royal panda

Glad that those urges disappeared and you didn't give into them. They can be very detrimental to your progress if you let them, so nice work! I wish you good luck on your job interview and the rest of your detox!

Welcome to the forums! Sounds like you have made a good start, a next step would be adding in hobbies / start gaining hobbies to fill out your time. So far a notebook for writing is a great idea. I wish you the best of luck, take it one step at a time!

Yeah I have heard about that, I just am not good yet with my screen usage and time boundaries so its kind of hard for me right now. I wish I could do it now though. But progress...progress. Also I have used forest before but that just helped me with work last year. Since I am more focused this year, idk what to do with it.

Day 5 + day 6 + day 7 Did I play games? No 🙂 Did I eat junk food? No 😄 Did I drink soda? No 8D Did I watch porn? No 😄 Did I listen to music? No 🙂 Thoughts of 10/ 8/ 20 Two days ago was great. None of the things that i am detoxing crossed my mind, so thats good. I worked hard in school, and so far I have gotten a lot of great grades besides math which is my worst subject but thats fine. I want to get better at it though. Also this day, I realized I want to do many more things than I initially thought for a career. Now it includes having my own business, being a marine biologist and more. Tomorrow 10/11/20, I am going to start working on them. Thoughts of yesterday + today Yesterday and today were both more on the lazy side. It was phone troubles again. I needed it for school yesterday and I got attached on it other than school. Same thing today, but with my computer. I want to establish a system where I only use technology for important things like school, scouts, ASP (maybe) and more. Other than that I dont want to surf the internet. (oh yeah this forum too, forgot for a second). My use of technology is really getting me off task and that needs to change, but i don't know what system to implement. Also for today and yesterday I did listen to music but none that made me sleep and just dream dreams, which is what the music detox really is about. Not listening to music where i just dream my future. Also another thing got on my nerves today. My parents have always told me that just because you have one symptom of something doesnt mean you have it. (Ex: when I was worried I had covid, my mom told me that it was nothing to worry about it was just a low fever. One symptom. I tested negative btw!) But whenever it's depression? Their whole logic and that fact just goes out the window. It's not just my parents, everyone in my family throws the word depression around like it's nothing, (except my 2 youngest brothers, but older than me). Everyone else does though. For one it's not a term that should be just used everyday as some people have serious depressions but even worse, even if an emotion comes from an external source that's supposed to be fun or persuade you to buy something. Well for the persuading one, my oldest brother said after a commercial played "that made me feel depressed." like no depression is not a feeling, well it kind of is but no it's a mental issue, and it has it's own diagnosis. You dont just feel it from time to time like you feel happiness or anger. And for the external source that was supposed to be fun, I was upset last night for like 1 minute because my team got eliminated in sports, and even though i have said many times I am out of my depression to my parents and even though I told them today I had a college open house, my dad was like "get out of your room, youre getting depressed" which was not only insulting to me, I mean why wouldnt you be, someone is literally assuming you have a mental issue when you don't. And two you dont get depressed when youre sports team loses, that just doesnt happen. I just hate how they throw the word depression around like it's nothing, like it's not just sadness, it's more than that. And two staying in your room doesnt automatically mean youre depressed, it could mean a plethora of things, but nope my parents always assume it's depression. I just don't know how I can make their numbskulls realize that one, depression isn't a term that should just be randomly used, two it's not a feeling like anger or happiness that you just get naturally, three how it can be insulting to someone that they say they have mental issues when the person their making assumptions of told them before they don't, and four, how to make them realize that depression is way more complex. I just don't know how anyway, it seems like I am slowly living towards a great life. Seeing a college monday but leaving tomorrow, as it's far. Bye Things to improve on: Eat 3 meals a day have the majority of my day be productive reduce screen and youtube time

Welcome to both of you! I wish you the best of luck on both of your journey's. Also a good thing to keep in your mind is that everyone here will support you and will help you in any way they can. Again good luck!

