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90 Days of Journal


info-gatherer

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Sounds like your body was tired and went to the way it knows best to rest. Same thing happens to me. The willpower to do something more productive was depleted by the activities earlier. The way to fix this isn't an easy answer, but I believe it involves setting new baseline habits on what you do when you want to rest. That takes a lot of time and effort though.

You spent much of your day on fun and productive activities. It's good to hear.

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I apologise, I’ve been quite lazy in the last few days and I didn’t read other people’s journals. I’m just very busy.

Day 71

Went with friends to an amusement park, spent the whole day there. I met the new gf of one of my best friends and she’s ok. In the evening we roasted some meat and had dinner all together. Then we played Trivial Pursuit but we didn’t manage to finish the game bc it was getting a bit late and people wanted to go home.

Holidays are just like this, a bit of it is very healthy but after a couple days I get tired and I want to get back to “work”. A pleasant day anyway. Had no time to surf anything.

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1 hour ago, info-gatherer said:

I apologise, I’ve been quite lazy in the last few days and I didn’t read other people’s journals. I’m just very busy.

Day 71

Went with friends to an amusement park, spent the whole day there. I met the new gf of one of my best friends and she’s ok. In the evening we roasted some meat and had dinner all together. Then we played Trivial Pursuit but we didn’t manage to finish the game bc it was getting a bit late and people wanted to go home.

Holidays are just like this, a bit of it is very healthy but after a couple days I get tired and I want to get back to “work”. A pleasant day anyway. Had no time to surf anything.

Don't worry about other people's journals.  I totally think you have a RICH social life...lol.  That's awesome. You're always out and about, meeting new people, playing sports, (heck even going to Mass just once), and putting yourself out there.  Whenever I read your journals, I feel like I'm THERE, witnessing events.  Anyway, take care of yourself, get plenty of rest and such.  I hope you continue journaling beyond 90 days.  You life is pretty interesting.

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Hey @Dannigan :) Thanks for the kind words. The friends I’m hanging out with in this days are my oldest friends, we’ve been together for years and since we live in different cities we seldom see each other. We are also very different, diverse characters, not many interest in common and so on. If we met today for the first time we would probably hate each other lol. But we’ve been together for a long time and they’re very dear to me. Apart from them, I barely have friends. And most of my friends, old and new, are very different from me anyway. I like spending time with them, but I rarely feel real empathy towards them. I mostly feel like I’m alone, even when I’m with other people. Yes, I don’t get bored, but I’m not fulfilled either.

Day 72

(spoiler: high level of negativity)

The person with the best social life on the planet spent litterally the whole day on the movies tracker. I want to explain why, and what are the consequences.

The movies tracker requires me to leave my pc on as much as I can. This means that as soon as I wake up in the morning, my pc is there, and I can’t help but sit down and check it to see if everything is running smoothly. Then what happens? I see the opportunity of filling a request or uploading a file. I sit down and do it. One, two hours pass. Then another, and yet another one. The more I upload/fill requests, the more my rank levels up. Tonight I made it to VIP. Sounds like a video game, right? The feeling is indeed similar. I have my little xp bar and all I have to do is make it to the next step. But I really don’t care about my rank, nor about the leveling feeling. I do it out of fear of being banned. I could log in just once a month, but even this minuscule quantity of gamification manages to get me hooked. I want to show them that I am a good user, I can contribute, so they don’t ban me and I can download everything I want.... even if I don’t watch movies anymore because I spend all my time hunting the rarest release.... How stupid I am? How worthless? I downloaded 3 TB of stuff, I watch 2 movies every week, I don’t need to download anymore for atleast 2 years. But hey, what if I really want to watch that specific movie that is obviously impossible to find in public trackers and that I can’t even buy because the industry is so god damn greedy and copyright laws are so fucking outdated that they would be obsolete in the VHS era?

