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I've been gaming since I was 4 and I wasted my entire youth with it. But I guess better late than never and I want to rebuild my life. I'm currently one month away from finishing a vocational training degree in computer systems so this is my starter point. I want to finish it, doing the practics, take a job, start to earning money, lose weight, get a girlfriend, maybe study an online degree to be able to get a better job, etc.

This month is the hardest of the grade, and if I don't quit gaming I might fail. I also know gaming is bad and I want to quit forever.

I know that what I enjoy most about gaming is the narrative, so I plan to replace it with reading fiction.

I think if I set a goal to read for example 1 hour per day, I can probably do it and not spend all day thinking about it, unlike games, because games are a lot more addictive than books. They're specifically designed to be as addictive as possible, and that is a problem if you want to do something with your life.

I decided to uninstall Windows and install Linux instead. Because you need to do extra steps in Linux to gaming, so you have more defenses when temptation comes to you.

Any advice will be welcome. I will update with other post in a week, telling how I did it.

I've basically known I'm an addict since I was 16, tried to quit multiple times with the most sucessful being 3 years ago where I hit 365 days. After that I relapsed for almost 2 years (up untill 5 days ago), with a few "sober" weeks/months in between. I'm almost 30 years old and my life as stagnant, stuck 12 years before. Don't need any advice, I know what to do, almost a week clean now. Just wanted to vent.

I will not allow this shit to ruin my life, I will win.

Hope everyone is doing good, thanks for reading

Deleted my ps5 account and accounts of all my games. Wish me luck, hopefully I don't replace it with doomscrolling or rotting on youtube 💀

TL;DR Depressed and addicted to gaming, fried my brain and cooked my exams, repeating a uni year 🤦🤦🤦

Saw another dudes rant and wanted to share my experience too. For some context, I was starting my first year of med school. Disappointed at my lack of self-control and sounds ridiculous.

Beginning of the semester was going relatively well academically but my social life was cooked. I've been gaming from my childhood and adolescence years so why not try make myself feel better by playing some games in my spare time? Extremely bad decision.

I started gaming for a few hours everyday, and schoolwork started to seem more and more boring which makes sense as my brain was getting fried from the constant dopamine. I started feeling worse about myself everyday when I went to school and combated it by gaming instantly when I went home.

A few months passed and I was gaming for around 40-50 hours every week and started skipping lectures (in my mind "I'll catch up on it later"). Still went to compulsory classes and passed tests throughout the year. Decided to bomb 1 of my final exams and pass 2 other final exams and rely on the remediation so I could progress to the next year. I passed 2 of the exams which worked well. I had a little over 2 months to study for my resits.

70 days... 50... 28... Was still gaming. 21... Realisation set in finally that I really need to start studying. My attention span was terrible. Only 1-4 hours of study per day. 7 days - Started cramming intensively but I severely underestimated the material, and didn't study the coursework specifically. Exam resit time I was beyond cooked 🔥.

Went cold turkey instantly after, realised I have a serious addiction problem but it was way too late... So much regret and grief after. Been building better habits and quit gaming for around a month now.

A useful resource: https://wiki.healthygamer.gg/en/Video_Game_Addiction

Really wondering... I see some friends from school that they are playing league of legends everytime i log into discord. Its not precisely making my day. Any way to disable that? Any other tips?

I am 29M living in Toronto. I play a lot of video games like: Valorant, GTA V, Sea of thieves, Anyone wanna hand out with me?

First of all I'm really grateful for this community because it helped me to acknowledge my behaviors and to know that I'm not alone with these problems.

I started gaming when I was about 12 and I think I've always had some compulsive attraction to it, but when I was younger my parents were there to set limits and I had a lot of other stuff going on with school and sports, so it was ok. However, as an adult, I repeatedly abused videogames whenever my life was going off track. I had the worst depression of my life in 2010, right after Torchlight came out, and I spent every minute of my free time playing it. I lost 10 kg and all my strength.

There were a few other episodes like that and moments where I thought I could play with moderation -- no such thing for me. After about two years of not gaming at all, last week I set up my PC again and installed Diablo 2 Resurrected, for old time's sake. Within an hour I was a fiend again, incredible how fast it happened. All I was thinking of for the rest of the day was how can I squeeze more gaming time out of it.

On that evening I realized that there is no way I'll ever have a healthy relationship with gaming, and that's ok. I can keep the fond memories of being so excited about Baldur's Gate 2 and GTA 3 back in the day, and let this part of my life go. Make space for something new. So I put up my PC for sale and today I managed to sell it. I'm gonna use the money to buy a bass guitar and get lessons. I'm done with PC games forever and I just wanted to share it here for accountability and to make it sort of official.

