Simon E

Starting your journal is a great first step. Your experience of telling your closest ones (the friend and the partner) really mirrors my own. People who haven't played games, or even more so people who haven't experienced the addictiveness of games simply won't understand how sever it can be, or just how strong of a grip the games have on you. I pride myself of being a pretty disciplined individual; I exercise, avoid sugar etc all with incredible ease, but when it comes to games, my willpower crumble down to pieces in seconds. It's serious, which todays society do not understand (yet, hopefully). But you'll find that everyone here do know of the struggle, and are open to talking about it. Good luck with your detox, and the game development.

Welcome! I'm fairly certain that if you stop and think about it, you do not really miss the games, not deep inside. Otherwise you wouldn't be here, right? And about your gamers friends; if you want more from life than them, letting your relationship with them holding you back is definitely not the right thing to do. Also, trying not to come off as offensive: they will manage just fine without you. It's alright focus on yourself, actually, more selfish people living the life they want to live is what the world needs. Congrats on your 32 days, keep going like that and this'll be like a walk in the park!

Welcome!

Day 6: Been having this weird sensation lately, both now and during my previous detox attempt. It arrives at night, when the day is over and all the decisions I've made that day is history, unchangeable. Essentially, it's like this: I go through the day, I laugh, talk with my friends, I do stuff, some of the stuff makes me happier, some of the stuff doesn't, that's not the point. I'm not reflecting over my actions, I simply do the thing I'm doing then move on to the next, whether it's standing around waiting for class or whatever. I'm not thinking that much. It feels like I'm just passing through life. Everything is happening, and I'm somewhat a part of it, but I'm not reflecting over my position. I exist, but am I living? I feel like nothing more than a high-functioning sleepwalker, and when the day is done, and it's time to turn off the lights, I ask myself, is this it? Another day gone and never coming back. Is it supposed to be like this? Going through the world without thoughts, feelings, without affecting or getting affected all that much. Maybe this is caused by the years spent of gaming; the way I relate to the world might've become slightly twisted, slightly off. Or maybe it's really nothing and I'm just overthinking the whole deal. On a different and more relevant note, I'm now 8 days into the detox. It's the weekend right now, meaning it's the time when most of my cravings show up, but I'm handling it fine; it really isn't too bad. I've been distracting myself through the gym and the krav maga (my current martial art). Will update if it gets any worse. Also, "Wake Up" by EDEN is literally the best song ever created. If there's one thing to take away from this journal, it's this; go listen to that song, or any song by EDEN. You won't regret it. Peace, for now, I guess.

Day 5: I think I figured out the cause of my recent relapses; I've been seeing the weekends as these massive chunks of time that I simply have to get through, time that I have to kill, and, well, that mindset is pretty flawed. This is closely connected to me seeing all my productive tasks as work, something anti-fun, and when I'm done with those, I thought I needed a reward. But it shouldn't be like that, I should be really careful with the time I have, especielly weekends where I'm able to do whatever I want. I'll have to change my outlook on the productivity thing; in an ideal world I will crave drawing and writing as much as I did (do) with gaming. I do believe it's possible to let these activities serve as escapes from the real world in the same way as gaming did, and honestly, I wouldn't mind letting them become my new obsession. If you want to be great at something, obsession is a necessity. Another things that's troubling me is the whole idea with fun. I sincerely doubt anthing will ever come close to being as fun as league was, but does that matter? Is it necessary to spend a certain amount of time every day having "fun", or is it possible to go through every day only making progress/doing fulfilling tasks and remaining sane/happy? In a sense, by being like a machine, just doing doing doing without getting distracted. Kind of a meh post, didn't feel it today. Just rambling.

Day 1: Alright, so alot has happened since my last post, which is no surprise since it's been almost two months. I have both bad and good news. Starting off with the good ones: I managed to reach 45 days without a problem. During this time I didn't feel any urges at all to play, and slowly but surely I created some constructive habits, such as writing atleast 500 words every day, drawing consistently and studying somewhat seriously (probably for the first time in my 11 years of school.) It felt awesome. (Notice "felt"? Yeah, that brings us to the bad news.) I only managed to reach 45 days. The only other time I sucessfully abstained from gaming that long in the past 8 years the exact thing happened as now: I feel literally no urges at all after quitting, and I'm thinking, this is easy, I can finally do it, I can finally make it work. Then, suddenly, these immense cravings appear from out of the blue, and since I'm so unprepared, I have no time to build up any defenses, resulting in the relapse. These moments of immense cravings usually coincide with external problems (not even problems, just things I have to deal with, things I have to react to.) Found this poem in the preface of a book I read ("Station Eleven") that really resonated with me: “The bright side of the planet moves toward darknessAnd the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,And for me, now as then, it is too much.There is too much world.” Considering how introverted I am (if I'm allowed to use that word), people and all the stuff concerning people tends to exhaust me. My ideal life would consist of me living in a cave in the forest, writing and drawing all day, maybe have a few spontaneous philosophical discussions with passing travelers, but nothing more than that. Since that is practically impossible I confine myself to my own cave with league and a few virtual buddies. The inital relapse didnt last long; I played for maybe four hours then deleted league again, but what it did do was break my streak, which is more damaging than the small amount of time I played. Since that night two (three?) weeks ago I've been relapsing again on the weekends, simply because of the fact that I can't muster enough commitment to start over with the detox again, for real. The whole situation kinda reached it's climax yesterday, when I played for 14 hours straight and stayed up until 4am before crashing. This happened for two reasons; first, it's what my brain told me to do. There was too much world, so I had to escape. Second, because I kinda made it happen. I thought that if I push myself to the point where I'm about to literally collapse I would realize that gaming really has the potential to fuck up my life, and after that I would be able to make the decision to quit with atleast some resemblance to willpower. And well, it kinda worked. I slept way too little, woke up late and felt overall awful today; haven't managed to write or do anything productive. A good kind of awful though; this is what's necessary for my thick brain to understand that it's not sustainable, gaming cannot be a part of my life (Considering how I have to discover this fact over and over again, I might be a special kind of stupid) So I'm starting on day 1 today. Came across the quote "Fall seven times, stand up eight", and tinkered with it a little for it to suit myself: "Relapse a thousand times, quit a thousand and one". (Honestly it doesn't feel like I'm too far away from reaching that number.) I've also read, in "The power of habit", that during times of recovery from addiction it's apparently extremely important with a supporting group, actually it might be what makes or breaks the whole attempt to quit, which is slightly downputting since I hate being dependant on others, being somewhat of a lone wolf/one-man-army-guy wanting to do everything on my own, but if everyone here are anything like Cam I know I'll be in great company. So I might check in here more often (more often than once every two months atleast), and I'm grateful for any insights/supporting words you guys might have (also open at any time to having the previously mentioned philosophical disucssions ) As always, I apologize to anyone struggling through my bible written in slightly awkward english, and I hope anyone reading this has a great day Simon

