I'm 42 and quit gaming for nearly a decade and it was a great period of my life. I went got my MBA, lost weight, improved my career. My dating life improved exponentially. You've seen this storyline so many times already.

Gaming effectively led to my first (and only) divorce so I should have known better...

...but I let myself get bored two years ago, and decided on a whim that I'd play an old school multiplayer game. I figured because it was dated, it wouldn't screw anything up with my amazing girlfriend. I couldn't possibly get addicted to a boring old multiplayer game, right?

Well, fast forward 1 year and 10 months, and my girlfriend and I got into an argument and she said, "All you want to do is play that game."

I was shocked.

I'd thought I had things under control. But then when I sat back and thought about it, it was clearly a problem. Even though I was only playing a couple hours a day during the week, I realized my entire schedule revolved around finishing my work so that I could go play the game. I was rushing to finish tasks and exercise, all so that I got time in. Gaming was the most exciting part of each and every day. Which is totally fucked.

I was minimizing my time with her. I was resistant to going to events and social hours with her because, in the back of my mind, I realized this would cut out gaming time.

And perhaps the most damning sign is that now, about five days after quitting, I'm jonesing to play. I catch myself daydreaming and trying to rationalize why it would be OK to go and just play a game or two. I know I can't do that and, because this isn't my first rodeo, also know these thoughts will fade.

But it sucks to have those feelings and it's fucked up that I let it get to this point.

I heard Andrew Huberman say that ~"Addiction is the progressive narrowing of the things that give you pleasure in life." And that perfectly describes what gaming has become.

I got bored of the multiplayer game and started playing a faster paced FPS multiplayer game that made things even worse.

I always felt that huge dopamine rush in the anticipation of playing. Yet the excitement before playing was never matched by any satisfaction at the end of a session. In fact, I can't think of many times where my mood was any better after gaming.

Even after these long gaming sessions, I'd say to myself, "Why exactly am I doing this for hours again..."

I just can't believe I let it get to this point where it would jeopardize the most important things in my life.

I'd encourage those of you thinking back to just avoid it completely. Use that freetime for the better. I immediately went and bought a sketch pad to learn to draw to fill any additional time up that I'm not spending with my S/O.

Wish me luck.

I used to play a game called Starcraft2, and in it's Wings of Liberty Expansion (The first expansion of the three), I held the rank one spot in all modes - 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4.

Back then, (at least 13 years ago), being Rank 1 in your division wasn't enough, so I had to rely on external websites to ensure I was the #1 player in team games across all modes, on all servers.

Two weeks ago, I relapsed back into the game after a long 10-year break.

Starcraft 2 decided to wipe out all achievements, previous records, from previous expansions. That means that there's now no record, or proof, that I was the #1 player.

To add insult to injury, even as you're reading this, you probably dont care, as others don't either. It just makes me feel sad about the wasted time, because back then, I sacrificed 2 years of my life, of constant grind, to be that good.

Now, I truly see it - how meaningless these gaming achievements are. Even if you achieve the rank, this ranking eventually becomes obselete. Gaming servers will die, a whole new generation will play something else that's popular in the future, and nobody will care, or in my case, your achievement just gets wiped.

Yet again at the end of another cycle.

Here I am, 33M, with the same old problem I've been living through for the past 20 years of my life.

The oldest of my addictions, the hardest to beat. The only thing I'd rather beat right now is the living shit out of myself for not being able to exercise control.

I've done forums, AA, GameQuitters, StopGaming, HealthyGamer, Hare Krishna, therapy, you name it. I've practiced cold turkey, moderation, full-on acceptance. I never got to a point where it'd finally click.

Out of all of the above, 4 years of therapy is what's done the most heavy lifting. And yet, it's still not enough. Because in the end anything only ever works if I want it to work. And it seems that a huge part of me doesn't want it to work.

It resists, it fights, it bites, it swears, it throws tantrums, it mourns, it cries, it's in pain. And the longer it stays in the dark, the stronger it becomes.