I have stop playing games for a month by completely removing the triggers. But I do have one question, which is " How I should respond to my friends when they ask me to play that game by joining them " . I am afraid that if I say I quit playing games and later if I relapsed , then I would feel guilty and ashamed.

My final question is , how one should maintain the cold turkey for long term by without looking back ?

Looking forward to your response !

Rant incoming.

I love playing MOBA games and playing with online friends, but it is becoming increasingly clear that I’m prone to addiction and gaming is one of them. Moderation is not in my dictionary, it’s all or nothing. In the past I have quitted for years because I know that when I play a game I like, I get addicted to it like the devil has possessed me. It means losing sleep and not eating and just playing.

Quitting means having to leave behind the game and people which is making it hard to do so. My friends have told me to take a break and come back next season to play, but I know it’s not going to work.

In the past when I quit a game, I deleted everything which reminds me of the game, which means I have to stop interacting with the people who reminds me of the game too.

Let’s be real, this SUCKS.

I think that is the best way to frame this addiction for me. Its kind of like quicksand, you might get out, but you're better off not getting in to begin with. Its good to keep in mind when you're having cravings to go back. Its hard to stop once you've started

I feel when i used to play games before, i used to make my main character beautiful, strong, rich, getting plenty of chicks, intelligent, etc. But now that i think about it, i feel pathetic that i didn't put any kind of effort to make myself get all those things. Now i feel really bad about how the best phase of my life turned out. Anyone else fee like this?

It has been a month that I gave up playing video games , while I was playing the game I almost felt like I did something with attention. But after I stopped playing the game for a month, I feel like I have some awareness of what am I doing .

Hence I think that I can play any competitive games in moderation but still not sure ..... But some say , we will fall into the same endless gaming patterns which would suck our time like millisecond.

Please advise whether I should start playing the games when I feel bored or I should do something instead.

Thank you !

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.

Hello reader thanks for ur time.

I’m feeling not good in the moment and I need to vent myself, I hope u understand that

So I was playing league of legends for 2 years and I can say that it actually replaced my life. I didn’t care about grades (I do education to nurse) and I declined meetings or offers with my best friend. I just going school/work and playing league all day. The best is… I never got out of iron. This sucks even more, because my dream to get challenger one day was not even close. It was the exactly opposite of it. I’m living alone and I just ignored everything what I had to do. I don’t cook I don’t eat moderate I just sit there and playing league. Finally I understand my behaviour and I tried to quit lol for months but now I deleted my riot games account. I still really love gaming and want to enjoy singleplayer Games. But in the moment they don’t bring me joy because I need the dopamine kick like in lol.

Does anyone have same story’s about league addiction? And how can I get these dopamine shit away.

Thank for reading it. I really wish u are great day and I hope u have a fulfilling live <3

so i was just playing lol as a support and it just came through to me that there's zero fucking reason to be playing this game. im gold and struggling and getting so angry, being perma gold unable to climb. but then what? what if i get plat? or even diamond or emerald? what then? im never gonna be able to get better than that given ive been stuck on the same rank for years. what if i even fucking reach master? how does that help anything? does it make me money? will people around me be impressed im a good rank at a video game? boost my status? i get slightly more credibility when talking about league but lets admit it, nobody in real life likes league besides their storytelling and its extremely unpopular mass appeal wise. its just so fucking gross, ive spent a few hundo on it total but im just completely done with it. there's literally zero reason to keep going its fun SOMETIMES but the time sink of HOURS on end just isnt justifying it.

games are meant to be FUN. so thats why im going back to simulator games like farming simulator or supermarket simulator or booting up the emulator to play old school games that may actually make me happy. probably not though. im thinking of it and im probably just gonna be stuck on some levels or some shit like that and drop it so i might not even bother with even that. so simulator games i guess, which is literally just real life on a screen

i always say im done but im actually done. its a cycle that exists for no reason. im really getting into drawing and practicing my art so i guess ill spend more time on that as a hobby. maybe some more meditation. without league a few HOURS each day is now free. im not even sure i want to play story games because those seem really time consuming too for no reason.

maybe ill play the occasional game of among us if all my friends really want me on, or if Half Life 3 comes out, but besides that, fuck gaming. hobby where you dump thousands of hours in it and you gain nothing tangible at ALL in the physical realm.

cheeers.

edit: just to see, i went on time wasted on lol (the site) and it says i've spent over 800 hours total on this fucking game. lmao. great. all that just to waste my time. the opportunity costs too. fuck

So I quit gaming 5 years ago because my mother made a ban on them, she allows educational games and doesn’t ban them.

Can I say I quit gaming?

