Brother (24yo) at some point stopped caring completely about his life. He used to go to the gym, exercise, takes care of his meal (he had his own diet), even so he still plays computer games then, but it was controlled.

Around last year, he found out he has hair loss problem and decided to grow out his hair, so now his hair is long and messy. I know, it's his personal life choice, but because of complicated family background, we are staying in our grandma's house where relatives frequently visits, so his physicaly appearance puts people off (Not to sound stereotypical, but my asian family rlly care about visuals..) . He doesn't tie his hair/wash, and on top off that, he doesn't shower, sometimes for days on end. So he stinks.

And the only time we find joy in his voice now is when he talks to his online friends and play video games.

He still don't have his driving license (He stopped halfway), he never worked a parttime job, and I think he's failing his uni classes..

Because he's failing his uni classes, I feel like he is not attending his classes anymore too, but I'm not too certain, because he says his lecture provides online classes but half the time we see him either sleeping or playing games with his online friends.

And now he even binge eats sometimes, I know eating alot is not bad but it was to the point he eats at odd hours, and its concerning. Our grandmother came to visit recently and he woke her up around 12am to cook him some eggs(??) and I was so baffled hearing that from my aunts... It was embarrassing.

I truly think he is a bright person, but his gaming addiction is stopping him from becoming a great person.

And for more background, our dad is a horrible father figure and he wasn't really present back then, and when he was really young, I think my dad and my mom (they are now divorced), fought a lot, and our aunts and grandma then, was really mean to us (my brother, my younger sister and me). I think it placed so much trauma in his head (?) which made gaming/online friends his escape, in a way, which I pity him a lot for, and I know it's not an excuse for him but maybe living for him is gaming.

But even so, my younger sister (she's 16) is very stressed about this, because our aunts like to gossip about family matters to her, so she thinks it's her responsibility now to change him. But my brother, ever since he's become too addicted has become very sensitive and moody.

Whenever me or my sister tell him he should shower, should exercise, should live, he'll either turn to his phone or play the victim/get mad then the silent treatment.

I truly think he needs professional help, because I know deep down this is not making him happy at all, and it's burdening for him. But I don't know how to approach him and as someone who was depressed/suicidal earlier this year, I'm scared if I act rashly and tell him he needs help, he might turn to his shell or even worse just disconnect and become suicidal...

Sorry for the long read, it's that earlier my younger sister and I had a talk about family matters again (surprise surprise) and she was on the verge of crying talking about my brother and I feel the need to do something as the middle child..

(My dad is not present, my mom is overseas rn & i have a feeling she's lost hope/blames herself too much, our family dynamic is odd and it'll probably turn into a book if I explain everything but please help !! )

How do you feel about watching gaming content? Does it cause you to relapse? Can you keep cravings at bay?

Where do you draw the line between gaming content and entrainment?

Does watching content of a game that you never played but enjoy soley because of entertainment fall under the line of StopGaming?

After completely getting rid of my setup I feel able to consume some content without the ability to get sucked in.

Like what do you do when you have a lot of free time alone? Watch twitch, YouTube or TikTok?.. You can't exercise for a whole day. So I'm really curious to know the things you can do instead of gaming that is not brainrot like tiktok.

Bit of a jumbled rant here, I am respectful that everyone has a different taste for games and I'm not belittling anyone whom actually likes these games.

I've sort of fallen out of love with open world games,

one thing is because I got tired of the senseless scaling of massive, lifeless maps, just to do recycled quests. This was particularly noticeable to me on Horizon Forbidden west. It was visually beautiful, excellent in that regard. But some of the challenges were just mind numbingly boring to me. *Jump to ledge that's highlighted by your focus vision* that made up so much of the gameplay. You could be in an environment where there's 1000 possible ways to scale it, yet you're shown the most trivial way.

