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Hello everyone who is reading this. Remember quitting video games on November 1st, 2020 because my money were being wasted, my goals on my to-do list was not fully checked off, and using video games to escape reality too sadly. My Dad introduce me into video games since I was a toddler (I still remember that picture), but my Dad lack any reasons to find a job, all talk and no action to start his own business, and he lack his own money for a 50 something year old man. It's sad to be honest for myself. Looking back 19 and a half years ago I was a completely different person at the time. My life was becoming negative very quickly for me. I was out of shape 19 and a half years ago. And I lack any clear goals for myself. Hopefully who is reading this will get through your own struggles in life as a long term and find your own success.

Hello every one Myself Darshan here Age 22 years male i feel that finally i have been able to defeat one of my addictions which is gaming addiction my streak is 4 months plus(i dont remember when the streak started but somewhere end of december) now when i look back gosh its wasnt that tough as i felt at the beginning all i had to do was 1. Delete All the games from the device i used to play the reason for this is that it made me difficult to acces them. the device on which i play is mobile so deleting the game meant if i had to play i needed to download the games again while many say they easily are able to download the thing which was beneficial for me was that i dont have wifi at home and i dont have online payment mechanism to buy data coupons plus i didnt received free data coupons from the telecom company since i had limited amount of data which i needed to study it became Difficult for me to download Note : why i say difficult and not impossible is because if i wanted i could download game by using data from moms phone thats where the next step helped me but before going to the next step making it difficult to access easily helped me to avoid relapse 2. What about the games with low download size For example games like clash of clans, critical ops and so on are of low size but at the same time addictive so not only did i delete the game but also deleted the the entire progress which meant if i ever wanna play i have to scratch. Then there may be doubts like what if i start playing from scratch and build up everything from base how can i stop myself from playing at all anf for this i followed step 3 3. Ask questions to urself one of the most important step i sat and asked myself 1. how many games have u played ? around 30 to 35 + games dont want to mention the names 2. how many hours u spent on gaming ? collectively more than 1000 hours this is fucking huge because this much time in studies would have saved my 2.5 yrs from being wasted 3. what did u gain from playing these many hours? failure, lack of studies - wasting two + years, anxiety, depression, rage, stressed out, on he verge of breaking up the relation 4. were u happy when u were playing? No. i was playing because i wanted to escape from the reality, it was mindlessly playing and i would rage whenever i used to lose 5. was all this worth it? NO 6. Do u wanna stay the same ? No 7. What will happen if u dont change? Unemployed, bad mental and physical health and losing the love of my life, homeless and so on 8. do you wanna try changing? yes absolutely 9. what will happen if u change? i can travel the world with loved ones i can go to theme parks i can just be happy Note : in the beginning these questions didnt prevent me from relapsing but after a period of time it started working and now here i'm in these 4 months plus i played 5 times to 6 times but never more than 1.5 hr and when i did play i didnt consider it as complete relapse it was a weak moment where i gave in but as soon as i came back to my senses i stopped playing deleted it and back to work this was my journey from a game addict to a free man from gaming hope this helps some 1 out there and donot give up life is too short to waste on these super natural stimulus lets free ourselves and help out others when they need help

