Apollo093

Day 7 One week!! Since I've started my sleep has improved (big time), I've much better mood, decreased anxiety, urges (haven't thought about video games today until writing this entry), more focus, motivation and patience. Today was a good day overall, spent a lot of time getting some chores or todos out of the way in one swoop that were piling up. Then enjoyed some reading this evening. My big big achievement was doing a challenging workout this morning, using an app I found which uses data to personalise my workouts based on my goals/aims and equipment at hand. That has always been the biggest barrier for me, knowing what exercises to do in different scenarios and creating a plan thats adequate for where I am to where I want to go (plus tracking it). Sounds exhausting before even starting to exercise lol. Thankfully the app I found does it all, so I'm exited to keep going tomorrow on the next muscle group. I have noticed that "busy work" at this point in my recovery actually tired me out quite quickly, even if its important that I do it. I reason its because the activity is quite short and spikey in terms of dopamine release. I've also noticed that following either busy work, or several hours of mentaling engaging activity, if I doing some resting activity for a certain period I often find myself in the mood to return to mentally engaging activity. A very useful loop if you ask me.

Day 5 Today is better than yesterday mood wise, I think yesterday I was actually unusually touchy or sensitive at times and I've found myself very calm/confident today. I think a number of things are helping with that, such as listing out all the things that were on my mind and making a plan to tackle them (plus getting one done already), exercise this morning, catching up on chores that were piling up and going over some mindset stuff I find very helpful. Overall I'd say improved mood, motivation, focus, patience with decreased anxiety and I had no urges to play video games. At all. Wow. And despite saying a week ago, I'd watch a movie tonight (before doing the respawn course and putting all my activities in place mind you), I thought about it once or twice but I just wasn't that interested. Between my mentally engaging activities, being outside and reading (resting activity) in the garden, I really couldn't see myself watching tv today! big turnaround I really enjoyed some family time today, my mentally engaging activities and I deconstructed the skills/parts to learning copywriting for including that as one of them. I first discovered it about 3/4 years ago, and tried learning it then but for one reason or another It didn't happen. I'm really excited to get started but mostly just to enjoy the process of learning it and writing. I've also been experimenting with supplements over the past several weeks to solve some mood related issues associated with nofap, based on the book The Mood Cure and The Edge Effect, and today I took another test to compare changes since I've started: so far there have been significant improvements (avg 20-30% improvement in the areas I've started to address) The biggest deficiency area for me was Seretonin so I started taking 5-HTP to see if there are any effects and while I'm still in a testing period, a lot of the symptoms have disappeared at the dosage I'm now taking.

Day 4 I realise overall my focus and concentration has actually increased significantly, not just since starting this detox but also with quitting porn, as I started to read a book I previously attempted about a year or two ago and I breezed through the first few pages like it was nothing. I guess sometimes you have to take a step back to realise how far you've come. Last night my sleep was amazing, I took a cold shower and meditated beforehand which I think really helped. The sun has been out here so I've been outside way more, and I can't help thinking how different that in itself is compared to all the sunny days I ignored to stay indoors and play video games, complaining about the screen glare! lol My mood in general is a little meh, but I'm ok with that, tomorrow is a new day. I had a great time so far activities wise, spending time learning piano, getting started back into french (which I dropped after secondary school, looking forward changing that), and doing some reading, cooking and exercise. Plus some journaling actually. Overall things are really improving. Bonus observation: A problem I was seriously having too was watching netflix or movies way too much, almost as a default for low mood days or just having too much free time, I realise now that was my go to resting activity but now that I've swapped reading (which I previously though was mentally engaging to me to my resting activity) aswell as having mentally engaging activities, the desire to watch netflix or a movie has massively dropped away. I'm just beginning to bring all my activities "online" in a sense, but every morning I now wake up with such energy for what's to come, it's a seriously nice change.

Thanks for Checking in @BooksandTrees, It definitely is a taxing life and it's only really in the last while I realised it having played just for maybe 2-3 days, but instantly regressing to a state of mind where anything that wasn't gaming was viewed like an inconvenience, eating, showering, sleeping, family etc.

Day 3 I've been doing the modules in the Cam's Respawn program and they've been great! I'm up to Module 4 now and this is my first day really getting into my replacement activities and it's honestly been super enjoyable: not only was I incredibly excited to get started yesterday but I've been really enjoying the day today. I'm taking things easy, not trying to do any certain amount yet or become a productivity maniac, just really enjoying the process. Started this morning with some piano, called my sister while I was cooking and after this post I'm going to probably do one or two more mentally challenging things before phasing into the more restful. For a long time I've been following the advice of "stick to one thing", or beliefs from the productivity world of chunking for maybe 2-3 hours to get into a "deep work" flow state. But now I realise between porn and the constant novelty of videogames, it's no wonder I've struggled to focus on things for long periods of time! (plus I'm relatively high on the personality trait openness and extraversion, so variety and multiple interests and exploration are almost intrinsic values/drawn to them, which makes me laugh at how anal I've tried to be with scheduling before). As for other areas of the journey so far, I'm definitely in a better mood, more focused and motivated, decreased anxiety and the irritability is decreasing too however I woke up with bad headache and was sleepless for good portions of the night. Not sure if this is withdrawal or symptomatic of other things/changes I've been making but I'm just gonna wait the next few days out and see if they resolve on their own. Looking forward to see what the future begins!