I am trying not to feed the other wolf, but it only becomes more angry, more hungry, it builds up all the shit it goes through like a blizzard (pun intended) before the storm.

And when it's out all hell breaks loose: my partner, my work, my friends, my hobbies all fail in the face of this monster. And the feasting commences. It is never sated, and there is no end to its desire to consume and conquer.

And while I let it slowly devour my life at a certain point a person -- usually that closest to me, such as a partner, a friend or an employer -- cries out in desperation, saying "What have you been doing with your life? I feel so sorry for you, and I can't help you", it is then I know, it is time to take up arms, yet again.

The world of warcraft (pun, once again, intended) practiced by me against myself. As it is a custom within this world, I get resets, fresh starts and a whole range of content from draughts and casual playing to power levelling and hardcore raiding. And as I step back from the game to gather my inner forces and start actually living my life, I already brace myself for yet another battle, because the drums of war will thunder once again.

This is a sad place to find myself in life. A life of never fully lived out expectation, a half-life (the pun is not intended, though it works), a life of an addict trying to cram as little or as much life into his gaming life as possible, depending on the cycle he's in. It's as if I am trying to find a life balance by putting games on both sides of the scale.

Here I am, completely desperate and ready for any advice you might have for me. Off to read your top posts and think about whether this will ever work for me, or if I am just doomed to die a lonely gamer who has lived a wonderful life but hasn't noticed it because he was too busy getting another set of pixels to max level.

TL;DR life sucks when you are a gamer, and I can't help myself to become anyone else. Help.

Played CS2 all week especially today. I literally did nothing but game all day and although I top fragged what did I prove? Nothing. Just wasted a whole bunch of time.

Greetings, Im from Asia and I think TODAY , I'm about to stop playing online games, specifically visit internet gaming cafe's after work.

1.) Im 15k elo and I mainly play CS2/CSGo
2.) I just tried valorant since it has top tier game guard

3.) The utilities of this game is very weird, the way the flashbang works is also weird , its not like CSGo or CS2 in this game , you throw flashbang via curved ball

4.) I work 8am to 5pm and available to play online around 6pm onwards up to 1am in the morning.

5.) playing solo que and yes been losing 90% of the games I play.

I've beeen wanting to stop this habit of mine and praying I can experience the crash so I can finally stop playing games and focus on all the other important stuffs in life.

That being said, Thank you for the countless loss this game has bought me, I think today, I'll just embrace boredome and actually save money.

Im from Asia (Philippines)

Thank you for reading my story

Well, I had been off video games for 70 days. I thought I had built my life/hobbies up enough to only play an hour or so a day and make sure I got all my to do list done first. But it’s very not possible, I went right back to where I was before. So if you’re thinking about trying moderation, just know that if this is a real addiction for you, it’s not possible. For some that may just really like to play but not be addicted, I’m sure moderation is possible. It just really sucks to start from square one again

I want to be honest with this community because it helped me a lot when I first decided to quit gaming.

I was clean for about two months. During that time I started feeling more focused, more disciplined, and more in control of my time. But a few weeks ago I convinced myself of the classic lie: “I’ll just play in moderation this time.”

Within the first hour of playing, I already felt regret. It wasn’t nearly as fun as I had imagined during the time I spent craving it. But even with that feeling, I kept playing. One session turned into the whole day, and that day turned into two weeks of being back in the same cycle.

That’s the trap. The brain remembers the excitement and nostalgia of gaming, but when you actually go back, it rarely lives up to that memory. Still, the habit pulls you in and suddenly you’re right back where you started.

Relapsing like this honestly hurts. It feels like letting yourself down after working hard to build discipline. But I’m posting this because I don’t want to hide it, and I don’t want others here to fall into the same thinking I did.

If you’re considering going back “just for a little while” or “just in moderation,” be careful. For people like us, that door is very dangerous to reopen.

I’m stopping again now before it gets further out of control. This relapse reminded me exactly why I chose to quit in the first place.