Same with avatar frontiers of pandora, beautiful map but just felt somehow unengaging. Ubisoft formula of taking over bases and playing capture the flag. que Evil mineral mining tycoon

What it comes down to me, is that I no longer have addiction to games anymore. I'd rather spend quality time on engaging gameplay, not hours of dialogue and walking simulator.

I'd love for someone to tell me to stfu and suggest a game that I might be impressed by

what is your opinion? are open world games in general just becoming graphic fests that are shallow under the surface? Or am I just cooked

Have a good day!

I (M29) have played games since I was young. Got into the usual MMO suspects: WoW, Destiny(2) and others. Quit games July 1st due to feeling off-the-rails and having major deadlines approaching at work. My job is quite stressful. I have often taken short breaks from games to hit deadlines. Always lots of negative self-talk about gaming, but this goes away once deadlines are met and I get back into games.

Recently passed another major deadline at work. Now I am fixated on playing WoW in its new expansion in 1-week. Thoughts like "why won't I let myself have fun". Not sure if I want someone to yell at me, or convince me. So, Reddit, give both a shot. See what sticks.

My mental illnesses ended up combining with video game addiction to ruin my life, by leading to me never adapting to school (I was truant, didn't study and the main thing I thought about was going back home to play games). My parents tried helping me and setting a time limit, but the addiction was too intense, so were the other mental issues - I knocked the timer on the floor and broke it around age 6-7.

This pattern seems all-too common with younger gens who get sat down with an iPad ; with me it was an old computer with a CRT monitor. Partially, I think my parents were worn out by trying to deal with the difficult behaviors and intense anger, so needed a break. Now i'm old and will probably be homeless eventually, because of no education, no driver's license, and barely any working record.

Hey all, I'm a 37yo father of two, both teenagers now. I've been gaming for most of my life, however recently I've been finding it harder and harder to become excited over newer titles.

For context I was a big Dreamcast gamer, Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia holdnl some of my favorite gaming memories. I'm just finding the new announcements and releases leave me cold.

My wife surprised me with a PS5 last year, and I feel guilty as most of the titles I play are older games.... Including Shenmue!

I'll start and install, it'll get half way through and I'll think about how much I don't want to play whatever it is I'm downloading, and I'll cancel it.

I'm sure plenty of you have probably had similar problems, I'm not sure if I just need to take a break or realize that it's just my nostalgic past keeping me tied to it?

Any advice would be great. Thanks.

I've been addicted to gaming ever since I was 8 and I recently just turned 15. I dont live in a good environment and when I was younger I would often use gaming as an outlet to distract myself from the rest of the world. I often neglected my hygiene and have very poor social skills due to staying in my room all day and just playing video games. I dont even know how to do basic tasks such as taking out the trash our tying my shoes because all of my time was spent on video games. Ive had suicidal thoughts for a while and around 13, I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ADHD. Gaming made me give up for the majority of my school life to the point where I missed almost 1/3rd of my 8th grade school year just to stay home and play games, and to not see anybody. My anxiety had gotten so bad that whenever I would walk through the crowded halls of my school it would feel like I was about to pass out at any given second. My teachers would often tell me how much potential I have and told me if I would just apply myself more, I would be at the top of my class, which made me feel even worse. It had gotten to the point where I would spend my parents money without them knowing just to buy games. They had found out and taken my Xbox, but it didint stop me. I signed up to a Cloud Gaming service with their money to play games on my school laptop and would contine to steal their money to buy games. Recently, around February, I met a girl on Discord. We had a lot in common and ended up getting into relationship. We found out we only lived a state apart and she came to visit me. For once in my life I was happy to go outside because I was with her. She has visited me about 3 times since then and I love her. I want to do better for her and want to quit gaming, but I just don''t know how to start, I've never done anything besides gaming. Im scared to try different things and don't know what to do. I want to live a normal, happy life but im just terrified of change.

Hello. I'm a gaming addict. I began playing when I was three years old, and it dragged until now (over 20 years).

