alvayuso

@WorkInProgress I did not commit into any 90 day detox cause I wanted to quit forever, but I also said I wanted to quit forever from the anxiety, the bad mood and from being constantly escaping into videogames to avoid problems, and the experience I had the last time we played (which btw was the first) it was relaxing, funny cause I would try to joke around the game to laugh with her, trying to solve the puzzles of the game with her, learning the story from the game and sharing it with her (which I think is excellent) plus the funny moments when I get jumpscared from an enemy sometimes XD. Having said that, I will think about it, because I don’t know if a different option would even be better (and I do not feel the need to play it, I just wanted to do something different with her and have fun with her, since we mainly chat on WhatsApp through audio messages every two days more or less). Talking about your last response, exactly! That is how I feel about it, I feel that I do things the wrong way because that is how it has been forever, and I just have the ability to improve and fuck up less, but that if I don’t pay much attention I will fuck up surely, just because it is me, and I found your reflexion about the idea so interesting, I am going to take notes on that, that would be something worth remembering for sure! Thanks!

@WorkInProgress Well I felt awkward some years ago when I started to open myself to other people, but I was on a point where I cared about nothing, so that and constant exposure to this kind of things have left me with no fear or weird feelings when I am trying to open myself to other people, because I know that primarily what I am going to achieve is better knowledge about myself and my problems and, who cares about what other people think about you? As long as this is helpful for you (and the other person is being helpful also), there is no problem. And yes, definitely this kind of responses mean a lot to me. You are right, I primarily focus on the negative, but don't take me wrong, I know there are a lot of good things around me and I remember those to myself every morning (that I remember x)), but to be constantly improving, you have to be able to spot the errors and the negative things, so I have also became addicted to that, thinking that just by that I could improve in whatever I want to do, but that also creates some sort of anxiety and feelings of not being worth enough, so I definitely have to learn how to balance that, for sure. I just don't wanna end up someday finding myself being too comfortable and not wanting to improve (my lifestyle, or whatever it it), that is something that makes me sick if I see it in someone. If there is someone like that in every aspect of their life (or at least in most), I try to leave as fast as possible. I agree that you are what you do on a consistent basis, that is exactly what people are, a bunch of chatterboxes with habits, and those are what creates the personality of the individual (not only the habits of doing but also the habits of thinking). And without doubt, gaming makes you a consumer instead of a creator of ideas, that is something I have been feeling this last days now that you mention it! I also find myself browsing too much on YouTube, and I am trying to stick to the things that are really interesting (like, I am gonna apply this information in a short term), and if not, I try not to watch it. I guess this firsts days could be a little bit overwhelming too (talking about boredom, which I felt today), and for fuck sake, how many times I have said I was gonna do something boring or hard tomorrow, or this afternoon, and I ended up postponing it waay too much, so yea, gaming is by far, the god of procrastination, mostly to people that develop this kind of habits of escapism. After it, you can find YouTube hahah. Right now, my idea on videogames is that, I have a very good friend from Mexico, a girl who helped me from almost the very beginning and with who I created a very deep connection, and we started to play Silent Hill 2, a game that I am loving and I'd love to end with her. We play once a week and I decided to end it with her. That will be my only touch with videogames. I think it wont be a big deal because I do not find myself obsessed with that game, plus I wanna play it with her, so I would not call that a relapse... Would you?

