Thegide

Hi everybody, This feels strange to be doing this, but here I am. As someone without an addictive personality, I never thought I would find myself joining for an addictions support group, for gaming of all things. But life has its twists and turns and for too long lately I've been gaming to distract myself from the real reasons why I'm not happy with my life. A short bio about me is I'm in my mid 30s and live in Canada... I never really had an issue with gaming until I played my first MMO at the beginning of grad school. I was in a new city with no friends, so it was easy to get sucked in. For about a year, I played about 8-10 hours a day during the week, and 16 hours a day during weekends, which consumed 100% of my time that I wasn't at school or sleeping. Eventually, I got burnt out from the game and quit cold turkey. Life got better, I met a girl, and things went well for several years. Fast forward a few years and things started to deteriorate in the relationship and I was struggling financially and mentally from pressure from school. I played games daily during this time, but it wasn't my first priority. Eventually the relationship imploded, which was a blessing in disguise. I more or less started anew and lost all interest in games while I pursued new hobbies and started working out again. I finished school and landed a solid job which I still have today. A little over 2 years ago, I picked up a new MMO and overnight I was compulsively gaming again. I stopped working out 3 times a week and started working out 0 times a week. I stopped hanging out with friends and pretty much put the world on ignore, unless it was my raid buddies calling. Again, I was back to playing every free waking moment. Eventually I found a bot to help me get away from the screen which let me spend some time with friends and do some other activities, but gaming was always on my mind. Last summer I quit that MMO and picked up minecraft, thinking I would be better off with something I didn't have to play like a full time job. Wrong. Many times I've asked myself what was so bad about the lifestyle I've been living. By others' standards I'm reasonably successful. But the truth is I'm unhappy with my life and have been for a long time. My life is not full of excitement and fun...it's boring and I no longer find anything else interesting. My social skills outside of work have gone to shit. I've been single for years and have more or less given up on trying to attract women. I'm an attractive guy but who wants to date someone with no personality or interests? Gaming is a great way to distract myself from all of those feelings and effectively guarantees I will never get off my ass to fix any of these problems. And so I find myself here, doing a serious re-evaluation of my priorities in life and thinking it's time to spur into action. If quitting games is the first step to a better life, so be it.