For the first years of my existence, gaming was not a problem, it was just one of the many hobbies I had, and it posed no immediate threat to my life.

Fast forward to 2013, when I found the game that ruined everything. League of Legends. That digital equivalent of cocaine got me good, and my life began to suffer:

• Dropped out of college
• Began taking antidepressants
• Attempted suicide

I had almost no friends, my relationship with my family was in its lowest point, and I saw no way out.

In 2020, after my suicide attempt, I tried, for the first time, to truly quit gaming, and from 2020 to now I have been on this start and stop of playing, not playing (weeks and months without playing, then I play again for a bit, get sad, abstain, repeat). My life improved significantly, but I feel I can only improve even further if the "start and stop", becomes only "stop".

My best period of abstinence is 9 months. I want to surpass that.

Thank you for your attention

Just a warning, this ended up being a lot longer of a read than I thought it would be lol. I think it'll be worth your time tho.

I fought against my gaming addiction since I began to try and stop back in 2010. It didn't take long before I fell back into it full force. Gaming was one of the main reasons why I have one divorce (and hopefully it stays just one til I die) under my belt and by no means do I mean that in a positive way (besides not having to be married to my psychotic now ex wife which is a story for another day). My main focus was games and lust, two of the WORST combinations of addictions that go hand in hand (no pun intended).

Its shameful to admit, but I hardly remember my oldest kids baby years through that phase of my life. Very rarely did I give them any of the quality time they needed along with my wife at the time. I not only drove my family I created away, but also my immediate family. My only goal in life was to game, watch porn, hate my life, work, and hope that one day I could be taken off this earth sooner than later because I know I would never have the capability of doing it myself.

Fast forward past the ugly divorce to my second and current marriage, I had kicked the addiction soon after my divorce and was doing great for a long, long time. I committed to becoming a better father and husband and to also be more present overall. I was at my best, I had gotten rid of every console except for my laptop at the time. But of course, like most people these days, I owned a smart phone, which fed probably the worst gaming addiction I ever fought up until now.

The play store released some of the first battle royale shooters back in 2016-2017 I believe. At the time I had been slowly moving up in the job I was working even though it was just a typical factory job. I had become a more reliable employee for the most part and gaming stayed in the back of my mind. Occasionally I may have played Minecraft with my kids on their tablets (which I also regret getting them til this day) but other than that the closest thing I came to games was playing some fantasy football. I came across a battle royale game that was similar to PUBG Mobile. I had recently got a new job as a Quality Technician and had got my foot in the door for a potential career path in my future…but I screwed it all up.

I began to game at work, snuck gaming at home, and my work life began to crumble. I got to the point where I was always tired, and I would take shortcuts at work rather than inspect like I was supposed to so I could get done quicker and go back to gaming on my phone. At one point I downloaded this game onto PC and played it ON THE COMPANY COMPUTER…like how stupid could I be?

Gaming didn't get me fired but played a huge part in my drop in motivation and carelessness for my job. As a result, I overslept in my car after I arrived to work and came in late. Instead of clocking in and facing the consequences, I did something deceitful. At the time, they had paper time cards beside the digital clock so whenever it went down people could use the time cards. I thought I could get by and write that I came in on time, but little did i know someone saw me do it and turned me in. It was that next day I got called into HR and fired on the spot.

This is off subject but has to do with this story.Something I recommend while I'm talking about this point on my life, NEVER think you can get off of anti depressants or anything of the sort cold turkey. It WILL most likely make your emotions completely get out of whack and could result in suicidal thoughts or actions.

I attempted my only suicide attempt soon after I knew I was fired and wasn't coming back. I am blessed that I am still here today and not buried in a casket. I took a variety of pills and refused to tell anyone after I did what I did. I began to hallucinate, seeing lines in everything. Kind of like those old TVs that have a gray screen with constant lines of black traveling from the bottom to the top of the screen on repeat.