My apologies for posting this again. My name is Taylor. I am a white autistic male quickly approaching thirty years old. I want to start off by saying that I am pretty sure that I do not have a "gaming disorder." I came here with honest skepticism towards that idea in general. While it is true that quite literally have over one-hundred games in my possession currently, I feel that I am not in any danger health-wise. The true reason I came here was to simply tell my story of allowing an incident from sixteen years ago or so to haunt me up to this point, and to look for guidance an how I could even perhaps turn my interest with gaming into a healthy occupation as a developer. From childhood, I was practically raised by the Sega Genesis. Sonic the Hedgehog and Gunstar Heroes are both special interests of mine as an autistic. The character, personality, color, and action are all appealing to my neurodivergent senses. It's only up to this point in time that my abilities as a cartoonist were fully realized. I love drawing, and my goal in life other than to create my own video would definitely be to create my own comic or cartoon series with those same attitudes in mind. My older and I love to bounce ideas off each other. Where he prefers darker material like Batman, I prefer more light-hearted. Growing up, I will admit that I had to deal with outside interference from family and school when it came to my time with video games. I was born, raised, and currently live in the buttcrack of the deep conservative south, Georgia, and it's a chokehold down here. My parents and teachers were not inclined to help foster growth in my creative pursuits inspired by video games during elementary. Life went on, but it wasn't until I reached high-school that I discovered fandom. Excited, curious, and naïve, I went everywhere I could online if it looked cool or interesting. For a time, it felt like the fandom of Sonic the Hedgehog felt like a home away from home. I shared a hobby and passion with others for the first time without fear, and it was glorious. Then, however, came change. Around this time in the mid-2000's, I had discovered YouTube for the first time as well. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, I'll make this one quick because I don't think I have the mental or emotional energy to go into the fullest detail without flying into a rage. I love video games, but I am thinking about quitting because of the so-called community. It's not just about #GamerGate, but about a lot of other things. To make a very long and complicated story short, Sonic changed and people started to debate about it. I was in on it, to be sure, but people outside of the Sonic fandom began to demonize us and the franchise and put a clamp on everything. I wasn't happy with that. One day, I decided to take a stand against someone who I thought was my friend. He told me to respect him or else I could go f*** myself. I refused and he released the hounds on me. I severed my ties with him and his group of bullies immediately. His actions never matched up with his supposed motto of "patience is everything." This guy and I used to be part of the same fandom, Sonic, and we had the same goals in mind until he backstabbed me. People need to be able to debate in order to get the creative juices flowing, but nobody wants to have that. They either want to be right by having their cake and eating it, too, or enforce as much neutrality as possible. There's a culture that dictates that debating with someone about video games is apparently the worst sin you can possibly commit. Other the other hand, too, there's demonization against the people who create the games that I love to play. I can't address this anywhere without being called a sensitive cringy fanboy. I've long since learned to forgive Sega for Sonic 06, and it's honestly done wonders for me. I've actually begun to hate that word, "fanboy." It's ableist in and of itself especially when you consider that fandom as a cultural phenomenon was originally founded by people like neurodivergents as a safe space for them to express themselves through their interests special or otherwise. It was then appropriated when it hit mainstream and the people who invented it all became scapegoats by cringe-lords. So, yeah, that's my life story.

👋 Hi everyone my name is PastTense and I’m a gaming addict. its not like I have three screens. I have a gaming chair I never use, and a macbook pro and a smartphone. for the past year I’v transitioned from uninstalling LOL from macbook, to installing wild rift, returning to PubgMobile an occassionally installing kingdom rush. All are somewhat decent games in that they keep you entertained. my issue is with installing then uninstalling the games. currently I have other problems to tackle. Landlord wanted me out sox months ago due to flatmates gossippy nature. One of them still does this and might hve taken legal action this time. I’ve been coasting om the fact that he didn’t resign my contract in a legally valid way. I handed over the communication to a lega practice which I then stopped paying. Ao they haven’t forwarded any mail I was supposed to have recieved. I might get kicked out 1st of March. Homeless. I could go back to my father. Only.. hes a nasty person. Tried to kill me three years ago. And have me comitted to a mental hospital because he didn’t want to support his “competition”/black sheep. At best he only cares to do the bare minimum to support me when others are looking. Meanwhile he hndsomely assists my older sister fonancially. And also gossipped and dabricated stories to my godparents. Eventually they believed every last bit of it. of and I got fired two weeks ago because a girl who hit on me, didn’t actually want me and then claimed harrassment. In my opinion its way way nastier than it should be. I never called her anything demeaning or touched her. I sent some mails to her friends but nothing I view as serious. This got into a police rapport and now I find myself having to sue dor Libel and defamation. They freaking called the police! When asked to provide proof, they couldn’t back up their lies. i live on 8sqm or equivalent of 2,5 one man beds. Woth common living areas. Only, due to the conflict with flatmates being smokers, is rendered useless. especially the past two weeks I have been lying in bed all day playing pubg mobile, crying. oI grew up isolated on a tiny ranch, left to my own devices woth gameboys. As such I am socially inept. I can buy contact lenses, comb my hair. I cannot control my dandruff of facial acne. and I haven’t been to the dentist for two years due to poor finances. Otherwise I am a tall handsome guy. Age 31. I have had four girlfriends for 0,5-1 years. It seems they all moslty used me either as bed and breakfast, genuine boyfriend for loneliness, sugardaddy, or similar. Except I dont have a lot of money anymore. About two years ago I bought a personal trainer program which gave em iniitiative to workout seriously. But due to paychological terror of moving back home to my dad, back then, The goals were not met. For Bodyfat percentage. at 6’3” weighing 223 lbs, I am a bit overweight with a beer belly. Bf%is 22-23, muscle mass is 45% according to electrostatic measuring.