Sorry that your family situation is rough right now, I do hope it gets better. For that and the outbursts for a more positive mind, have you tried meditating before? Meditation can help calm your thoughts and re-address situations. I know it helps me feel calmer and allows me to look at things at not only in a brighter view but also allows me to see the bigger picture, so you could try that/ get back into it. Also congrats on the tax return!

Hey codepants, welcome to the forums! It sounds like you have a great plan so far, all of those are possible if you commit to it. I think it's good that you are being experimental to see whether or not you want to quit for life. When you're addicted to something, it's hard to let go. I think this experimental phase will allow you to play games still but also see what you can do when you play less games and make a decision based off that. For my personal opinion, you should quit games for life, but see how you feel after the three months. Also on your goal lists, I have never heard of acroyoga or slalom rollerblading. How are they different from normal yoga and rollerblading?

I felt a bit like that at first as well. I was worried what they would think, how they would react etc. Finally I told them, and a few supported me, and then some thought I was crazy, and that's most likely what will happen. Of course it hurts when the people who you are close with don't believe you, but all in all, you can prove them wrong and make them feel guilty for not doing so. Also if your friends call you crazy or anything, with the hobbies you're planning, you will find people who share the same interests and create new bonds that way. So basically what I am trying to say, is no matter the outcome when you tell them, remember you're doing this for YOU, not for them or their approval.

Glad to hear Forest is working out for you! I have used it before and it's been super helpful for me, allows you to focus more on your tasks. Also I have the same question as giblets, what language are you learning? Foreign languages can give you more connections and enable you to interact with more people, also make new friends, depends on how much it is spoken. Glad you are doing well so far! @giblets Forest is an app where you can set the number of minutes you want to focus on a task. After setting it, on your screen a tree will start growing, if you leave the app then your tree will wilt. However, if you keep working on that task your tree will grow and you can create this forest of trees. It's pretty neat, and it's similar to the Pomodoro technique. I don't know if it's similar to Android's digital settings for phones as I have never owned or used an android before, but it is available for android devices, you should check it out!

Day 3 + Day 4 Did I play games? No 🙂 Did I eat junk food? No 😄 Did I drink soda? No 8D Did I watch porn? No 😄 Did I listen to music? No 🙂 Overall thoughts of yesterday: Yesterday, wasn't that good. I had a good morning, then went on my phone again, making me miss another college thing. After that and crying for a bit, I took my phone and put it in the back of my closet. I won't use my phone unless I have to submit something or use it for school. I didn't think my phone would be such a distraction again, but I was proven wrong. Maybe taking a break will help. Overall thoughts today: Today was way better, i got a walk in, finished my homework, was very productive. I think I am noticing a pattern too. Once I wake up, I dont want to get out of bed initially, but then once I get out of bed, I am raring to go and enjoying my productivity. One thing I also realized today is that anything you can do in a game, you can do in real life. For the games where you shoot humans or like GTA, you shouldn't do it, but you still could, (not promoting violence btw). For example, like any of the 2k games, instead of pretending to be a superstar basketball, baseball, hockey, football, player, you could put the game down and practice with a real basketball and a real basketball hoop, and practice to actually be an NBA superstar. So I found that quite interesting. Also today I made it to a college visit. Things to improve on: Waking up early start meditating again have a morning routine

Day 2 Did I play games? No 🙂 Did I eat junk food? No 😄 Did I drink soda? No 8D Did I watch porn? No 😄 Did I listen to music? No 🙂 Overall journal for today: Compared to yesterday, today was a more lazy day, which is ok, as humans it is impossible to be productive all the time. None of my detoxes ever crossed my mind. As I said before though, today was a lot more lazy. I did attend school, but like yesterday, I spent a lot of time on my phone, which is unhealthy. What was I doing on my phone? Scrolling youtube. The only reason I keep youtube is because of motivational videos but with them you can still fall down the rabbit hole and not get any work done. What's worse for me though is that you aren't able to customize what videos you don't wanna see. I mean like, you can mark videos as non visible in your feed, but what I mean is, if there's a channel that you don't wanna see at all, then you can't block them and their content, even if you report them you can still watch videos. Now maybe there is a way to do this but I was unable to find any. On youtube I ended up re watching one of my favorite shows I watched as a child, instead of working on my homework. Another downside is I missed a college info session, not because of laziness but because somehow my priorities shifted and I forgot. Other than that though, I took a nice walk and watched my Yankees for a bit, and now I am going to bed. Goodnight y'all What to improve on: Less Phone Waking up earlier Writing down reminders to college things

Welcome! You have made a great decision so far on quitting games. I wish you the best of luck on this detox, and know that I and others on this forum will support you on your journey!

