. She picks fights, doesn't communicate with me at all, and makes me feel like I'm being an asshole. I end up feeling guilty about everything because she's letting me live here for free, paying for groceries, and allowing me to take my time with all of this. But at the same time the emotional investment is not worth it because of how stressful these living situations are on weekends. I want to write or take an online class and she picks a fight with me saying "it's beautiful out and I want to walk the beach! I don't want to sit around inside all day." This makes me feel like a loser for staying inside to work on something I want to work on. So now I'm starting to get depressed and sad because I'm not living the typical "fear of missing out" style of life where we have to spend the whole day outside and take pictures because this is living yay!!!!!! Fuck that. I can do that some days, but other days I need to be constructive. I need to create things. I want to do something on my own some days. I don't want to go back to a career I literally just gave up. But living here has been such a disaster and it's turning out to be exactly what I feared. I'd quit my job and then get into arguments here and have to go back. I haven't even written a single fucking line in my cartoon because of this drama. I'm also tired of people saying "if you're not working on it then you don't want to do it". I'm too afraid to start working on these things because my self esteem is low. I have been working so hard to develop my self esteem over the past few months and between work dwindling down my life and my home life being so turbulent I just want to escape. It's a miracle I haven't been watching porn 10 times per day and trying to play RuneScape. Every day I just sit and think I should have bought that fucking house and just lived for the weekends. But I don't want to do that. I don't want the ordinary life. I just want to do something special and be special because I know I can be special and not special needs. My mind is everywhere right now and my mom doesn't see it at all.

At the end of the day everyone in the world has addictions to vices that help them escape their stress situations. It's ok to acknowledge it, but it also doesn't have to be a label. You are Fawn (whatever your real name is) and your friends and family will know you for that name. They won't know you for "addict" or "negative ruminator". With the re-introduction to your old gaming community and friends: what is calling you back? Is this a test to see if you can be in that environment and maintain the growth you've had over the past few months? Are you missing something from that former part of your life that you'd like to integrate into your new growth? My suggestion is just follow your desire and see how it feels. If you notice it is affecting your life and emotions in a negative way, cut back. If it continues to do it, remove it until you feel comfortable. If it continues to be the process of not feeling good about it then I'd remove it entirely. Also, you mentioned rumination earlier. I was reading and listening to a few doctors discussing ruminating thoughts because I was being very harsh to myself about self improvement. What I learned is every person in the world is constantly thinking and their brain doesn't shut off. This can feel amplified with self improvement periods because instead of thinking about dinner, your favorite sport, your friends, or bad drivers in traffic, you're now pointing your perspective inwards and also receiving all of the emotions in your heart. Self improvement can lead people to face lots of negative emotions because a lot of angles we take are "what we don't like about ourselves" instead of "I want to try this because I think I'll benefit and it looks fun". I had to accept that and it took a few weeks of me occupying my brain with other things like not liking my job or something to take my mind off of it. Good luck.

Thank you. I also just think living at home is going to be toxic to me soon so if I don't start producing an income outside of cartoons then I'll be forced to get an engineering job again.

I'm 31 weeks free of video games right now and I think it's amazing to see how far I've come so far. I have crushed every record of mine and I just feel so strong now. I'm also about a week without porn. I watched a movie called "Don Jon" with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Scarlett Johansson and it reflected some of the struggles I've had with porn addiction. It was a really good movie and I gained some strength after watching it. I've been dealing a lot with anxiety recently. I think it's being caused by a drive to produce something and work on my tasks, but at the same time I have this fear of direction holding me back. The two forces are creating inner turmoil for myself and I just want to write my cartoon and create some stuff online. I have been writing and coming up for ideas for my cartoon, which have been nice for me. It just so happens that life keeps coming up. I planned hangouts with my friends and former coworkers who I want to stay friends with. My mom also had surgery so I'm caring for her. There's also a woman who has kind of been interested in seeing me, but communication has been sporadic between responding within 5 minutes to waiting 5 days. As we mentioned earlier I don't really give a shit about this right now and don't want to date until I'm in a more comfortable spot for myself. I do enjoy her support, but I'm also not emotionally comfortable to give myself to somebody right now because I'm very fragile right now. I don't want to just jump into something. I fear one small turn could lead to an emotional collapse for me some days. I found a yoga studio to attend and am touring gyms to try out. I also helped my artist sell his work at a comic convention and did very well there. It was nice to meet other artists, but was also a reminder most of these artists are going nowhere and work full time at their own jobs. I don't want this to be some shit side gig. I need to push through.

