[mattso's late journal]

Day 16

Woke up late, forgot to meditate in the morning. Unlucky. I'll try to remember tomorrow. In the morning I started reading "The Power of Habit", spent most of my day doing it- got through the first chapter, now I understand how habits are formed and how it's possible to change them. Meditated after that, then went to codecademy, but didn't do much there. And suddenly I'm tired and it's 8:30 so I might as well update my journal, meditate and go to sleep. Time feels slow.

[JJ (stands for Jacob's Journal, ain't that cool)]

How you doing out there? Having a hard time, or is it easy at first?

[mattso's late journal]

Day 15

Had a dream where I was playing Path of Exile, I entered a map, and when I got some drops my lootfilter made a sound, and when I realised that I'm excited by that sound, I felt guilty and turned my game off. I guess that's a good sign. Woke up at 9 AM, so I'd say normal for a day off, did some meditation before breakfast, then realised I have schoolwork to do and felt good because I knew what to do next. Once I was done I played my guitar for like 30 minutes, actually enjoyed it- I want to do it regularly so that my fingers get tougher and stop hurting as much. After that I browsed forum, I wanted to comment under someone else's journal but couldn't find anything to say. Then I didn't know what to do, started feeling empty and decided to read. Later I chatted with my sister and mom, then thought that since I'm so sleepy I'll just post here and go to sleep after that. I finally have "The Power of Habit" and "The Slight Edge", so I should have something to do during the weekend. It sucks that I don't go outside and here the sun sets at 4:30 PM. Not great for my mood. I was thinking of returning to programming, as we are taught that at school, but I effectively stopped learning after half a year and made no progress since then. I really want to just walk normally... As far as I know myself I probably wouldn't care the next day, but still.

[VGRM Detox #2]

Hiding your screen in public, being too excited to sleep, procrastinating, having nothing to talk about with friends, forgetting to eat... Know that you are not the only one. What's important is that you got angry at yourself and it pushed you to do this. I am proud of you.

[mattso's late journal]

I've been making my own notes since day 1, but I reckon that I should start posting here- to possibly get some advice from others and make my recovery more effective. I tend to think about many things in life that if I don't do it entirely myself, it doesn't count, but I see that it's just dumb and I should get rid of that thinking, beacuse in most cases it just makes everything harder and doesn't reward me in any way. I'll also start commenting on some other journals so that I don't just leech and give nothing in return. Doesn't feel right to do it. I'll post relevant things that happened in past 2 weeks in one big comment and then... well, write more things that come up.

Day 1

Turned on my PC just to remove all bookmarks about gaming from my browser- it looks so empty. Wanked once, felt wrong after doing it. Feeling like I should do a nofap along nogame, since they do the same thing to my brain. Did some changes to my phone- removed all icons of apps that could potentially suck me in from home screen- i have to manually search for them in order to open them, and that gives me time to think what I want to do there. Other than that checked my phone only once the entire day. I know I can't substitute gaming with mindlessly browsing internet- it's a jump from one addiction to another. Went to bed early, couldn't sleep for 3 hours, was reminiscing a summer camp from a few years back- the last time I really enjoyed myself. Had a minor mental breakdown, had to pet my cat to calm down- fell asleep after that.

Day 2

Wanked once again, felt even more wrong than previously. Read a book for a few hours, felt really sleepy again in the evening and didn't really do much else. Checked my phone 2 times, spent next to no time there.

Day 3

Actually had dreams, furthermore none were about games. Feels amazing. Spent some time with my younger brother. Planning to look for some new hobbies tomorrow, realised I have a guitar.

Day 4

Un-subbed from all gaming channels on YT, all gaming subreddits. Did a lot of rambling on creating vs consuming. Panicked for a second because of a thought that something like reading books is consuming rather than creating, but calmed down after realising that not all I do has to be creating. Played some guitar.

Day 5

Winter holiday ended, didn't go to school because of a broken ankle, but did some schoolwork- previously I wouldn't even attempt to do it. Feels nice to finally not abandon it.

Day 6

Cleaned up my computer from anything game-related so that I don't get tempted. Made a decision to keep up a nofap.

Day 7

Woke up late, only managed to do some schoolwork before going to a doctor. Turns out I'll still have to use crutches to walk. Sigh. It's been a month since I walked on two legs. After returning felt absolutely powerless, just laid in my bed doing nothing, then spent 1,5 hours on YT, nothing gaming-related though. Felt a bit guilty after that. Was I supposed to not succumb and work instead? Realised that I shouldn't think of gaming as a reward for good behaviour.

Day 8

Feeling unfocussed and tired, read for a bit, spent some time reading stories on gamequitters, but felt annoyed by them more than anything else. Perhaps because of envy.

Day 9

Unfocussed again, played some guitar.

Day 10

Spent most of my time learning for my English test.

Day 11

Went to school for the first time in over a month- good to see people again. Realised the importance of constant growth. Felt tired in the evening, registered on the forums, started working on my introduction.

Day 12

Spent my entire afternoon writing an introduction. Starting to feel like I'm forgetting why I'm doing that entire detox thing.

Day 13

Didn't go to school because my ankle is swollen and hurts. Started meditating, will continue. Spent some time on my computer trying to start a journal, but got distracted and couldn't get my mind to do anything, got angry and turned it off. Grabbed Metro 2033 out of boredom, spent 6 hours reading it. Not sure how I feel about it.