Hey everyone! I'm new to the group and appreciate all the advice and support given here. I recently quit playing video games as in console and PC games after 26 years back in October 2024. During this time I picked up a few hobbies. I got into Magic the Gathering a little, built a deck but haven't played... yet. I bought a guitar and got rocksmith to learn how to play. I got some fishing gear and did some of that through the holidays, I got back into comics. The only thing that seemed to stick was weight lifting. I'm assessing this is because I've always sort of enjoyed it but I still have withdraws and crazy urges to play PC/Console games. I can't seem to stick with these other hobbies and I haven't found anything else I'm interested in.

I'm asking for some advice on how to navigate this issue. Maybe some new ideas for hobbies or something to fill that "void" if that is ever going to be possible. Thanks in advance!

I am by no means addicted to gaming. I just need help to stop. I've gotten myself into a relationship, but my friends live upwards of an hour away and gaming is the only way I get to communicate with them now. I want to stop gaming and become more productive. I just don't know how to do it

Over the past 2 months, I was addicted to Cyberpunk and i played it so much that I felt like I was playing the game to escape to that world than actually facing the realities of my own life. In my actual life, I was going through seasonal depression and using gaming as a coping mechanism. I stopped talking to friends/family, i went out less, and was negative all the time.

A part of that was due to gaming and once i stopped feeling sorry for myself and got tired of being in that situation, I decided to give up gaming.

I am in the process of selling my PS5 and parting out my gaming PC.

One thing I had to do was mentally dig deep and accept that the best times i had gaming is now over and the reason i kept playing the past 5-10 years was to try and capture the "magic" of gaming like i had when i was a kid. It is physically impossible to be a kid again or be able to relive playing a certain video games for the first time. Don't get me wrong, i still have some nostalgia from time to time and I would rather watch a video or listen to the games OST to remember the old times but that is the extent I will go with gaming.

Sadly, I am 35 now and feel bad for letting too much time fly by due to video games. I cannot change my past but i am moving forward and using my new found time to get a better job and make a better life for myself going forward.

What was your breaking point with video games?

I was wondering...
My (ex-?)game-addiction was NOT on any game.
I've played Tons of games but I couldn't keep my attention to them in Long term (more than 30 minutes).

I've tried:
Horizon, Tekken 8, Dragon Age: The Veilguard (ok, I cheated - I saw the ending before I bought the game), Street Fighter 6, Ratchet & Clank (Ok, this one almost took me as I wanted to see Ratchet encounter Rivet).
None of these could hold my attention...

Although, I noticed...
Cyberpunk 2077
Skyrim (PS5)
League of Legends (quit begin 2024)
These were my killers, I remember I couldn't stop them due the fact I was stuck in a story...

I am figuring out how gaming addiction works, in my case. I was stuck in a story and I couldn't get out until I knew how it would end. Think of it as a movie of a series (why people binge watch).
League of Legends was addictive in my never ending search for a main champion and main strategy, something I could use every game all over again - but that's not how League works, every game you need to adapt.

My question to you:
Which games were your killers? And why (analyse your brains)?

Hi everyone! I'm Kay, and I'm new here, and so thankful to have found this community. :) I'd really appreciate some advice. I just got to level 40 on my rogue in Hardcore wow, and I felt really proud. I know I need to stop gaming because it's really become a problem and I can't moderate it. However, I'm wondering whether it's better to just stop now, or whether I should try to push through to 60 (max level) and then stop, which would feel like a nice ending point for a big part of my life (if i actually make it to 60 lol). I've just been having a hard time deciding, so any advice would be appreciated. :)

Hey

I'll make it short, to resume I have a real problem with video games and I took a lot of time to realize it, this sub contributes to it. I hate that I wasted so many years playing. I don't like playing anymore except with friends.

I had managed to stop playing for 4 months, but recently I got back because I accepted playing with friends.

Generally I can handle the fact that I don't have to play and I can rationalize it. However, on a bad day, or when I'm bored, when friends ask me to play I often find an excuse to convince myself that it's not so bad to play, for example you'll be able to laugh with them, have a good time. They are cool people but I stay in touch with most of them only because we sometimes play video games together. Otherwise I think we wouldn't be talking anymore.

So I wanted to know if you had any tips to, even on these bad days, be able to avoid video games.

I have many other hobbies, music, cinema, litterature, sports and I have a lot of things to do and I know video games just stops me from being who I really want to be. But every time I go back in this loop and even though I'm young, I feel like I'll be stuck in it forever. I just wanna convince my brain that video games is the worst thing that ever happen to me and never touch it again.

(sorry if there are any mistakes, english isn't my first language)

Thanks

Hello Everyone, this is my first time posting. I just wanted to share some thoughts to see if they resonate with anyone else.

