Dizzy, disoriented, nauseous. It's me right now, again, after another all-nighter of gaming and frying my brain. Probably triggered my vertigo. The first time it happened I got my brain ct scanned. The doctor said there's nothing serious and I just need to rest more. He's right. But I also just can't control myself.
I am not even enjoying playing games anymore. I have already deleted all my steam accounts, but it didn't prevent me from getting hooked into online gacha games right after. After losing my 50/50 to bronya (who is unfortunately the best support in the game, and also all my other 5 star characters are unexceptionally good meta supports), I grinded honkai star rail so hard that I cleared the content in less than a week, spent countless hours browsing theory crafting posts to decide who is the most META dps and used all f2p pulls I could get so that I can get seele and "w".
And I am not satisfied. Mind you, there is literally zero enjoyable content left after such tedious grind. Soon after, I found myself scrolling through all honkai related subreddits, hsrg and discord non stop for hours per day and I developed gambling addiction as well, perhaps out of boredom; whenever I got enough jades I would pull one immediately while lying to myself that I'm just "building pity" and I spent all my trailblaze power and fuels farming relics. The sheer dopamine rush when I managed to pull an early Jing Yuan was surreal and I would linger endlessly on my characters' relic page to admire those godly pieces I got lucky on. There is no real life anymore. All that left is me day dreaming about getting the speed of my supports to a new breaking point and "w", in a fucking PVE game that fucking openly opposes grinding.
In less than 18 hours the game is gonna have a big update and release a new meta character sw. I'm guaranteed to get her and I already prefarmed a full subdps ER% CR% EHR% quantum relic set for her. She will boost my team so much that my seele will deal 32 times more damage compared to baseline. The events in the new patch sound fun and the new quests look promising. But I'M NOT GONNA LOGIN INTO THAT GAME EVER AGAIN. As a matter of fact, I am quitting all thrill divorced from physicality for good.
I will achieve that intention by following these small concrete steps:
1. Internal trigger override: replace gaming with reading for dopamine cravings. Also, “The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.”
2. Identity pact: I am not a gamer, I am not a theory crafter, I am dumb and hapless. I am a reader. I love reading and hate any RNG gambling.
3. Effort pact: DNS blocking 4chan, twitter, reddit, discord, etc.. Leave and unsubscribe all gaming related channels.
4. External triggers & selective programming: I must never discuss anything gaming related with anyone and I will end such topics proactively. “Is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it?” "Does it lead to traction or distraction?" BE MERCILESS.
5. Reinforcement: I shall utter a "I HATE GAMING" mantra every time I partake of food. I shall journal on gamequitters.com every day for two months.
6. Identity pact self conditioning 1: Every day I will collect evidences on how I hate gaming and prove it to myself with small wins on reading.
7. Identity pact self conditioning 2: I will be proud of my reading habits, and show off my reading achievements consistently to my close friends.
8. Identity pact self conditioning 3: There is no addictive personality. Only unfortunate circumstances and bad environments. Reading is my beloved coping mechansim.
9. No victim mindset self loathing: I will not give a fuck about my parents' inaction and no-fuck-given attitude for my cry for help of gaming addiction
10. Positive feedback loop: i will use habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement to provide clear evidence of my progress
11. Reinforcement 2: In addition to the mantra reciting, I will write it down to further boost the neural link establishment process.
Remember: Junk food is flavor divorced from nutrition. Pornography is sexuality divorced from the context of relationships. Video games are thrill divorced from physicality: no self regulation from having the physical demand of the actual Rough Play. STOP FRYING YOUR BRAIN NOW.