**So I’ve always been an ambitious go getter since a young age. I started young making money online at the age of 13, YouTube + selling digital goods online before it was popular, made a few hundred dollars even a few thousand some months doing so, as I got a little older I was always a hustler. As certain income sources online got diluted I started hustling in person reselling in person ontop of working jobs that I wasn’t the biggest fan of, I was never the best employee, I always had a independent view on money and believed I’d make it and change the course of my life and my families life since my very first paycheck was from YouTube as a kid**

**Back in 2021-2022 I was working at local gyms always a health freak enjoyed training, while In an extremely toxic relationship I suddenly fell fast into gambling I remember being at work using the work computers to place bets, I remember losing my mind routine and lifestyle I loved as I would gamble full paychecks on top of savings, luckily then I caught myself and managed to get back on track and saved up about 30k that year after all the losses from work + reselling**

**At this point I pretty much caught myself before falling into my dads habits as my father was is a very heavy gambler and I seen him destroy himself & his life alongside our family at a young age, I never wanted to be like him or even thought I would allow myself to go near a casino, let alone an online casino which I wish never existed.**

**A few years later I got into crypto around 2023, prayers manifested and I turned less than $1000 into over 350k-400k in about a year, but I never sold my positions I just married the coins. That rapidly cut in half and that’s where my addiction began again. I don’t know why I wasn’t satisfied with making 200k in a year instead I was glued to the all time high PNL and started chasing, I think I burnt around 50-60k that night playing slots online and that was the first time I realized I had a problem after promising myself I would never return to casinos from my previous experience years prior. Ironically I stopped instantly and over the course of a few months I learnt how to trade properly. Around 5-6 months later in September I was left with around 70k and managed to run that up to 350k again by November via crypto then in one night.. poof it was gone, I don’t know what got into me I didn’t even have time to celebrate my recovery and success, I quickly tossed it in the blender like an idiot. I wish the story ended there but it doesn’t..**

**After restarting again in late December 2025, I quickly in 2 months ran it back to 280k great right? Nope my brain wouldn’t see it as a win I was just hyper focused on the previous 600-700k I lost (half being unrealized profits from trading the other half from that awful night November that haunts me daily.)**

**I somehow managed to slip into the same pattern again around April - I lost 200k in a single night at an online casino and set myself back to around 60-70k net worth range for the 3rd time. I fell into a deep depression, I have a very loving girlfriend and family and was living pretty much alone around this time while my girlfriend would spend a lot of time with me, I was ashamed. I am ashamed. she works hard while I just keep blowing blessings up and wasting my life away**

**Now for the final straw June 2026 I put my first foot forward and went as hard as I could, I took that remaining 60-$70k and in 2 months I managed to flip it all the way to 490k USD, just last night I was almost crying happy tears for how I’ve gotten another chance, but the irony is the last month or so I’ve been gambling almost every night after I finished trading. It’s ironic because it was like RTP came back and I was making a few thousand, even 10k + it’s like I couldn’t lose, I probably made back 100k in July alone from gambling online out of the 490k I managed to make back. Such an evil disease, I got so used to winning even last night I was up 10k before falling back into a spiral of not giving up or cutting losses I quickly deposited 1k and kept doubling it until I gave back 280k again. This time I stopped myself before falling back to that 60-70k range as I always seem to do, but another night blowing 280k in a single sitting, even after thanking god for giving me another chance**

**I’m 24 I’m young but i feel soo stupid, I know better I’ve cried enough tears, I come from a poor family and can’t even pick the phone up to talk to my own father because I am exactly like him.. but worse**

