Supa

Hi everyone. This post is 2 days late, but I figured someone might benefit from seeing this and I should be contributing back to the community that helped me out so much anyways. Skip past my history if you just want to see how my 90 days went. Me A quick history about me, I've been playing games since I was 6 or so. My addiction truly began at the age of 9 or 10 when I started playing games on websites such as miniclip.com and addictinggames.com. I later found out about Runescape during this time and that was my first main gaming addiction. After that I bounced around to various MMORPG's on my PC and various console games. Overall, Runescape was my most played game which I quit at the age of 18 (4 years ago). My other addictions have been to Minecraft, Diablo, PoE, various steam games, and finally LoL. I've averaged 12-15 hours a day most of the time either playing a game, reading about a game, or watching video content about a game. My mind was constantly consumed with ways to improve and this escapism eventually caused me to fail greatly in my academics. I started to slip around 11th and 12th grade since more work was required outside of class, but I still managed to pass with a good gpa. After that I went to university for a year and dropped out since I couldn't pass most of my classes. 90 days journey I found it relatively easy to quit my gaming addiction this time. I truly hit rock bottom in the 3 months leading up to that day. My gaming addiction was my fault. It caused my relationship with my SO at the time to suffer as well as with my family. I also had no friends in real life outside of my cousins. 3 months before I started this detox I was going to the gym for 3 days a week. I tried various times to go cold turkey, but I always went back to gaming. My entire life I tried to moderate, but I could never get it down. A comment by Yxven really sums how I felt, I made a list of goals for 2016 and broke those down into monthly goals. Then I broke those down even further as to what steps I could take to accomplish them and what I could learn every month so I could see progress. I started to up my gym regiment to 4-5x a week, learn mandarin chinese daily for 30 minutes, read a book a month, play at least 30 minutes of guitar a day, and daily learning of coding. What really helped me out was seeing my new activities and hobbies in a daily tracker. Everyday marking one of these off in an app I installed made me feel a sense of accomplishment. In the first two weeks I played offline games with my brother or cousins a couple of times for 2-3 hours. Since then I had no desire to game and saw icons for games as a mental distraction since it would bring up memories of the past. I ended up uninstalling every game on my PC since I didn't see the point of how gaming would make me succeed in any of my goals. In the days leading up to the 85th day I had a bit of a slip-up. I used to make gaming videos for Runescape which I found while cleaning out an old laptop and started to rewatch a few of them. After this I watched some YouTube videos that I loved about that game. On the 85th day after seeing a nice video I wanted to see how it was so I installed it and jumped online. I usually go online on this game every couple of months for an hour just to relive some of that nostalgia. I went on it and instantly felt the desire to succeed, to set up goals and succeed inside of that world. After an hour, I realized that the fantasy in my head was just trying to relive the fun I had in my past. I'm a different person now with my productive hobbies though. I uninstalled it and had a good chuckle about how silly my thoughts were. Hopefully that doesn't count as breaking the detox. I think that slip-up made me feel even stronger about not requiring gaming to be apart of my life. Analysis 90 days are over and the journey has just begun. I've been game-free nearly the entirety of that detox period and at the highest point of my life physically as well as mentally. I've been fairly successful in my courses this semester and even picked up a part-time job. I've read 3 books which really changed my perception on life. I've successfully hit the gym 4-5x a week and my body is proof of my progress. I've memorized a song on the guitar and nearly a few others, but I now know how to play chords and read tabs easily which is amazing compared to what I knew before I started. This has gotten too long, but a few tips of what I learned: Be aware of how you spend your time and what distracts you most.If it's not aiding you in your goals then cut down on it less or remove it completely. Watching less youtube and spending time on various social media and reddit/all made me waste a lot of time. The first 30 days are the most difficult.Just remember to keep yourself busy and outside of games. Even laying down doing nothing or meditating is better than playing. Go outside everyday, no matter whatI can't emphasize how much this helped me out. Whenever I chose to stay inside for a day, I would feel useless and trapped in a box like how I used to feel back when I was addicted to gaming. Ending There's still a lot of work to be done though to accomplish my dreams and goals and progress towards it daily will make it count. Hope I explained everything well, thanks for taking the time to read this and good luck on your own journey.