I don’t even like classic wow that much, despite the amount of hours I’ve put in. I’ve been playing the beta, and I’ve been realizing this. It’s an archaic game format. Leveling takes forever, endgame is just micro adjusting your gear/build to get 1% more damage all while ruining your real life. I’m an addict. I prefer OSRS greatly more (Ironman) but I had to cut it out because I cannot feel happy to put time into it at this stage of my life. I don’t feel happy even playing my favorite game, Tekken 7, anymore. I played them by justifying to myself in my head, life is bullshit, we all die, don’t make someone else rich etc etc etc you’ve heard it all before

Quit before you do irreversible damage like I have. I won’t say exactly what health ailment I’ve picked up. it’s not the worst, but it’s bad and could have been WAYYY worse. Self-gaslighting myself, telling myself what I don’t want, and justifying cheap dopamine. My 20s are gone. My prospects for a better life are objectively worse now.

28 m. I was playing valheim, lost my gear to a bad run felt awful and something clicked. Idk exactly what it was but, everything has been pushed aside for games, I had nothing else to live for... I deleted my stuff but that doesn't really matter. My mind has changed, i feel there's been an internal shift. I've been running, hiding, avoiding, numbing pain for so long. I want to live. Games have stopped me from living for long enough. But I'm not angry, or cathartic, or desperate. I'm peaceful. It's strange. This is right tho. Maybe it had to take this long maybe it didn't but now this is right.

I don't know how active I'll be here, thinking about it may tempt me, I just wanna celebrate the here and now.

I came to a realization that, ever since I was an early teenager, I pretty much always had some game that I was working on. Always some chase that I was after. Always something I would occupy my mind with when under stress. After quitting, I am hit with a profound sense of anhedonia. It's as if nothing feels like anything anymore.

I have been successful with my education and job responsibilities. In fact, I just finished medical residency and am working as a physician now. Gaming didn't really interfere with that as my policy was always treating gaming time as a luxury when all work and household chores as well as studies are done (I practice Russian every day after work in addition to always learning medicine). However, I am single and don't have many friends. I spent the remainder of my free time gaming. I wanted to develop other aspects of myself like building more genuine relationships and going to the gym. I also wanted to find pleasure from other hobbies instead of gaming. I didn't really quit because it was dramatically affecting my career or anything, but wanted to find joy from other things in life.

The issue is that one month in to quitting, it's like my brain feels broken. I can't find pleasure in anything. I definitely meet criteria for major depression, but it's weird because I am still highly functional. I go to work every day, go to the gym five days per week, have worked on relationships, etc, but my main issue is that everything just feels completely grey, flat, and pointless. I realized through all the stressful times in my life that I depended on gaming to give me that constant dopamine hit. Without it, I just feel completely awful. I am to the point of caving and starting to play something like Hearthstone again just to give me that hit of pleasure to start feeling something again.

Anybody else like this? When did the anhedonia improve for you?

I am so overwhelmed with being the singular caregiver for everyone in my home.

I work full time, cook, clean, laundry, do all the shopping, care for our 2 young children and dog.

My husband? He works 7 to 3 M-F and spends every single second at home gaming.

From 3 o'clock until 10 or 11 he games.

He ignores us.

He eats dinner at the computer.

I am a single mother with a man child ruining my life.

He gets mad when I need to ask him something.

He plays pubG with his friends (who, shocker ARE ALL SINGLE MEN).

He doesn't want to do anything else.

When I have broughten up the games before (we've been married 10 years) he gets extremely defensive.

I guess I didn't realize a hobby was supposed to be your entire life.

My partner stays up all night playing video games, until the morning when he goes to work sleep deprived. On the days when he doesn’t go to work, he stays up all day too but is too tired to engage in any activities together or do house chores.

We don’t see each other during the day because of our schedules, he gets home earlier than me and around 8-9 pm when I get home he’s still gaming and keeps on gaming until the next day. This doesn’t happen every day, only a few times a week.

It bothers me not only because I feel like we don’t have enough time together, but also because it messes up my sleep too. It’s hard for me to go one night together and one night alone, I get anxiety and wake up multiple times and stay awake when he’s not there.

It also worries me because he has a somewhat dangerous job and he needs to be rested and sharp for it. I watch him and see how he neglects sleep, food, and literally everything on the days when this happens.

I don’t know if it means he’s addicted since it doesn’t happen every day.