But I am better than this. I can ask more to myself. I need and want to respect all the efforts that started more than 2 months ago and lead me where I am now: in a much better spot in my life. I’ll seed the last movie that I uploaded and then I’ll log out of that account and I’m not using it until the end of this spring break. My mom likes to use my pc, she’ll do the seeding when I’ll be in uni city. I’ll download a single movie a month, deciding the title BEFORE I login, just to keep my account active. I’m done with this rankup bullshit, and I’m done with wasting my time. To be more clear:

GOAL: Don’t use the movies tracker until the end of the spring break. Not even logging in will be allowed.

Tomorrow I will go out early, have a good walk and stay away from my room.

End of the rant. But not end of the entry.

Next topic: smoking. Today on the StopSmoking subreddit there was the picture of a guy that spat blood in a cup. He’s in his thirties, just been diagnosed with 3rd stage lung cancer. HOW MUCH FUCKIN STUPIDITY DOES IT TAKE TO SMOKE THOSE CANCER STICKS? I really don’t know how I ended up like this. (Yes, I know, but still it seems a dream.) I said so many times in this journal that as soon as I finish this detox I want to quit smoking, but I don’t even feel prepared. I don’t know if I must buy a vape or quit cold turkey, for example. I don’t know if I will get fat, or whether I’ll be able to focus on my books or I’ll think about cigarettes all the time and fail my exams. If I will go back to it one day. I don’t know anything, except that I want to be free. I feel very isolated and in danger, and I don’t see the way out. I will rely on sheer willpower for surviving the day tomorrow.

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3 hours ago, info-gatherer said:

I really don’t know how I ended up like this. (Yes, I know, but still it seems a dream.) I said so many times in this journal that as soon as I finish this detox I want to quit smoking, but I don’t even feel prepared.

I can completely relate to this. Days when I sit around watching TV or youtube all day, I look back and wonder how it started. I know how toxic it is, but in the moment my subconscious tells me it's so right. I can only speak for my experience, but in those moments I'm usually either trying to start on a task that I've been procrastinating on because it's been causing me intense psychological pain, or I'm just going to a familiar source of pleasure to break me from the numbness I feel. I'd be curious to hear what you think is your source, and what you experience when the urges hit.

 

When I quit gaming for a year I did it by replacing it with another addiction, the one I described above. Midway through the year I realized I really wasn't much better off. I still wasn't happy with myself. I was still using addiction to hide from solving my real life problems. And in that moment, and many times since, I sunk into the depressing feeling that this problem was something I couldn't possibly overcome. It would be something that would define me for the rest of my life.

But my deepest, realest self only has one response to that thought. "Liar." If you've seen the Walking Dead it's like that scene when the Governor said that same word to Rick. Part of me was telling me that that negativity was bullshit. That I can beat this.

You are prepared.

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@Pierce I'm not sure whether you're talking about smoking or binge-watching videos. I will assume that you're comparing the two. Sadly, for smoking (and any substance-related addiction) you don't need a trigger. Even in the most wonderful days, every 40 min you get the urge of lighting up a cigarette. There's a source, though: I had a girlfriend that was a smoker, and I started because I wanted to emulate her. That's all. The more you smoke, the more you want to smoke. Both the psychology and the physiology behind the phenomenon are quite simple. As usual thanks for the kind words :)

@Dannigan Thanks for the tips. I'll probably do as you suggest and won't try to quit smoking before the detox is over. Also, I know that smoking is bad. I always knew. But as Allen Carr puts it, "we don't smoke for the reasons why we shouldn't".

Day 73

Woke up early, spent the morning on the Gamequitters website. I had neglected it lately, so I catched up with some journals.

In the afternoon I went to pick up my brother after his basketball course. I noticed he was very impatient to go back home and play PS4. I’m very worried about him. He spends all his free time playing videogames with his friends or alone. He rushes homework because he wants to play more. When he’s not playing, he is watching some fucking youtube video from a fucking idiotic italian streamer, two hours or more every night before going to bed. He is 12, he has a social life, his school marks are very good, he does sports, he’s even had a girlfriend for almost one year now, he has a good relationship with the family, but I can’t help but feel scared for him. I know where he’s heading to. I walked his same steps. He has no interest for reading anymore, not even for watching tv with my parents. He prefers to use the evening for playing online with the xbox. My mum and dad don’t realize it, they didn’t learn much from me. They always prefered to just scream at me, without trying to understand. And they still don’t understand. My dad is a bank director, my mum a university professor. And they look so helpless when confronted with this thing they don’t understand. I don’t know how I can help my brother. We are not very close. When I try to talk to him, he always nods and pretends to understand. He respects me a bit, but he’s mostly scared. He knows that I don’t talk much, but when I do, I mean it, and I can get very depressed or very crazy.