@WorkInProgress Thank you first for your wide response, I highly appreciate it bud. I have tried audiobooks in the past, and I think they are excellent, but in most cases I prefer to read them by themselves (even if lately, I have had a hard time finishing any of the books I tried to finish due to my addiction), but I will definitely give the one you mentioned a try! I would also want to recommend you not only a book, but a person that has helped me to find purpose and meaning in life many times, and who I think is like the father figure for many who (like me) miss that figure in their lives, not because I do not have a father, but because I feel like the parenting I have received has indirectly pushed me towards some problems I have had in my life, and he is Jordan Peterson, I discovered him like 1 year ago and I have followed his career this last 5 years since then (he has more than 200 videos on youtube), and I have tried to read his book '12 rules for life: An Antidote To Chaos', which I am committed also to start again and read it completely. I cannot agree more with you about how competitive I am, and how videogames just work on the short term, even if I have been dedicated to them and made progress on them, the more I put into games, the worst it seemed to feel inside, weirder, more freak, more 'out of touch with reality and real people', and I am not sure if that is just a subjective perception, because you can see a lot of pro players having their lives and earning a living from this, and being able to control it (at least it looks like that), but that was not my case. I did not suffered much bullying to be honest, I cannot remember it, but I remember being quite lonely always, mostly when I was a teenager, none would match my expectations (or I could not match the expectations of them, so I wanted to think that none would match mine, I am not sure to be honest) so I would stay in the virtual world where I usually match expectations, and they usually also match mine, and sometimes I forged good relationships, but even like that, most of them faded away (even if I tried to keep in touch and this things), I can only think of 1 friend I made when I was 13 through the PS3 on Call of Duty WaW, that added me not so long ago to the social, and who was glad to know from me again (which made me truly happy, for real). So, coming back to the activities I could use to replace that feeling of growth that videogames provided me with, yes definitely fitness is something I have had in mind since I started back when I was 18. I have found many rocks in the path and after several times leaving and coming back, nowadays I am working in my bodyweight training (since I live with my parents and my grandma and I cannot afford going out to a gym, even if I wanted to right now I am in a village, so that is absolutely not an option), and I am preparing a program to start to improve my posture, my mobility and the basic movements (pull ups, chin ups, push ups, dips, planks...), so yeah I could say I am working on that already ;), but thank you again for recommending me those ones, I am sure if I did not know enough about the subject I could just go and use those as a starting point! Social sports would be a huge help, but how I told you, in my situation (and since I am quite busy preparing my thesis and preparing the trials to join the Army as an engineer) I just cannot use them. I also played LoL for 4 years and I stopped also because of the huge feelings of worthless and the toxicity, and it took me a long time until I could recover from that game, I had to move to other videogames until I felt some of them would fill me at least a little portion of what LoL did (I still do not know how, but that game drives you completely crazy, something I hardly felt in videogames), so I feel you bud, what a huge accomplishment to be out of that shit for all this time! You will be able to check daily how I am doing, cause I will not fail even one day to come here and write about my entire day, all I want to tell. It makes me feel much more self aware of the situation. Lastly, thank you for your wishes, I eventually find my real self, I just have to keep trying .

@championealAbsolutely, as I told Jason70, when I feel the cravings, I focus on why I decided to quit: the meaningless existence, the anxiety, the rages, the feeling of being stuck, I try to remember it as vivid as possible, and that way I can feel like the urges slowly go away (as well as having a friend or two supporting me, that actually helps a lot too in order not to feel weird) Respawn is better than I though in the first place, when I bought it I was like: here I go, another guy profiting other people’s addictions, but it was not the case and I am glad I commit into buying it! I need to keep going on it bc I have not finished it tho.

@Jason70 That is true, yesterday when I felt the cravings I tried to focus on the bad mood I had, the feeling of being stuck and the anxiety it produces me, and certainly has helped. I have to keep going, one day at a time. I am so proud of myself I can tell you, I have spent years without even 1 day off, so this must be the path.