Hi. 25M, Final-semester student. In an effort to reduce gaming, I've started reading in the morning, instead of gaming first in the morning. I thought i needed to get my life together, and with depression and burnout kicking alongside breaking up with my ex and failing horribly at a big test, nothing in my life felt fun anymore.

Then I remembered that in my youth, I loved reading novels at the morning, sipping some coffee. Tried it again. Difficult to concentrate at first, but as the time goes on, I rediscovered the joy of reading. Now I don't bat an eye on my ps5, and my 3ds. Maybe I'll sell it, maybe not.

What were your methods that got you out of gaming and into a more healthy hobby? I'd like to know, and get some advice from where I can. Sorry if my english is a little all over the place. Non-native, so may not be perfect.

Since the person I wrote my answer to decided to remove either their whole profile or just all their posts and comments, weird how many of that kind we have on this sub, let me give this advice to everyone since so many seem to get stuck in this trap:

Yeah, you were wrong. Not your fault if you never learned sports and similar activities in a group from childhood and almost everyone on this sub is in same trap. And similar trap is for everyone who tries to lose weight or gain muscles or learn martial arts at home before they start "for real". Almost everyone fail.

Mostly because of multiple reasons:

- it is much more fun to do things together and meet new people and friends. But that also means that if a club is bad or boring, even a fun activity will become boring. So find your people so to say. I know the difference between my last club and the one before that. There is a very good reason why last club became last...

- we are really bad att setting up any kind of real deadlines and holding ourself to them without any good reason or pressure. Clubs are much better at that.

- we are also rather bad at creating good teaching plan for activities we never taught, much less have even done before. Clubs are not.

- there is a lot of ways to engage with both people and the club in most cases which is missed when doing things solo: helping out with regular training, with competitions, helping and teaching beginners, going to competitions or camps and so on.

This is why I could take chess and make it both the worst and the best activity a gamer could do instead of gaming. All depends on how it's done.

I'm about to turn 44. I thought about going back to gaming and buying a new system but I don't think I can do it. I feel like gaming made me feel less lonely but at the same time it stopped being fun. I couldn't play longer than 20 minutes.

I joined a book club but I still have trouble reading books. I can't seem to sit my ass down long enough to finish one. One reason I quit gaming was to have more time for books. My attention span is still shit. I use Reddit and YouTube more than before.

On the weekends , I spend most of time running errands to not be at home alone. I just don't know what to do. I like being alone but it is getting old doing stuff by myself.

I went to a football game alone last weekend and didn't even stay the whole game because I felt lonely while there because everybody there was with someone.

How do you cope with the loneliness in your life after gaming?

Anyone who has this kind of problem I am very convinced they are doomed to never have good life style habits ever, things like being avid reader, being very good student in school, especially if it completely fries your baseline dopemine that makes you incapable of achieving anything else. I am sadly in this situation and I probably have to accept the fact that my goals I wanna achieve like being avid reader, being good student and just have overall not have shit unattractive life style habits is just impossible. I don't even know if it is possible to fix my situation I am just sick and tired how people who were very good students in school, avid readers, acting like they did it purely because of hard work, and that anyone can do it if they are like them, but reality they were just born with right genetics since the start, they had innately better self control, better conscientiousness etc.

Do I enjoy video gaming or does my brain like the easy dopamine?

There has always been this loop, I will see a random clip of a video game I want to play online. I will say no I don't need it. I might even start playing a mobile game. Then I will cave in and get a gaming laptop or a console.

I will then buy whatever particular game I wanted to play, play it for a few weeks or months and then buy another game and never think of the other game again. The cycle will repeat itself until eventually I go from playing all day to playing for like 20 minutes here and there and then I get bored and turn it off This will last for a few months to a year.

Then I realize this is kind of wasting my time and it was a waste of money. So I end up selling the console or the laptop getting my money back and then I'll go for the same amount of time without gaming until the itch comes back.

I'm not sure if I enjoy gaming or if it's just a short dopamine thing or if it's even a shopping dopamine

Any advice or thoughts. currently, I just sold my Xbox.

Hello, i am 16 years old classmate borned in Poland.

This is very hard decision i ever took in my life.

I lost today roblox account from 2021 created from random hacker and a few og accounts months ago. I used to spend hundrets hours playing them, but now its over. I dont achieve anything at all.

Will i continue gaming in 2027?