I got sick and began throwing up over and over again though nothing I threw up was pills. I could count on more than two hands the amount of times I threw up til I literally had nothing left to expel. By the end of the night I was in so much pain but me, being a stubborn ass and refusing to give up on going through with it, never told anyone. Somehow, I woke up the next morning, no sickness, no hallucinations, nothing. Just the usual depression and suicidal thoughts.

Don't let yourself get to this point and get help. I'm lucky to probably even be alive and also lucky to have no long term damage to my body due to the attempt.

I wish I could say at that point I gave up gaming forever, rode off into the sunset, yada yada yada…but no, because Activision (or whoever it was) decided to put my favorite shooter of all time, Call of Duty, on mobile. You bet your ass i got rid of my obsolete phone and got the phone I have now, a galaxy S10, to play not only this game, but other games I wanted to play and planned to play in the future.

Yet again, I was hooked. From the time of my termination up until this point in my life, I had for the most part kicked my addiction to the curb for gaming. Well, codm made history easily repeat itself. Not only codm, but games like Among Us, PubgM, and others had become my new drug.

I again repeated the cycle of ignoring my kids for games, hating work, hating life, etc. The only good thing this time around is I was more active in trying to fight this addiction, and I believe around this time I first found out about this sub. The people I talked to were incredibly helpful, but my problem was I didn't want to continue listening for long. There's no telling how many times I cycled through playing, quitting, making a reddit account to converse with others in my similar crisis, deleting my reddit account and thinking I can handle it on my own only to fall right back into the beginning of the cycle.

From there I struggled to maintain interest in anything yet again, let my depression get the best of me, and went back to making games my safe place from the real world.

Years past, still heavily addicted to mainly codM until a game even more addicting came out that I believe is so addicting I refuse to mention it on here. I spent the next year and a half convinced that it was okay for me to game when I knew it wasn't.

The cycle was beginning all over again, except this time, I wasnt even getting past the quitting part.

Honestly, it wasn't until I not only prayed about it (which I did over the course of this addiction) but also asked my current wife to pray for me did I begin to FINALLY feel like I could let it go. I had put my foot down SO many times telling her I was done only to fall back into it and justify why. I made her get fed up to the point where she said she couldn't be a part of trying to help me anymore due to the fact of continuing to justify gaming, even sometimes making her the enemy.

Dunno if anyone here believes in God or not, but either way this is what helped me more than anything. As I type this out, today has marked 10 days completely, and I mean COMPLETELY, game free, and I have no intention of EVER going back.

This is my longest streak in most likely 2-4 years. I believe the longest I ever went was about 100 days until I relapsed but this time I believe is different. I feel like I have finally defeated my mobile gaming addiction. This last game that left me hooked had me convinced that I would never overcome the addiction, but here I am,10 days in.

I've been dedicated these past 10 days to get my life back on track. It's been probably the best 10 days I've had in my life in a long, long time. I've spent more time with my kids than I ever have before, Im working to tackle all these projects around the house I've started and not completed, trying to find new hobbies and pick up old ones (which some, like playing the electric guitar, will have to wait until funds are available), and so much more.

It's worth it, I promise you. There is a limitless amount of things to experience in the world and I've spent enough of my life living in a virtual one with nothing to show for in my real life. For me, this is a new a chapter, or better yet a new story for me, because I won the war and I don't plan on getting back into one with my addiction ever again. My kids have seen enough of me with my phone in hand playing video games…it's all they want to do now, and mainly because I enabled it.

My kids can't have realistic goals if their own father can't set an example and be the leader they need to succeed. My 9 and 10 year old sons want to be YouTubers and they're convinced that they will be successful like the other ones out there.

If it was that easy, everyone would do it.