I grew up with videogames; I had a controller in my hand before I learned how to read. I think what really drew me to them was the narratives, and how they blended with gameplay - I can distinctly remember crying during the end of Final Fantasy X in Middlescool, or getting lost in Warcraft lore. For what it was worth, games were the best thing around at the time - before the age of streaming services, being able to play a game like FFX on demand was one of the best value propositions for a 13 year old. I was a gamer, and games were my artform.

I still maintain that as a teenager, videogame stories like Horizon and Persona can compete with any teenager-facing media or YA novel.

As I grew older, my taste in books matured from YA novels to fantasy novels to upmarket science fiction and ultimately to literary fiction. My taste in games matured from RPGs for 13 year olds to RPGs for 17 year olds to... Disco Elysium, I guess?

Something clicked for me when when I finally got around to playing Final Fantasy 16 last year - that I may have grown up with videogames, but videogames didn't grow up with me. I was trudging through a 60 hour long story that was trying to be a grimdark fantasy novel, but by the standards of grimdark fantasy novels it was absolutely terrible. Then I went online and saw that people were giving this game 9/10s and calling the story amazing. Yeesh.

I feel like I've smashed into the ceiling of what this medium can give me. Gameplay challenges that would have had my younger self salivating are now a glorified formality. Writing that would have appeared groundbreaking to my younger self now feels exhausted and sophomoric. It now feels like a medium that demands at least 5-10 times the time, money, and energy that literature/film ask for, while giving back crumbs in return.

There are exceptions buried in there, somewhere. I still treasure Disco Elysium. But man, this just does not feel like an artistic medium that is worth my time as I grow into adulthood.

1. My eyes are really dry now compared to when I was a teen
2. I have to put effort into enjoying gaming (finding new games, keeping a positive mindset, etc). I would rather put that effort into my healthier IRL hobbies.
3. All my friends, even the successful ones, suffer from a lack of sleep due to gaming. Sleep is vital.
4. A significantly disproportionate amount of my gamer friends are now NEETs and/or gooners.
5. I connect more deeply with non-gamers. I love hearing about people's adventures and lives that don't revolve around games.
6. I feel like my social skills and empathy regress when playing video games whereas I feel the opposite when socializing in person.
7. Instead of challenging myself, I often end up passing the time with gaming.
8. I can get a good amount for my PC hehe.

That's about all. I have some positive reasons. Like how some stories I will keep near to my chest forever. But those stories were maybe 2% of my total game time. That's just not a good return. The rest of the 98% of hours I can hardly remember and had virtually no positive impact on my life.

So, my parents banned video games, and I quit because of that, then word got out in my classroom and they are all gamers and one (who couldn’t read) said “You should play Roblox “

I feel like playing again but against it, can someone provide support?

I try to go to as many chess and cubing tournaments and football tournaments so I am busy and not constantly rotting my brain

I also play educational games since my parents think video games rot my brain and educational games make me smart

Sign up for StopGaming's February 2025 here! Or share your on-going accomplishment!

Hey everyone! Welcome to the official sign-up thread for StopGaming’s February 2025!

Use this thread to share your commitment to abstain from playing video games for the entire month of February 2025.

New to StopGaming?

• Need help to quit gaming? Read our quick start guide. Learn about compulsive gaming and video game addiction by reading through StopGaming, the Game Quitters website and consider attending meetings through CGAA.
• If you are committed to your 90 day detox, sign up for this month by replying to this submission.
• To track your progress setup a badge. We also recommend using an app like Coach.me or a whiteboard/calendar in your room.
• Document your progress in a daily journal. Having a daily journal will help you clarify your thoughts, process your experience and gain extra support.
• Ask questions and get support by posting on StopGaming. The more involved you can be in the community, the more likely you are to succeed. We also have an online chat.
• We have added an option to get an accountability partner this month. Post your own thread here and find an accountability partner.

Ready to join? Reply to this thread and answer the following:

• What is your commitment? No games? No streams? Anything else?
• How long do you want this challenge to last? By default it is one month, but 90 days is recommended for your detox.
• What are your goals?

Hey folks. Do people mind sharing their experiences with withdrawal after stopping for a long period? For me I felt great for the first week or so but then I began to feel increasingly irritable and haven't gotten past it yet. Is this common? How long does it last? Thanks!

https://www.darkpattern.games

This was posted awhile ago but I wanted to include the link so you don’t have to scroll through comments to find the link. Going through all of these helped me understand why I was addicted for so long.

Will also link that thread in an edit so you can read the comments there and see the original post

Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/StopGaming/comments/1icb8lc/comment/m9q40zj/?context=3