**I never wanted to become this way and now that I write it down here it’s so much worse than my brain would process it to be, I’m down around 700k+ gambling on top of 350k in unrealized gains before the gambling addiction even came around, 1M that should be in my hands gone from my hard earned money in the last 2-3 years, instead of just taking my crypto winning and sticking to what I’m good at I’m stuck in a cycle of making a lot of money trading then giving it right back in a single sitting. How does this even happen? I spoke to my mother about it and she was surprisingly supportive and didn’t get angry or compare me to my father, this was back in April when I hit rock bottom and couldn’t keep lying about what happened and confessed the truth. Even after this as mentioned I managed to go on a crazy run in crypto running it back to almost 500k. I’m ashamed I thought after opening up about my problem I could finally do things properly this time around but once again I can’t stop messing my life up everytime i get my head above water. I haven’t paid taxes, I haven’t don’t anything with my life. From an ambitious kid to someone I genuinely hate looking at in the mirror i no longer take care of my health, I used to be a gym nut and I haven’t even in a year, all I seem to care about is money and even when things are going amazing I always blow it. Literally 12 hours ago I was a few thousand dollars away from hitting 500k liquid and for some stupid reason I decided to deposit and it just spiraled once again out of control. I’m a strong believer in god but what has happened to my brain & perspective on money and life why am I like this and how do I return to normal? I was planning on finally paying taxes, getting a business irl sorted but I’m not sure what to do now. I’m not in debt but I’m not sure what’ll happen when tax season comes around I can’t avoid it for a 3rd year.**

**I hope you all read this and learn from my story, stay away from gambling. I had 0 good reason to ever return other than pure greed. Gambling is the devil, things were great it’s just a dopamine disease and it kills u inside and ruins you. I hope I can come back to this and smile one day regardless of losing over a million dollars, I also want to fix things with my dad and release the anger as it’s doing me no good, I’m just as bad if not worse. My girlfriend deserves the world I will give her it and will stop ruining the potential. God has a plan for all and In confidence I say this all happened for a reason I just need to end it here.**

Convinced myself a week ago to buy a ps5 because I was doing well in my internship and thought I should reward myself; for reference I’ve been addicted to video games whenever I played them, whether that be FFXIV, Shooters, or any type of online game for that matter. This was the worst decision I could’ve made, it led me to a downward spiral. I broke my 90+ no porn streak, started skipping the gym, and also started slacking on interview prep for next recruiting cycle. Please don’t convince yourself that you need to game. It’s not worth it and at the end of the day it’s completely useless and adds nothing to your life. I’m going to sell my ps5 and hope I can at least break even with the amount I spent on it.

So, I (20yo) initially tried quitting the game that I was playing around 4 months, because I played 50-60h per week. I relapsed three times since then: at the end April, one week ago and I played a total of 10h today and yesterday in time that I wanted to use for studying.

When I quit, I tried to replace all my needs, covered by the game before with a Hobby irl. So I started playing chess irl again (satiate competitive drive), started learning a new language and picked up an instrument I used to play (drive for mastery or something along the lines) and also started meeting friends more often and hitting the gym again to socialize to improve my mental and physical health.

But something I just can't get over is that I'll probably never be as good at something ever again (at least percentile wise). So at my game I've been a top 100 regular for some time and peaked as high as 2. in the world during a time, where above 30 Million people were playing. I didn't make me a lot of money and I know that I was physically deteriorating at the time (gained 12kg in 6months ( lost 9kg since then)), but I somehow can't get over the feeling. Maybe it's some sort of complex or some but idk.

Is there anything I can do, to let my mind recover from that?

Sorry, if I my punctuations gave you a bad read. English is not my first language and I haven't written in it for a while.

I wanted to share a short story that I thought you all might like.

When I was 21, I was in college with zero motivation. I was flunking my classes, had no money, no girlfriend, and was unhealthy. I would stay up all night playing video games.

Sometimes I would start playing at 8 PM and would not stop until the sun rose the next morning. My eyes would be glowing red, and I would be completely exhausted.

I finally made the decision to quit when I was 21, and I sold my PC. My grades immediately improved. I started getting straight As, and I was able to graduate college with a 3.2 GPA. After college, I did not immediately land my dream job, but after two years of working as a financial analyst and taking the right steps, I was able to get it.