Anyway, I asked him if it was ok if we went to visit our grandparents before going back home. He said ok. We went and after 5 min he insisted for leaving. He couldn’t wait. It was good seeing my gp anyway.

In the afternoon I received a call from a friend I didn’t see since october. He graduated in archeology in the meantime, and he came to my city because he’s got to take an exam here for the abilitation to be a tour guide. He’s taken a break from university, he says he’ll start studying again next year. We spent the afternoon together, and then he invited me to have dinner in the apartment he has rented. I accepted. We talked a bit. Not much confidence, a bit of suspiciousness, but pleasant evening overall.

Tomorrow I should go back to uni city but I don’t want to. I barely spent any time with my parents in the whole week. I was always out or in front of my pc. Maybe I’ll wait for friday.

P.S. My grandma broke her ring finger. Both bone and muscle are gone. She doesn’t want to have surgery, and she won’t be able to use that finger anymore. She said “who cares, I still have the other 9 fingers”. I thought she meant “I’m so old that it’s not worth fixing me”. I love my grandma, and I don’t want her to die, even if she’s very old and lived a happy life.

Edited by info-gatherer
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Its funny how within a family living under a same roof, everyone can be so unaware of what's going on in the others' lives. About your brother though, does he know you're doing a detox? I wonder what he think/say if you honestly talked to him about it

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Day 74

A lot of stuff happened.

This morning started in the worst way possible. I ignored the alarm and slept until 11. Then I surfed the net before gettinng out of bed and when I finally got up I immediately went to smoke a cigarette, with the sun heating my head. 5 min after getting out of bed I already had an headache and I knew the day was going down the drain. My grandma came cooking at my home and I had lunch with her and my siblings. 

Then instead of packing my stuff and going to uni city I watched TV for the whole afternoon. This way I missed the tennis lesson (is “missing” the correct verb? Skip maybe?) and I wasted my day.

But at 6 PM I had this phone call with my GF, explained that I didn’t do anything the whole day. She said: “I think that in the last few months you learned that it’s never too late to live a meaningful day”. And I realized that she was speaking the truth. So I moved my ass and went out. What to do, what to do? I went to the vape shop and bought an eCigarette. Spent 120€. I tried it before buying it and I was surprised of how similar to smoking a real cigarette it felt. Really, amazing. I didn’t really mean to stop smoking, I wanted to buy it for future use, but I haven’t smoked a cigarette yet and I’m super happy of this new thing. It’s a very similar sensation. Also, I know that I’m not really quitting, there’s still nicotine inside this product, but I’m removing the great majority of the negative effects of smoking. I’ll quit completely in the future. As of now, I’m so so happy. Looks like magic. We’ll see if it will still look like magic even tomorrow morning, at breakfast xD I’ll re-evaluate in tomorrow’s entry.

After dinner I texted one of my oldest friends. He came back in my city for the holidays, now he lives in Belgium and he’s finishing his master in engineering. We went out and got a hot chocolate. I told him about the detox and he was like “wow we’ve known each other for so long and I never suspected a thing. Did you really had a gaming addiction? Is gaming addiction a real thing anyway?”. Yes, I always hid so well. For some reason I felt proud of it. We ended up talking about politics. He’s a right wing liberal, and he’s getting involved in european politics. He’s meeting with european parlament deputates and so on. I’m a left wing social democratic, my ideas are almost opposite than his. We talked about immigration politics in Italy and oh man it was a hard talk. We couldn’t find common ground. Anyway, it was good seeing him. He also said it, “was good seeing you”, right before slamming the car door in my face without giving me the possibility of replying.

tomorrow I have class at 11. This means waking up at 7.30. For gods sake.

oh I almost forgot: MY REQUEST FOR STUDYING IN PARIS GOT APPROVED! Not at the most prestigious university, my first choice, but I was accepted at another university, one good enough, that I selected as a backup choice. Gonna spend 9 months there! It starts in september!