Firstly I want to thank everyone that comes to check how I am doing or just wants to know my story. I want this to be my diary, because although this is not the first time I tried to leave videogames, I want it to be the last one, and I am fully committing on it, so I will be posting my daily experiences on what I experience everyday and how I feel, in order not to lose sense and check in here daily. DAY 1 (12/07/2020) This happened yesterday so I am trying to write everything I felt as I can remember today. I remember it as another day, committing to my endless task of trying to grind my way on the one that was (well, I think I could say is ) my favourite game: Rocket League. I have been playing that game since 2016 and I have 2200 hours on it (now that I remember it from yesterday, my brain is craving for playing some Rocket League to be honest). So the thing is I warmed up as always, and then started playing competitive, and losing in every single match (I even tried different modes). After losing the last one (a 1v1), as other times, I wanted to hit the screen and throw the computer, so instead I hit the table with my fist, twice, as hard as I could, and I exit the game. You know? I feel like I LOVE that game, certainly there is no other game it gets me like this right now, if there wasn't for Rocket League, I would have probably stopped earlier this process, but RL for me feels amazing, the physics, the way I control the car flying, carrying the ball, hitting crazy touches, but I am just tired, I feel like I cannot deal with this anger anymore, and if I am always going to leave the game angrier and with bad mood, then why the heck I play? Someone would say: well but Álvaro, just don't take it that seriously, try to have fun, do not try to climb or rank up that much, and here it comes the addiction: if I don't see any improvements on me, on my gameplay, on my mechanics, ON MY RANK, I just feel I am shit, that I am losing my time and I CANNOT afford losing, because if I start accepting losing as something normal, I would never be EXCELLENT on what I want to be. Do not misunderstand me, at the beginning I knew I was going to lose a lot and I would need to learn a lot, but right now, with all the time invested, I feel like I am just a piece of crap if I keep losing this much, and that I am worth NOTHING, and the more time I invest, the worse that feeling goes, so I just wanted it to end. Apart from RL, I have played many games, and when I felt I was tired of one I would go to the next one, until the point that the days I feel the worst cravings, even if I have to do something else, I would be gaming mindlessly for the entire day until I have to go to sleep, it is like feeding a monster who is never satisfied, it could be satisfied today, but tomorrow, as soon as I have energy, there it is, coming to make me keep playing until it is too tired to continue. So after that huge rage I remembered I have seen some videos of Cam on youtube, talking about gaming addiction and how to deal with it, so I checked some of them, and after eating lunch and keep feeling this bad mood, I decided I had to do something, so I went into his website and bought 'Respawn', which by the way it is way better than I though in the beginning, and it is helping me a lot, so I read until the point where it says I should go and delete my accounts and my videogames from my computer, and that is what I did (well, I did not delete the entire Steam account, but I deleted every single videogame, uninstalled steam, left all discord servers about gaming and unsubscribed all the channels I used to follow about gaming), so since I did not have too much time left, I had to continue with my thesis, and so I did, until the end of the day, having some feelings of relief, anxiety, fear and excitement. DAY 2 (12/08/2020) Today I slept so well, certainly way better than any normal day, the anxiety levels were much lower (since yesterday I had this pulsating sensation on the left side of my head, and also my left eyelid twitching for the entire day), and I had motivation to go do things, and so I did! I ate breakfast, and worked on my thesis, while I was checking if someone would have replied my first message in the forum, since I am quite excited to be able to share, help and be helped around here, I am not gonna lie. Apart from that, chatting with some girls on a dating app, play a bit with my dog and help my grandma fixing a lamp has been all I have done today. I haven't felt much cravings today to be honest, until at 21:00 I entered in discord and I started chatting with a couple of friends (who, by the way, support me on this decision), and I heard them while gaming, that made me feel cravings, but I just fought them, so when one of them left, the other one and me were watching videos together and just chatting, which I certainly enjoyed. Oh, by the way, I played a chess game against my father (who could not remember too well how to play) and it was fun to play against him, even if it was way too easy to win him, I hope we can play some more any other day, since our relation is not in its best to be honest, and this seems like an activity both of us enjoy. I love chess, I was the type of guy that in primary school