I'm hooked on a video game. Everyday I get up and say I won't play it today or I'll just play for a short time - that hasn't worked. I also tell myself I'll start "quitting" tomorrow and of course I haven't. Hence, I'm here. I"ve put a password on my phone only my husband knows so I can't access google play to download the game. I also removed my android device from my laptop, so I can't install the game from there. I'm guessing these actions will support the other work I must do to stop. I've read the materials offered at this site, found them helpful and will use the information to guide me on my path. One thing I know about myself is that making myself publicly accountable has helped me in the past; I've had success quitting a smoking addiction (10 years now) by joining a group. Knowing that I had to show up and be accountable for my choices helped me think about my behavior in the moment. So here I am, and I'm grateful to be here, making the commitment to not play video games. I plan to check in everyday to share my choices and explain myself as needed. If anyone is out there that would be interested in buddying up (check in on me, I'll check in with you) to mutually offer support/encouragement, that would be fantastic. Otherwise I'm going to just imagine that's the case, that someone is seeing what I'm writing. 🙂 Finally, it's taken my a while to come here because I feel such shame about this addiction; it all seems so ridiculous, yet here I am. I was thinking about joining one of the meeting groups to find additional support and wondered if anyone found that helpful? And about the shame part, I'm too embarassed to tell anyone I know what's going on, my husband knows and is supportive of my quitting. Just wondering how other people handle these feelings. Thanks for listening. Peace out.

So I had a really deadly thought one night, which boggled my mind because of its' sudden occurrence. And thankfully, God helped me to put away with this assumption that was so crazy. Anyhow, I was woken up, I don't exactly remember the setting during the occurring thought. Maybe it was a storm but, that's probably what happ- Yeah it happened later on after the thought. Although I think I was really just in a pure state of anxiety, confusion and desperation out of nowhere for a good few minutes, and for a literal second; a thought occurred to me- I had this intrusive thought say "I can just reset" Like, kill myself and expect myself to come back just as I am, as if I was in a game and restart my life, but the other thing is that there was no other thoughts that followed besides "No, this is not a game." What this reminded me of was a series of events that happened recently. One was I watched this one anime movie (Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train) that had to do with Demon Slayer. In the movie, it has a scene where a demon has manifested a train and took over, much like in a similar anime I watched, which I cannot remember, but it was a gore like anime *shivers*. But yeah, it had this moment where the demon was consistently using it's trance power to put the Demon Slayer to sleep, and in the sleep, the Demon Slayer repeatedly used his memory to remind himself killing himself in the dream was the only way out, and in return he did so every time. But at this point the Solution became a problem, much like my situation with the Damn Dark Intrusive thought, it was at his demise that this next attempt to get out of his dream, was a trick to actually have him kill himself, but thankfully his friend the hog man, stopped him just in time and told him it's not a dream and to not fall into his trap. I feel like this was a big awakening , and a quite gruesome one, as it actually happened to me not too long after. Another point I'd like to bring up was I was also thinking of how this related to another anime movie I watched after Demon Slayer Movie, it was a Movie Called Jujutsu Kaisen 0. Terrible choice, because it was to my opinion, as I understood it ofc, not the perspective you might take on it, that our words manifest our reality, and our thoughts and emotions to those words can become as real as our mindset toward those words. It really messes with you after you've been what I've just been through. All these thoughts that have to do with how i feel about my life, myself and how i have chosen to go about it, was apart of this sudden thought, and it doesn't stop if you don't realize you it soon enough. Lastly, i think about this thing that says in the bible, your words have power of life and death (I copied this from google, because they explained it so well. Proverbs 18:21 puts it this way: “The tongue has the power of life and death.” The stakes are high. Your words can either speak life, or your words can speak death. Our tongues can build others up, or they can tear them down. An unchecked fire doubles in size every minute.), so i think that was a large factor in the movie that i had watched, it really showed that and manifested itself so quickly and escalated things in his life after the tragedy that happened to him. Please comment your ideas and perspective , if you've watched these movies, and have other thoughts on this. I tried to search about it , if anyone has tried to Off themselves by resetting their life as if in a video game, but it just brought up the Hotline for that.

