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.

Edited February 20, 20241 yr by Marrr

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. 

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.

 

 

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.

2 hours ago, Marcinp said:

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've started listening to podcasts too. One of my addictions is music, I would just listen to songs for up to 12 hours a day, I was gaining nothing from it. I'm currently listening to How to Be a Better Human with Chris Duffy, interesting stuff!

Keep up the good work 

Best

Ace

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.

 

 

 

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.

Edited February 20, 20241 yr by Marrr

Yes

On 2/19/2024 at 8:22 PM, Marrr said:

Sometimes small things can have big impact. The very little word of support can be all that someone needs

The little things make up life for me. enough small steps or little tasks usually turn into big moments. They don't even have to be big moments, doing something small sometimes just feels good. Making your bed every morning for example. A compliment can turn someone's entire day around. 

 

I feel society loves to focus on the big moments only, all the adrenaline filled, instant gratification stuff, as if that is all life is. Focusing too much on that can feel draining or upsetting, like you're making no progress. I think journaling and gratitude is helpful in this sense as it allows you to enjoy the day to day facets of life we can often gloss over.

Wishing you best of luck

Ace

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.

 

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.
 

It's been a while, but I felt quite a lot of craving over last few days so I decided to comeback here.

It's been almost 2 years since I've gave up gaming, the attempt that I've taken when I started journaling here turned out to be succesful. In addition I did manage to also quit scrolling, porn etc.

It had a massive impact on me, I re-evaluated my life. Long story short - I ended a long-time relationship, that suddenly stopped working when I wasn't gaming anymore. Then I moved back to my home country for a few months, I've found new girlfriend and moved in with her quite quickly. I did couple of things that I've always wanted to, like a hitchhiking trip, we visited few other places that I've always wanted to.

In the meantime I had 2 major relapses - first about year ago, when during quite rough period at my work, I saw my new gf playing one of the newer versions of games that I used to play a lot - it quickly ended with firstly trying it out on her laptop, and soon buying this game on my own and going back all-in playing 12-14h a day. The good thing is that at least she could find out herself, how serious this is for me and she was very supportive, and helped me a lot to get out. She also did follow me in my struggle - trying to cut off doomscrolling, uninstalled instagram etc. which was her problem to some extent. It feels great to actually grow together.

The second relapse was at the end of October - I was very overwhelmed by my work, it was really a terrible time for me, we had some problems with finding a nice apartment back in Austria, stayed in our friends place with very little natural light. I did start playing again, with it's peak when my gf went away for a week and I ended up playing for 16h+ hours everyday. I did manage to quit and bounce back quite fast.

Since that time my life did a 180 degree turn, last 3 months I was very productive, very succesful at work, socializing a lot, great time during Christmas, a nice skiing trip with friends on the New years time.

Overall life is great - but over last few days I started to feel a lot of craving again.

It feels a little like in the story of an alcoholic celebrating 2 years of sobriety with a drink. Hopefully writing it all down will have some therapeutic properties. I'm planing to focus on getting sunlight in the morning and some physical activity in the next few days.
I'm gonna stay strong!

Thanks for sharing . You know (in 2023) I had relapse after 47 weeks without gaming . This relapse lasted for 2.5 years... I'm game free for 3 weeks now . Won't give up that easily . For me on the beginning of relapse , it worked . As I had good balance preserved . I still read books hit gym , did other activities . But after a year or so some stress from work , broken marriage (we are fixing ) , and from life in general started to accumulate , and I went to gaming completely . Started to miss gym days : as I had to reward myself with gaming for hard time I experienced. There were always a lot of excuses to just play . So the last weeks of gaming (dec and beg of January ) I was doing nothing by playing games . At work constantly, risking being sucked . Did not do proper work at all: only bare minimum ... same with gym . I hit gym twice a month maximum ....

anyways I feel you . We just must remember that we are sick . Gaming is not for us anymore. As one game will be not enough . It will be never enough . I remember playing bf all weekend , for me to realise Im still not full ... the neuron path responsible for rewarding is broken forever . Brain learnt that this is the easiest way to hit us with dopamine. And it would all work if only our brain just did not counteract these activities. As since it goal is to keep homeostasis, the receptors for dopamine transport are less sensitive . That's why we can't enjoy gaming for hour or so . It will be always not enough . Baseline dopamine level changed . But this process can be reverted . Luckily for us it takes time for the baseline level to stabilise to previous state. And this can even last few months

Edited February 1Feb 1 by reader