@BigOlBeartic good seeing you again, and good to read (in your journal) that you’re faring well :) My brother knows but we haven’t talked about it. I will think about your suggestion next time I come back home.

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5 hours ago, info-gatherer said:

But at 6 PM I had this phone call with my GF, explained that I didn’t do anything the whole day. She said: “I think that in the last few months you learned that it’s never too late to live a meaningful day”. And I realized that she was speaking the truth. So I moved my ass and went out.

Thank God for your girlfriend @info-gatherer.  You are very lucky to have someone that supportive. 

Needless to say, you got your sh!t together, and went out.  Vaping.....ok, I've heard of that as a replacement for smoking.  You can use different flavors too, if I remember correctly.  I hope that will work well for you.  Yeah it's definitely a lot less hazardous than cigarette smoking.  The only bad thing I heard about vaping was that when the container heats up, crappy vapes leak lead.  So, just research which ones are less faulty. 

I envy you.....Paris?  To study there?  ><  That is a dream vacation for me.  : )

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Day 75

Woke up and went to uni city. Realized I forgot my keys and so I’ve been locked out of home for the whole day. No big deal, my parents are coming to uni city tomorrow (not because of me, they would come anyway) and they’ll bring me the keys. I’m sleeping to my gf’s.

Attended class from 11 to 13, then my gf wanted to go eating sushi so we ate a ton and slept half the afternoon afterwards. In the evening for dinner I made the “Summer salad”, one of my signature recipes:

-Iceberg salad

-Cucumber

-Carrot

-Red radishes

-Sunflower seeds

-Green apple

-Salt & Corn oil

(Optional: walnuts, pear)

Then a friend came to visit us and he and my gf smoked cigarettes and weed next to me but I was happy to just smoke my eCig. I’m quitting cigarettes without even trying, I went from 1 pack a day to 0 with almost no cravings, this thing looks like a miracle! But I know it’s early to say that it worked. Hopefully next month I’ll post here and say that I’m a non-(cigarette)smoker. Only thing that bothers me is that I’m probably spending more than before. 1 bottle of eJuice sells for 8€ and lasts 2 days. I previously spent 2€/day because I rolled my own cigarettes. If my calculations are correct I’m going to spend twice as much as before. But it’s for my health and I’m happy to do it. Also, maybe in internet I can find ejuice at lower prices :)

It’s been a week since I last opened a book, I should go back on studying asap. Not sure if I’ll wait for monday or start tomorrow.

Checking out

Edit: @Pierce and everyone else: don’t be scared to offend me and please correct my english mistakes when I do them! I want to improve and I’ll be grateful!

Edited by info-gatherer
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Hey you know, when I started my detox I tried to quit smoking as well. But it is not that easy. Gaming can be replaced but I believe quitting cigarettes is a different kind of wine. My uncle had a brain tumor and quit for 7 years only to, one shiny day, buy a pack of smokes and continue as if he never stopped. I quit and start over quite often. Currently, I smoke. I am processing my past which makes me go nuts and I feel to weak in willpower to quit completely even though I had not smoked in months. What often works is changing my condition. I often smoked in front of the screen and during "social events". When I first quit smoking I denied myself to smoke indoors, so having to go out into the cold was a good motivation not to smoke. Not sure if that helps. My ex GF went to some hypnosis guy and for her it seems to work.

Aside from that, I wish you the strength to quit and do not feel alone in this. Smoking is harder to give up than many other addictions, since you do not see crack or cocaine everywhere, but the smell of of a burning cigarette can catch you almost everywhere. Stay strong, mate.

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Day 76

Spent the day watching The Young Pope and surfing the net for more information about vapes. I’m not doing anything meaningful but it’s ok, I’ve taken this week of inactivity as a way of recharging my batteries and take it easy while I stop smoking.