Hi everybody, I am Mike, 21. I am a year 2 undergraduate. I am addicted to both mobile games and YouTube videos. When I was studying in grade 7, it is common for my friends to play mobile games. In grade 9, I engaged in the game called Clash Royale because my friends were playing. Starting from the moment, my mind told me I was obligated to play the game every day even though I could not feel any happiness. I have been getting a sense of achievement. To get the gaming skills, I started watching YouTube. Fascinated by those contents, I got addicted to that as well. I even watched a maximum of 7 hours of videos per day during my holiday. I often got enraged by losing games consecutively. I tried to search for the internet, seeking ways of getting rid of addictions. I have uninstalled and installed the game many times (so do the ad games), but I was defeated. Fortunately, I stop playing ad-games now but I still cannot get rid of YouTube and gaming addictions (Maybe I am not hooked by those ad-games). The addictions above have been striking my life in the present comprehensively. I was mediocre in a public exam so I cannot study in a greater university. I got a poor grade in computer science and I received a warning letter from my university. I am not interested in social. I am often unable to submit my assignment on time. My sleeping cycle shifted unhealthily due to gaming and watching YouTube - I sleep in the morning instead of night. I am not motivated although I know I want to be in the future. I got some health issues with my digestive system and my neck is soar owing to prolonged bending. I realized it was time to stop gaming. I tried to contact Supercell to delete my game data permanently but I ended up being neglected. This makes me angry and I am more determined NOT to waste time on gaming or watching YouTube. Here are the questions for which I want to seek help. Thank you. 1. Have you got addicted to watching YouTube? How do you stop watching YouTube crazily? 2. How to prevent procrastination? 3. How to delete the Supercell account by myself?

Hey everyone, I guess you might be confused at the title, but let me tell my story. So, I am 21 years old and I feel this kind of attraction (close to addiction), to play a new game on my pc. So I search up the internet and spend some hours looking for a game to play on and after getting a game I start playing it. Within the next few days, I feel like "It's a good game but I will spend too much time on it". So I feel like it's a burden for me to play that game any longer as I am just wasting my time and try to complete it as fast as I can (usually missing out the experience and just trying to speedrun my first try of the game). I don't usually quit the game halfway as I spend my resources on this game, so I feel obligated to complete the game. So when the game is finally over, I relax for next 2 days and then again the urge continues to download a new game and the cycle repeats. And to be honest I am annoyed of my new covid-time cycle, it seems that I have no control over my life. I wake up, eat, study (bare minimum), game, eat, sleep and the cycle continues. I feel like I have too much time on hand and don't understand the value of it, I know that I should focus my time on my career. I don't even have hobbies anymore. I am just...confused and I don't know what to do :(

First of all I’d like to say I am grateful for any tips or advice. My school closed a month ago. So I am stuck at home bored! When I actually have to write my thesis and study for super-final examination (I am at my last year of university). Ofc I would like to work on myself, my own projects too. But I keep doing nothing. Quarantine changed my day so that I have literally 24 h of free time every day… No motivation, no pressure, no deadlines, feeling of unlimited amount time, comfort HUGE task ahead of me (thesis and revision of 3 years of uni studies) And btw I doubt about what to do after my uni. So actually procrastinating and then extending my studies by one year is a large relief... During the month I tried several things, always relapsed back to this state 😕 What would you suggest please? Gaming window: I downloaded Leauge of legends (I quit a year ago) and thought I will use it as reward for being productive (and to fight isolation), worked for 3 days, then I went competetive, spend a week playing and realized I am in it again. Ended up deleting my lol acc forever.

I am seeking new hobbies to do cause since I quizzed gaming I got like solo mich time and don’t know what to do any suggestions?

I'm Kombat749 [Gamer Tag]. First day. Aim: No relapse I had a doubt. Is this considered as an addiction? I started playing Assassin's Creed 1, was nervous while playing, hands and feet went cold. Worried. Uninstalled. Relapsed. To Assassin's Creed 2. Same story. Nightmares, cannot sleep. The reason I played AC was because I saw a friend playing it when I was 8. Today I am 14. Saw a few GMV music videos. Liked it. Ignored age warning, as I read reviews saying it was okay. I find AC to have a sort of class and loyalty, something which I always desired. My body has become autonomous. Every time, I get up from a chair, my hand flicks, as if to draw the hidden blade. If I sit still, scenes replay. When I sleep, scenes replay. It seems every bit of memory about AC is simply trying to find a way to enter the mainstream of my thoughts. Kindly let me know, if you have discovered any tricks to counter this. Thanks for the support.