@TheNewMe2.0 Thank you!

Day 1 Did I play games? No 🙂 Did I eat junk food? No 😄 Did I drink soda? No 8D Did I watch porn? No 😄 Did I listen to music? No 🙂 Main Journal for today: Games didn't even cross my mind today! For Junk food and Soda, while we did stop at a Wendy's all I got was just a sandwich and a Lemonade, so no junk food really, still on the unhealthy side in my book. While porn did cross my mind I didn't watch it, and for music, I did play some songs, but none that diverted me from my goals and made me just dream dreams. Most of my day today was visiting that college, I really like it! Though I would agree with my mom that the town around it doesn't feel that safe. Despite that, while I did spend some time on Discord I realized that just texting is not improving my social skills at all. Anyone can just text. Also since it's an alt, I am acting like someone I'm not which is not a good habit. I think I might delete discord and both my accounts for the better. It's hard though to leave the connections you made. One positive though would be spending more time with my friends in real life and making new ones. As I say myself, it's freaky that I know so little about my in real life friends and a lot about the connections I made online. Speaking of online, I wanna use my phone less. It feels like I depend on it, and I don't like that. Despite my use of my phone, I did round off the day strong, I finished my dark laundry, I rode my bike which felt nice against my skin in the cool fall air, and soon I am going to read and meditate! One thing to improve on: Less phone time Waking up earlier Have a good evening y'all

Glad you are doing well so far, keep it up!

Slowly I am recovering. For the first few days I just relapsed on everything. Soda, Games and Junk food. I thought they would help the pain go away but nope they just drained my energy. I did play mobile games today, for a lot of the day. But tomorrow is when I am gonna start my recovery and live up to the bar I set for myself for the first time. Some things to note is that For some of the days i was gone, we lost WiFi and Cable due to our driveway being done. The driveway guys completely ripped it out of the ground with their machine. Now we have to have some guys come over to replace it. For school my father took me to our local Church, to use the WiFi there, I did school while he did work. Another thing is our Washing machine broke. Though thankfully it's back now. We also have cable and WiFi back but the wire still needs to be replaced. For detoxes, I am starting over. Completely new slate. Video games, Junk food, soda, and now I am adding porn and Music. I know I shouldn't be watching porn when I am still a minor, in fact I don't even know why I started watching it. I know the cause, for why it came across my thoughts, and the reason is really stupid, but I don't know why I started to watch it anyways like 3 years ago. Being a minor still is one of the reasons I wanna quit though for my safety and other reasons. Music is because I listen to it way too much. Usually drugs; crack, cocaine, Marijuana, Cigarettes Vapes etc. or Alcohol, people use when they talk about what makes them "high." Well music is basically my drug. It's making me dream my dreams instead of actually working towards them so. It will be fine if my family plays music but I myself won't be able to personally play it. I will still have Spotify for podcasts. Speaking of my family I won't worry about whether they made junk food or bought me a soda or anything. During my time away, I have thought of kind responses I can use. Without hurting their feelings Honestly it feels good to be back to this. I think all I needed was a quick break to help me and process everything. It's good to be back to journaling. @gargamel and @Bird By Bird thanks for the support. While I am sorry you are in/were in similar situations, your comments eased me and helped make me realize I was not alone so thanks! Anyway gonna go to sleep, seeing a college tomorrow. For my journals moving forward I don't know what I am going to do, but for now I think I am going to write my accomplishments, what I am grateful for, what I can improve on, and to motivate me into the morning, a quote from a successful person, to remind me to be successful. Anyways, goodnight y'all, it's good to be back

