Fighting addiction by using knownolage and logic

[BrutusCz]

Hi, I am Bruno Czech

I stopped playing Video games about 30 days ago. I was heavily addicted for 10 years. I'd like to share my story how I was able to stop playing computer games by my own very weak will. 

The hardest part for me was to realise and admit that I am acutally addicted. Because I asked myself many times: "Do I want to play Video game". - Fucking yes. I believed in it, I felt it as true feeling that I WANTED to play games and I could not live without them. I would probably never realise that something is wrong but than I had to stop playing games during week and play only on weekends, I was acutally pretty ok during week, but when I came home on weekend I was uncontrollable... I remember one day that I would only drink water because I could not waste time by shopping for food... after 2 those weekend I realised.. this is not normal behavior that I might be addicted. But once I realised that I am addicted it was so "easy" to stop and not relapse because of just that one video Cam released - 90 day detox.

 

Because of knownolage and logic behind Dopamin and how it works. So basically I told myself, that it is not me who want to play it is brain that wants to play. But that was not enough for me. I needed to know why my brain wants to play and basically I created theory for myself. That dopamin flows like a river and my river is very HUGE so I have to make river smaller by not creating so much dopamin in my body and eventually flow will became somewhat avarage.. and that took me about 7 days before I stopped having cravings. I also realised why I was playing games. First it was for competetivnes, failing in that and in my life I was heavily addicted by using games as "distraction" and not thinking about my shit skills of living life.

 

What was acutally hardest, most wierd to overcome were not cravings and I had really strong cravings.. basically only thing I could do was laying in bed for few hours until they ended. But I expected that.. what I was not prepared for was what happened after scavings.. I was feeling much better and I acutally started to have dirty thoughs like "well I did it.. now it would not be that bad to play games right".. very very tricky from my brain. If I did not know any better I would fall for that.  Now I have not need to play video games. I started to work out with my old friend who decided to stop play video games as well. And I am so lucky, because I realised I like one girl and she likes me too so hopefully something nice will happend.

Also I have school leaving exam in 3 months and now basically I have free time to make myself bigger, better, and more clever. 

 

Good luck and please excuse my english.. I am trying to write properly

Bruno Czech

 

YOU GUYS CAN DO IT AS WELL!

Also I absolutely suggest Art of Charm podcasts, you can start by most popular ones. Thanks for Tip @Cam and thanks for helping everybody.

Edited April 25, 2016 by BrutusCz

[Cam Adair]

What's up Bruno! Thanks for joining us here and congrats on 30 days so far! 

[Mad Pharmacist]

Well it sounds like the story of success! Mad Pharmacist is proud of you!

Welcome to the forum man! Wish you the best with preparation for the exam!

[Guest]

So awesome to have a real life friend quitting games aswell.Good luck with your exam... and the girl of course.

[Alkan]

That's fairly similar to what I did. I spent a lot of time just understanding the brain and how it works. It's the only thing that's worked for me. I've had such a fluid, creative approach to improving myself.

I thought of it more like your brain is a force field and the decision you make is a particle.

If you model neurons firing, you actually get a random walk pattern. That is, it looks like the graph of the stock market. So there will be this sort of net "energy" towards a specific decision, and it will fluctuate randomly with a propensity to favor one side or the other. So, sometimes randomly you will do the decision that you were otherwise less likely to make.

You can probably guess that I'm not a particularly strong proponent of the idea of free will.

I did a lot of meditation, and I track my decisions and thinking. It's pretty eye-opening, realizing how hopeless I was to actually change anything before with nothing but force of will. It works if you happen to be a person who has a naturally strong force of will.

What I noticed as I grew my willpower was that it simply got easier to say no to distractions. Yet, most people treat effort like it's a matter of moral fiber or ambition. We cast people aside who struggle with willpower. And, people who struggle with willpower put boxes around themselves and give up on their dreams. I'm extremely ambitious, but I lacked the ability to properly act on it.

[TheJan]

30 days, that's alot! Congrats for making it this far alone!

I found out, once you realize it's not necessarily you, but your brain that wants to game (due to gaming becoming a habit and "conditioning")- it becomes a lot easier to actually fight the urge. It becomes like - "wait, that's not what I want to do - my -brain- wants to game. What do -I- want to do now?".

 

[Florian]

Hi Bruno,

For me, quitting addiction comes down to one point: do you do it because you want to, or is this something that has control over your life?

If you have done nothing else but gaming, you won't know how it feels to be without. You don't know whether you want to do it out of choice or because you don't know any better. So first step is exploring other things and then, you can still come back to gaming after you have tried out a whole lot of other activities. Important thing is to give yourself the choice back.

All the best on your journey!

Florian

[BrutusCz]

Also I'd like to add this, I might be just rephrasing something that was said written and said many many times but still:

If you think that you play too much don't ask yourself: "Do I want to play?" - Because answer will be probably yes (because of dopamin addiction).
Instead ask youself: "Is there something else I would like to do but instead of it I rather play video games?"

Thanks for answers, and good luck guys.

 

Edited April 29, 2016 by BrutusCz

[BrutusCz]

I believe I might wrote this post to wrong forum section.

Oh well... I kinda failed 2 weeks ago, I had bad day and I replapsed. Since that I was playing for 1 week and I tried to stop play games 2nd week I couldn't stay very motivated so I was installing games and than uninstalling them next day... well now I believe it is time to try for 90 days DETOX again. 

[Cam Adair]

I believe I might wrote this post to wrong forum section.

Oh well... I kinda failed 2 weeks ago, I had bad day and I replapsed. Since that I was playing for 1 week and I tried to stop play games 2nd week I couldn't stay very motivated so I was installing games and than uninstalling them next day... well now I believe it is time to try for 90 days DETOX again. 

Welcome back!