Hi all, Here's a few questions that I've been asking myself for a long time now, since all of these questions apply to me as a gaming addict with Autism. If you're on the spectrum, or have somebody you love who has, would you mind contributing to this post? The research says that gaming addiction is quite high amongst those on the Autistic Spectrum, but there is very little research actually explaining why this is (as far as my knowledge is). There really isn't a lot of research out there talking about specifically why there is a link. I personally have been doing recovery related things for just over 2 1/2 years, although it's never really "clicked" yet. I've been doing If I got everybody to answer all these questions, these might make for some very long posts. Maybe just pick a question and answer it to the best of your knowledge, if you would like to contribute. I also will be contributing my own thoughts when they come. Why are video games uniquely appealing to you? What made you pick video games over any other addiction that could be meeting the same needs (gambling, netflix, porn/sex, alcohol, drugs, workaholism, etc)? How has your Autistic traits made it difficult to function in real life: As a kid? As an adolescent? As an adult? What emotional/spiritual/relational needs does gaming attempt to meet in your life that you felt like you had a lack of due to your upbringing as an autistic person? Given what you've experienced growing up, do you think that if you didn't have Autism, you would still be an addict? Why or why not? Coming into gaming recovery, what challenges did you find you now had to face that were unexpected? What battles do you fight that you knew you would have to deal with going into recovery? What triggers have you had to avoid in order to see success in recovery (whether uniquely Autism sourced or not)? (ex: certain stimulants, entertainment, boundaries, etc) Have you noticed any Autistic traits in other non-Autistic gaming addicts? Consider the following statement: "Autism is an addiction disorder." Is this true or false? Partially? What stimming options have you tried to replace the destructive addictive behavior with? Is this a realistic idea? Not looking for perfect scientific answers, but more your thoughts based on experience. (But if you want to reference something scientific and scholarly, that would be cool too!)

First I wanted to say that I believe that games can be enjoyed in moderation, I just happen to be bad at moderation, but I'm getting better. I discovered JockoPodcast in January and you could say I became a disciple in March. JockoPodcast has lots of stories from military people and book discussions focusing on discipline, leadership, and in a broad sense what it means to have a good life. I highly recommend it because it isn't focused on faddish "self-improvement", but on self-transformation through practical advice for attitude adjustment. After hearing all the war stories its hard to think of anything in my soft and pampered life as "difficult". Even before I decided to quit gaming waking up at 4am as Jocko recommended, and consequently going to bed at 8pm, naturally decreased my overall gaming time because there was no longer several hours of "dead" time between dinner and bed. After many hours of podcast I concluded that my life would be better without "most" gaming and I'm here because I'm acting on that belief, one small step at a time. Previously my go-to timewaster was hearthstone or some other card game to fill in the hours I had to sit at my desk for work, a single player game or watching streams between work and dinner, and streams or gaming after dinner until bed. This fundamentally made me a worse worker since I was doing my job between hearthstone games or sometimes while playing a game. And I wasn't paying enough attention to my family and household and didn't have any other goals to pursue. Playing games was my focus and the rest of life happened in between game sessions, sometimes frustrating me because reality took me away from a game I was particularly fond of. Current plan - 30 day timeline: stop single player games for "entertainment" or to fill time stop watching twitch streams (at this time streams and work are my only non-family social interaction so that is rough) Permitted gaming: pokemon go if I'm not at home and waiting for something to happen, like at the mall waiting for auto service desktop/console gaming with my children - the family plays mario kart together sometimes gameplay as long as I am streaming I'm not naturally social so talking for long periods of time drains my energy. Streaming is one way I can build endurance for real social encounters, even if nobody is watching I always continuously talk like they are. I honestly don't like streaming at all, I just started doing it because it was the "cool thing the kids are doing", thats why I feel like for me personally it won't hurt me to indulge in gaming while on stream.