Day 14 (today)

Still at home, felt weary and spent pretty much an entire day reading. I have some schoolwork to do, but I keep telling myself that I'll do it on the weekend. Started a journal. In the evening still feeling weary. Tomorrow I'll get a grip and start doing what I have to do.

Some additional things that I want to mention:

During the 2 weeks, to my surprise, I had pretty much no desire to play at all. I caught myself daydreaming about games a few times, but that's about it. I really didn't feel like I want to play. A greater problem seems to be the feeling of wearyness, which has been haunting me for the past week or so. I've been avoiding spending time browsing content, but I find myself checking my phone to see if anyone messaged me when I'm just bored. Played guitar every day since day 4 for a couple days, but did none of it in past 3 days... doesn't seem as appealing anymore. Overall I've been pretty idle in the past few days, should focus on not procrastinating. Once I finish my schoolwork tomorrow, I'll look for some more hobbies, because meditation and reading feel like too little right now. Unfortunately, my options are limited to in-door activities, because, again, broken ankle. I'll look into organising my journal better, because so far it seems messy and incomplete in many ways.

[I am not who I want to be.]

Hi there, my name is Matt, I'm 18. I've been around for a bit and I think it's time to stop lurking and join this community.

I've been gaming "seriously" since I was around 13. I only have vague memories of how it looked like until fairly recently, so I don't want to go too much into detail about my middle school days. I would play a lot, but I think it was still somewhat controllable, mostly thanks to my mom. When I was 15, i ended a close friendship and I started to isolate myself more, and games were my main thing to do- other interests started falling over. However, I know for sure that things got out of control at the age of 16 when I went to highschool in a different city. I didn't know anyone at all, except one close friend who went to a different class in the same school. I had no friends from previous years, except for that one guy, and essentially I would spend most of my days surrounded by people whom I didn't know- extremely stressful for me, because I was never a type of person to just walk up to someone and befriend them. Later another factor came in- as opposed to previous years, suddenly I was having problems with learning. It used to be that I would be exceptionally good at whatever I had to learn, with my greatest pride being math. This left me with a very fixed mindset, which I am fighting to this day. In high school, I didn't just breeze through everything- I had trouble understanding math and programming. And instead of being encouraged to learn more and improve- I got put off. I simply wanted to forget about my ego being hurt. And that's when anxiety became my main drive for gaming. No negative thought could slip through, and it required no effort at all- what more could I wish for? When I started to talk to people more and they were asking about my interests- I suddenly realised that I couldn't say anything but "games". And I was ashamed of it. It got even more interesting when we had to give a short talk about our interests in front of the class- I made something up, because I didn't want to say "I like games and that's all." So I gamed to forget about the shame, but it was making me feel ashamed, so then I'd game more to forget it- a truly self-driven mechanism. All of a sudden I'd spend all of my free time gaming- even when not actually playing, I'd watch streams, YT videos, browse reddit or just think of what will be the next thing I do when I get online. I was neglecting school- I'd only do a bare minimum, sometimes not even that. I felt no need to self-improve, since I was achieving my gaming goals, and they were enough. My ability to focus was awful, most days I was feeling tired, but not really the kind of tired sleep would fix- just no desire to do anything at all. I blamed it on lack of sleep, but I had no will to improve it. School takes away too much time, I thought, when in reality I'd spend hours browsing internet before going to sleep. I was feeling depressed more and more often, until one day I realised that it's hurting me, so I resorted to something that seemed harmless- games. During all that time a thought to stop gaming didn't even seem real- "why would I do it? What would I do instead?" At one point I wanted to start lucid dreaming so that at least I could be happy in my dreams. Guess what, I'd dream of games, if at all. Later I decided to start tracking how much time I spend on games- turned out to be up to 13 hours a day at weekends, but I stopped doing that, because I didn't see any use for it. A question of "Am I an addict?" started to appear in my head more and more often, but I'd answer with "I might just be", and then I would keep playing.

Moving onto more recent events, I broke my leg in January, right before winter holiday. I'd sit at home and play around 10 hours every single day- to a point where my hands and ass would hurt, but not enough to stop me. During that time time became irrelevant to me- I couldn't tell a difference between playing for 2 and 4 hours. I'd only take breaks to eat, go to toilet, or spend time on my phone watching others play. One day, I finished all my goals in a particular season of my "main" game, and I was left with nothing to do there for a next month, until a new season comes out. For the first time in many months I felt... bored. Next day, an incredible coincidence happened. Remember that one close friend I mentioned at the beginning? He was, outside of my family, the only one who was truly aware of my attitude towards gaming. In the evening, he sent me a link to this very website. It was the best moment to do it- I was bored, and I couldn't satiate my hunger for playing that one game, since I was done with a season. I didn't tell him about my boredom right before that, turns out he just sent it to me randomly. I clicked, and a page about the 90 day detox came up. I read it, and these words shocked me:

I bet you relate to the following experience:

 Life just doesn’t satisfy you like gaming does.

 Everything else is boring anyways, especially compared to the fun you have gaming.

 And if you were going to quit, you just don’t really have the motivation to.

I found that to be true on every level. I thought "This must be it. I see what I have to do now." An idea about spending a weekend without anything related to games or any social media came to my mind, and I immediately picked it up. And that's how I started my, so far, 12 day long detox. I am doing it because:

1. I want to be able to feel happiness again.

2. I don't want to spend my entire life just consuming content.

3. I want to be able to create and give, not only take.

 Now that I think about it I might start posting a daily journal here. I've been making my own writings on paper since day 1 every single day, but posting some things here might be more helpful for my recovery. Thank you for reading.