I am fucking falling apart again. Negative thoughts are back I am completely drained, I am not finding work fun, I mean people wouldn't but I am not enjoying it. Just everything is falling apart. I said I felt like I was in control during the morning but that slowly deteriorated throughout the day. Like I know I will fail, and there will be rough moments, but how am I supposed to complete shit when you live with a family who just is a balanced diet family but still eats a lot of junk, drinks soda, plays games. I just have everything I am trying to get rid of right in my family. Both my dad and brothers play video games, my mom buys junk left and right and due to our income it's easy for her to say "Oh lets get McDonalds or Wendy's" like every 2 fucking weeks. And on top of that my dad insists that we drink Pepsi because it's the company he used to work for and Pepsi is strict that you dont use other products. How are you supposed to expect me not to fail?! I just want freedom but that's hard when everyone around you is just a big fucking consumer of things you want to restrict and you don't have a job yet, so you're not making money, you don't want to just take from your parents income even with asking, so you can't get your own place, and you dont have a license yet. I just don't know what to do. Furthermore, I am struggling with waking up early, it's getting dark at 5 AM/6 AM, and being focused and just enjoying every second I wish I could not use my computer or phone and just go about my day, but nothing but two hiking trails are near me. Besides that there's nothing to do, and with school, I can't do much if school is on the fucking computer. I just want to be free and live my life still under my parents guidance but again my whole family, with good eating habits is going into things I don't want. I can't control that, but I don't know how to control my reactions towards it when they literally say, "Hey there's a Pepsi waiting for you." "Hey McDonalds is near here." "Hey a new animal crossing game came out." Like shut the hell up. Like I love them but why can't they accept that I've changed and I don't want that shit anymore. I just don't know how I am supposed to escape this hell with all these outside sources. For the money issue, I say this because back when I was in the height of my depression and games were my escape, I realized I had a debit card, so I thought well I have this I can buy games off the Nintendo E-Shop. So I did. I don't remember what the first game I bought was, but I just kept buying. Then 2 weeks before Christmas 2018/19 (don't remember year), I had games I wanted and since I had a debit card I bought them. I bought Pokemon Lets Go Pikachu, NBA 2K 19/20, Smash Ultimate, and Super Mario Party, all of those were in the $50-$60 range, and I bought them, thinking I was getting entertainment for free because my thinking was, "my parents can just add back on, we're rich" and yes we are richer than most but we still need to be wary of how much money we use, and I just blew all mine off. In that same year I bought like 10 Tier 1 subscriptions on Twitch, and A better version of Discord Nitro came out so I bought that too. On top of that, I had a Spotify Premium subscription, I had NBA and NHL app league passes which means I could see any game, I had Disney + and it was just mess. Oh yeah I also had Nitro boosted a server twice on discord which costs money. I kept blowing it all away, and like every month my parents had to keep adding keep adding keep adding. My worst month wasn't the weeks before that Christmas, no no, the worst was this past February or March where I still had Nitro boosting and Discord Nitro, I had 5 Twitch subscriptions, I had Spotify Premium, now I had Netflix, but I no longer had the NHL/NBA league passes or Disney +, and with this and another thing I bought I blew through the $200 I had on my account in a MONTH. What did I exactly buy? Well even though we already had it on the Wii U, I wanted it on my Switch. I bought Breath of the Wild, even though I could already play it. It was $50, but those subscriptions kept eating at my money. On top of that, Smash Ultimate DLC came out sooo yeah. I was confronted and now I am better at managing my money but still. Yet now it's the other way around, my parents and brothers aren't as bad as I am but they all have jobs and stable amounts of money so yeah. They're still big consumers though. This rant made me a lot better, I just don't know how I can complete these detoxes with all this around me, and by the way, I did relapse both to games and junk food already was there so yeah. Thanks for reading this, I think i am going to check on tomorrow to see if anyone has any advice and then just take it easy and see if I can make it through a day of school. Doesn't help me that in Math I have a quiz tomorrow and a college thing but I'll figure it out. Then for the rest of the days, I guess I'll be recovering idk something like that. Just so you know no suicidal thoughts happened when this happened. I guess I am just for now, going to take a shower, get into comfy Pajamas, and then start rewatching the Phineas and Ferb series, then read meditate and Journal in my physical Journal. I don't think I'll get to my drawing today, I need to take it easy. Then after that I think I'll get an early sleep. See you whenever I return to journal again.

