FriedUp Posted September 6, 2020 Posted September 6, 2020 (edited) Hello, I am 33 years old now, I am lucky to have a quite successful life, I have several business working well, accomplished several of dreams I didn't know I was allowed to have and am quite happy with the state of life that I am in with now, except for one thing, I can't quit playing incremental, clicker games, while watching documentaries in another tab(I guess to make me feel less guilty about playing those games). When I was younger I skipped on year so I was always the little one in school, I didn't really know how to fit. I guess games gave me a home. I played Starcraft at a not too bad level, which led to a lot of tension with my parents and me wanting to go to South Korea. Over there I started WOW and one year of mine was eaten totally by this. After that I would say I develop a love/hate relationship with games, and I think that the level of addiction + the fact I am able to watch something else while playing those games tricks my brain enough so I am only half guilty, and can keep going on for several days of Binging before getting my life back together. I even play those games in private window so I can't save. Which shows to which point I am aware of this issue, but am still trying to find a way around. For me it works as the perfect drug to numb me, information on one side, something to do not too demanding on the other side. I really am fully aware that I am trying to avoid all the responsibilities I have. Being a business owner, I can manage to find excuses to my business partners as long as I do my job. But I really feel and see it affects the quality of the work I am doing, and looking back to all the time I lost not improving other skills, really saddens me. I wish I would have learned to produce music more. I was in a good streak earlier this year in March, I played the piano every night for one hour and then would learn how to produce for 40min but I lost myself quickly. I was a long time smoker, and was able to quit cold turkey 7 years or more ago and not even once want to smoke a cigarette, but I can't stop this addiction from coming back. I guess those games are the closest I allow me to real gaming, because I know that I have an issue. But I still fall for it, it's like if the ghost of my addiction was still there, and I couldn't t get rid of it. It always happens one day I am bored, or want to escape some big task I have to do. It just takes one second for me to think, okay let's just play one second, and then my whole day is gone. And once I do it one day I might restart for several days in a row before going back to a normal life. I would sometimes also watch porn. I read somewhere about once the stimuli of game doesn't work then people would go to porn to make them feel good again, then you get your little dopamine then back to gaming. It's such a safe environment where I have to respond to nobody. When I am in binge mode, I would not answer people call, I had some girls wanting to come over, even coming all the way to my house, I would just pretend I am too busy and make excuses not to see them. One of my business is Marketing so a lot of my time is spent on social media, which is a good excuse to not delete them. When I am not game binging, I still spend too much time on youtube/instagram. It starts with a good intention of watching something interesting then the void of internet catches me. This is ridiculous. I feel really that I cannot get bored. I need a constant flow of something. I would sometimes try to play a podcast while drying my hair or taking a shower... What's the point? can't I just take a shower quietly. At the moment we are talking, I am at a 3rd day of a incremental game strike after over a month of no gaming, the game is still open. Our gym had to close again because of Covid-19 and this was the excuse I needed to stop everything. But today I downloaded an app to restrict the website I can access and also TimeRescue that I read good about, I never really did this. I really want to get more productive and get more time to really rest, have a quality rest. I know it will take time, but listening to other people experiences, even though different from mine helped me making this decision it's now 9 am and I have a very important presentation to make for (ironically) a Game Video launching event. I will close the game window and will commit to a 90 days of no gaming. Before my brain get 's really Fried Up, I wanna get my life back, wish me luck! For those of you also on the same path as me I wish you luck too, and thank you for sharing your experiences already. Thank you for reading mine Edited September 6, 2020 by FriedUp
giblets Posted September 6, 2020 Posted September 6, 2020 Mate I know that feel. Those clickers made me feel like a sucker, "oh I'll just have it running in the background while I do something productive". NOPE. I end up not paying attention at all to what I was supposed to be productive on and my "5 minutes" timer would always just get ignored. Going cold turkey is definitely the way, especially if you are resilient from doing it before with smoking. TimeRescue looks amazing, definitely an app I have been looking for. I wonder if there is a free/open source alternative though?
FriedUp Posted September 6, 2020 Author Posted September 6, 2020 Thanks for your reply, it feels good to see someone else understanding me. It was super hard today to close that last window. I had NGU Idle open. Those are the worst because they make you believe you can actually just have them on the side, but they end up hijacking your whole brain... I feel also very ashamed by the fact that those games are so simple and most people wouldn’t understand why I would even play them in the first place. I listened to pretty much all the gamequitters course and the expert bonuses not able to close the window, while playing this last time. My save is now gone, but why was I saying to myself one more hour, while whatever i achieved in this game wouldnt matter as soon as I hit the close button, and never mattered actually. It wasn’t easy but I shutted it down finally. I’m home, took a shower and Im gonna sleep and then start a new life tomorrow! Yeah as you say I think for me there is no in between, I really want to be able to say, I quit gaming for 7-8 years like it did for cigarettes. I don’t know if there’s a free: open source version, I did pay for it but i think theres a free version for Time Rescue, with less features though. im sure you can find something !
giblets Posted September 6, 2020 Posted September 6, 2020 I signed up for the 14 day free trial, and set a reminder in my calendar to cancel it in 12 days if I don't like it or don't get much out of it. Looks good so far, I have had 3 hrs of screen time today and only 22m of that was not productive. Good start for the weekend!
FriedUp Posted April 3, 2022 Author Posted April 3, 2022 I am very happy to see the new options of apple to be able to control screen time. But mine is just so bad that I kind of try to avoid it...
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