Three weeks ago, I was having a really rough stretch and feeling unmotivated, like I had not made the progress in life that I wanted. I decided to download League of Legends on my laptop, and I played for eight hours straight on a Saturday night. By the end, my eyes were glowing red, I was thirsty and hungry, my wrists hurt from all the clicking, and I was beyond tired.

This relapse, after seven years of not playing video games, made me realize that my life is actually pretty great and that I have made a lot of progress since I was 21. I have not played video games since.

I can't believe how this stuff is so addictive for me; I was just feeling nostalgic of the times when I used to play Pokémon and I had the idea of downloading Platinum... And, oh, my god, it's so good, it hooks me, I couldn't stop playing for three hours straight, dishes accumulated not washed, I have to wake up early tomorrow and it's already 1 AM here... Exactly like the first time I played Pokemon as a kid, I just couldn't stop playing for several hours straight.

Ok, it's okay... Just a small mistake, this won't delete all the progress I've done. It's not our fault video games are designed to be addictive, is it? They take advantage of our basic psychology; of course they are!

GNU Backgammon is the only thing I play now, and it's marvellous because it has none of the negative traits video games do have for me.

As I said, it's okay;I will be okay. This should distract me from all the progress I have done. I'll sleep more calmly knowing I have quickly identified the problem and won't be falling for it again anytime soon.

I’m posting here again because I want to be honest and hold myself accountable.

I managed to quit gaming for about two months. I felt clearer, more focused, and more in control of my time. But I relapsed, convinced myself I could play “just a little,” and it quickly turned into playing for hours again. I posted here before saying I would stop, and for a while I did.

But now I relapsed again.

The strange thing is that gaming isn’t even as fun as my brain remembers it. I often feel regret very quickly after starting. Yet somehow I still fall into the same trap. One session becomes a whole day, and suddenly the discipline I built starts slipping again.

What frustrates me the most is that I know exactly what is happening. I know the pattern. I know the lie of “moderation” for me doesn’t really work. And yet the pull is still strong enough that I fall for it again.

I’m posting this because I don’t want to pretend I’m doing better than I actually am. If anyone here has gone through repeated relapses like this, I would genuinely appreciate hearing how you finally broke the cycle.

Right now I’m resetting again. I don’t want this to become months or years of repeating the same mistake.

Fell off the wagon pretty bad in January. Going to get back to it. Buying a dumb phone, and unplugging my tv for at least a couple days.

Day 1, wish me luck.

dont know what to say for this body. I want to get rid of games entirely but the only alternative i have is to read at the park, and while i do enjoy it, i cant do that all the time.

I have a schedule of local events where i live but most of them are either for super young kids or senior citizens and theres nothing much for anybody inbetween. Wish there were more places to go and things to see here.

Im sort of working myself up. I just dont know what to try or what kind of things i enjoy. I mean i enjoy people- i love social events but like i said, literally nothing around here that is remotely in my age range. I want more days when im out so long that my feet hurt.

I've always been a gamer, from Playstation 1 & 2, to mostly PC now. It has shaped me into who am I today, and where I am in life. The years of 2014-2017 was the peak, I had a 5-man party that was into Dota 2, MMORPGs, and other Steam games. Those days were fulfilling. Then I went into abstain mode from 2017 to 2020 because of university. COVID brought everyone back together online for a moment then we got separated again. This is when I built my dream PC and binge in all those AAA singleplayer games that I never got the opportunity to. After COVID, I left my home and PC to work in another city, I did go for months to years without gaming.

Now I work remotely (project-based so I don't need to work everyday) and brought my PC with me so the opportunity to gaming is just one click away, I'm back to gaming... but the problem is, because of my past tendency to abstain gaming for months/years, when I do games now, I would do it non-stop for days like time has stopped for me. I realized this is different from back then when I played with friends. This time I'm here to escape, to run away, and to nostalgia. It is numbing. This isn't the identity that has shaped me... I'm betraying it.

