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NEW VIDEO: The Dark Side of Gaming (Documentary)

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Posted (edited)

Hello everyone! ..To be fair, I wanted to write this introduction yesterday, but I had no idea what exactly to say, or how to begin. So I will just write whatever comes to my mind and try to organize it in a readable manner (sorry in advance for the long post).

I am a 21 year old guy, currently studying Computer Science at the University of Manchester (UK).

I was born and raised in Hungary. I have a sister, who is older by 9 years. Growing up, I was always fascinated of what she was doing with the big grey box with a flashy screen (a PC). Eventually, I guess, she got bored of me constantly nagging and bugging her in her work and showed me a video game, so that I would leave her alone for a time. By today's (and even those day's) standards the game was nothing special, maybe even mediocre, but to a 6 year old like me, who has never experienced anything remotely similar, it was fascinating to say the least. This repeated itself a few times, as my parents were always working so I was home alone with my sister quite a lot.

A few years later, I am in high school, playing online games after school each day, every day, instead of making friends, doing homework, or generally anything else. Fortunately my mother came into the room after 2 hours, we quarreled about the issues raised above and sent me to study. I reluctantly complied and while feeling angry / frustrated / sad  wasted time for at least another half an hour and then started doing my homework with the speed of a snail. This pretty much sums up my life in school. Oh yeah, I noticed that I had a gaming addiction in this period. Although, only in my last year, when I had to study for the Baccalaureate in order to get high marks, so that I could get into a decent University. Honestly if it wasn't for my father I wouldn't have made it into a University in the UK. 

So a year later I was in my first year, studying Computer Science at the University of Manchester (yes the tuition is a nightmare here too). Everything was really interesting: I was in a new country, I was meeting new people, there were parties every day, the subject that I chose to study was awesome, but after 2 months I was back to gaming. Not just that, but I was playing triple E games wasting more time and money, while isolating myself from the rest of the world even more.

Another year later I was a second year student. I somehow made it past the first year exams (yeah, barely). At this point my problems were way out of hand: university material was a lot harder than I would have expected and I was gaming almost 24/7. Seriously, there were entire weeks when I did not leave my room, not even for food or water (usually I would stock up on Sundays). There are no mysteries here, I failed my second year examinations (believe it or not, I was actually surprised at the time), and was kicked out of the university. Through some miracle I could reapply with the excuse that I was depressed during the year (which I actually was), and was permitted to continue my studies, on the condition to repeat my second year. The initial shock was great, so great that it actually made me quit gaming for a short period of 2 weeks, and even after that I never returned to my old behavior.

Currently I am repeating my second year, and I am very pleased to say that I have improved considerably in every way. My grades also jumped up to "upper second" (on the verge to "first"). While I am proud that I managed to get out of the slum that I was in earlier the past year (2015), I was still gaming 4-5 hours last semester. I have tried to get rid completely of my gaming addiction for the past 6 months or so, with small results. I actually stumbled over Cam's videos on YouTube while procrastinating. I forgot to mention (but I guess this must be quite common) that when I don't game for a longer amount of time, I procrastinate the same amount of time that I would game. After watching a few videos, particularly the "90 day detox" one (very educational!), I decided that I want to get rid of my addiction (to the internet really) for good.

I decided to go all in, because I want this attempt to be my final one. I really do not know if I will have the courage / energy / will for another attempt at quitting, and I do not want to find out either. And when I say "I decided to go all in", I really mean all in: the next day (after I watched the videos) I went cold turkey and began the 90 day detox, not just on gaming but procrastination, movies, serials, online porn (this will be tough), YouTube (except for Cam's videos); I bought respawn; I did everything as instructed / suggested by Cam, no questions asked. The forum tasks are the last ones, for some reason I found these to be the hardest ones..

Currently I am on my second day of detox. It is hard, especially when I get to the parts of the day when I usually just watched something for relaxation, like in the mornings or evenings. The cravings are a real pain, but again, and it might just be me but, the videos really, really help.

Thanks for putting together this program @Cam! I haven't seen anything this good on the internet, that explains the situation and helps myself an others like me to this extent; and I have been looking for months.
:DDD yeah, like you said, the advices that I got on my issues were: "study more", "game less", "pay attention to what you are doing" and others like those.

 

Sorry again for the long post and have a nice day.

 

By the way, does anyone know how to or if I even can change my user name? Earlier I was frustrated because I thought that I couldn't sign up for the forum, so I put in the first 3 letters for user name.
Thanks!

Edited by sdf
Posted

Welcome mate :) hang in the for the first couple of weeks, it does get better. Try to keep your day's busy and I would suggest not to go cold turkey on everything...start with gaming first then transition into no fap, tv etc.

All the best.

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Posted

Hi mate,

I'm 20 and studying Chemistry at the University of Bristol. I can relate to a lot of what you've said about your gaming during uni, and after a holiday relapse I'm ready to try to quit full stop. Was wondering if you wanted to be accountability partners? Not a prob if not, just seems like it would help both of us :)

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