No I'm not going to crap on their dreams, but backing my discussion to them by statistics, I made sure to be real with them of the struggles of becoming popular enough to even make an ⅛ worth of a living. None of them, including my oldest (13 year old twins) have the slightest idea what they want to do with their lives…. And that's okay. Hell I'm 32 (or 33? Idk) and I still never figured that out, but it was because I never had the motivation to even look into it nor did I have anyone (including my parents) guiding me and raising me to be a responsible adult.

That's the mistake my parents made that I don't want to repeat with my kids. There's so much more to life than games but they don't see it nor seem to care. Gaming is so much more addicting than it used to be and we just got a taste of what's to come.

If you're struggling with gaming addiction, don't give up on yourself. You're going to have terrible days, but don't give up on a terrible day. Get out of your house and get outside, that alone helped me more than anything. Don't make excuses as to why you should just stay home and pick up your controller. Don't justify falling back into it when your conscience is screaming STOP.

You can overcome this just like many of the members of this sub have. We all believe in you.

TLDR: Been addicted to Mobile games since around 2016, regressed into my worst type of addiction to gaming yet until I could recently overcome it.

I think my kid is addicted to games

i know i shouldn't feel bad, its just this was the only hobby i had since 8. i will try changing for better

For a while now I told myself it would be better for me to quit games as there are other hobbies I want to give more attention to such as drawing and writing. I already draw everyday but I feel like if I played games it would mess with my excitement for drawing. For some reason, everytime I try to quit, I can't help but feel this yearning to play again.

I'm 20 years old and I've played games ever since i was a child, so maybe I've become too attached to it? It's definately not an addiction but I feel like it shouldn't be this hard to just. Stop. I feel like my life can only get better if I quit and that I need to. So why is it not so simple?

Hello everyone I’m new here, and during Covid I got addicted to NHL hockey, NHL 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. The mode I was hooked into was NHL hut it’s where you build a team from nothing and create the ultimate team. It seems that it just never ends your always chasing packs and rewards.

I ended up having a panic attack in 2022 which I thought I had under control seems I don’t fully have my life back. I cut gaming back but still abuse it.

So this Wednesday I deleted everything and my Microsoft account. The only downfall is I have to wait 30 days before it will delete it completely. My brain is telling me to go play but I know I have to stop.

Curious how others stoped gaming and what they did with all the free time they had. Because gaming can take hours out of the day.

Any tips would be appreciated. Can’t wait to feel myself again.

Hi everybody, how are you? What it would be the best time to spent playing videogames, while not frying or elevating Dopamine basleine too much? 5 hours everyday is very bad, but how many days and hours per day, would you play while taking care of your Dopamine?

I grew up with videogames ..and i may had a view consoles .. classic gameboy, gba, gba sp, ds, ds lite, 3ds, new 3ds, psp, NES, N64, game cube, ps1, ps2, xbox360, xbox one, xbox series s, ps5 … typing it out made me realize how much money ive spend on them 🙈🙈🙈..

I already quit online gaming a few months ago .. but now i find myself playing ghost recon wildlands every day .. i fell down the rabbit hole again .. i come home from work and after dinner i start to play at least for an hour before i move the my couch and watch an episode of (insert favourite series here) .. .. and i do this 5x a week at least.. i feel that my other hobbies i had and loved are getting neglected.. i loved (still love) to build dioramas and play the guitar.. ..but it feels like videogames dont let me out of their cage .. they bind me so i feel like i just dont have time for the old hobbies ..

Please .. help ..

Last week, I accidentally quit gaming because I went on a six-day vacation trip to Norway and decided not to bring my Steam Deck. Those six days without gaming turned out to be incredibly refreshing. Having grown up with video games, suddenly going without them made me realize why I often felt so tired, depressed, and overwhelmed. I recognized that I wanted to finally finish writing my novel, so I took this opportunity, along with the risk, to better my life.