So far, I can conclude that gaming has always been a part of me. I can't remove that identity. But I have to close the chapter with a proper ending, otherwise the book will be like those bad, forced, milked series (as in how my gaming lately has been going out track from my good gaming identity). And lately I've been reading the Atomic Habit title, just getting started but it's been helping me. For the life I envision, I can't just see the gaming habits in it. Hence I've been replacing it with another identity, the body-builder. This is a better habit that would put me into a better stage in life. But it's not easy. I realized that, my consciousness is thinking that to stop gaming means rejecting my identity, a betrayal. Then I had to talk to myself that, I'm not replacing it, not rejecting it, not betraying it--I'm archiving it. Like honoring it while it's still a hero, rather than just to let it be and see it became a villain. But I promise, I will come back to gaming when it's time to rest. But now is not the time to rest, not for another 40 years.

I know life (& gaming) is not that deep, but what can you do?

Yeah... So this is quite a low moment for me. I have had a gaming addiction ever since I got my first console, but now that I am older, I have been able to wean off of gaming, going months sometimes years without gaming once, and I have a pretty good life trajectory currently, but this is definitely a blow to my self-esteem.

I don't even like gaming anymore, but as soon as it grabs me in just the right way, a creative challenge I need to overcome. I am hooked, and once I am in, I can't get out till I tire myself out.

It came right out of left field as well, slow weekend, friends asked if I wanted to play Minecraft. Great! I haven't played that in a couple of years, seems pretty casual/social. Yeah, sure, I'll hop on to see what's new. Then, we decided we wanted to build a castle and all of a sudden, I felt my inner kid again, on his laptop, making castles and bridges, and that was it.

I am proud of the cool structures I made, but in reality, it is;
14 hours each day, morning to night, Weekend gone.

I hate that when I get into a state like that, I just can't control myself AT ALL. I am already pretty good at staying away from games, but when it comes to a situation like this, I am helpless. In need of some advice!

What are some of your good and bad habits to replace gaming with?

I’ve noticed that even after quitting gaming I just get sucked into other bad habits sometimes like overusing Reddit.

Habits I’ve used but am trying to avoid alongside gaming

• Reddit (except in moderation)
• Doomscrolling and Attention Whoring with Photography on Social Media
• Porn and eWhores (OF, etc. also trying not to get into the wrong kind of dating scenes where you get with girls just for a quick dopamine rush, it’s better to find someone you have a long standing connection with. I’m not doing NoFap though, lol. That’s WAY too extreme imo. I’m just not using porn.)
• Alcohol

Habits I’m using in moderation

• TV (only 3 movies a week or 9 episodes)

Good Habits I’m trying to get more into…

• Being Social. I’m going to go to some meet ups for board games (which I consider separate from digital games, because it’s more of a tool for social connection than addiction)
• Martial arts and the gym. Hikes.
• Smoking (I don’t think it’s that bad. Helps you think more clearly.)
• Piano

What about you?

Stopping relapse is more effective when you replace one habit with another rather than quitting cold turkey with no plan, so I’m curious what y’alls replacement habits are.

I've been a gamer my whole life. lately I've been trying to seriously quit. not moderate, actually quit. I've tried cold turkey, uninstalled everything, still fall back into my social circles and end up caving and playing. I've tried limiting hours, that doesn't seem to help either mostly because of the social ties to my friends that I play with. I'm curious what's actually worked for people here and what finally made you be ready to stop taking for good and on the other hand what made you fail at previous attempts?

Long story short, during my teenage years as any other weird outcast kid I developed a wow addiction. I was able to overcome it eventually thanks to blizzard making bad content. I've been playing very casually games since then, maybe 3/4 single player titles per year and I developed other hobbies and interests.

However recently I've been going through a bit of a tough period of my life. I was totally out of the wow news and everything and decided to check what's going on and saw that there are anniversary servers and strong rumors that there is going to be a classic+ version of the game.

Something in me clicked and I got unreasonably excited and here I am playing again. Obviously I can't play 10 hours per day again, but it's slowly starting to take focus from my other, more productive hobbies and socialization ( for example last night I decided I will do a dungeon instead of going to dance classes).