I found out that the reason why eJuice is so expensive is that laws and regulations about it are very strict in Italy, and taxes are extremely high compared to other countries (500€ of taxes for every liter of product; considering taxes alone, eLiquids are actually more expensive than the best wines). I better start crafting my own eJuice as soon as possible by buying basic materials and mixing them or I’ll run out of money before I realize it.

Tonight I went out with friends and had a very good time. Moderate alchohol, interesting conversation, no cigarettes.

@Regular Robert Thanks mate. As I said this is not a real quit, I’m still inhaling nicotine. It’s much easier than quitting cold turkey because it is not quitting. This is very clear in my mind. I will need to stop the nicotine addiction sooner or later. But now I’m happy to just transition to a less dangerous alternative for some time. I just want to be sure that I’m not going back to tobacco cigarettes before I try to quit for real. Having an addiction is bad, but killing a little bit of myself every day is even worse. And my gaming detox hasn’t ended yet. That said, I wish you every possible luck for your attempt to get rid of this dangerous habit. But hey, when the commitment will be there, you won’t need any luck! I really hope you can overcome it.

—-

My entries have been quite lackluster lately because my life isn’t going as well as in the previous weeks. My sleep schedule is always changing, I do nothing the whole day, I don’t always have lunch and dinner at fixed times and so on. I’m confident that everything will go back to normal when I’ll be back at my usual daily routine, starting next monday.

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I just asked myself: why is this community so small? I mean, I don’t “want” it to grow, this size fits me perfectly. But we’re just a bunch of people. Where’s the thousands and thousands of people who suffer from a gaming addiction? Right now, if everyone of us decided to play on the same server (let’s say a WoW server), we wouldn’t fill a tenth of it. Are there similar websites? Are the people there? Mind blown. Let’s try to answer:

1 A big part of addicts (let’s estimate 50%) don’t know/don’t want to acknowledge that they have a problem.

2 A big part of addicts (let’s estimate another 50%) doesn’t speak english, or doesn’t know english well enough to contribute here.

3 Most addicts (let’s estimate 90%) are not thinking about quitting anytime soon. Either they don’t think they can succeed, or they don’t want to try right now.

This leaves (if my calculations are correct, but I suck at maths, and my estimates are ofc not supported by data) a 2.5% of potential members out there. Cam mentioned that gaming addicts in the world are roughly 10 millions. Let’s accept this figure. This means that today there are 25.000 people potentially interested in this website. It’s very likely that most of them have found this website via google. But let’s assume that only 1/3 of them registered. Even with such pessimistic numbers, we should still see thousands of post every day. But we just see tens of them. I don’t get it.

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You brought up a very good topic that I will discuss later on.  I have some personal non-factual opinions.  I'm at dragon boat practice at the moment and will respond later thus evening.  Thanks for bringing this up.  Too few of us on this website....a bit discouraging.   :(

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I don't think everyone who wanted to quit would necessarily end up here. There are other sites (though few) that deal with gaming addiction, but joining an online forum like this is also not the only solution, it's just an option.

So if you factor in all possible solutions (therapy, family interventions, 12 steps, online forums, etc.) and then the probability of an individual choosing THIS site over potential others, that percentage would decrease further.

Also, you said THINKING about quitting. Thinking and making the decision are two different things ;)

I'm just speculating, but I like questions like this, so...yeahhhh

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Day 77

Last day of nothingness. I cleaned the house and also my own room, though. Just to be more ready for the upcoming days.

Tomorrow I’ll be back at it with the real life. I feel prepared for it.

Will need to watch my sleep schedule, make drastic changes. Today I woke up at 1 PM. Not ok. I’m fixing it. Tomorrow I’ll wake up at 9 or die trying. And I’ll wake up at around 9 for the whole week. Need to re-establish that good habit.

Spring break ended, I didn’t game, I even quit smoking tobacco. It’s not a perfect score, but it’s enough to rejoice.

It was hard in the last days to see my girlfriend study the whole time while I was doing nothing, chilling on the armchair, phone in hand the whole time...

