Neat

Hello all! I relapsed. I played in the last 2-3 weeks. It is very disappointing since I was doing really great. It all started with a seemingly innocent decision. First, I was invited to play with a friend Magic the Gathering. Since I barely play it, I thought it is gonna be OK. Well, the next day, I felt a great urge to play again, so I downloaded the PC version of it, just for fun. That was the second mistake. I quickly got bored with it, and went back to my hard core strategy games... I reinstalled Europa Universalis, and some RPG-s. I was in overconfident after the initial success. That is why I dared to download the game first. The thing is I only enjoyed them 10% of the time. But I kept playing with them hoping for some flow. But i could not get it anymore. I have to restart my detox, with the minor success of 17 days. I don't feel depressed however. I am just glad I can start it over. It was a good experience for me to realize that I don't enjoy them anymore as I used to be. It seems useless and fake. On the other hand, I feel ashamed that I could not keep up with the people here. I will make sure it won't happen again. Should I start a fresh journal or continue from here? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Neat

Hello! Aleksander is very right on enrolling your son into activities after school. Martial arts can be pretty good for self confidence. My father and I went to boxing together when I was in 7th grade. I enjoyed it very much, and I could defeat a bully who was in 8th grade. I stopped boxing in after a year, but i regard it a nice chapter in my life. As a parent, the worst thing you can do is make judgments on him, like calling him an addict. At 15, you think about getting laid and being cool with your friends. When things does not work out as you imagine, success in computer games give you the escape and self assurance which you thrive for. You should stop worrying things which are beyond your control. What you can control, is to help him to engage in social activities which bring him out of his negative spiral. Drive him to the swimming pool, enroll him in chess team, or judo team! And remember: being teen is pretty complicated. Just be there when he opens up to you, but don't force it. He will be fine

Day 8. Pretty good day. I started the day with Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror song. I have an idea of a big project. I will start my own business! I have a pretty good idea, and next week, I can pitch it to the HR representatives at a university job fair(they are the target). At the same time, I will make my plan to apply 5 jobs at least every day. I will see how it goes. Take Care Y'all

" The value imo in the detox is that it puts people in a position to either start developing more awareness of the underlying problems in their life, and/or also gives them the opportunity to start fixing them. " So true!

I really like the way you organize and update your progress journal! Would you mind, if I organize mine the same as you do? It is fun to read!

7 days post: Hello everybody. 7 days without gaming! Wohoo! In the last few days, I have mixed results for productivity. I went out to socialize, got a date with a nice girl for this week. Dating is pretty important. The bad news, I watched a lot of YouTube(some gaming videos too) and did not follow through my projects. I did not visit this forum for almost 5 days, and it is not the way of recovering. Conclusion for myself and others: Check in to the forum every day, even if you don't write your journal. You need this for the first 90 days at least. Otherwise your progress will collapse quickly. Take Care See you for the next time.

Day 2 I have to be honest, I really don't have cravings for games yet, I have cravings for procrastination( YouTube/browsing the net). The day 2 went fine, without anything spectacular. I went out last night to socialize. I unsubscribed from my gaming channels as Kiki suggested. I will use Kanban for a week to decide whether is works or not. Then I will definitely write a review on it. (I made a psychical one, to answer your question.) You all take care!

Day 1 This forum does help. I started the day with mindless YouTube for 1 hour. Then I realized, this is not the way for the better life. I visited the forum, read some success and failure stories. Then I had a productive day. I cleaned the house, set up a productivity system based on the kanban method and worked on my project. Kanban is way better then the depressing to-do list. I recommend it to others too. In the afternoon, i was in flow while working on my project. I had a call, got distracted, and the YouTube spiral started again. I am here again, making this post before getting back to work in the evening. Tip for day 1: Productivity for me, looks like a sine productivity function. If you read other people's journals, you realize then both have fantastic productive days and low energy( sorry Jeb Bush) days. Up and downs. if you catch yourself in the downhill, just read some of other peoples success stories or struggles. I feel a lot better. Can't wait for tomorrow, I think it will be even better then today.

The whole post is very inspiring! What do people say on this site? Subscribed?

Hi there! I am glad you wrote me. Newbies should stick together

Thank you all! Day 0 is pretty bad, I can't say I did a lot of productive things. However, despite the cravings, I did not play. I watched a lot of YouTube and browsed the net a lot. From tomorrow, I will minimize watching Youtube too. I accept the challenge! I believe it will be a lot of fun! Tomorrow, I will make a post of the things I did on day 1. Cheers!

Hello everybody! I am a massive video game addict and procrastinator. I am 25,unemployed, and I would like to restart my life and carrier. I tried to go on this journey alone before. It never worked for long. This day, I don't start alone. I will share my feelings and successes with you all. I hope others will get some value from this journal. I will write down what does work for me and what does not. Interesting fact for day 0: It is well studied, that alcoholics have much higher success rates with joining support groups like AA. Humans are social animals, with a basic need to belong. With this support group, we all find our community to belong to. Best Wishes Neat! ( English is my second language, sorry for the future mistakes.)