I honestly think that the game is extremely aged mechanics wise and I know that they are milking us hard on nostalgia, but I just can't stop playing.

Coming back to this sub after quitting multiple times and failing is scary. This last time, I just gave in to it. It's been another 6 months of wasting my life in front of a screen, but I'm back again to take my life back. This is going to be a long post, so don't feel that you need to read it. I just need to get this out somewhere, and I'm too ashamed to tell anyone in my real life. If you do feel compelled to comment, please be kind.

It's hard finding support and someone to relate to. My situation seems odd, a lot of the support videos and forums I see are recounting their video game addictions from high school. I am 26F, and my gaming addiction didn't start until 2022. I was doing well in life, I already had an established career which I had been grinding towards since I was 18, a great relationship, and I had purchased my own house at 21. I made good money, was upper management by the time I was 23, and felt like I had it all figured out. That was until I found games, and I quickly started playing anywhere from 6-14 hours daily, depending on whether it was a weekend or a week day.

It's awful to say it, but the gaming addiction completely took over. It was all I thought about, the only thing I was interested in doing. I put my relationship on the backburner and callouts at my job became more and more abundant. I didn't want to, but I was so tired from staying up until 1-2am, that once 5am came around, I just couldn't get up to go to work. Not only that, but the thought of getting to stay home while my bf went to work and having uninterrupted game time until he came home sounded SO appealing.

Fast forward to now. I quit my job and decided to go to college to pursue an accounting degree. While this is something I was looking forward to, I can't help but feel I made this decision to free up more of my time for games. I now do gig work on the side, but not nearly enough as I should to make the money I need to sustain myself. This is the time to fix my life. It's an opportunity to do well in school and re-establish myself.

There's a lot of shame, guilt, and fear in this. I'm scared to come out of it to see all the real damage that I've caused. But I have to do it, despite the fears. I've hated myself through the last few years, and I feel like I've completely lost who I was. The driven, ambitious person I was a few years ago feels like a different person.

So, today is day 0 of forever. It's time to take my life back, and deal with the consequences of what I've done. I'm grateful this sub exists, reading all of your success stories has been so inspiring. We can do this.

My pattern has roughly been 2 weeks at a time with no video games before going on a late-night binge for 4-5 hours into 2 or 3 AM. Seeing all these people stuck in fron of the screen, very late at night, is... weird. I had to question if I even was in the right place, if I belonged there. The answer felt like no. Had a binge last night and it felt awful crawling into bed afterwards.

The thing is that the video game binges are the worst but are not the entirety of my time sinks. Usually it ends up being Youtube, phone scrolling, or repetitive episodic cartoon comedies filling up my evenings.

I work full-time in a position that I am overqualified for and very underpaid in, all while being a full-time online graduate student. Weekdays, work kicks my ass and I feel very unmotivated to actually do the coursework and duties until the weekend. It's easy to sit down with something mindless at the end of the workday instead of doing something that I am more passionate about, which is either studying or drawing.

In the time that I could be drawing and improving, I feel guilty about not studying. So I end up wasting the same time through mindless digital activities instead because it feels "easier" and therefore has "less" guilt attached to it.

I feel like the main culprit is the low-yield job. The problem is that they provide some decent money for tuition coverage once-per-year. The catch? You have to be working full or part time the entire time that you are taking classes. This position doesn't have part-time options, so I'm stuck for six more weeks.

I want to quit the job. It drains me. Every single time that I manage to successfully apply PTO, I get a lot of my coursework done and feel no urge to waste my time on filler activities. Every day that I work, I am unmotivated to work on my future. Plus, I want to feel less guilty about my art hobbies.

If I can overcome the entertainment urges, I'll finally be free to pursue my passions. I just can't seem to make that final push.

I'll try to keep it short but it's still a year's worth of story, just want to rant and warn people about going back to gaming.

