46 Year Old Gaming Addict

[Davo36]

Hi guys, yep, I'm the grandpa of gaming addiction.

My poison has been StarCraft 2, which was Cam's I believe. 

I have played it on and off since it came out (since StarCraft 1 came out in fact).

The built in reward systems, achievements, league levels and so on are really compelling.  Lots of YouTube videos of pros playing and so on.  I LOVE all of this stuff - of course!  If I hated it, or was ambivalent about it, I wouldn't be addicted.

Around 18 months ago, I gave up playing and in fact got to 424 days of no playing.  So what happened?  Well, I got very physically active after being very sedentary for a long time (sitting on my ass playing games of course!).  And I got a bit over eager.  I got very into growing native tress, removing all the noxious weeds off of my section etc. and really really hurt my knees.  It's a sloping section...
So I assumed that I would just be able to you know, stop gaming and take up a more active lifestyle.  But it turns out that if you spend like 10 years inactive, and then get quite active (and you're not in your 20s any more) then this can be a long hard road to go down.  Gaming ruins your mind, we all know this.  Just bear in mind, you younger guys, that it also ruins your body.

So anyway, I started watching game replays on YouTube and guys playing on Twitch.  And sure enough a couple of months later I bought the game again...  And I've uninstalled and reinstalled several times since then, the last being over the Christmas/New Year break when the weather was terrible.

Been free of gaming for a few weeks now, and man I've got so much done!  Actively trying to keep myself busy with other things.  I've managed to rehabilitate my knees via the gym and a good physio.  So now I can do active things again and am really enjoying getting outside to ride my bike, walk with friends etc.  Started back working on my section, but will take it much more slowly.

I'm lucky enough to be financially free, have a nice house, wife, 2 boys etc. Not having a job is also a bad thing.  It gives me all day long to indulge bad habits.  There's absolutely nothing to stop me from gaming, drinking, eating all day long and of course looking at boobs on the internet.  So actually I need to be busier to keep me away from all these temptations.

I've enrolled in several online courses, mainly in Bioinformatics which I find really interesting.  I'm getting back into reading and watching movies/tv series in the evenings. 

Oh well, wish me luck, and part of the reason I posted this is to let other older game addicts out there know they're not alone.

David

Edited January 19, 2016 by Davo36

[Cam Adair]

Hey David! Thanks for joining us here. Your story is very inspiring and there are many older game addicts who will get a lot of value out of your post. Thanks for sharing.

[Laney]

Thank you for the honest talk about what it did to your body being sedentary! I'm really worried about this as well, exercise has become a struggle for me. If not for speek walking between classes I'd be super weak, haha.  Bioinformatics sounds awesome!  Never heard of it before but of course we need information systems for bio data too. 

 

Hope to see you around and look forward to reading your journals/progress.

[Primmulla]

The key to changing a sedentary lifestyle is to start small, with short and easy exercises which help your body to get used to more activity. If you over-trained yourself, no wonder that you've got problems. Also, from my experience it is the regularity of sport which counts much more than its intensity: it is much better to exercise for 30 minutes but do it every day than to train hard for three hours once a month and it is definitely healthier to train in small doses but frequently.

[Danielk]

Hi David welcome! I am looking forward to follow your journey and rember me and many others on this forum are experiencing exactly the same as you right now.

You will make it, the world is full of things so much more fun and rewarding then gaming, each and every day it will become more and more clear ☺