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Wafsek's journal.


Wafsek

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Hi there.

Let me start with the information that there is TL;DR at the end of this post so you don't have to read the wall of text if you don't want to waste your time and I understand that.

After trying few times to quit gaming I decided to give it another go. This will be my first journal so please excuse me if it is going to be chaotic. Quick info about me before I start to jabber - male from western europe,  mid twenties, currently doing my MSc in mechanical engineering, living with my family, unemployed, single and finally a game addict.

Not-so-short life resume focusing on my gaming addiction and what led to it

In my early childhood (say 5 to 12 years old) my 'addiction' was football. I was the first one on the pitch and the last one to go home (still remember my mom saying "everyone comes and goes but of course you have to play till the last one leave" or something similar). Then when I was about 12 I got my first good PC. PCs were the reason that there weren't many people wanting to play football anymore so we switched to online games. I should add that I was always very competetive - I remember many kids and teens few years older than me at that time saying stuff like "you're short and fat yet you are outplaying me so hard" (well probably translated it wrong but you get the gist - even if I was not well predisposed for something I was always good at it if I wanted to because I always gave 100% of myself). And this quality doomed me later when online games became 'the thing'.

Online games

So as I said people were transitioning from sports to online games and at the age of 12 I started 'new level of education' and all the kids there wanted to be the cool ones. I was the smartest kid in the class but short and fat so I got bullied. Rarely physically (sometimes punch in my arm just to annoy me, not to hurt me) but mostly mentally. Making fun of me, that I was getting red on my face when talking to girls and telling them to tease me (fun fact I was the first one to interact with girls with ease but back then my friends laughed at me for that, you know stuff like "hahaha Wafsek loves girl Y hahaha"  which over time made me react with blushing and shyness to any interactions with girls). Also stuff like throwing my backpack, trying to made me defocus on classes like taking my stuff and not wanting to give it back, calling me names  and all the not-so-harmless-but-fucking-your-development "jokes" (excuse me if I can't use swear words here- couldn't find good substitute, I'll edit it if I have to tho). 

Highly competetive kid getting bullied in a world where online games are getting trendy

Now do the addition: highly competetive + online games are overtaking sports + bullying and you get a kid addicted to in my case MMORPG. My first 'drug' was Tibia. There I wasn't short, fatty that was made fun of, I could be the cool kid there, the highest level among my social circle (if you can call it that). Lots of my friends were playing Tibia and as you can probably guess I was giving my 100% there too and quickly I became the highest level, with most gold etc. It was so appealing to young me - I had the same chances at being cool there as everyone else. This way I changed from the all the time outside playing sports to all the time playing computer games. Now, my parents at the time were like "well at least he is not getting in any troubles like other kids and he has great grades so whatever" therefore my addiction without any obstacles thrived. 3 years of this 'education level' passed, I was 15 and got to the next 'education level' then I was 18 and still the only thing I did in my life except going to school was playing Tibia and interacting with my 3 or so close friends from time to time but rarely leaving my home. Now at the age of 19 I went to University and decided at some point that I gotta end my "Tibia addiction". With help came another game - Dota 2. Now I was playing Dota 2 and with like a waving of a magic wand I didn't feel the need to play Tibia - cool! Before I realised I was addicted to Dota 2. Now I was playing Dota 2 all day, watching streams and so on. Two, three years passed and I read that there is going to be a 'double experience weekend' in Tibia. I had something called voucher that would make my char get 3x the experience for killing monsters - after all I am done with Tibia and don't feel the need to play it, so why not play it for a week and see what level can I get? Well one year later I am playing Dota 2, CS:GO, watching streams and having a botfarm in Tibia that needs lots of my attention and still avoiding real life and still being underdeveloped in many areas of it.

For the last 12~ years I achieved almost nothing (except getting the title of engineer) because I was escaping into gaming. My time in university made me slightly more social and improved my skills in many areas but I am still this shy and slightly weird manchild. I had few tries in previous 2 years at qutting gaming, the longest one was about 90 days then I read that a character in Dota 2 called "Zeus" had cool changes in an update so I wanted to give it a try, eh... 

What now?

To sum up where I am now: 1 year away from getting my MSc, playing 3 games that I am highly addicted to and watching streams. I have no hobbies, never had a girlfriend or job. I am a manchild trying to mature into an adult. I want to write about this journey here on forum to have access to my previous thoughts and also to share it with people that understand it and can help me with this connecting back to real life. I'll try to write here daily. Thank you if you read it all, or part of it, or even only opened this post :).

I'll write about yesterday and what clicked for me then to give non-gaming  another try in a post below this one so this can be my introductiory post (I could write it in the Introduction section but I wanted it at the start of my journal so I thought that writing the same thing there and here was pointless).