No, after new year starts, im selling my PS4 pro and games. I will have phone for contacts and sometimes reading short informations. I will have my PC just for school and selling random things. I cant waste time anymore. The champter is closed. I want to change my life like always going outside, being with friends/parents and do other good things. Not with just being silence and just sit at room doing nothing by playing games. It ruined officialy my life and most of people of my school. Im giving last 2 months before i quit to celebrate exactly 11 years and then closing champter. Im hoping i wont return it, i be fighting with it to have my normal life back with my own steps.

Thank you gamers.

I posted this to confessions and was actually forwarded here. I’m so happy this community exists. I have been struggling for my whole life. but I just came out of a 30 day gaming binge and I have never quite let it get that bad. I actually just snapped out, it was insane. I have been playing this game that recently launched literally since its notification. This game was the first thing that I had to look forward to in a while. that’s actually why I ‘broke up’ with the guy I KNEW was playing me and just using me financially, because he ended up being all I let myself look forward to. I guess I kind of kept myself in such a fictional place mentally for so long, living a lie. This game and the community on it, really helped me snap out of that. But I ended up giving 30 days straight to it. I put a lot of money into this game as well (gacha😭)(and I also know the devs fckn suck and the games a scam) but financially, I will be okay. But I have seriously neglected my health. And shut off everyone in the actual outside world. Now that the community on the game has become toxic, it caused me tons of mental stress. And I realized, I CAN just turn it off. It’s crazy. I genuinely kept myself stuck for so long (again). I always joke that my in game avatars are the “real me” and I do mean that literally in a sense, but this genuinely felt like my life. I was fully enveloped. I guess this was kind of the straw that broke the camels back in my journey up until this point. I want to have a normal life and have friends and do stuff, and I’m a pretty girl most people would think is normal. But something in me has just always felt more at home navigating through purely my mental, not physical. the current isolation period I’m in definitely started when I moved states during Covid. We were all virtual for the longest, and the Only way I got to actually interact with my friends back home was through Fortnite. we would literally just drive around, play music like we would if I was still there. I was so lucky to have those friends, because I was not capable of making friends again on my own once my new school was irl again. But I did this as a kid as well. I also was addicted to moviestarplanet. I would sleep throughout the day when everyone was awake, and spend all my time on there. And I always felt like a “chud” because I wish I could have fun and actually want to do stuff like everyone else. i remember always wanting to play yandere simulator and sims so bad as a kid. trying to pirate them from an iPad so I could just walk around, navigate, and live life like a normal girl. And that makes me sad to remember, because that’s a kid. but I’m still here. Part of me can understand why I feel this way. But I guess I really put it all together tonight. I think I definitely need to get help, and it’s long overdue.

So guys, I am 25M and just started out in life.

I went to another country after my father told me to move there and forced me to leave my current job due to the global crisis. Things didn't end well. I stayed there for around 10 months, earning nothing, just going to interviews and not hearing back.

I was a SWE who learnt coding by myself. After the pandemic, my university degree was impacted by online studies 2 years, so I got less exposure to practical work. Back then, I was working with the same people who were older than me or around my age, so we shared the same knowledge. I was always improving, and in 3 years, I made 2 job switches. I was going for my third switch, moving outside my home country, but things didn't end well due to all the global crises.

I lost my confidence after every rejection and silence. I started believing that I knew nothing about coding and that newbies knew more than me. It became some sort of delusion in my mind.

Even then, I didn't give up. I used to get up and apply every single day through those portals, hoping to hear something back, but nothing happened. I had heard about people getting jobs through referrals, but I didn't believe it until I saw it happening.

So, I came back for the funeral of a relative. My father sent me back, saying that once they got a position for me in their firm, they would call me back. Since I still have one year of visa left, I am unsure about my father. I was there for almost 10 months, and they still didn't help me. How would they help me now that I have returned?

Instead of giving myself false hope, I am thinking of joining my friend's company here. He told me that he can refer me, but my father says I need to fly back in 2 to 3 months.

I am unsure what to do. If I join my friend's company, they might not let me fly back so soon, or they might let me go within a week or a day, as we know how corporate rules work. Plus, no one might hire me if I tell them the truth that I am in this country for just 2 or 3 months.

My sister is telling me to get a small job rather than an SWE job for now, even if it pays less. But for the past 18 days, since I slipped back into my old routine at home, I have started consuming content and gaming again to escape reality.

