Marrr

While browsing some other topics I've found this one and it's definitely worth spreading. HALTED Are you: H = Hungry? A = Angry? L = Lonely? T = Tired? E = Environmental (work or home stress)? D = Dehydrated? Don't give in to cravings yet, and check/work through these possible feelings/sensations first! Credits to BooksandTrees. I think over last 3 weeks at some point I might have been TEAL, I really should be more mindful of my feelings and emotions and have some more self-compassion.

I haven't updated in quite a while. Overall I'm doing well. Already more than 70 days on detox from games and porn. I rarely even think about coming back to gaming and rarely experience craving. However time spent scrolling and using phone in general definitely increased. While things like messenger and whatsapp for keeping in touch with people isn't bad, I'm quite annoyed about all the time spent scrolling. Recently it got a bit worse, but maybe there is an excuse - I might have been working too much and I had quite a lot of stress. It's still a lesser evil and maybe I shouldn't be too hard on myself, but at the same time I really want to improve in this matter. Today starts my additional 30 days detox from 9gag, meme site in my mother tongue and news site in my mother tongue. Hopefully I can stick to that and improve, especially in the morning - instead of doing that useless stuff I'd love to develop a habit of language learning.

Sometimes small things can have big impact. The very little word of support can be all that someone needs. I've just watched that new talk of Cam with Tony and things he said about brotherhood and it made me feel like writing about some conversations with one of my friends. I met with an old friend of mine some time ago, that was struggling at that time, he seemed really overwhelmed, lost plenty of weight in quite unhealthy way etc. I've just told him that I acknowledge and understand his struggle and that if he needs someone to talk to he can call me, because I totally understand that he would never tell his wife and family that he can't go on. Like in the quote from a ted talk by Brene Brown. [...] And he said, "Because you say to reach out, tell our story, be vulnerable. But you see those books you just signed for my wife and my three daughters?" I said, "Yeah." "They'd rather see me die on top of my white horse than watch me fall down. When we reach out and be vulnerable, we get the shit beat out of us. And don't tell me it's from the guys and the coaches and the dads. Because the women in my life are harder on me than anyone else. After quite some time we had a chance to talk and I was really surprised to hear that those few words of support really helped him and he was very grateful. And sometimes it takes even less, I still remember a time when stranger's smile in the street was just enough to make one of the darkest days bearable.

Almost 3 weeks without gaming and porn, the third part is not perfect, I definitely spent more time, than I'd like to, looking for those little dopamine boosts while doing stuff like scrolling fb, browsing some discord channels or checking mail but it's still been very productive 3 weeks. I didn't meet my goal of booking italki lesson, I've subscribed to babbel though and kept doing it almost every day. It's a win but I'm aware that it's also a way to stay in comfort zone - in order to learn faster I need to start speaking and I can't do it without other people. Very big success for me is that I've finally managed to go running, went for a really long walk and did a workout at home, so quite a massive improvement in this area. Work is going very well, I don't need much improvement in that matter for now. One area that sucks and I know I should do something about it is my social life - recently on most days the only person I talk to is my spouse. In the city I live in I have literally zero friends. I did check some meetup events but here again - staying on my couch is much more comfortable option. I definitely miss having more social interaction and probably this is something I should focus on right now. Thanks for the kind words Ace and all the best to you in your own struggle with games.

A little success - I've just finished watching one of the Huberman Lab podcast, the one with Adam Grant and it was amazing experience. Watching those podcasts is one of those thing I really enjoy, but at the same time they are quite demanding and I don't think I could ever watch them when not trying to detox from games. I am very grateful for all the things I've learned from it.

It's been over a week, I'm staying out of games, it was a little bit of a rollecoaster. My profession has some similiarities to gaming. It triggers similar neural pathways, so during first few days of detox, when everything else feels numb, it suddenly becomes one of the most interesting activities available. It doesn't have to be bad on it's own. I'm my own boss and putting more hours is definitely fine, but they also need to be quality hours and I should be focused and mindful which wasn't exactly the case this weekend. With extra stress and emotions I ended up really close to relapsing, I had couple of drinks instead, which definitely isn't a good substitution in a longrun, but at that moment was probably the lesser evil. The good things however are that since I've started detox a little earlier than this journal, I've already made it for over one week. With only occasionally caughting myself scrolling some social media, but definitely much less than in the earlier attempts, where I'd sometimes wake up and stay in bed scrolling memes for 1,5 hour. Putting more structure to my life is still on to do list, same as taking care of some things that I've been procrastinating for a really long time. Another really good thing is that I did spend 1 or 2 hours learning the language of country that I live in and I'm planning to finally book my first lesson on italki by the end of the weak. Learning German is one of the top priorities right now, at least to the level where I can have some very basic conversation - and then just learn by simply using the language. I'm surprised again that not so simple act of writing this stuff down is really helpful, thinking about all those things and taking the effort to write them down seems really beneficial to me, it's very likely that I'm gonna put more of my goals in further posts.

One big need that gaming fulfills is that it's a perfect way to vent. What I do for living often generates a lot of stress, negative emotions and frustration. It can also bring my dopamine levels quite low, so after a tough day like yesterday I had a strong urge to do anything highly dopaminergic, not allowing myself to game I had cravings to do some drinking or gambling. That was actually the reason behind most of the relapsing that happened to me - feeling very low in times when work is going really badly and relapsing just to kill the pain. I need to find a healthy way to deal with the feelings, going for a run crossed my mind, the problem is that I often finish working really late - I've came back home around midnight. On the other hand getting clean is one of my main priorities, so maybe I should just rearrange everything and for some time put myself on a healthier schedule, where I work less and/or during the mornings.

Hello, I'm M, I'm in my early 30's and this is gonna be my first succesful 90 day detox from gaming, plus getting rid of porn and mindless scrolling memes/fb etc on top of that. I've been trying to quit gaming for more than half of my life. I've had access to games and my first PC very early in life, had my first PC by the age of 10. I've also realised quite early that games are not good for me, since I've always had problems with playing them in moderation, so probably my first attempt to stop playing games completely was when I was 13 or 14. I've probably made hundreds of small attempts. Over last few years I've probably had a dozen of times where I'd be clean of gaming for 1-2 months, relapse, binge for 1-2 weeks. Other option was to just play "in moderation" which in this case means 6 to 10 hour a day on average, not doing much over the essential stuff. Just writing all this stuff down was a very interesting experience, I've started to really think about it, I really believe this time I can make it and I'm grateful that I've started this journal.