Last evening, as I lay in bed, I thought about how it felt to play games. Yes, I still have cravings, and I allow myself to feel them. But then I stumbled upon an entertaining thought: I couldn’t really ‘log out’ from this real world anymore because I wasn’t turning to games. It was just me, in this one world. For the first time, I could finally see that I had been dividing my attention between two separate ‘worlds'. Now, I have only one world to experience and one place to bring my emotions. Although it feels a little bit scary, it is also extremely freeing. I no longer have to split my brain and energy in two. It's been a long time since I’ve felt like a whole person.

My console broke so I decided to just quit gaming but I need something to keep me busy while im stuck at home.

Over the years I have built up a decently sized friend group of people I enjoy spending time with. I recently moved back home about a year ago after college and it’s been hard making friends in this small town since all my other friends have moved away and all my online friends live in different areas. We socialize mainly through league and play almost every night. It’s not the worst and we don’t play for too long but sometimes it influences me to play during the day over my other responsibilities. I also prioritize it over other hobbies I see as much more valuable. Has anyone been in this situation? It feels like I can’t quit without isolating myself

I wanted to share with you all a really good passage from 'How To Break Up With Your Phone' (a book I'm reading right now):

Not only does mindfulness help us get better at noticing and managing our invitations, but it also enables us to recognize the core emotions, fears, and desires that are driving our addictions—which is an essential step in breaking them. As Brewer explains in The Craving Mind, most addictions stem from a desire to feel better and/or to make a bad feeling go away. If you try to cut back on your phone use without first figuring out what you’re trying to achieve or avoid, you’re dooming yourself to failure. Either you’re going to relapse, or you’re going to find another, potentially more destructive habit that achieves the same effect.

Highly recommended read!

http://sndup.net/x73hv

Usually when I'm very bored I'll play the new update for one of my games or finish something I started. It would always be for a entire day now that I only play every 2 months or so and I'd have nothing to do for 2 days after since one gaming session makes all my other hobbies seem stale. And FOMO is still getting to me. The way I think about it if I have nothing better to do why not catch up on the missed content? How do you guys deal with it?

Yesterday I played College Football 25 all day just to get booted by EAs finest servers and my record went from 25-15 to like 28-24 and I just feel worthless and miserable FIFA and Madden made me feel like this before and FIFA did much worse to me glad luckily I dropped it. Does anybody ever just feel miserable for days after losing multiple sports games ?

A month ago I broke my gaming monitor while playing league and then I wrote this post in which I said I'll be back in a month. So here I am.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StopGaming/comments/1e3eu20/smashed_a_400_monitor/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

The Plan

It wasn't my first time trying to quit games or a addiction, so despite this spontaneous turn of events it seemed like I was ready. I knew what to expect, and some of the possible pitfalls. With that knowledge I tried to plan things out.

The overall strategy I took was to slowly downsize my gaming time by any means, so I gave myself only one rule which was to play only after 8 pm (and that was tough enough).

Second most important thing was 'not punishing myself', usually when I tried to quit any adiction I'd do as many productive things as I could while trying to 'catch up' with others, right after that I usually went back into gaming, it was one of my greatest pitfalls so I made sure not to force myself to do anything.

To not overcomplicate things I left it at that and told myself to be patient cause it's gonna be slow.

And slow it was

I had two monitors, on the one I broke I'd always play games and on the 2nd one I'd watch either youtube, tv shows or anime. Since I rarely done anything else and gaming was a no till 8 pm I would watch anime for the whole time. I didn't even remove the monitor I broke till the 2nd week. I didn't clean my room, because I'd consider it as punishment. That week I did less then I normally do but that's because I was extra careful of not doing more then I should.

It was very boring but anything would be after all the stimuli I put myself through in the past years. To not fall into the trap of boredom, before I even started negotiating with myself about moving the 8 pm reverse curfew I'd up my porn intake, but after a couple of days it too started to become too boring.

By week 2 I had to start thinking about other things I could do, but everything seemed sooo boring. But despite that I did start to work a bit on photoshop since my family needs it, and I took out my bike from the basement, I also started to think about painting or drawing but I hate to see myself doing worse then 10 years ago.