wanted to play chess but none in the class wanted to play against (not because I was good or anything, but because none felt it was fun). So, yea, that has been my day, quite relaxing until the end of it, when I started feeling the cravings from hearing my friends game and having to write the above text about Rocket League, but now I am gonna prepare my dinner, watch a video or something and go to sleep, I hope tomorrow starts as good as today :). DAY 3 (12/09/2020) Today it has been such a weird day. Firstly I could not sleep too well and I am not sure because if what, I think I went to sleep way too late and that usually affects me, since I am the kind of person that, doesn’t matter the hour I go to sleep, I always wake up quite early in the morning, so idk. During the morning I have been at class through videoconference and everything was going well. After that and before eating lunch, I worked out a bit, and since my workout was not too complete, I decided today I would start programming what I was going to work on and how, so I am able to see some progress on my body and on my endurance, which has been a bit stuck lately. Apart from that, I had some cravings during the afternoon, again thinking on Rocket League, but I managed to make them disappear quite fast when I thought on the process of gaming: feeling ashamed again, raging, the bad mood and the anxiety, and I managed to make those cravings stop. After that, I checked GameQuitters and I also had some responses on this topic from WorkinProgress, who kindly exchanged some ideas and reflexions about different topics around my life experience and I appreciated it quite a lot, I got some interesting thoughts from this conversation that I am gonna take notes of. I also had another game of chess with my father, who is tryharding so obviously, taking 10-20 min to move while I never take more than 1 min, and we are having an interesting game due to some very awful mistakes I did. I like things are getting interesting but I told him we cannot take days to play a game, so we are gonna have some kind of limit in the time to move, so we can finish a game per day at least! Right now I am writing this on my iPhone while I am warm under the blankets of my bed, and I think it is time to go to sleep. DAY 4 (12/10/2020) Today I slept much better, I think the reason why I could not sleep well yesterday was bc I ate something pretty salty on the night and I had to wake up and drink water way too much. Anyway, on the morning I attended my classes as always. I could not be progressing on the thesis I am working on bc on class they were revising the exams we did last week, and I had to pay attention. When it finished, around 12:00, I started checking videos on how to fix posture. I have spent most of my life sitting on a chair, and that plus my low self esteem made me develop a very poor posture, which I am convinced to fix, since it makes me feel bad about myself and it makes it more difficult to be able to workout properly, efficiently and preventing injuries, so that is what I am gonna focus now. After creating the program I am gonna follow, I kept watching some videos about bodyweight training, since I do not have any equipment but a pull up bar, and I think I could do something just with that. I am sure it is not going to be able to create as much muscle as weight training, but I think it could be very interesting, so I saved some of the videos I most liked and went to eat lunch. After eating lunch I realized I lost way too much time flirting with girls over a dating app, which made me lose part of the evening, but after that I just worked on my thesis until was around 20:30, when a friend came to my discord server and we chatted a whole bunch about music. I was thinking about buying a piano or a keyboard, to start practicing and use some of the free time learning an instrument, which would be great. I mostly love beats, (hip hop, mostly 'slowed+reverb' songs and lofi hip hop), so we started thinking about a keyboard, and we kept watching some of them, but to be honest I am not sure how much free time I am going to have, since I should speed up the process of finishing my thesis to be able to work 100% on my classes... So I am starting to decline the idea of learning an instrument. I have the workout, the mountain bike, podcasts, chess, books, and maybe right now it is not the moment to start trying to learn how to edit music on the computer and so... I may end buying a cheap keyboard so I can start learning how to play it just a lil bit (with any extra time I have, I don't know to be honest). Apart from that, I received a message on GameQuitters, on my introduction, from a guy with who apparently, I share a lot of personal issues and psychological traits, so I replied him, quite excited to be honest, finding it as a learning opportunity, since sometimes you are too much inside the forest to see the tree, and with the experiences of others sometimes you can see the problems, and you can apply them to yourself, so I wrote some things about my experiences, the reasons that, in my opinion, dragged me into the paths I have followed during my entire life. It was too late by that time so I decided to go to sleep, and see how tomorrow goes.

