My Story

[ElectroNugget]

Hi there.

My name is John and I've been a hardcore/chronic gamer since I was about six years old, when I first discovered Red Alert. I was never a very athletic kid, and I grew up in a conservative environment where athleticism was highly valued. Few subjects at school interested me, except for Drama, Art and History, so I was the quintessential nerd in what felt like an athlete's world. As I became increasingly disillusioned with the real world, I expanded into every field of gaming I could find, including FPS, RPG and racing games. If the experience was new and well-crafted, I wanted to try it. As a result, they took up more and more of my time and left less and less time to develop other areas of my life.

Locked in a vicious cycle, I turned more and more to gaming to relieve my feeling of social isolation and my inability to achieve on the sports field, or to find a girlfriend. During my teenage years, the internet and porn became further addictions that drew me further and further away from interacting with the real world and figuring out how to socialize with people properly. Despite this, I had a massive growth spurt in my late teens and finally found some self-acceptance to the point that I was fairly popular - but I still went home and spent most of my time on gaming, feeling like the real fun was to be had in cyberspace.

In my 20's, even though I was apparently becoming more well-adjusted my gaming and internet addiction continued to interfere with my life. Despite having some lovely girlfriends over the years, I was unsatisfied with them and in hindsight, I feel I treated them poorly and didn't give them enough time compared to gaming, porn and my new found social status in university.

I studied art with the intention to work on games as a concept artist one day, but even there my game addiction has stymied my progress as I spend more time gaming than honing my artistic skills. Now I find myself in a difficult stage in life after a painful breakup of a long term relationship, the sudden death of a close friend of mine who was also an artist (and a lot better than me) and struggling to land a job in the very volatile games industry. Last year I was diagnosed as clinically depressed and while I am no longer on medication and doing much better now, I feel the possibility of sinking into that pit again is never far off.

I feel I have to reinvent myself now or else I will become embittered and depressed, perhaps forever, and not be able to lead the kind of life I want to lead. 

I hope this program can help with that.

If you read this all, thanks! I hope we can make it together. Cheers.
 

[Damiano]

Welcome man, this is the right place to get rid of this gaming vice. Good luck.

[rivers]

Welcome John. I feel a lot of similarities in my story and yours. Sending you and everyone else on this site thoughts of strength to get through this.