In week 3 I started doing bit more, did a lil workout, went biking, helped my family a bit. Most things I did weren't time consuming so I still had a lot of time, which I mostly spent on anime. It was tough to accept sluggishness of it all but what else could I expect, beating 15 year long addiction will take time and it may not even happen at all. Accepting that is tough, but it did free me of the expectation of results and that's very important.

Week 4 was very similar although I did get out of the house more, which for me is a bit scary. I'm afraid of meeting someone I know. It's a bit shameful showing myself in my current state but i guess it's part of the process. I thought people would look at me weird but that wasn't the case at all, and the benefitof biking is that even if that happend I'd be gone in a second making it more bearable.

During all the weeks when I was gaming I moved to slower non competetive games, any game was boring so it didn't make much difference to me and some days I didn't even play anymore. I just didn't feel like it anymore.

Reason for addiction

I actually thought that gaming was just a leftover coping mechanism from childhood, but I got to discover that that wasn't the case very soon after I quit. In the first 2 weeks about every 3 or 4 days I couldn't sleep. I had so much guilt about the things I did and didn't do, constant flashbacks and daydreams about 'what ifs'. Most of the things weren't directly related to games, it was mostly about my relationships with people. Sometimes I didn't have a better choice or I just didn't know any better.

After enduring these thoughts I finally understood why I was addicted, while there may be more reasons, the guilt and shame I have were enough to justify it all. Gaming was necessary and I was even more glad for the strategy I chose because I wouldn't last for a week if I went cold turkey. But I understood that to heal I need to move on and let myself feel those emotions and that it also will take time.

Results

I always was a hardcore gamer in a sense that I would play everyday for many hours. In the last 3 years I shut myself out almost completely, while increasing my gaming time up to 12 - 16 hours a day.

In this month instead of ~430 hours spent I did ~130 (including days where I broke my single rule), until I wrote this post i wasn't happy with the result, most of the time I still spend in front of a computer. But now I see that I did progress, and if I stay on that course I will change for the better.

What's next

I use technology too much, I did a test one day where I didn't use it for a couple hours in the morning and I felt much better and more acomplished that day, so my next goal will be to decrease my screen time. It's going to be much tougher but It's necessery to progress further.

Thanks to you all I got motivated to go on, I didn't want to disappoint and that helped me immensely. That's why I will post again in a month, as a form of gratitude to this community and it will also keep me from regress.

I hope this post will help anyone looking to quit. o7

I wasted my whole life on video games and I’m trying to find new hobbies. It’s not that video games are addicting to me. Sometimes I don’t even enjoy them but I just play because I can’t find anything else to do. It’s just that I can’t seem to enjoy anything whenever I try new hobbies so I just stick to video games. What hobbies did you guys take up to replace video games?

I have been gaming obsessively for the last year. I climbed to the top of the leaderboard and made friends on Discord, but it is causing me to lose touch with my friends and family and my works and personal health. It is not good. My kids don't deserve a dad addicted to screens. I need to beat this crap.

My partner was recently sent to rehab by his parents due to ‘gaming addiction’. He would spend hours in an internet cafe, but he could also go on for hours, days, or even weeks without it, which I find quite odd. He wasn’t addicted in THAT sense. The tipping point for him being sent there was that he hadn’t pay his hours of plays for months and even edited a fake reference number. As a result, he owes the internet cafe some money (which was paid off eventually). However, gaming did not consume him; he only played recreationally. I once asked him if he was ‘addicted’ and he said no. He explained to me that he uses it as a form of escapism for underlying issues that he has (narcissistic mother, toxic household, depression, etc.).

Right now, I feel confused about where the line is drawn when it comes to gaming addiction. Do my partner’s actions manifest such? What do I do in this situation as his partner? I need some advice and insights. Please be kind and approach this with an open mind.