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NEW VIDEO: The EASIEST Way to Stop Gaming

I REALLY want to quit, but I can't.


dweems

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I've been addicted to video-games for well over 7 years (I know this isn't a lot for some people but I'm 15 so that's about half my life being addicted) and I can't stop. I recognized my addiction about 3 years ago when all I would do is go to school, not pay attention, get home and don't bother with homework or studying, then just play for 8 hours until I go to sleep. I repeated this pattern throughout middle school and I'll probably continue doing this the rest of high school and when I'm an adult if I don't stop now.

I really want to stop. I do! I think of how much better life would be if I wasn't so controlled by video-games. Every so often I realize how much time and money I've wasted on video-games, but these thoughts get overrun by my addiction. I think to myself "Who cares I'm having so much fun", or "I'll probably grow out of it in a couple years", and the worst of them "I can't wait to play video-games my entire spring break and summer vacation!". Another major issue with quitting is I have very little things to replace it with. You can play video-games whenever, wherever, and you can play for multiple hours at a time. There are almost no other hobbies/activities that replace this. I guess I could read for a bit, but I would probably get bored or not have enough books to read. I could exercise, but It's not like I could exercise for 7 hours during my free time. I can't really think of much to do.

I have tried to quit multiple times. Last year I tried to do a 90-day detox but I failed on the second day. The worst part is, video-games surround every aspect of my life. Pretty much ALL of my friends play video-games, I play a lot of phone games to pass time in school, and I already spent so much time, effort and money on gaming so why quit now? I have very little motivation in general, and I have almost none when it comes to quitting video-games. I feel like I don't have it in me to even quit for ONE day! Even cutting down time slowly seems dreadful. Honestly, I'm losing motivation while I'm writing this.

If anyone has any suggestions, advice, or questions please comment on this post and I'll reply ASAP.

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The key to replacing gaming is multiple activities. Gaming is one activity that does a lot on its own, there are pretty much no other activities the same as gaming, so if you want to quit you need to start shifting your values and use multiple activities to replace it. A bit of gym, a bit of reading, a bit of learning a new skill or having a side project will help. 

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I also tried multiple times before I found this site.  

I am 56 years old and I had been gaming since there were games.  Here's what worked for me.

  1. Uninstall all games.  Then uninstall Steam or whatever.  I know they have been a big fat part of your life, but they are TOXIC.
  2. Set up other activities.  Take a walk, shoot some hoops, go take an art class.  Get out there with people, doing things.

Look at your games.  They will make you a loser.  Imagine that they want you to fail.  I am diabetic, and I can't eat sugar.  So I use a mental trick to keep away from it.  Whenever I see a Twinkie or Coke, or anything sugary, I repeat inside my head "It's Clorox, it's Clorox".  Teach yourself to see the games as failure and laziness.  Imagine yourself at 56 without any social skills, friends, job, etc.  Learn to hate them.  Say to yourself Effing Games!  

Please.  DON'T end up my age with the same problem, but 40 years more entrenched.  For God's sake, Don't become ME.

 

FYI: You CAN.  I did.  

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Just quickly dropping by, I might write something more in-depth later but I gotta get back to work :)

The most important thing, the ever-so-cliche, YOU MUST DECIDE. Your commitment must be strong enough. Without it, nothing else will work. There are people, like @Cam Adair of course, that can explain this much better. BUT... I've tried quitting some games before so I've learned some easy and cheap tricks that might help out a little bit. Mind that without your decision to quit, these external helpers will not make you succeed.

  • Throw away your gaming mouse. Literally. Throw it into a river. Make a statement. It's cheap enough so that you won't mind the money. Without your gaming mouse, you can't game. I also trust that you are lazy enough to not buy a new one, that actually takes some steps to take so in that time you can recuperate, change your mind and not buy it. I haven't heard anybody mention this, I just discovered that I couldn't game when my mouse broke.
  • Change the e-mail adress of your gaming accounts(steam, battlenet, LoL etc.) to the e-mail of a friend you trust that will not give it back even when you have cravings and might ask for it. Or even your parents. Then change the password to some random characters. Then uninstall everything. This way, you can't access it, neither can you retrieve the password.
  • Destroy your in-game collection. This works for almost any free-to-play game, I will use hearthstone as an example - this is something I ACTUALLY did years ago. Never played hearthstone since. Log into hearthstone, disenchant every single card. Then, in order to prevent you from logging in later and utilizing that dust, you're going to make a golden meme deck. Go through the most useless cards in the game and craft golden versions of it. My entire hearthstone collection is a single 30-card deck with golden millhouse, golden whisps etc. This effectively destroys your dust and you will never want to play again.
  • Ask the support to delete your account. This only works in some services, afaik steam and battlenet doesn't let you do that. But league does, for example. They can delete your acc or put a perma-ban on it if you ask them.
  • Sell your PC and get a MAC. Boom. You can't game now, but still own a computer for real-life things.
  • Install Ubuntu on your PC, allocate the maximum amount of memory. So that your windows will not have enough space to install any games on. This solution is similar as getting a mac except that you keep your PC and use linux instead of windows. 

I thiiiink that's it. I will write a more in-depth blog post about these cheap tricks very soon.

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@dweems Hey Dweems, I think your on the right track being able to recognize your addiction is the number one step. I was very much in the same position as you, as a kid video games served a purpose for me, I had a disfunctional home life and they provide escape and validation. Only problem is 9 years later I was still playing, a big part of my healing was recognizing the uniqueness of your addiction, for example I tried to compare myself to all my friends who could limit there playing, again took me 9 years to come to terms that this wasn't me, I think if your here this might be the case for you too. Second, you have to start thinking like a non-gamer, someone who doesn't play video games, does a non-gamer crave video games? No, he doesn't have any to crave, so I think the next big step though a scary one is to get ride of it, if your a console gamer, sell it, if your a PC gamer like @JustTom said trade it in for a mac. Part of this process has been learning to trust yourself, sure my friends may pressure you into playing, but they don't have to deal with consequences that you will. Good luck, I know you can do it, writing in the journal helps to identify your habits and triggers if you haven't started doing it already. 

-S

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