[I want to stop ruining my life]

4 minutes ago, DaBest said:

Hi @Hayns, welcome to Game Quitters!

If you wanted to hear stories about people quitting, then yeah, you came to the right place! 

Me personally, I gamed from 7-27. I never thought it was a problem despite my anger issues while playing until I turned 18, when I woke up one day, and played for about eight hours straight without eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, or noticing time passing. I deleted everything off my Xbox 360 and took it apart and put it in the closet. 

Things went well when I started college, and I didn't really game all that much since all the system's were my roommates's. I also didn't have much time to either. However, I started to watch walkthroughs and streams, which is basically just porn for a gaming addict really. 

After college, I offered to play a game of LoL with my severely depressed and severely gaming-addicted former roommate as a means to keep in touch. I was instantly hooked, and went through several bouts of installing and uninstalling. This repeated for a long time. Watching gaming and being otherwise addicted to the internet was part of why I ended up leaving grad school early. I was broke and with few friends, and even fewer social skills. I joined Game Quitters at that time, many years ago, and left a while after.

I got a job and things got a bit better now that I was making some money. However, I keep watching gaming, and periodically reinstalling LoL and playing for 16+ hours straight at a time and feeling like a coked-up zombie. Eventually, things reached a head last spring, where it was all I could think about on my drive home. I would start chaining together several days with 12-16 hours of gaming. At that point, I came back on Game Quitters, installed a bunch of website blockers. That's when I realized I was really depressed and anxious and that I was using gaming to cover that up. Because of the website blockers, I started to do really well in staying away from anything gaming, but that was when all the emotions came pouring back. Coupled with work stress, I started having suicidal thoughts for the first time in a long time, and I went to go get a therapist. I felt TERRIBLE. Eventually, the feelings subsided, and I've had probably one of the most painful, but also one of the most rewarding and growth-filled years of my life. Now, I'm (apparently) killing it at my job, starting to go out again, making new circles of friends, and performing improv comedy on a regular basis. As a loner who was sucking at their job (admittedly, after a promotion), anxious, depressed, and unfunny, to say that I would've predicted this last year would be a huge lie. 

Moral of the story: often times we use gaming to escape from reality and what scares us. By doing so, the scary thing becomes scarier and takes a larger toll. The only way to get through this is to embrace the pain you will feel from giving up gaming and having all the emotions come back, and use the pain and anxiety to direct our course our action. One must approach their demons to get through them. If you can do this, the rewards are amazing. 

Don't throw it all away for gaming. Throw gaming away for everything else. Good luck on your journey!

Thank you for sharing your story! I wish that you continue on your journey and become the best person you can become!

It's day 4/90 of my detox and I am doing very well! The cravings were bad but my desire to stop isstronger! I'm looking forward to share my story to everyone else in the future hrhe

[I want to stop ruining my life]

Hello! I'm a 19 yo male kid studying in university. I am addicted to LoL. Lately, I have been not helping in groupworks, and failing some of my subjects. I have a lot of things I want to do. I want to take the psychometrician's board exam, workout, and establish better relationships. I have been really troubled by my addiction. I lost my girlfriend, and I might doom my education with it. I really want to stop, and so I want to hear similar stories from people here that was able to stop. Thank you for having me!