My 3-Week Benchmark Report Hey all, I felt like I should make a post about hitting the 3-week checkpoint in my game quitting journey. Thus far, I'd say my cravings have been fairly manageable. There were a couple of days within the 3rd week that I definitely wanted to play Madden because I was reading up on some of the latest NFL news. I started watching old games on YouTube for a minute to try and manage and then I got over it. For me, digesting anything football-related can be a trigger because I obviously go into the mode of wanting to play out my own version of these stories in the game. As for filling my time, one of my hobbies that I wanted to develop anyways (gaming got in the way) is learning the guitar and getting back into music. In the three weeks, I've done something music-related every day, whether it's voice lessons, practicing the guitar, writing songs, or working with my friend to come up with concepts. It's been a lot of fun and something I can track progress for and "level up" in. A few other activities I have done are puzzles, reading, working out, horseback riding, and even fishing. While we went fishing last night, I said to my stepson, "Wow this is so much better than catching Pokemon." On top of that, I just started a new job last week so I'm putting a lot of attention towards that obviously. Using the apps "Coach.me" and "Trello" have been effective for me in terms of time management and task completion, while in a sense replacing the feeling of "leveling up" in a game. With gaming gone, I noticed that my body/mind has struggled in some ways to adapt. One thing that happened last week is that my eating habits kind of fell apart and I started eating unhealthily for the week. On top of that, I got into a Netflix series and binged almost as if it was taking the place of the gaming. I'm becoming mindful that the addictive spirit can manifest itself in other ways besides gaming. Finally, the biggest revelation that I have received in this time is that some of the games I was addicted to (Madden, Pokemon) are all rooted in my childhood. These games were escape mechanisms from some of my childhood struggles back then, and so I believe the addiction I had recently was connected to all of those struggles. It's incredibly enlightening when you step away from these things to let the dust settle, and then you realize what is really going on. Anyways, I just wanted to share my experience and to stay encouraged as I make my way towards 90 days (Aug. 24th will make 90 days for me!). Stay blessed everyone and let me know your thoughts if you get a moment! Kevin Ferris

Hello everyone! Some of you definitely know me because I'm a member of the Discord chat under the same name (my previous nickname - Farant). For those who don't - my name is Vera, I'm 25 years old, female, from Russia. My English isn't particularly great, so don't mind my mistakes, please. I felt the need to start journaling after something bad happened in my personal life just yesterday. I've been journaling for more than 10 years on paper, so I know the drill. I'm afraid to touch my journal right now, I'll get back to it later when I'm ready. I've been a gaming addict for several years, abandoned gaming and the internet entirely for a couple of months, but it didn't really help a lot. Games were my escape from reality. I think I started thinking about it seriously last spring, became familiar with GameQuitters on Youtube. I used to play very niche online game with the toxic community, servers that died every now and then, the game was very addictive. I quit only when I got really angry at myself for wasting so much time on nothing. As time went on, I've joined Discord, did about 40 days out of 90, relapsed multiple times and eventually decided I want to play, but only one game because of my boyfriend. But the game gave me strong motion sickness, I didn't like it and I already deleted it, so I have nothing on my hard drive. I enjoy keeping an aquarium, knitting, programming, reading, journaling (obviously). I’m into Stoicism, I’m far from perfect but I’m using every opportunity to learn more and apply it in my life. I can’t say my life is empty, but I feel empty right now. I have the chance to turn it 180 degrees. I decided I’ll go to the gym once again and just try to be social, let it be the first step. It will help me hold on and not give in to depression right away. I’ve also asked my friend to go to the cinema with me when the new How to train your dragon comes out. The more I reach out to people, the more I realize I have friends I can count on. So here I am, day one. I’ve prepared things I need for the gym, tried to eat (not very successful, but better than nothing) and it’s time to go to sleep.

Hi, everyone! I have recently decided to quit gaming an I haven't already played any games for about a week, but here the problems come... So, I have done with my Steam, Origin, GOG,,any type of gaming platform as I persuaded myself to stop playing. The main problem is that I played about 1k hours in World of Tanks (further - wot) from the open beta (2010) aaaand.... my father has played even more than me: about 2-2.5k hours. Playing this game make us extremely nervous (all these unfair "not penetrated", "we hit them, but not penetrated", awful matchmaking system, disgusting physics, etc., you would know if ever you played that), sometimes we have even argued with our relatives because of wot (as because of any other game). We didn't feel any pleasure and were playing as we're just ADDICTED, but my dad doesn't realize that. The other big problem for me: sometimes I feel urges while my father is playing as I decided to quit and wot is extremely addictive. At those moments I feel much more uncomfortable rather than I usually do. Sometimes my dad even rages about his teammates which confirms that he doesn't have any positive emotions from wot. TAKING INTO THE CONSIDERATION ALL ABOVE THE QUESTION IS: HOW TO PERSUADE OTHER CLOSE PEOPLE TO QUIT GAMING AS IT TAKES THEIR TIME, MONEY, POSITIVE EMOTIONS, DAMAGES THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS AND SO ON? IMPORTANT: I have tried to suggest him other less addictive games, reading books, watching films, doing some sports, going outside, finding new hobbies, telling him and showing some videos about how bad wot is, but never helps. Also, my dad is 40 y.o. and I know that playing dynamic games such as Quake is a bit difficult for him due to the age. I've been trying to show him patents about wot matchmaking system, but he doesn't believe me. The main idea of those documents : the better you play - the more you suffer. (The patents : https://patents.google.com/patent/US8425330B1/en ) Please, sorry for my grammar mistakes if I made them. I will be thankful to you for your advice! Have a nice day!