But if you want to achieve, you also need to know when to relax.

Relax is over.

I’m back.

GOALS FOR THE NEXT WEEK

1 Wake up between 7.30 and 9.30 every day.

2 Watching my phone before getting washed & dressed is FORBIDDEN.

Let’s go.

 

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9 hours ago, info-gatherer said:

I just asked myself: why is this community so small? I mean, I don’t “want” it to grow, this size fits me perfectly. But we’re just a bunch of people. Where’s the thousands and thousands of people who suffer from a gaming addiction? Right now, if everyone of us decided to play on the same server (let’s say a WoW server), we wouldn’t fill a tenth of it. Are there similar websites? Are the people there? Mind blown. Let’s try to answer:

1 A big part of addicts (let’s estimate 50%) don’t know/don’t want to acknowledge that they have a problem.

2 A big part of addicts (let’s estimate another 50%) doesn’t speak english, or doesn’t know english well enough to contribute here.

3 Most addicts (let’s estimate 90%) are not thinking about quitting anytime soon. Either they don’t think they can succeed, or they don’t want to try right now.

This leaves (if my calculations are correct, but I suck at maths, and my estimates are ofc not supported by data) a 2.5% of potential members out there. Cam mentioned that gaming addicts in the world are roughly 10 millions. Let’s accept this figure. This means that today there are 25.000 people potentially interested in this website. It’s very likely that most of them have found this website via google. But let’s assume that only 1/3 of them registered. Even with such pessimistic numbers, we should still see thousands of post every day. But we just see tens of them. I don’t get it.

I totally get what you mean.  I hear ya. 

It's rather discouraging.  I think your estimation looks reasonable = 2.5% that use this forum.  And yeah, perhaps people gravitate to other helpful websites or even Discord channels.  I have no clue. 

Here's my personal opinion:

1) People try out this site, but don't stick to writing a journal, or do not buddy-up with somebody.  Therefore, they fall to the way-side and we never see them again.

2) People who have completed their 90 Day detox, no longer need to use this forum.  Therefore, they drop off and hopefully are living a life without addiction to games.

3)  People who are addicted to games, have no idea about websites like this.  IMHO, I think that other demographics besides young men/women in their 20's, could be outreached.  Eg.  schools, particularly junior and up to senior high school.

4)  I wish there was some sort of follow-up questionnaire for former and current users of Game Quitters. 

Eg. 

Question 1:  How has Game Quitters helped you?  Rate it from 1 to 10. 

Question 2:  How long have you used the website?  a) less than 3 months, b) over three months c) more than a year

Question 3:  How long have you been addiction free from video games?

Question 4:  How could the website improve to serve you and others better?

5)  People just don't like using this website, for their own personal reason.

My mind is going blank....very tired at the moment. 

But I think you raised very good points.  Some addicts are in denial or don't acknowledge they are addicts.  What I have done, is I kept my member status open on my former's Guild's discord channel.  Beside my name = "Playing absolutely nothing".  And if a person clicks on my profile, it has www.gamequitters.com attached.  It's my way to spread the word in case people start to gain insight about their addiction.  I might even write a note in the Discord Channel text chat describing GQ or other helpful websites.  All of my former gaming friends play 5-10+ hours a day on average.  I want to help them, but I cannot lead a horse to water that does not want to drink from the trough.

Over and out,

~Dani

 

 

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4 hours ago, info-gatherer said:

Day 77

Last day of nothingness. I cleaned the house and also my own room, though. Just to be more ready for the upcoming days.

Tomorrow I’ll be back at it with the real life. I feel prepared for it.

Will need to watch my sleep schedule, make drastic changes. Today I woke up at 1 PM. Not ok. I’m fixing it. Tomorrow I’ll wake up at 9 or die trying. And I’ll wake up at around 9 for the whole week. Need to re-establish that good habit.

Spring break ended, I didn’t game, I even quit smoking tobacco. It’s not a perfect score, but it’s enough to rejoice.