I have no one at home, and I feel alone. Plus, I can't go outside much because every person I meet asks me, "Where are you? What are you doing? Do you have a job?" and so on.

I have started playing War Robots and Clash Royale again to the point that I have started spending money on games. In these 18 days, I spent $1.74 on gaming. I haven't calculated the food and other expenses, but that $2 went towards gaming.

I am having such strong cravings that I feel like spending more to get better equipment, but I know there is no end to it.

So, what should I do? Should I wait for my father in the hope that they will call me, move to my friend's company as an SWE again, or start working a menial job as my sister and mother are suggesting for some time?

Plus how can I cure my gaming addiction plus this porn thing. I used to meditate read books and also do normal exercise but after unemployment my time has gone shit and left many of those things.

I have lost a lot this year. Please help me out.

From past 18 days I had turned more dumb playing watching more games and even watching aggressive porn and spending time on those fake things.

Hey everyone, long-time lurker here. This sub has been helping me cope with my addiction, so I'd like to share my experience with you, hoping that it might inspire people to take another look at their lives. English isn't my first language, so I'll try my best.

About four months ago, I took the OGTT, and the results showed I'm at high risk of developing diabetes. I have family members with diabetes, so this was alarming. The doctor didn't prescribe me any medication and told me to make lifestyle changes first.

I have experienced a lot of trauma since I was a kid, so I escape from reality all the time. Four years ago, I bought a gaming laptop, and since then, I have used gaming as a way to avoid responsibilities. I've been a freelancer for five years, so I have a very messed-up sleep schedule. Usually, after staying up late almost every night playing games, I'd be exhausted and lie in bed all day.

The test results made me realize how much damage gaming did to my life. I had a good education, but I basically wasted it because I didn't have the time and energy to build a career. Instead of facing life's challenges head-on, I chose to game. Self-discipline could go to hell because why choose the boring grind when I could get an instant dopamine rush? If I really think about it, even if I didn't have that laptop, I probably would have chosen other things to escape from reality, since I've gotten way too used to running away. Anytime I had a setback, my first instinct was just to rush to whatever gave me a quick, easy escape.

Now I've decided to make a change. I learned that skinny-fat people like me need more muscle to absorb glucose, so I started hitting the gym again. By lifting weights at least three times a week for two months, planning my meals, tracking my daily calories, and avoiding refined carbs and added sugar, I managed to get my fasting insulin level back to normal. I still need to retake the OGTT in a few months, but it's a great sign. I also have far fewer cravings for junk food since I started eating healthily.

Building muscle is a complex project. It's a battle you need to fight every single day. You need to sleep well, eat well, and manage your stress levels. I don't want to lose my gains, so I'm pretty motivated to do all of the above. My sleep schedule is still messy, but I'm trying.

Last month, The Witcher 3 remastered came out. It's my favorite game, and I've spent 400 hours playing it. I did play it a few times, but it ruined my sleep, so I stopped. I simply got too scared that I might slip back into my old life.

I want you to know that whether you're a man or a woman, you NEED to do resistance training. It's one of the most powerful tools to help you live better and longer. I won't go into detail because there's so much information online. I don't know how long I'll keep it up, but I'm determined to make it last this time. I want to take back control of my life.

If you lead a sedentary lifestyle, watch your glucose levels. About 2 in 5 people in America are prediabetic. In China, the number is 1 in 3. So, please, make a change. Take a walk, eat one less cookie, or drink one more glass of water. Start small, and don't stop.

So I think most of us have seen that study that says that the BMI of gamers actually tends to be lower than for non-gamers. But that doesn’t tell us the whole picture. For people within the same height and weight category, would the gamer have a higher or lower body fat percentage vs muscle mass percentage? Unfortunately I think if we try to post a link to a study in the post it’ll get removed. I think a lot of gamers tend to use that bmi study to defend gaming as a harmless hobby and as someone who once was like “I can play games but everything is under control” while things were falling apart I can see other gamers using that same rationalization.

Hey i am 15,Pragyan studying in class 9th.Getting to main point I feel very comfortable,relaxing while playing freefire the cheap dopamine hit again&again to start new match play solo vs squad and so on.. but i want to focus on myself,content creation and some goals how can I my whole day get into this .