I have recently stopped my old journal, because I feel that I have nothing more to add to this kind of format. Gathering knowledge within the topic of fitness, health, self improvement and addiction was always something that fascinated me. And now, especially during my journey and time here at gamequitters, this became more and more advanced. Now, I want to start a new topic, where I start collecting all kinds of ideas, which I think are valuable. The reason I want to share this, is that first, I like to right it down somewhere. But if I only do it for me, I feel that it is kinda lost in nowhere. Sharing it might be valuable for me to learn new perspectives and it might also help other people to gather new ideas.

Hi Game Quitters, I am conducting an online survey as part of my Clinical Psychology Master’s research project. If you are 18 years of age or over and have played a video game in the past 12 months, you are invited to answer 10-15 minutes worth of questions. The questions explore thoughts such as how much we desire playing a game, motives for playing, and mental health. You are still welcome and encouraged to respond if you have stopped gaming within the last 12 months. Your participation will be a valuable addition to our research and your responses will be kept anonymous. If you are interested in this research or would like more information, please click on the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2GGBFVZ Alternatively, please forward or share this link if you know of anyone who may be interested in participating in this research. Thank you. This project has ethical approval from the University of the Sunshine Coast (S191375).

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Hello everyone. I have a question for all of you out there. What is the biggest issue you’re dealing with when it comes to meeting new people? I know that this might be a sensitive topic, so feel free to shoot a DM if you feel like this is a more private matter, thanks.

Today i found out i played 4 months out of the last 2 years dota 2. Meaning on average i have probably around 5 hours a day gaming overall . Other than that i'm doing ok. I have social life, i go to the gym (sometimes), good health, had girlfriends, got part time job while in university. I am not feeling addiction problems, unless i play all night (rare), but the amount shocked me. Should I be concerned?

Hey guys, so I have been thinking a lot about self improvement recently. Since like a year or so I became very focussed on getting a very good grade for my bachelors degree. I have been planning a lot, I studied a lot and I also worked out a lot to achieve my fitness goals. But even though I have had great successes since then, I am not really sure if I am happier. Sometimes I even feel a little less happy than before because I am so focussed on achieving my goals that I find it hard to enjoy the small things in life like having a beer with a friend or something. I socialise a lot less in general because I want to get up early to study and in the evenings I usually work out. Has anyone else more experience with self improvement in the long run? I think I need to add that I am not depressed or anything but I am just not as happy as I want to be.

Hi y'all my name is Sid, I'm a young American school teacher who is addicted to video gaming. My video game experience started when I was 3 years old back in Cleveland, Ohio when I first played my first game; Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo. I was hooked and still remember that first play through. Since then I have had every game system beside the first Xbox. Oh yeah and Banjo-Tooiee (1999) on the N64 totally hooked me. Honestly video gaming didn't become a major problem until after I graduated from Kent State University and moved to Las Vegas. Becoming a teacher and being the best teacher takes a lot of your focus and attention. Video gaming became my escape from the pressures of my new career. Also weed and alcohol didn't help either. After getting sober I gamed even more. Now I have decided to quit gaming for good. I've spent thousands of hours of my life gaming and now I'm going to look at gaming like I do other harmful drugs. On a lighter note I have read more books in my first week without gaming than I have in three years. Gaming is such a waste of time and motivation. No longer will I spend $400 on fortnite skins and thousands on games in general. Wish me luck. Good luck to everyone else making this huge and positive life change.

