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Ari's Recovery Journey


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Today was day 30. Already past midnight, so it's technically day 31, but I just realized I got 30 days! I'm 1/3 of the way through the first 90 days!

My first detox was a 30 day mini detox. I wonder how many days free of gaming I would be had I quit for good back then... 
We live and we learn. I don't really regret even the time spent wasted because of the valuable lessons I can take away from it.

My cravings to game are relatively infrequent and I am able to escort them out quite quickly. They happen most often when I am bored and restless. 
I don't miss gaming at all. The benefits far outweigh the few good things I reminisce about. 

Today I filled 9 pages in my sketchbook with lazy mandalas. Lazy mandalas are a lot more than I'd be doing if I was wasting my time gaming.
I'm trying to do quantity over quality for now, I've noticed that when I try to bang them out real fast it frees me up and lets me just enjoy the process.
I have realized I've been trying too hard to make my works something special, when what really matters is that I'm having a good time creating.
Even though I do want to make a career out of my art, it's not like my life depends on it or anything, I am so privileged to have this flexibility.
My days are too numbered to turn my passion into a chore. I have to remember why I started drawing in the first place, because I loved to do it.

Edited by GrainSiloEnthusiast
posted too early on accident
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7 minutes ago, GrainSiloEnthusiast said:

Today was day 30. Already past midnight, so it's technically day 31, but I just realized I got 30 days! I'm 1/3 of the way through the first 90 days!

My first detox was a 30 day mini detox. I wonder how many days free of gaming I would be had I quit for good back then... 
We live and we learn. I don't really regret even the time spent wasted because of the valuable lessons I can take away from it.

My cravings to game are relatively infrequent and I am able to escort them out quite quickly. They happen most often when I am bored and restless. 
I don't miss gaming at all. The benefits far outweigh the few good things I reminisce about. 

Congrats @GrainSiloEnthusiast!!! 😎👌 Same here, always when bored and restless, cravings say hi. 😂

Edited by chiliflavor
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7 hours ago, GrainSiloEnthusiast said:

I do appreciate the advice, but I'm not trying to "be a reviewer" or anything. It was mostly just to show it off to my friends and give the people reading reviews on etsy a little more than "oh it's so nice!" If I ever really got into making videos I would definitely keep this all in mind though 🙂

 

Oh ok. I was under the impression you were becoming a reviewer. 

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Today is day 32.

I'm writing this from my new (to me, used) tablet. I decided I would experiment with keeping the web browser. I did get the tablet in order to replace my need for the desktop computer in most situations, so keeping the web browser only makes sense. If the googling gets out of control again, I will have to reconsider. 

I will continue to only have utilitarian apps on my phone though, which means when I am out and about I will have no choice but to be in the real world. Luckily we spend a lot of time out and about lately, we've been going on a lot of drives to stave off the cabin fever from quarantine. We've had some pretty cool adventures.

I just realized I need to install my screen time app... And some sort of blue light filter... Off to do that I guess.

EDIT: One huge benefit to using the tablet over the computer is being able to actually quantify my total screen time. As of right now there aren't any PC apps that track screen time the same way as the app I like to use for my phone and now tablet. Tracking it helps me to minimize it.

Edited by GrainSiloEnthusiast
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Today is day 33. Nice.

Today I set an intention to finally finish up this sketchbook. There is now only one page left, and with how I've been banging stuff out I know that won't be a problem at all. I've already filled 5 pages today. I have been mainly doing lazy mandalas and sketch pages. Anything is better than nothing imo. Not everything has to be a perfect finished piece, and I mean it is literally a sketchbook. Enjoying the process is the most important thing to me.

EDIT: It's done. I finally did it! It technically took me over a year, I officially started this sketchbook on March 3rd 2019, but about 4/5ths of it was filled between May 17th 2020 and today, June 23 2020. Procrastination sure is a bitch lol.

 

 

Edited by GrainSiloEnthusiast
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Here are some samples of what I did over the last couple days, 5 of which are from today.

Apologies for the not so lovely photo quality, I typically edit my art photos in Snapseed so they look more professional but I just didn't feel like it, especially considering I took all the pictures today and I was busy.

Needless to say they all look better in real life lol.

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IMG_20200623_171113.jpg

IMG_20200623_203237.jpg

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Today is day 34.

Today I bought a new sketchbook. Although I have another sketchbook already, it is a mixed media sketchbook that I will primarily use alcohol markers and watercolors with... Therefore it's not great for art on the go, and I needed something for on the go. So we went to Hobby Lobby and I picked up a cheap 5.5''x5.5'' (~14cm x 14cm) sketchbook that fits nicely in my little backpack and it doesn't feel "precious" at all so I'm less afraid of "ruining" it (with my "shitty" art lol.)

Right now my only goal on my goal tracker app is for my detox. I'm not ready to jump into another commitment to draw every day right now... But hopefully I'll still end up drawing consistently anyway. I have been genuinely enjoying doing it, so that helps. I can't think of any other goals I want to set either... I don't want to put too much on my plate. I'm still pretty fragile emotionally and I've been feeling particularly overwhelmed the last few days.