Day 2 Yesterday and earlier today I was feeling very irritable, with a general lethargy and moodiness. At times it was blood sugar related but other times the side effects would still be there. When I did play games, I didn't really take care of my health with stable meals so it'll be another few days before my blood sugar is fully stablisised. That's and my general health and wellbeing is the first priority for the next few days so that any issues with mood are JUST withdrawal symptoms. I have had one or two thoughts of playing games, urges/cravings, and thoughts of the last game I played, but they don't last long or I use a process I learned through nofap to deal with cravings (modifying it for this). Honestly though, I'm actually feeling quite good as I'm writing this, excited to be starting this journey. I'm working through the respawn materials and given how far I know I've come with nofap in the last 6 months I'm really excited to see how far I go with this.

Hey there, So this has been a long time coming. So I've actually been going through Nofap/porn recovery for the last 6 months or so, Hard mode and going strong, and it was the best thing I ever did (so far), opening my mind to a whole different way of living, and I actually started playing the piano after believing for years it was something I failed to learn in the past. Nope, I'm good at it! The benefits of that were great for me, and now that I'm in a reasonable comfortable place, I'm moving onto VideoGames. In truth, the cost video games has had on my life is almost hard to fully calculate both tangible and intangle; Time-4255hrs++ (low ball figure, based on steam hours and what I remember from one MMO, but doesn't include XBOX hours, which was years of play, should be 8,000-12,000 hours atleast) Money-€3,108.12+ (estimated, may be more) I'll write a journal post about the more intangible costs at a later date...self-esteem, relationships, etc. Full story; I'm 27 from Ireland, I've had a long history with video games that began harmlessly enough as a father-son bonding experience (which was positive). However, I was quite ill as a kid and teenager with epilepsy, often missing school a lot for hospital stays, eventually turning to video games more and more as an escape and distraction from the difficulties of illness, medication changes side effects but also to experience a sense of control over my life, and as a social outlet with my friends when I would be absent etc. This might seem reasonable but eventually, video games became a contributing factor to my illness (atleast on a psychological level, but arguable physical too), and its only in the last few years I fully realise that. It got to the point where I was experiencing so much social anxiety and fear about returning to school when I was absent for a long period that I'd feign or fake illness to stay home and play video games. Circumstances eventually changes, and I did go back, and I graduated from secondary school going to a very good college. But video games and this pattern became something I returned to when my illness returned or when I felt things became too unsafe/unmanagemable...in a sense I regressed back to the behaviour. This resulted in me dropping out of college when my seizures returned, and despite being offered to defer my year and see how my health improves etc, deep down I weighed the inconvenience of dealing with a new year and college against returning home to play video games as simple choice...and chose the video games. It's funny, while going through my porn reboot I incidentally didn't play any video games for something like 130 days, but after journaling about my history with them as part of my healing process I got insane cravings to, so I decided to play something for to see if it can be part of the reboot or not. Well it definitely can't, a few hours turned into 3 whole days. I completely went off the deep end, largely because my brain really just craved dopamine and besides porn, video games are just the infinite sugar daddies of the dopamine world (legal ones anyway). I went from feeling fully present and connected to my surroundings to completely numbed up and distracted with intense brain fog, and needed a full day dopamine detox to set myself right. Warning signs recently or in the past; Preoccupation with video games. CHECK Withdrawal symptoms. irritability, anxiety, boredom, cravings, sadness. CHECK (Experiencing right now) Tolerance-need to spend increasing amounts of time, may be motivated by a need for the completion of increasingly intricate, time-consuming, or difficult goals to achieve satisfaction and/or reduce fears of missing out. CHECK Unsuccessful attempts to control participation in videogames. CHECK Loss of interests in previous hobbies and entertainment as a result of, and with the exception of, video games. CHECK Continued excessive use of games despite knowledge of psychosocial problems. CHECK Has deceived family members, or others regarding their gaming. CHECK Use of video games to escape or relieve negative mood. (eg. feelings of helplessness, guilt anxiety) CHECK Has jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, job, educational, or career opportunity because of participation in video games. CHECK If I'm honest, deep down I knew years ago I had a problem with video games because it felt like rot when I played to solve a problem they couldn't solve, and in many ways I didn't care about myself or love myself enough to face the truth and want a better life for me. But I do care now, and this is the beginning of my journey 🙂