ajrice2

Hey Everyone, This is not easy... I do not like talking about myself. I am the type of person who immediately regrets it when I share anything personal on the internet, and I always delete anything that I ever post. In fact, my facebook wall has nothing but happy birthday comments and my interaction on any other sort of social media is essentially non-existent. I have been reading various reddit threads daily now for about a year and have yet to post my first comment. So this is awkward for me. My name is Tony. I have been addicted to video games since I was in middle school, when I was first introduced to Ultima Online. I am now 29 years old and my plan for this year is to finally quit playing video games for good. I have tried to stop many times in the past. I figured that the best way to overcome an addiction is to substitute an unfavorable addiction for favorable ones, but the withdrawal was always too difficult to overcome. All it would take is one bad day and I would be at it again. The best that I could do was learn to manage this problem. For me, this addiction is cyclical. In the spring, summer, and fall, I am outdoors a lot and tend to play moderately. However, in the winter, when it is cold, dark, and gloomy, it seems to be the only activity worth doing. To counter this, I have purchased several books over the years that interest me, ranging from programming to government to comics. I can always get into reading them for a few days or weeks before I start experiencing the withdrawals. (And this is while actually still playing video games. I was having withdrawals because I was not playing enough!) I am here today because I have always told myself that there will be a day when it finally ends... and I think that day may be soon. I had some good times, although for the most part, I have felt nothing but regret from wasting away years of my life to this addiction. It is crazy to think about where I would be today if I had never picked up a controller. (Fortunately, I was somehow barely able to graduate with a bachelors in biochemistry while burdened with an addiction that deprives you of time and strips your potential.) The truth is, I just became a father and I do not want my children to meet the same fate as me. According to Malcolm Gladwell, it takes approximately 10,000 hours of purposeful practice to become an expert at something. (I think there are many of us here that have greatly exceeded this value with a controller, and if we could, most of us probably wish we could take that time back.) By quitting, I increase the likelihood that my children will one day become experts at something other than "playing video games" (like their father). Thanks.