Hi everyone!

My name is V (trying to keep my online privacy), and I'm 23.
Trying to quit gaming due to the fact that I'm falling behind in a lot of areas of my life. On the outside, it would seem that I'm doing amazing (I did amazing in my school and undergrad, found a great job while finishing my masters), but once I came to a new country to get my Master's degree things started to go downhill.

I've already (kinda) recovered from gaming once while in high school (Dota 2 was a mistake haha) and gamed moderately from time to time, yet now the addiction has returned, and returned ten-fold as now I can spend the whole day watching YT gaming videos and not do the work that I'm supposed to for my job and master's thesis. Moreover, I would hate to disappoint my girlfriend since I would like to be a great boyfriend that she deserves.

I sincerely hope that this course and forum will help me get back on track.
Pleasure to meet you all!

Hi V
I just started reading the book myself and came here to try it out, I saw your introduction so I just wanted to say hi and with you good luck and all the best !
How was your progress so far ?

I stopped playing games in May 2025, I relapsed last week and I played for like 2 days or so.
I found Respawn last week and I'm trying to see if this would help me :D

Did it help you in any way?

@Adrian I did read respawn. It was really useful and I found anything by Cam to be helpful for me in my journey. Even his YouTube videos when I wasn’t actively trying to stop YouTube use.

YouTube is good harm reduction. You’re under some stress as we all experience stress. The outlet was gaming, now it’s YouTube. If you’re posting here it’s highly likely gaming isn’t a healthy outlet for you. If YouTube’s out of control for you. That’s the new behavior to replace. Replace it with something that’s furthering harm reduction. I mostly just watch anime and read manga and journal a lot. I try sometimes to read and write fiction but it tends to just stress me out so idk if that’s a good outlet for me.

May we find our best outlets and replacement behaviors.

On 9/23/2025 at 12:54 PM, FunnyDreamer said:

@Adrian I did read respawn. It was really useful and I found anything by Cam to be helpful for me in my journey. Even his YouTube videos when I wasn’t actively trying to stop YouTube use.

YouTube is good harm reduction. You’re under some stress as we all experience stress. The outlet was gaming, now it’s YouTube. If you’re posting here it’s highly likely gaming isn’t a healthy outlet for you. If YouTube’s out of control for you. That’s the new behavior to replace. Replace it with something that’s furthering harm reduction. I mostly just watch anime and read manga and journal a lot. I try sometimes to read and write fiction but it tends to just stress me out so idk if that’s a good outlet for me.

May we find our best outlets and replacement behaviors.

Thank's V for your insight :)
I'm half-way through the book , I could not finish yet as I got stuck with work and I olny read a few pages in the night before going to bed.

But I wathched the videos on Youtube and these halped a lot :)
I haven't had the need to play as much as I used to two weeks ago, and that's great, it means that it gets out of my system :D

Congratulations on your progress

Good luck and all the best moving forward :) !