Looking for a support system

[Guest]

Hello everyone, I really hope your day is going well so far.

My name is Mohammad, and I have been gaming my whole life. The only time I managed to stop gaming was during a two month period where I was forced to, in order to pick up my grades. As a result my grades skyrocketed and I was more productive and generally happier. Eventually I couldn't stop thinking about installing video games on my computer to play a bit, and to this day I have attempted to quit many times and have failed every time.

I have only recently come to terms with myself that this has become an addiction and that I want to stop gaming as I felt like I had the opportunity to get things done with no distractions, and now that I am going to start my first year in university for engineering, I know that this may interfere as a future problem. The reason I think I game, is to have a support system that "deals" with my day to day stress in life, as well as have something to do in my free time. I know I am capable of filling this time with other activities, but I'm having a hard time letting go of gaming. Every time I uninstall my games on my computer, I just end up reinstalling them again after a couple of days. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and looking at the community, I am also excited and hopeful to move onto my next phase in life. I just need a bit of support getting there.

Thank you if you have gotten this far and have read this whole post, and enjoy the rest of your day.

[Cam Adair]

Welcome Mohammad! Awesome to have you here with us.

[JSmith]

What is up with all these gamers who want to be engineers?

You're not alone man. I wish I was more aware of my unhealthy gaming habits when I was a freshman. Best of luck!

[ChrisO]

Every time I uninstall my games on my computer, I just end up reinstalling them again after a couple of days. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and looking at the community, I am also excited and hopeful to move onto my next phase in life. I just need a bit of support getting there.

Thank you if you have gotten this far and have read this whole post, and enjoy the rest of your day.

BroMoe, Mohammed! There's a move I made a few years back, which during that time really helped me.

Now this method is not for everyone, because a) it involves talking about your addiction with a friend/family. and b) you'd give up some of your authority.

So it's not a permanent solution but it helped me during the first few weeks: Reduce your own windows account to a non-administrator status and ask a good friend or a family member to set an admin password on your desktop.

Doing this has some benefits:

0. You cannot install games by yourself. You have to ask for the admin password.

1. You "automatically" gain a partner to talk about your addiction.

2. Your computer will still be available for any other non-gaming activity you'd like to perform.

3. Hacking your way back into your computer as an admin is certainly possible but you'll think twice, maybe three times, before going through all that effort before sabotaging yourself.

The downside is that you might argue that you're not achieving sobriety autonomously... but who cares!?! We're here in this community because we don't want to be alone, right?As long as you achieve your goals (within ethical boundries ofcourse! #winkyface @sjoti)

How would you achieve this?

1 enable the admin account http://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/3-ways-to-enable-and-disable-built-in-administrator-in-windows-10.html

2 login as admin and let someone else set a password for this account

3 as admin, go to uac and remove your own admin rights.

 

advice is always free and there's no strings attached. Do with it whatever you like ;-)

 

 

Kind Regards,

Chris

 

[Colin]

Moe, we're all in the same boat. Reach out directly if you ever need some help at a critical point in your process.