Swid

For me personally, I'd often masturbate for much the same reason I would game; to avoid confronting some bad feelings, be it stress, anxiety or unhappiness. I am trying to cut porn out but will still masturbate when the urge arises. I think it might actually be unhealthy not to release every now and then.

Thanks for the welcoming words! Haha, good question! It's easy to get a sense of progress and the games are short, so very easy to loose the sense of time. I think it shares a lot of things with RocketLeague as well.. game developers have become too good at knowing what button to push to keep us playing!

Hello! So glad I found this forum as I am having trouble kicking this addiction on my own. I'm not sure how much I should write here, my story is quite long if I were to explain everything that happened which made me end up here. But in short, I realized I had a problem 2,5 years ago when I had a psychosis. It lasted about 24 hours with smaller persisting for a week. I had been neglecting sleep, smoking weed regularly, and drinking heavy every weekend for at least a year leading up to it. I was not happy, and I was doing everything to not confront that fact. After the wake-up call I went into therapy, initially for alcohol and weed but I was able to quit that over night without problem (I just needed a good reason to quit). So I focused on my addiction to gaming (mainly League of Legends) in the therapy, and after a couple of months I was completely "clean". Now, my problems have started again with the release of WoW Classic, a game I used to play with my brother and friends as a teenager. I desperately wanted to relive the nostalgia. I set a goal of 8h / week, max 2h / session, and never later than 10pm. That didn't last long and I was soon consumed with the game, thinking about it constantly when I wasn't playing, and lying to my girlfriend about how much I actually play. I was able to see the problem and quit for a month, but now I'm back again. I am still not sure why I can't just play moderately. I am happier than before the psychosis, but apparently not enough to resist the pull of this alternative world. Maybe I am just lazy, confronting emotions is hard work and gaming is the easy way out.

I'm also new to the forum. I recognize the binge-watching problem for sure.. I'd stay up and watch streams and ended up sleep deprived. It felt like it was better than gaming itself but now I'm not so sure. I am still struggling with finding other positive hobbies that can replace gaming/binge-watching and fill the void I was escaping from. I started bouldering which I really like, some physical activity really helps me with feeling good.

This really hits the nail on the head for me. That's why I kept coming back to games, to escape the void. I guess the best way to escape it is to face it head on and work through it. But when I was feeling low that's just too difficult.