It was hard in the last days to see my girlfriend study the whole time while I was doing nothing, chilling on the armchair, phone in hand the whole time...

But if you want to achieve, you also need to know when to relax.

Relax is over.

I’m back.

GOALS FOR THE NEXT WEEK

1 Wake up between 7.30 and 9.30 every day.

2 Watching my phone before getting washed & dressed is FORBIDDEN.

Let’s go.

 

Props to you for cleaning the house and your room. 

Yeah, sleep schedules are tough.  Make sure you have a definitive reward waiting for you when you wake up at 9:00 a.m.  For me, it's my morning coffee at 5:15 a.m.  I set up my coffee maker before bed, with the coffee grounds in it, a bit of salt, water filled, and a coffee mug.  I drink bullet-proof coffee which consists of:  whipped cream in my coffee, in addition to coconut oil, Stevia drops Vanilla flavor.  Presto!  A great drink to give you energy and also healthy.

And make sure that you go to sleep at exactly the same time each day. 

Cue ---> Routine ----> Reward (eg. hot coffee waiting for you in the morning at 9:00 a.m.)

Rewards are very important to keep habit in check.  : ) GOod luck to ya!

 

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11 hours ago, info-gatherer said:

I just asked myself: why is this community so small? I mean, I don’t “want” it to grow, this size fits me perfectly. But we’re just a bunch of people. Where’s the thousands and thousands of people who suffer from a gaming addiction?

I think most of us don't even know we're addicted and if we do realize we are addicted, we don't really know the procedure specifically designed to get over the hurdles that gaming abstinence presents us. Furthermore the act of gaming addiction reinforces itself to make the person not be able to help himself effectively since he/she spends the majority of their time and energy gaming. It usually takes an act of desperation to seek help or conscious effort.

Another point is the long overdue 'recognition' that has been missing which factors to our lack of knowledge about gaming addiction. In a similar way gaming addiction draws parallels to how drugs are made illegal which forms a fog around the issue, generating a lack of understanding. If a drug is legal and 'visible', it can be researched with greater speed and effectiveness to be able to educate the wider public. Instead many societies like to control people through fear than true understanding/education.

 Because gaming addiction is not 'visible' in this same way, we simply don't talk about it enough as it is not recognized with importance; until ofcourse it hits home to the people closest to you or yourself.

Gaming addiction is not really a traditional addiction when looking through the time of human history. If the dialogue between everyday people about gaming addiction isn't there, the solutions and realizations will be hard to come by. It also takes quite a bit of courage to post online here and admit we have an issue, many of us like to envision ourselves as happy with no problems but the reality says otherwise.

Hopefully, as the issue gains increased awareness such as the recognition of gaming addiction by WHO, this dialogue between people will slowly start to expand. It's just a matter of time before people realize how detrimental it is to ignore this issue.

Edited by Arch
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@Dannigan Guess what’s left to do (about number of members speculations) is accepting the mistery. I agree with the great majority of your corrections, and still I have a feeling that we are less than we should reasonably expect to be.

About your friends... I think that before trying to help other people, we should achieve freedom for ourselves. That means - putting it in oversimplified terms - completing our detox. I see how my brother wastes his life, I see a couple of my friends as well, and I remember how I used to be. They wouldn’t listen. Hell, they DON’T! I had this conversation with one of my best friends who is also my closest gaming buddy ever, and he was like “well if you felt necessary to quit I support you. But I’m not sure that gaming addiction is a real real thing. I’m not addicted, anyway.”. He plays (or at least used to play, I’m not sure about now) 10 hours a day! I mean what the hell? Look at yourself!

BUT we can be an example for them. If they see that we have a better life, they will be encouraged to walk the same path! Or at least, that’s what I hope. That’s our best bet anyway :)

@Arch

16 hours ago, Arch said:

Furthermore the act of gaming addiction reinforces itself to make the person not be able to help himself effectively since he/she spends the majority of their time and energy gaming.

