Let's do this before my addicted self changes his mind!

[Jami]

Hey all, I'm Jami from Montreal, Canada.

I am a freelance web developer and have been doing that full-time for about 2 years. I am also married and trying to add a new member to our family.

I have been playing games since I was 6 or 7 years old. The first game I played was 2 black and white pixelated gorillas that threw bananas at each other, and now I'm 32 and my "drug" of choice is mainly single-player strategy games like civilization, RPGs, and some simulation and card games. 

Last november I went into burnout and depression and fell deeply into a competitive card game called artifact. I played about 80 hours in the first week, then 60 the week after, neglecting my work, my wife and our chores. In a moment of lucidity I uninstalled steam and all my games and things started looking up... I was actually taking the steps necessary to heal instead of just using games to escape my bad feelings and pretend I'm doing good by leveling up or getting new gear or stuff.

About a month or 2 ago I had the same kind of experience where I burnt myself out at work and at the same time my wife had a miscarriage, followed by a work accident 2 weeks after and I just dove right back into video games to feel better. Since I didn't want to install any new games on my PC I just for some F2P games on my phone (idle games), thinking that these games your progress is blocked and you just need to log in a couple of times per day to enjoy it. Well here I am playing 4 different idle games at a time, playing 2-3 accounts in parallel per game, and the times I manage to get everything up to the max, I log into reddit to browse the best strategies to advance faster.

These games also have microtransactions and even though I am reasonable in my spending I must have spent a couple hundred bucks on virtual currency, items and characters. Combined with my steam purchases and I've spent thousands of bucks in the last few years. Good thing I used to torrent most of my games or I would be bankrupt.

Add the opportunity cost of thousands of hours spent playing games instead of working, exercising, spending quality time with my wife and friends...I can't even wrap my head around it.

So I am using this moment of clarity to take care of the problem...I just uninstalled steam and all my games (not completely deleting my account yet but if I realpse I'll consider it), and uninstalled all my games from my phone. It is already bringing up feelings of anxiety, fear, guilt, etc. which just makes me want to smoke a spliff and launch a new game, but I am sure I will not regret my decision.

What I am sure will get from this:
- Better quality of work, more money and better relationships with my clients and partners

- Better relationship with my wife

- More sex drive and better mood and confidence

- Get back to exercising and playing music

- More time to cook, do chores, take care of my environment (I work from home so 2x more important)

- No more procrastinating on uncomfortable and hard tasks

Wish me luck!

[Jami]

I'm back in here after relapsing and binging on a game for 2 weeks instead of doing what I need to do for my work or my marriage.

I think this time it's the right one!

[Big Adam]

Good for you for not giving up after a relapse.  You said you might consider deleting your steam account if you relapsed.  Do you think that might help you?

[Jami]

Actually this time I changed my steam account's email address and password so I will have to go through 3 more hoops to get steam installed. 
I considered deleting the account altogether but it seemed complicated so we'll see how it goes.
The way I see it is I can easily just create a new steam account and buy a new game, or just use torrents, GOG, etc. if I want to game. So in the end I need to be able to control my urges even with the possibility of installing a new game easily in a couple of clicks. 
That being said, I found going through the process of uninstalling everything, making steam unaccessible, etc. to strengthen the decision even more. Kind of like throwing a pack of cigarettes in the trash.