Time to start off this journal-thingy! Right now I'm actually eight days into it already, and it's been going surprisingly well. Might be because of the heat-wave that descended over our part of the country last week, it being around 30 degrees Celsius or 86 degrees fahrenheit (which is really damn hot for a Swede like me). I've spent the days outside longboarding, walking and playing a little pokemon go with friends (a sort-of video game that I'm not going to give up yet, because it makes me go outside and hang out with friends, two things I want to do more. Also, I don't feel the same temptation for it as I did with games on the computer, but I'll keep an eye out for that.) When inside I've been struggling with establishing writing and drawing habits, and well, I've come to the obvious conclusion that creative stuff is just so hard to do sometimes. I think I've managed pretty well though. As for urges/cravings, there hasn't really been that many, but sometimes random gamingvideos can pop up in my recommendations tab on youtube, and when that happens it instantly feels pretty rough. Especially today, where the title of some video stated that apparently my single favorite character is in a really good state in leagueoflegends at the moment. Not what you wanna hear when quitting haha. But I kinda just said screw you and went about watching some drawing tutorial instead. Overall, I feel pretty damn good, and I'm excited to keep going. Since I keep a daily journal on paper I might not check in here very often, but I'll attempt to do it atleast once a week. Peace, and have a wonderful day :)

Welcome!

(A late) thanks for all the greetings guys!

Alright, so here we go. Here's my story, which is probably just a variation to the one you guys all know so well. (You dont have to read the bible below, I am mainly writing for my own sake.) My name is Simon, I've been playing video games for atleast half of my 18 years long life, starting to play seriously at the age of twelve. The games I've indulged in varies, it could be everything from singleplayer strategy games to bigger online games such as WoW. Mainly though, it has been league of legends, which I unsuspectingly signed up for in 2012. Everything about it had me hooked; the social component, the competitiveness, the way you could see yourself climbing up the ranks as you dominated over other players in your games. It became something to put all my enegry in, a passion, and I've spent so much time looking up guides and watching pros. But the moment came when I realised sitting in front of the computer and showing off your virtual skill to other players probably wasn't everything life had to offer. At this time I also realised how hard it was to break free. My nights would look something like this; I end up in front of the screen around six-seven pm (be it because of lonliness, tiredness, insecurities - it doesnt matter) and stay here until late at night. My body hurts, I fee completelyl awful, and furiously I tell myself this has to stop, this is the last time. Surprise - it never is. (Stumbled upon some kind of diary a few days ago, and I had no small amount of shivers when I realised I had been trying to quit for over 1.5 years.) Sure, I managed to go free from games certain periods. I even got 53 days into the 90-day detox. But well, I always came back. Yesterday I played a few games, went to ate dinner, then came back and suddenly realised I had two paths to walk from here. I could give in to my addicted brain telling me to go at it again, and I could with perfect clarity see where this path would take me. Or I could take the other one, the one I deep down so desperately wanted to take. I dont know what circumstances made it happen, but I chose the second option. I wrote to the company owning LoL, and asked them to delete my account. (The account I have spent probably thousand of dollars on, and 3249 hours of my life. Yes you read that correctly. And that is only one of the many games I've played.) It kinda broke my heart when they answered today and said they would do it, but you know how broken bones become stronger than before once they've healed? Main focus now will be surviving the hell the following days will prove to be, but after that I'm going to do all the things gaming has held me back from doing. Ive been a big reader since I was young, and have dreamt of being an author for just as long, so now I'm gonna pick up on that writing. (And alot of my other hobbies; drawing, playing the guitar and the piano, excercising. When I think about it theres so many things I want to do.) I apologise sincerely to anyone struggling through this wall of text lol. To all the ones already having quit, congratulations, I'll be happy to join you. To all the ones considering quitting, make the hard desicion. You will be stronger afterwards. Credit to Cam ofcourse, for all his content and his patient answers, and to the author of this post: https://m.reddit.com/r/StopGaming/comments/2ca0xz/ventrant_nsfw_language/ for delivering the harsh but much needed truth. /Simon "A winner is just a loser who tried one more time"