Hello Marius! I am a 25 year old Spanish guy who is also addicted to videogames, and I have also spent a lot of time of my life in League of Legends. That, with the help of other addictions, dragged me down in a very dark path I have been fighting for some years by now, but I am not gonna focus on myself here, if you wanna know me better go check my introduction. I played LoL for 4 years more or less (it was the only game I was playing at that time), and I started from Bronze 5 (when that was the worst rank) I can tell you, I was really bad. I started learning and I ranked up, and I spent so much time refining my decision making, learning new characters, I once got Platinum1 (in the season 12 I think, I cant remember tho). But during the journey I certainly felt more depressed and dragged down than excited and motivated. Games were more about trying to change the mind of my teammates (who would usually rage, troll, go afk, or just complain at everything and being negative) than about my actual skill, and I eventually found that was not fun anymore, I did not play a game for that (plus I usually was frustrated since I usually measured as well as I could my decision making, to let some random teammates just give it away in some stupid decisions and eventually gift the game and my time to that shit), so I decided to definitely uninstall the game forever. It was NOT easy, I had to play so many games until I found some that would help me replace those blasting feelings towards LoL, those that made me addicted to the game in the first place and I was not feeling anymore in LoL, but that would bring me back over and over again to see if today is the day I can feel those again; and now, after some years out of League, I am proud of myself for being out of League. I do not regret having been addicted to that, even if it brought me many bad things (bad habits, no friends, mental issues), I have also learnt many things and I had some good times in there. Now I am decided to stop gaming definitely since I certainly do not enjoy it anymore, I think I am done with it and that I should move on, and I have deleted all my videogames from my computer yesterday, and I am willing to help others, to give the insight I have right now so others with my same issue would find this path clearer. If you are willing to talk further text me, you are not alone on this bro. Stay strong. Peace!

Hello fellas! My name is Álvaro and I am a 25 year old guy from Spain. As you can guess, I am here because I have a serious addiction to videogames. I remember I first touched a videogame with the Nintendo 64 when I was 5 or 6 and it clicked on me, since then I have never stopped gaming (apart from when I was 14 to 15 when I had a girlfriend, and I was so in love I left almost everything to be with her, but that is a different kind of problem, not to be discussed here). I am so used to have this addiction I cannot remember a time when I was not feeling urges of playing a videogame, really, it sounds fucked up but it is the reality, when I was a teenager I left many friends because I thought what we used to do was too boring (just hang out, speak about anything and maybe drink a coke), so I could spend some more time playing videogames. During some time I competed in an amateur team on a shooter, being always between the 4th and 3rd place of Spain (in esl.com), and after that I wanted to believe that, someday, I could earn a living from playing videogames, but the more time passes, the more I realize I was just having an addiction and that I have always been delusional on that topic (something I really had a hard time admitting). I have used videogames as a replacement for everything: escapism, social interaction, measurable sense of growth and a challenge, but it wasn't always that way, at the beginning it was just for escapism and for the challenge, but this addiction has grown until it has eaten almost everything of my life, (the remaining life I had was eaten by weed after I was 16 and overuse of porn after 19, so yea, you can say I literally dedicated my life to addictions). My therapist has shown me that I'm surely a person with obsessive traits and I feel it is kind of true, because when I found something I really liked (like videogames and weed) I just can't stop doing it, but I truly think I always had those addictions cause I did not know how to deal with my personal problems, and that was a fast reliever of the anxiety, finding myself right now (8 months of no weed and high reduction of porn usage) as a person with a lot of anxiety, that cannot stop biting its fingers and a feeling of an annoying pulsation on the left side of my head, which started 3 years ago, and with not much in life apart from videogames and the friends it brought me (I even had an anxiety attack like 5 years ago, due to risking too much my college education (cause I was constantly high and playing videogames, depressed). Apart from the lack of life in general, I accomplished being able to stop smoking weed, working out every week at least 4 times and eating healthier, but I have this videogame addiction and I am gonna aim to destroy it, since I am tired of feeling depressed, anxious and meaningless, plus I want to live a real life, acquire social skills, and in general step up above my last and worst addiction: gaming. Thanks everyone reading this, I know it is long but it was needed to frame my situation a little bit, hope we can help each other on this journey. I am going to start a diary in its section tomorrow, so this will be the prologue of it. Stay hard. Peace.