This is SO SO IMPORTANT for understanding how a gaming addiction works, I’m very happy you mentioned it. And I add (this is what I think you meant): not only gaming makes it harder to live, but a harder life gets you more into games, that in turn make life even harder, and you escape in games even more, etc... It’s a spiral. I think it is important to understand this part because most addicts wonder “how did I end up like this...”, and I think that what they experienced was NOT a linear process, but more of an exponential one. Gaming addiction doesn’t “add”, but “multiply”. I probably wasn’t very clear, here are the limitations of my english, but I hope you get what I mean. Also, thanks for taking a political view of the situation, it’s much necessary nowdays, and it’s very hearthening to hear somebody speak like that. More awareness and understanding of the problem means more means to fight it.

Day 78

This morning I did a very silly thing xxD

I volunteered for extra-curricular work that I wasn’t supposed or even required to do. I must research if and how the narrative structure of Joseph Roth’s “Job” takes after the biblical Book of Job and write a 10 pages  essay on the subject, then tell the class about my conclusions in a 30 min speech.  I mean, it’s good that I am willing to do more than I’m expected to do, it’s part of my plan to (re?)claim a top-tier student status (and hopefully get a PhD scholarship one day), but now my calendar is totally fucked up.

27/4 Exam

12/5 This thing

30/5 Another exam

I must pass (almost flawlessly, or it’s not even worth the effort) 3 exams in less than 2 months while attending from 12 up to 24 hours of class every week. The next 2 months will be hard, very hard. Probably the hardest ever, or close to it. I’ll do my best, but will it be enough? I must try tho. I can’t escape. If I succeed I will also regain a lot of self-esteem and confidence & academic validation.

I’ll need to use my evening time way better. I must go to bed 1 hour earlier so to gain 1 more hour in the morning, AND I must go back to do some studying in the evening too.

P.S. While writing this my “smoke free” app popped the “100 hours free from cigarettes” notification, good stuff.

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5 hours ago, info-gatherer said:

This is SO SO IMPORTANT for understanding how a gaming addiction works, I’m very happy you mentioned it. And I add (this is what I think you meant): not only gaming makes it harder to live, but a harder life gets you more into games, that in turn make life even harder, and you escape in games even more, etc... It’s a spiral. I think it is important to understand this part because most addicts wonder “how did I end up like this...”, and I think that what they experienced was NOT a linear process, but more of an exponential one. Gaming addiction doesn’t “add”, but “multiply”. I probably wasn’t very clear, here are the limitations of my english, but I hope you get what I mean. Also, thanks for taking a political view of the situation, it’s much necessary nowdays, and it’s very hearthening to hear somebody speak like that. More awareness and understanding of the problem means more means to fight it.

No, I understood you. You're saying the addiction to games makes one avoid their challenges in life and because their challenges get harder to deal with by not practicing discipline/time-management and everything else required to complete a goal or task we turn back to gaming to escape it - a downward spiral. Your English is comprehensible.

Edited by Arch
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7 minutes ago, Arch said:

the addiction to games makes one avoid their challenges in life and because their challenges get harder to deal with by not practicing discipline/time-management and everything else required to complete a goal or task we turn back to gaming to escape it - a downward spiral

Yes 100%

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Day 79

Had a good day with its pros and cons.

I woke up at 9.30 (the latest allowed by my schedule, but still allowed). Right after waking up I failed my goal not to look at my phone before getting dressed, because my flatmate was using the bathroom and I didn’t know what to do while I was waiting for my time to take a shower. And it took a while.

Then I arrived to the library very late but kept a positive attitude and by the end of the day I had studied more than usual. That’s because I involuntary did some changes:

1 Since I arrived late, my favourite room was already full and I could not take a seat. Instead of finding another “secundary” room, I went directly to the main room. I used to avoid the main room because it’s totally silent, so silent that it used to feel oppressive. But I guess I changed and now the silence of 100 people around me doesn’t scare me anymore. In fact, it helped me focus more and be more productive. I’ll use the main room again in the future.

2 I took less breaks, even for smoking. Probably due to being more focused.

3 I had conversations during breaks. Just small talk. I found it helps to clear my mind and be ready when I go back to studying.

Thanks for reading

5 days without tobacco!

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