 

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My wife and I are strongly considering giving up on trying to have a child.
We both want a child intensely, but we're not sure we want to go through everything again.
There's also undeniable freedoms that come with not having children...
Everything sucks and everything is difficult. I want to disappear. 

Still don't want to game though, silver lining i guess lol...

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On 6/26/2020 at 7:04 PM, GrainSiloEnthusiast said:

My wife and I are strongly considering giving up on trying to have a child.
We both want a child intensely, but we're not sure we want to go through everything again.
There's also undeniable freedoms that come with not having children...
Everything sucks and everything is difficult. I want to disappear. 

Still don't want to game though, silver lining i guess lol...

Does your local health service have a support group for this kind of thing? I'm 37 and unmarried. I'm worried one day I'll be too old to have kids.

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On 6/28/2020 at 10:02 AM, GrainSiloEnthusiast said:

We made the choice to let go.

I'm going to log out of here for a while.

Must have been tough to let go like that. Your hopes and dreams as parents. Sorry to hear. It must be weird grieving something that hasn't actually eventuated yet. Would make your gaming problem small in comparison I'm sure. You're more than a third of the way thru your detox, but this is a real vulnerable time for you because gaming is a way to escape the grief. Hang in there, because you don't want to alienate your partner any more than you have to.

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What do you do to cope with those dark nights? This forum is useful as a way to keep track and have a record of how you felt. You will look back at the time stamp in the future and reflect back on how you felt at the time. I recently read an old detox journal and made the connection years later that I was probably grieving the loss of a close friend. The response rate with other quitters can vary though. Sometimes the smallest of connection to this forum will keep you accountable. Hang in there.

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I see you're going through some intense things right now. You've got whatever empathy I can offer you as a new face here.

I actually relate to a lot of what you say in your journal, so I'll be following you, happy to see if you choose to share your story here again someday.

Take care, we'll be wishing you well from here.

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We, my wife and I, relapsed. Not on video games. We smoked weed. 
Yesterday, first time, was fine. Good even.
Today, as I expected would happen soon or later, I took it too far and got too high and freaked out.
I had that rock-bottom spiritual awakening my mom warned me comes not when everything is fine and dandy but when we've lost everything.
I'm still in the process of coming down and I feel shaken to the core.
I finally remember why I quit in the first place.
"god" picked me up by the shoulders and shook me, showed me exactly what I'm messing with.

As terrifying as this night has been, I do not regret what I did. I needed a big fat dose of reality, which surprisingly came in the form of unreality.
May I never forget what this night has taught me.

Edited by GrainSiloEnthusiast
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  • 2 weeks later...

Today is day 52.


I've been hanging in there. I don't really have any desire to play games. When my detox is up I do plan on installing a mahjong app, but as I've said before I don't really count digital versions of games that have physical real life counterparts as video games. (Not to say they can't cause problems, there are people addicted to online chess. But they have never been a problem for me personally, and I don't really feel like buying a real life mahjong set hahaha.)

I sent my clean date for drugs on July 5th. I only smoked on June 30th and July 1st but the brain fog continued for several days after I decided to quit, when I woke up on July 5th I finally felt clean again, so that's the day I chose.

My relapse has actually shown me how much the people in narcotics anonymous genuinely care about me. Before my relapse I thought everyone would be disappointed in me, but that was not at all the case. Of course they felt bad for me, but they were very sympathetic. Everyone tells me they appreciate my blunt honesty.

I am not the only person for whom relapse is part of their story. I've always told people coming back in that relapsing does not magically dissolve all the clean time they had before that. Despite the fact that they have now broken their streak and must start over, all the time they have clean cumulatively still counts for something. Any time you spend clean headed and free of drugs is time that you are living in the real world and learning and growing. Even during our relapses we learned valuable lessons. Even the worst of things are opportunities for learning and growing.

These things are also applicable to video games. Even if you slip up and go back to your old behavior, you can always quit again. All the cumulative time you spend without gaming is valuable time, no matter how frequently you break your streaks. Think of all the productive things you've done without games and remember that those things would never have happened if you did not stop gaming for that period of time.

Every little good thing counts, please always remember that. It is much like something I heard a zero-waste vlogger say, "you can't do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good you can do."

 

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I forgot to mention, I picked up a new hobby: bullet journaling. Well, kind of. I don't really use the "bullet" part (because bullet journaling actually refers to a method of journaling, it's not referring to the dotted notebooks most people use.) I have mostly just been doing the trackers and what not in a dotted journal. I have habit trackers, a daily memories log, and a gratitude log. I do also make a monthly calendar to track events and things I need to do on certain days, but I don't really use my journal like a weekly planner. I'm still figuring out what works for me, which is why it's good I started in the middle of July. a lot of people say that if you want a bullet journal just start immediately, starting in the middle of the month is a great opportunity to learn what you do and don't like. I know I don't need a weekly planner because I don't work or go to school, and for the most part I keep track of upcoming events in my phone and tablet. I do really like the trackers and the memories/gratitude lists. I am hoping that by the time I'm starting my August spreads, I will have a better idea of how to organize things. I have a sleep graph but I'm definitely just going to turn that into a sleep log next month. As cute as the graph is, it's just a little silly and complicated.

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