How did you convince yourself to say goodbye?

[paradisenow]

I'm curious how others here made the decision to walk away from gaming. I enjoy gaming. I enjoy some of the stories, the visuals, "beating" the challenge. I have a list of games I'd like to go through and new, interesting ones come out each year.

 

Part of me feels very reluctant to walk away from all that. If you did say goodbye, how did you convince yourself to? How did you deal with a feeling of loss if you did experience that or something similar?

 

I know about the potential benefits, etc and while I don't have an excessive problem with gaming, my relationship with it isn't healthy either and long term in my mind it doesn't align with the person I dream of becoming. But coming to terms with that seems harder than I imagined.

[Cam Adair]

Welcome to the forum

As I shared on Reddit, for me it was just time. I originally went 11 months without playing and then I relapsed for five months where I played 16 hours a day. During this relapse I knew I had to move on for good and not look back. Life has been a lot better since then.

[Dannigan]

I did not grow up with gaming.  I was a kid that was outside a lot, enjoyed reading books, and I had parents who put us in other types of sports or hobbies that kept us busy most of the time.  I think this helped me walk away from games for good.  I was hit with the nostalgia bug, in that I was reminiscing about a time when I didn't use computers or technical gaming to entertain myself when I was young, and I missed the hobbies I used to do, as well as the feeling of 'freedom' from technology altogether.

I am not an anti-gamer nor anti-computer person.  In my own journey, I felt it was necessary for me to fully enjoy my life as I used to before the internet and gaming came along.  I miss those days very much, and I can happily tell you that my life is fuller without spending excess amounts of time staring into a computer screen. 

Hope this answers your question.  Others have varying answers, I am sure.  But ultimately, my life is back to where I want it to be. 

 

[SundayMiharu]

To convince yourself? Knowing yourself, you realize that if this continues on, you'd be screwed later on. knowing that the time can be used for more things that will benefit you now and later on. Knowing that you wasted your time, and will continue to waste those time. Many reason though.

To maintain the conviction, though. I remind myself every time, in the morning. the first thing I see in my phone is my habit tracker. 

[Falky]

Yeah it's different for everyone, for me personally I needed to say goodbye when my work was falling behind and I was justifying reasons to play games instead of working. Also it very first started when I got so angry I ripped out my Razer gaming mouse and swung it against the wall. I couldn't go on my computer and couple of days laters I decided...screw it I'll start the detox lol.

 

[Piotr]

I've stopped gaming because it became unhealthy for me. Everything was a second thing, compared to game progress. I had everything in games, where in life it was completely opposite. Also, I've lost too much because of eascaping into virtual world. I want to change it. It's my reason.

[Jeremias]

One morning, I was somewhat sleep-deprived as I left for work at 8:20am. I normally need to leave at about 7:50am if I want to arrive by 9am, but my standards of punctuality had been decreasing for weeks. 

My Mum commented on my lateness with a disappointed tone of voice, which basically led to me saying some mean things that I wouldn't have considered saying if I wasn't so tired and grumpy. There are many, many small things similar to this that had led to this situation, but it became the turning point where I decided that something had to change. 

The relationship has been on the uphill ever since

[Daniel]

Found this interesting so I'm necroing. 

I decided to say good bye to videogames when I noticed my gaming pattern was just like an addiction. I started to google how to quit gaming and found Cam.
Cam said something along the lines: 
"Quit games for 90 days, see how it feels. See how is your life without gaming during 90 days, if you don't like it you can always go back to gaming"

When you are kid those all-night videogame marathons doesn't seem harmful. But how about when you are 18? 30? 40? 

I think most people who are members of this forum tried to quit gaming before.

 

 

[Alex]

Found this interesting so I'm necroing. 

I decided to say good bye to videogames when I noticed my gaming pattern was just like an addiction. I started to google how to quit gaming and found Cam.
Cam said something along the lines: 
"Quit games for 90 days, see how it feels. See how is your life without gaming during 90 days, if you don't like it you can always go back to gaming"

When you are kid those all-night videogame marathons doesn't seem harmful. But how about when you are 18? 30? 40? 

 

 

 

This. So much this.

[WorkInProgress]

Basically at some point the days of self denial and lying to my wife got to a point, where I was very unhappy with my way of living and decided to stop gaming. After several tries I found this site and just tried the journal thing, wich actually helped me to get over the hurdle. At some point the complete lose of confidence and lifequality made the decision(not the actual quitting though!) easy.

[Hobedaga]

I was getting numb to it and although I didn't fully realize that I'm less and less likely to achieve greatness in something and lead an interesting life of purpose it was actually happening and that thought popped in my head from time to time.

There was a lot of stuff leading to it. The public shame when people ask about what are you doing and you're neither working nor studying, people treating you like shit because they don't have a modicum of respect to you (understandably so tbh), the twilight zone feeling of not knowing what is reality and what is a game after a particularly long lasting binge, small chunks of suicidal thoughts because you just don't feel or care about anything, the faster heart rate when going to sleep because you literally didn't move from a chair and eat fast food all day etc.

After all that for some reason I felt excited about deleting my games. Also the thought process of "c'mon, you've been playing for a long ass time, can't you just be bored for like a month? Can't you even do that? You've had a ton of "fun" anyway. 

There was no single rock bottom moment for me.