I am glad you're doing well! Also making a board game is such a good idea, can you show me when it's done? Also good luck on reading a book a week.

Yeah, that's what I've been having, I have been having a runny nose and cough. There is lots of pollen going about right now. I just saw a bunch blowing in the breeze today. Usually taking a Claritin daily has been helping. I am pretty sure you can get it at a local CVS or local Pharmacy. I hope you feel better. Also video editing sounds fun you should learn it!

I am sorry what's happening at home, that is terrible. Glad you're moving out soon though. Also I agree with you about books, everyone is throwing away the "too violent" or "too sexual" books. I am seeing that in my school library, we have books with barely anything young adult, even though those books are considered young adult. The best I can get is at Barnes and Noble near me or off Amazon. I think it's due to the fact that in this day in age, there is a lot of sensitivity and also the fact that schools should live up to a school standard of "not having inappropriate material." Which is silly in my opinion because I have heard that in mostly every US school students smoke and swear and say slurs and mess up places and shit, and the schools don't care. On top of that in my school for english classes, we read books with all the swears and pornographic stuff, yet it's not in the library. There should be more of a market for boys here I agree. Try Amazon or a Barnes and Noble, that's where I was able to get some of my more mature books. I wish you luck on that.

Day 22 Today is Game detox day 7 Soda and Junk food detox: day 3 Phone detox day 3 Goals for today: My goal is to enjoy every moment and not stress whether I completed what I want to get done. I do everything for a reason. Today, I want to complete my work, crack down on college things, draw and start meditating. Morning thoughts: I don't know what it is about today. Maybe nothing at all, but I feel like I am completely in control of my life. Neither the Spotify symbol or my phone or anything that would generally be a distraction for me is distracting me. On top of that i have discovered some things that give me dopamine, that is thinking about college, exploring nature, hiking/walking, drawing and exercising. But i don't know what this feeling is, I just feel free.

Day 21 of overcoming video game addiction - afternoon: What goals did I complete? I cleaned my room I exercised (2/4) Detoxes: Video game detox: Success no games today Soda detox: Success Junk food detox: had 5 pumpkin cookies and another brownie 😞 I am sad because of it. But it's hard as shit to do when your mom keeps making them anyways 😠 Phone detox: Success, only turned on my phone to submit some work for school but that's it. Overall thoughts today: Although I only got 2/4 things on my to do list done I liked today. I finished my school work which is always satisfying, I went out on a hiking trail I never went on before, (only a walk away), I wish I could've walked it longer but some lady had her hostile dog with her and was complaining so I felt rushed. (-_-) The detoxes went well except for junk food. Which again is hard as hell to do when your mom makes them without conscience thinking people would like them and then getting upset when no one eats them, (my family is all trying to eat healthier and my mom knows that but still for some reason she makes treats and then gets upset we don't eat them when she knows we're trying to be healthier in our eating choices). I don't want her to feel upset. But other than those really small things today was fine.

Welcome! I wish you luck on the 90 day detox. Don't stress yourself, it's going to be hard in the first few weeks but then after that it'll get easier. Keep doing what you're doing, try to fill that void. Also reminding yourself is a good way to fight the urges. Anyways, good luck!

That's great! Glad it's going good for you

I didn't just wake up I just had to start classes right away. Day 21 of overcoming video game addiction: My goals for today: Clean room, draw, exercise, start Jiu Jitsu Today is game detox day 6 soda detox day 2 Junk food detox day 2 Also no I didn't wake up late I just have had classes. @BooksandTrees @TheNewMe2.0 Yeah youre both right, better to do what I can do now and later on traveling will get back. It's just sometimes you miss it. But it will come back. However, I still want to do something great and exciting each day, with COVID and I am unsure what I could do.