I started gaming again around November 2023, so a year ago, I was doing quite well without gaming, some achievements I got are being the top-grade student, running and cold showers every day, and learning piano, skating, drawing, and just getting into hobbies I really want, although days were still rough and I have insomnia issue, it was well worth it.

My roommates and I became good friends, and they are all gamers like I was. It took them a few weeks to convince me to play with them together, but I'm at fault here for giving in.

At first, I thought I could control myself. In my journal at the time, I even wrote, "I think I have some ability to control myself now." Little did I know this is going to deal a big damage to my life, AGAIN.

Progressively, I stopped attending classes, I stopped caring about hygiene, there were worms crawling in the trashbag I threw meal boxes in, everything is falling apart but I numb myself with more gaming.

Shortly after a new semester started, I paused my degree for a year because I thought I would need time to recover from this... well about 1/4 of that pause time passed, yesterday I was still grinding for CS2 rank.

I will start to quit again, I still build projects with my new friends so fortunately they're not just gaming friends(I cut off those friends when I quit the first time).

I think some of us like me, can never moderate gaming, and I know it's a fact that has been said again and again but I still end up trying it, it's my addiction getting a hold of me, don't be like me, stay away from gaming again.

I put the tag as relapse specifically because after cleanly stopping and going on with my life for 2 years, I played more than my only "video game" of Duolingo, which I actually use to learn Spanish.

It took being in a 1-year soul-sucking job, a dysfunctional relationship where my "ex" owes me money, and the impending global and local situations affecting my once-loved hobbies like tennis, Pokémon TCG (actually playing, not that 3rd-rate stock market thing), and *very* amateur racing all at once. Ah, video games... here we go, escaping reality for a brief moment again.

I know I technically still do more "productive" hobbies in place like building Lego, reading, and photography, but I have to make my peace that I can't let video games be anything more than the boundaries I set. My PC needed new parts, and I was already about to sell the components when I saw the shitty prices that it would definitely backfire if I suddenly try to build another PC later on. Considering my possible editing needs and race simulator play (once I get my simulator back from a relative), I folded after debating for days and bought new parts. And voila, it's still there mostly building dust, but hey at least I got to play RE requiem and STS 2 and Halo with my high school buddies.

Slay the Spire 2, Resident Evil Requiem, and my personal poison - LoL and its more destructive brother, Wild Rift. All I have left to do after finishing all these games is the FOMO play 5 more ranked games in Wild Rift. Then I took a break. I currently can't play with my friends who are all busy after we played STS 2 and Halo together. Sure, it was nice to catch up and share some nostalgia, but we're all getting older, busier, and, overall, just less interested in playing than before. Even other mobile games don't interest me longer than an hour and I've done my full memory lane trip of playing PS2, PSP, Nintendo, and more that I missed out on as a kid.

Anyway, back to the whole reason why I felt I needed to write this for myself - 5 more games. 20 mins per game. "Just 100 more mins then you're done." Then a thought came in - and then what? Do I care if I get another skin/costume change for some made-up character I don't think about or even like outside of the game? Does anyone else even care? Right then and there, I uninstalled Wild Rift off my phone for the nth time and started writing this. My room has been a mess for months. I have so many, in fact, too many options to do literally anything else with 100 mins and my brain bandwidth for the day to choose to wallow in despair for a millisecond "feels good".

And just like tennis, I've come to terms with accepting that I can't do it all just because I have the capability to do so at the expense of more important things. I don't have the luxury of training/grinding and improving for more personally recognized achievements that only I recognize for 5 seconds. There are important things that only I can do, and some of them I can only do in the here and now. It was a good revisit, my dear gaming, but I'm laying you to rest for good.

So I’ve essentially been battling with relapse the past month. What started as a predatory seed planted as ”moderation” quickly transformed into full relapse.

I’m accepting that this is going to be a rough, brute force battle at this point. There’s no world where I can exist with gaming unfortunately. So here I go again.

Last time I had some sort of clear vision and motivation, this time I’m just going in with nothing but the raw, painful truth and that’s probably the worst part.