I am ismail and i have been suffering from the addicting of games long time ago . my whole lifestyle is based on how to have the best result in the game(s) that i am playing . so once i wake up i immediately turn on my laptop ( and advance my progress in the game which is the most thing i take serious in my life and make real plans for it . any other things that i make plans for it like study always fail , which force me back to gaming again because it is the only thing i can progress (although i am a very amateur player and can never be compared to the other good players .. not to mention the professionals and the world champions !) gaming is killing me slowly , it make me losing my money , university , respect , and the true love , which leads me to be isolated and forced me somehow to pornography (i mean watching porn) my situation is getting even worse , these days i barley eat ! whenever i got hungry i just drink rather than eating ! my weight got worse . i am too lazy that i cant even go buy food ! or even order some !!! i have tried to quit gaming tons of times ! the longest one was once i sent my laptop to relatives in order to study , eat and live better , and after the day 40 i started to be like Psychiatric patient which we watch on TV ! . i have hit myself , insulted myself , , talked to myself , was depressed , couldn't sleep , cry into a pillow like childrens , my energy got worse (although i was eating better than before when i was gaming( . that's why i forced my relatives to sent my laptop back because of the depression . once i received the box of the laptop i started to open it like it was a potion of heroin for some1 who haven't took it for long time ! or some 1 who haven't eaten for 3 days ! and once i started to gaming again i felt like the same feeling that we feel when we ejaculate (from masturbation) ! but the difference was that this feeling lasted for couple hours rather than couple seconds ! gaming is my drugs . i have lost all my money and started to borrow money couple years ago , i cant even pay loan interests . if i don't stop this shit and continue my study or even work , i dont know what is gonna happen . so i must leave now . there still many things that i haven't mentioned yet .. but i wish that ucan solve my problem or just connect me me to some1 who is qulified to my case . best regards .

Hello everyone. I have been playing video games from a young age of 6 years old when i first got a computer in my household. My parents were limiting my play time to 1 hour a day, so i had a pretty good childhood and decent teen years, but as my age increased the limits set by my parents kind of disappeared and and i got myself completely into video games. Even though back then i had a group of very close friends and did hang outside fairly often. Another problem was that from a young age I was shy and had problems meeting new people and starting conversations with them. In highschool i started playing FPS games competitively and started hanging out with my friends a lot less. I was pretty much spending all my free time just sitting in front of my computer and playing without a care in the world. After school our group of friends split up to go to universities/colleges in different cities/countries, so I was left pretty much alone. What was i gonna do? I dedicated even more of my time on video games and web surfing in general in my university years. Out of the 30 people in my university group i made friends only with 2 of them and due to my addiction I did not even hang out with them outside of university, which resulted in me having no friends at all after university finished. Now I have been working for 3 years as a programmer without any social life outside of work. I feel like i don't even have the skills required to converse with people. One on one i can manage some talk, but in a group I can't muster a single word, because I don't feel like I can add anything to the conversation. Having wasted my teen years and university years doing pretty much nothing I don't have any stories to share, I don't even know the city I live in that well because I never went out to clubs or bars. Obviously my love life is non existent, I have had drunken sex a couple of times, but never made the effort, or knew how to make a connection with a female and date. I turned 25 this year and realized how much of a failure I am compared to the people I work with, who have many interests, have read many books, accumulated all kinds of knowledge from experiencing different things, created families and are leading active lives. With these heavy thoughts depressing me i tried quitting gaming and it kind of worked, since games for the past couple of years have been just a way to spend my free time, I don't actually enjoy them anymore. I have reduced my gaming time to a maximum of 1-4 hours a day as opposed to 5-8. But it is still not even close to being enough, since i replaced my gaming time with useless internet surfing time. With all of these thoughts in my head i started getting depressed and started to seriously consider suicide. I am having suicidal thoughts around 3 times a week, once a month I would cry to myself about my pathetic situation and what I have become. But before I depress myself even more with these thoughts of mine I decided to take action and completely remove gaming from my life, reduce pointless internet surfing time and add 2-4 hours of some kind of social/active activities. So my goal being here is to quit gaming completely and quit pointless internet surfing in general, find a new group of friends and hopefully create myself a healthy social life, where I could hopefully become more confident in my self and eventually create a family of my own. The biggest problem i will have to solve is how to open up myself to people more to befriend them, because socialization is definitely one of my weakest points at this moment. I wrote quite a lot, if you have read it all you have my thanks. I'll be sticking around this forum looking for tips and advices on where to go on from now and what kind of activities i could take up. So if you have any kind of starting advice, i would love to hear them, thanks ?