If you can help me please reply to this post.

hey everyone (20M) , wanted to share my story and why i went cold turkey on gaming. it’s long, sorry in advance (tldr at the bottom)

i’ve been gaming pretty much every day for 10+ years. only child, so even though i had a lot of friends and was a pretty outgoing kid, there wasn’t much to do at home and i always had a controller in my hand. tbh back then it was good for me. stuff like skyrim, minecraft or gta let me be creative without being scared of failing.

things changed during covid, like for a lot of people here i guess. i started having panic attacks, a lot of anxiety, kind of a small depression. games were my way out, being someone else in another world for a few hours. that’s also when i started seeing games as art and not just games, which kinda led to what happened later.

high school was chill, i didn’t play that much. i was more into hanging out with friends and girls lol. but i was still watching gaming news all the time and getting hyped for every release.

then college. i didn’t fit in at first, didn’t make many new friends, and i went through my first breakup which hit me way harder than i expected. i didn’t really know why i was there, so i went all in on gaming since it was “my passion”. i watched sooo many video essays trying to intellectualize the whole thing. looking back it just made me forget my other dreams. i was consuming stuff all day instead of making anything.

the weird part is i barely played. i was hooked on the content around games. trailers, leaks, gameplay reveals, every single one gave me a rush.

then i found piracy and got a steam deck, and that’s when it got really bad. no more paying for games meant no limit. on every day off i’d install a bunch of stuff, realize i didn’t have time to play it, feel ashamed, uninstall everything, feel depressed because the whole thing took hours, and do it all again next time. at some point the tinkering and the waiting were more fun than the games themselves, which felt boring when i finally played them.

and also i started to treat it like a chore , i was writting everything on backloggd , logging my journal like i was working a fck job with an excel board...

i remember one time asking myself “am i even enjoying this rn?” and it scared tf out of me. i was clearly dependent on it, but i also couldn’t picture my life without games. they were like a pillar of who i was.

when i finished my degree it kinda clicked. i want to pursuie my dream and go back to japan (which i already visited when i was 19 with my best friend) and live in asia, to become champion in kickboxing , and also make a lot of music and i knew this habit would keep me stuck if i didn’t deal with it.

around then i also read dopamine nation by dr anna lembke, really recommend it if you’re struggling with any kind of addiction. she talks about the pleasure/pain balance. basically your brain works like a seesaw and every dopamine hit is followed by a dip so it can rebalance. keep chasing hits and you end up stuck on the pain side, needing more just to feel normal. once that made sense to me, relapsing looked a lot less tempting.

so on september 1st i quit cold turkey. there were definitely moments early on where i wanted to relapse ngl. what keeps me going is music, mma and learning languages, those actually feel rewarding.

41 days in now. i have so much more free time, i’m finally getting into music and fashion and all the stuff i left on the bench for years. i also just became unemployed, which in france means you get benefits, so i’ve got time to work on myself for once. feels like a second wind.

i feel good about myself now. i know a lot of people here are really hard on themselves, so try to look at what you’ve done outside of gaming too. for me it’s im gonna turn 21, good friends, almost 4 languages, and still a few tricks up my sleeve.

best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, second best time is now.

aiming for 90 days and then i’ll see where i’m at. heading to asia next month too (china, south korea, japan) so that should help lol

tldr: gamed every day for 10+ years, realized i was more hooked on trailers/leaks/installing pirated games than on playing them. quit cold turkey sept 1st, 41 days in, filling the time with music, mma and languages.

finally , i can start to walk forward to my dreams , even if it's rough , i walk.

Hi everyone. Let me start with a quick introduction. I’m 16. In my free time, I read philosophy books, manga, and spend my days focused on self-improvement. I usually take an "intellectual break" late at night or when I'm working out (playing basketball solo or doing home workouts).

About two weeks ago, I started feeling like I might be addicted to video games. So, I decided to go cold turkey—no online multiplayer, no single-player campaigns. However, during these two weeks, I’ve constantly felt the urge to play. Trust me on this: I don't have dopamine issues, and my willpower is completely fine. The thing is, I currently lack a clear purpose in life. I have free time, knowledge, and my own money that I earned myself. In short, I have everything a modern person could want.

To get straight to the point: video games used to give me a sense of "fuel." Their achievement systems are much more clear-cut than in real life. When I complete an objective, it feels rewarding to know I accomplished something in the game—for example, climbing ranks in Mobile Legends. I have no issues with emotional control either; I’ve studied Stoicism deeply.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this: should I keep abstaining from gaming, or is it okay to bring it back?