So I had severe asthma and allergy conditions growing up. Some of the medications that helped me build asthma and allergy tolerance/strength were Singulair, Rhinecort Aqua, and Advair. I also did allergy shots for 8 years. I'm better now, but in the month of May I struggle a bit so I stay indoors. I suggest taking a shower before going to bed, get allergy covers for your pillows and mattress, wash your sheets and pillow covers once per week, and don't open any windows or doors for a month.

Don't strive for that. I just had it.

I've noticed a lot of the people on here and those who are dealing with addictive behaviors deal with these same struggles. So know you are not alone here. I had a very rough past year where I tried quitting gaming in April of 2018, relapsed in September, and finally quit in October. The mood swings and the frustration with my life came to the forefront of everything. I hated my job, most of my friends, family, had no hobbies or interests because I view gaming as a way of life and not a hobby, and was lonely. I would just play games, watch porn, and binge video series. This self improvement journey is strong, but think of how strong of a decision it is right now compared to 30 years from now. I know people who can't smile without a cigarette or a beer consumed. You're young right now, like myself, and have the ability to make a great set of decisions to not jeopardize your future in paramount. Use your words and find your patience. It looks like you've been dealing with escapism and addictive behavior since 2015 on this website alone. You know there are issues. That's good. I ask you to do some homework assignments. What are your triggers? Are you getting these cravings and depression related mood swings when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, in a bad environment (home, work, family event), or dehydrated? If so, try dealing with those feelings head on before your mood worsens. If over time you realize those emotional triggers aren't the only things bothering you and it's a greater feeling, then what is it? Are you pissed about your career? Do you hate what you've become? Are you drowning in regret and unsure how to right those wrongs? Are you ashamed that you neglected the most important person in your life, that being yourself? Don't flood yourself trying to answer all of these questions at once and don't answer them if you're one of the smaller moods I mentioned two paragraphs above this one. It will skew your thoughts and answers. Remember what Smokey the Bear used to say: "Only you can prevent forest fires."

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Beautifully said. Thank you man. How are you feeling now from your sickness and everything?

This scares the shit out of me with my recent decision. I do have considerable savings though.

Interesting video. I think the first part really helped me with something I needed to hear. Thanks for this.

I can't help but think I'm a retard for quitting. I spend 1 day with my mom and she just picks fights. What am I thinking quitting my career to pursue a dream I know nothing about. This is terrible.

How are you going to block it on your phone? I tried blocking porn but I can always just open an incognito tab or download a new browser. I feel like my issue will only be solved by self control.

I wanted to touch on something I'm experiencing which is fear. I'm constantly thinking back to whether I should have bought that condo and stuck it out with engineering, but I remember not liking my career and it wasn't worth the tradeoff. It's just sad that I got so close to a home I loved and the financial security of my job. But I know I can always return so I can't be afraid. I should be secured instead. I've unfortunately leaned on pornography heavily for the past 10 days. That night I worked 16 hours and commuted 3 hours set me into a deep anger and sadness. I have been watching porn once to three times per day since. I recognize mental fatigue and exhaustion setting in from the emotional rollercoaster i've been on, the pressure to start working on passion projects, the desire to find a daily routine to keep me going, but also develop spontaneity where I might decide to go to the beach or a brewery or something. I realized I only enjoyed college, work, and video games for the sense of community as I'm an extreme extrovert and need attention. So I'm going to join a rock climbing gym or a gym where I can play sports and go to the other rock climbing gym once a week or something. I'm also looking for a yoga studio near home and I bought a beach pass and outdoor recreational passes. I'm hoping the integration of social and physical elements help revitalize my mentality and promote my drive to achieve my goals while eliminating some anxiety induced by the fear I mentioned earlier. The fear is kind of acting as a road block for proper thinking and getting in the way of me planning my long term goals of cartoons and books and my short term goals of blogs, comedy, and social media. Thanks for reading. Matt

What are you doing to combat this loneliness? Have you tried joining a social group for games or a developer group who meets once per week?

Thank you!

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