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Damje

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  1. Damje

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    Have you considered using some form of screen time regulator for your phone? If you're struggling so much with the question whether or not to continue using discord (and facebook), maybe it could be useful to regulate your time on those apps for now instead of quitting those cold turkey right now. Quitting gaming can be (is) hard enough as it is. You could for example lower your time limit every week to slowly stop using them, or stick to a certain amount of time that you feel comfortable with. Of course, you could also block discord entirely or do neither of these options. It fully depends on what you feel is best for your recovery.
  2. For me personally, MOBA's were (are) most addictive. Other games would also satisfy my addiction, but I would always get bored at some point. Especially with single player games, I would feel like the pace of the game was much slower and I would just start playing some other game. MMORPG's definitely drew me in more, but at some point I realized (playing runescape) I was just clicking on a tree to level up, in order to click on a new tree (same could be applied for any other skill). There was no point to it, this bummed me out and I haven't really felt a major pull from such MMORPG games since. The never ending learning curve and constantly changing meta of MOBA games is what really kept me going. Throughout my gaming life, DOTA (2) has been the constant. I would always come back to this game and I loved studying how to get better, I especially loved the strategic part of the game: how to read the map and what objectives to take and when to take them. So yeah, I guess it is different for anyone. I know any game can be addictive to me, but MOBA's seemed to satisfy my needs most.
  3. Hi, I'm Jesse and I'm 25 years old. I started gaming at around the age of 14 years when I was in high school. Back then I started to develop some bad habits; spending increasing amounts of time gaming and hiding how much I gamed. I did however have a proper structure in life; I went to school, I worked, played tennis, had a good amount of friends and learned to play guitar. In hindsight I definitely already showed some signs of an addiction, but due to the structure I had in my life it was not really an issue (yet). After high school I went to study Business Economics in a new city, I left (almost) all my friends behind (which all went to different cities to study). I was quite anxious to build up a new life in a new city and instead of actually building something new, I turned to gaming. With no real structure and no external control (because I didn't life with my parents anymore) I rapidly started gaming more and more. My second year studying it got exponentially worse: colleges and tutorials were not obligated anymore, I did not like any of the courses I had in the first half year and my only roommate went abroad for his study for half a year, which meant I was alone. I spent almost every waking hour either gaming or watching game-related videos. I completely isolated myself from the world and got caught in a vicious circle where I would feel more and more ashamed -> Didn't want people to know how I lived -> Isolated myself -> Felt even more ashamed. I had periods where I started to feel better and started to do more things outside, but gaming always caught up with me again and the circle would begin again. Quitting meant I had to deal with how my life had turned out, so being in denial suited me better. I think I've downloaded and deleted steam about 90 to 100 times during my study, that's how much I struggled with the question whether I wanted to stop or not. The longest I managed to stop during this period was for 1 month. After being diagnosed with depression 1,5 years ago, I finally realized in march last year that gaming was an issue for me and that I needed to do something about it. I wanted to finish my thesis (and with that my study) and realized that it was not going to happen while I would still be gaming. I decided to do a 90 day detox, based on Game Quitters. I did however not stop watching gaming videos and in retrospect I did not do enough research or commit enough to really pull through. Despite that I managed to stop for 3 and a half months. But not much had changed, the last 1,5 month I had increasingly replaced gaming with Youtube and Netflix and I hit a roadblock on my thesis. And when I started gaming again, I immediately got pulled in again. My depression got worse again and I started seeing a new psychologist. One of the first things she said to me was that I was addicted (which none of my earlier psychologists had said). And that's when I finally really stopped being in denial. After 4 sessions with the psychologist I stopped gaming on November the 7th and I haven't gamed since. I guess I needed that recognition from someone other than my parents to really stop being in denial. Since then I'm slowly getting better. It is still difficult to put everything behind me and move on from the shame, but I'm positive that I will manage to. Despite having stopped gaming, I still struggle with managing Youtube and Netflix. In some aspects they serve the same purposes as gaming did for me: I use both to procrastinate, to hide for my emotions and to fight boredom. This is also the main reason I started the Game Quitters module: Despite not having gamed for 4.5 months, I haven't fully left that life behind yet and it is time that I did.
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