TL;DR: Highly competetive kid + getting bullied + online games + 12 years = manchild addicted to games

 

 

 

Edited by Wafsek
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Here is a post that I will edit later so I can write about yesterday and today before someone replies in this thread - please don't delete! I'll do it probably tomorrow.

Edited by Wafsek
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From one aspiring Mechanical Engineer to another, I bid you hello! Your story resonated with me in a lot of ways. Especially with the part about feeling at a higher level in games than in the real world. Looking forward to hearing more, and good luck with your Masters (I'm still working on BSE haha).

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Hey welcome to the Forums. I will have finished my masters degree of engineering in a year too. Seems like many of us went into the same trap. I can relate to many things you wrote and was addicted to dota 2 for a long time. I am now game free for around half an year and can tell you, that it changes alot if you use the time to develop yourself. It helped me to mature and being more social. If you have any specific questions or just want to know how to start feel free to pm me or write here and tag me with @WorkinProgress.

Best of luck to you!

Greetings Mario

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Welcome to the community!

I can relate a lot to being competitive and having video games around at an early age, perhaps you might be able to learn a little from my journal (if you've got the time to read that much!)

Best of luck for your journey, and welcome again to the forum :)

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THERE IS TL;DR AT THE END OF THIS POST

@Cam Adair thank you for creating this community and for welcoming me :) 

@JSmith thank you for welcoming me, also I wish you the same with your BSc :)

@WorkInProgress thank you for offering your help and welcoming me :D happy to know that things get better over time

@AlexTheGrape thank you, I will read it for sure soon :)

It is somewhat comforting that people resonate with my story and are fighting the same (or similar) battle.

Inspiring quote of the day:

"Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great." - Niccolo Machiavelli

Almost gave up on writing my journal:

I have to say that I almost wanted to give up on this journal. Not that there is something wrong with it, just that everytime I tried to quit games I ranted on r/stopgaming letting my emotions out, writing about my life, addiction etc but always on the next day I felt bad about myself with thoughts like "I am such a pussy, what have I thought? Posting something this personal and showing my weaknesses to strangers? I am such an idiot". Usually I haven't even replied to people that offered their help or just encouraged me and sacrificed their time reading my story and I am ashamed of that. Well it wasn't different this time but after reading this thread for the 3rd time I decided that such behaviour is unacceptable and it is just the first withdrawal symptom (trying to rationalise what in reality is seeking accountability, help and place to store my thoughts as acting like a weakling in order to give up and start gaming faster) and I will continue writing here.

Day 1:

Forgot to add earlier that I have vacations now (50~ days left so I have lots of free time)

1) Woke up at 7:30, drank coffe, listened to 40~ minutes of "No more mr Nice guy" (great book, read it before but I thought that it will be helpful to refresh what I learnt about myself from it as I was brought up as a Nice guyTM).

2) Next I wanted to go rollerblading. Right after I left my house it started raining though and the first thing I thought was "damn I gotta go back home" but I overcame it and did 8km (about 30 minutes of aerobics). Now it was 9:30 am and I already did more than I did in majority of the vacation days I had this year so far - it felt good.

3) Now I ate breakfast and listened to RSD Julien (many people may think that all the RSD guys are evil creatures getting advantage of insecure man but I think it is far from from the truth - they give advice on how to change oneself to become a better person rather than just get girls to sleep with you by using some tricks and scripts).

4) Now I started to run out of ideas to do - 40 minutes till dinner what can I do in this time? Look at my phone...memrise! Opened the app and it turns out I haven't learned languages in over a month, so I did the repetition of the 80~ russian words that memrise wanted me to repeat. Ate dinner and now I started to feel tired...

5) Got over it and started doing the electronics course I bought 3 or so years ago but never finished - it was fun and I was genuinely interested in it but after doing few exercises I couldn't focus anymore.

At like 16:00 I decided that I did a lot compared to how usually my days look and it is enough for today or i might wear myself out and relapse (my modus operandi in almost all the previous tries). Rest of the day I hanged out with my mom, listened to some music, talked with friends on facebook, read some articles and subreddits (not the gaming ones) and thought about my new game-free journey and life in general. I have one hour left before I go to bed and all I have planed before that is starting "Take 10" which is a guided meditation for newbies (never did the whole 10 days though as I lost my willpower quickly...).

Summary of day 1:

Compared to how usually my days look I did pretty well. Got bored, tired and couldn't focus many times during the day and thought how nice it would feel to play some deathmatch in CS:GO or watch TI6 on twitch but I resisted these temptations. Overall I feel good about the future :).

Tomorrow I am going to visit my cousin with my closest family so there won't be much to report and I might be back very late and write about it the next day :). So see you all tomorrow or the day after tomorrow :D.

Thank you for reading :D

TL;DR:

Listened to No more mr Nice guy audiobook, went rollerblading, watched RSD course, spent 30~ minutes learning languages on memrise, did few electronics exercises from the course I bought 3~ years ago but never finished and rest of the day chilled (hanging out with my mom, listening to music, reading articles, talking on facebook etc). Had few thoughts about gaming but resisted the temptations. All I have left to do today is meditating :).

 

 

Edited by Wafsek
typos, editing etc
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I have to say that I almost wanted to give up on this journal. Not that there is something wrong with it, just that everytime I tried to quit games I ranted on r/stopgaming letting my emotions out, writing about my life, addiction etc but always on the next day I felt bad about myself with thoughts like "I am such a pussy, what have I thought? Posting something this personal and showing my weaknesses to strangers? I am such an idiot". Usually I haven't even replied to people that offered their help or just encouraged me and sacrificed their time reading my story and I am ashamed of that. Well it wasn't different this time but after reading this thread for the 3rd time I decided that such behaviour is unacceptable and it is just the first withdrawal symptom (trying to rationalise what in reality is seeking accountability, help and place to store my thoughts as acting like a weakling in order to give up and start gaming faster) and I will continue writing here.

This is called a vulnerability hangover

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Good job on going rollerblading in the rain! Do you have a training goal(something like 3 times a week cardio)? If you get bored in your free time: Here are my favorite free ressources(http://forum.gamequitters.com/topic/1939-free-helpful-articles/)

It felt strange as hell at first to write here too, but it helped alot to clarify some feelings and thouhgts of mine.

 Your temptations will come and go. Be aware of them and try to make the walls between you and possible triggers as high as possible at the start. You will get weak at some point and beeing able to just type in some words in the browser and be back at twitch, can lead to a fast relapse.. Check leechblock out, to block dangerous websites from your browser. This did help me a lot for some time.

 

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Welcome countryman!
It's nice to see you joining this community and making a good decision towards better life! It's good that you have started your journal, of course we share in them private things, but remember that you share it anonymously, thus, if you write with care, you will be untraceable. It's good that you are mixing diffrent activities, this will keep you away from games. I'm trying to get engineer degree in mechatronics, what's yours speciality?

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THERE'S TL;DR at the end of the post

First of all sorry for not quoting your posts (it makes my post look longer so it is more intimidating for potential readers).

@Cam Adair Thank you for the link - that was an interesting read and I can relate to it and learn from it. Great to know that everything that I experience during my struggle is either experienced by someone before me or/and explained scientificly.

@WorkInProgress Thank you :). My training goal is to get to 76kg till the end of my vacations (40 days left, I am 80~kg, 170cm, already lost 1.5kg in last 10 days). My workout routine is so far 3x weight training a week and cardio every other day (rollerblading, running - haven't done that in few months though). I have this small gym made in my house for 4~ years but the longest I've sticked to working out was about 1.5month :/. I'll read the free resources tomorrow. About the triggers - I have read some threads on reddit on r/dota2 and r/globaloffensive today but haven't felt the need to play (still I am a bit worried that I had the need to visit these subreddits). About the leechblock - I've used one that made some exceptions to prevent me from going to twitch and some other sites for the period of time I have chosen but unforuntately I've found a way to get around it, lol.

@Piotr Thank you for welcoming me :).  About the untracable thingy, I wouldn't be so sure :D - for your peers sure, but Imagine you want to become a president or someone important, then the specialists will look into your history on the internet easily :D. Now about my speciality - it is HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning - sometimes it is called HVAC&C - the additional C stands for cooling) . To be honest with you it is boring - I'd rather get into desiging new engines or compressors or stuff like that but my 'specialisation' is more about making the heating/cooling/air conditioning systems and that's about choosing the right parts from the existing ones. Now  the advantages of HVAC in the sense of designing systems (be it heating/ventilation/air conditioning/cooling) - it is needed everywhere so there are plenty of jobs in HVAC - especially in the northern part of Poland (where I live). The second major advantage is that as long as you use your brain and don't fuck up your calculations everything should be fine - all you need to do is to calculate and select already existing parts. Keep in mind that my experience in HVAC is just 1 month in designing department of a company that specialise in air conditioning, so I might be wrong.

I have lots of free time so if you have any questions about studying mechanics (called MiBM in Poland) or something even vagualy close to it then feel free to pm me.

Now let me get back to the journal.

Day 2:

Woke up at 9:00~ (I swear ZMA makes me sleep better - that is without waking up at night, but longer). Drank coffe, and drove my mom to few shops. I was back @11:00 and there were 2 hours left to driving my closest family (I'll refer to closest family as my mom, dad, sister) to the bbq that my cousin was hosting. I was kinda pissed cause I've heard before that we will go there @14:00-15:00~ but it turned to be 13:00. Nevertheless I forced myself to workout, showered and was ready to drive! So we arived there @14:00 and stayed till 24:00. Holy shit, being the driver where 10-12~ people party and drink vodka for 8-10 hours is exhausting. I am kinda proud of myself because I have kept my cool and only complained a little bit. On the way back my dad was drunk (happens maybe once a year) and he kept saying that he haven't thought he will live till the day that his son will drive him back from a party and that he was a bit scared when I was driving my mom and sister but now he sees that I drive well and he isn't scared about that anymore. Those were the words of someone drunk, nevertheless it felt good. Once I was home, I lurked a little on the internet and went to sleep.

Summary of day 2:

Haven't done much because of the bbq. Before the bbq I worked out, few hours into bbq I went back to the car and watched RSD Julien and spent some time on memrise (learning languages) so overall the second day was better than expected.

Day 3:

Woke up @ 9:00 (the next day after I am a driver for someone 'partying' I feel kinda hungover so I slept longer). Ate the breakfast (I think I will skip the breakfast part in my next posts, lol), and didn't know what to do. During the day I felt lost so most of the time I spent thinking what to do. I have listened to over 40~ min to the "No more mr Nice guy" audiobook, listened to RSD Julien, went rollerblading, did 1 more electronics exercise and read about electronics till the end of the first part of the book I was reading. In the evening I went for few beers with my buddies, talked about the life an relationships with one of them when the second one went home and came back to write this post.

TL;DR:

Day 2: Worked out, drove my closest family to bbq hosted by my cousin. Spent some time there 'bonding' with my family, some time alone in a car learning languages and listening to RSD Julien. Got back @ 01:00~ and went to bed.

Day 3: Listened to "No more mr Nice guy", learned some electronics, learned some languages, went rollerblading, went with my buddies for few beers and talked about relationships and life in general with one of them.

To sum up - Things are getting harder each day but not much. Still I see the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

EDIT: I forgot to add that I will read journals of everyone that posted in my thread so far. Please give me time as I am adapting to the 'new reality' and I have a hard time writing in my journal let alone reading someone's journal and replying there with something valuable.

 

 

 

Edited by Wafsek
syntax fixes, grammar etc
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  • 1 month later...

Day 4: hangover + lots of free time = geting back to gaming and wasting time

Day 5 to whatever number is the day today: gaming, watching streams, mindlessly surfing on the Internet

The gaming isn't that bad to be honest...I mean I only play with one IRL buddy maybe 10h a week but the rest of my free time I spend mindlessly browsing web and watching gaming streams...Holy shit I could have done so much during this time and I wasted 1.5 month, kill me please. It probably would be easier if I haven't been sick twice in this time...

I did achieve something though. Got equivalent of an A for the only retake exam I had to take and also read 1 book during that time. Not much to be proud of if one takes under consideration that it is all that I have done during 1.5 month of vacations where I had almost 0 responsibilities.

New Day 1: Tomorrow starts last year of my MSc studies. A sane person in my position would think that he will soon be on the "working market" and he has all the skills required there (social skills, manual skills, 'life skills') underdeveloped and is not in a good form physically. Therefore such person would do everything in this last remaining year to fix that and in the end he would succeed - after all his futre life depends on that. What will I do? Probably try and fail and then try and fail and then some... What else can I do though?

There is a bright light at the end of the tunnel though. I have observed that when I have lots of free time I can't spend it effectively - if I have whole day for myself then why do something in the morning? I can do it later and take things easy...then after dinner and so on. In the end the day is wasted because suddenly there is no time left. Now lets say I have 3-4 hours window in my classes, now I can workout during this time, read and do all the things that I want to do. I came to a conclusion that it is beacuse there is no time to hesitate - you either do it or not, there is no "I will do it later" because the window between classes or other responsibilities ends. I told my mom about it and she said that it is very similar to what she heard many times from people that retired from work - they say that when they were working they had time to do everything but now that they are retired they can't find time for anything even though they have lots of it. Perhaps that is human nature.

This post was supposed to be 2-3 sentences long but after I started writing down my thoughts it became longer and longer - it seems that writing down your thoughts helps you clear your mind and think straight. Who knew?

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I have only read your first post yet, but it's really interesting so far. You're not alone on the "wall of text" part, I also have a (slightly disturbing) tendency to ramble on for what seems like forever - but don't be ashamed! Stick that chin out and keep mashing them buttons! 

About your gaming; I can only wish you luck, and ensure you it'll become easier. If you relapse, get out if it as quick as possible. 

Here's some cheesy inspiration from someone else who know of the struggle: "Relapse a thousand times, quit a thousand and one"

Will be following :)

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This post was supposed to be 2-3 sentences long but after I started writing down my thoughts it became longer and longer - it seems that writing down your thoughts helps you clear your mind and think straight. Who knew?

And this makes a big difference in your ability to succeed after you quit!

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