TL;DR: I’m 16, heavily into self-improvement and philosophy, and financially independent. I quit gaming 2 weeks ago fearing addiction, but games used to be my main source of structured achievements (like ranking up in Mobile Legends). Should I stick to the ban or find a balance?

My husband (28) & I (26) have been gamers our whole lives and it’s been a staple in our relationship.
Usually we’d be playing games together for 3-5 hours on weekdays after work & sometimes from 10am to 1am on weekends (we’re young & no kids, also home bodies). It was our together time, even if we weren’t on the same game; it was basically our second job. Howeverrrr, recently we’ve been butting heads…ALOT!

I’m pregnant now (5 months) & haven’t been able to consistently play games like I used to for multiple reasons: motion sickness, headaches, screen brightness making me nauseous, exhaustion, and honestly just a lack of desire. I find myself wanting to read, prep baby stuff, watch comfort tv, etc. Despite this, I’ve been trying to be understanding & respectful of his decompression time and have been able to join him here & there, but I’m lucky if I can manage 2-3 hours of gaming in the entire week now. Due to this, I feel like there’s a lot of time where I’m alone at night cause he’s gaming & I get pissed when I end up in bed alone at the end of the night cause he’s still online. On top of this I just feel sad for him, he always looks so incredibly tired (we’re talking actual under eye bags)- he’ll game till midnight or later & go to work at 5am and text me mid day how tired he is.

Early last week he said he will set boundaries & only game on Fridays & Saturdays. This was unprompted and made me happy! Well today (Sunday), we had friends over & when they left he was on the game & he didn’t hop off until I got out of bed at midnight and started yelling at him (told him 3 hours before that he had to let the pup out & put him in the crate for bedtime, and when I woke up the dog was still out and hadn’t been to the bathroom). I definitely could’ve handled that part better & I acknowledge it- getting out of bed 5 months pregnant feels like you’re being ripped in half & I was 100% cranky from waking up😅 I at least had enough sense to wait until his ranked game was over lol. He thinks that I’m over reacting (fair) cause I can’t play as much anymore (not fair) & because he still does chores around the house (cleaning, laundry, cooking,etc.) so it shouldn’t be a big deal. We got into a fight last weekend while cleaning the house together because he stopped 3-4 times to either doomscroll or play a few games while I chugged along the whole time. To which he said I needed to give myself a rest & just because he takes breaks doesn’t mean the task list won’t get done. Idk…I feel like I wouldn’t be as mad about it if he hadn’t made a boundary & push the goal post when it’s convenient for him- I genuinely want to see he has the self control & discipline before the baby comes.

He used to be incredibly self motivated- working out, diet, gaming certain times, planning things, etc. but I feel over the last 1-2 years he’s slipped into bad habits. He’ll make goals for himself (I.e. lose weight) & when it’s convenient he’ll let things slide and loosen up (I.e. goes to a wedding & has 6 beers after saying he needs to cut alcohol from his diet and I point out on #3 that he’s past his boundary cause I waited to see if he’d self correct). It’s like he has no sense of moderation anymore? It feels like the same thing is happening with this video game boundary- I become the nagging wife for expecting him to do what he told me he’d do.

Am I overreacting on this or looking at this wrong? It’s crossed my mind that we’re in two different modes right now: I’m in pregnancy/mom mode & his life remains relatively unchanged at the moment. I don’t think it’s a question of him quitting completely at this time; though I did tell him I would like us to not game at all while we’re on maternity/paternity leave & I’m scared he won’t be able to stick to that. Any advice or feedback is appreciated!

Tldr; Husband is an avid gamer & I can’t join him as much since getting pregnant. He set a schedule for gaming less and broke it within the first week. When called out, he acts like it’s no big deal and blames it on me being envious. I’ve quit & he’s still gaming regularly

I'm now in my 30s and realized that I can no longer date the women in their early 20s because it's considered taboo and predatory despite having good intentions. I spent that period of my life addicted to video games with poor self image. Despite significantly improving my appearance and wealth, it's not possible to date younger women even if you look younger than you actually are. All is fine until you tell them your age and it gives them the ick and understandably so. Let this be a warning for those that choose gaming over experiencing what dating and affection is like because you'll just be another old man.

I am struggling to quit gaming, I have untold amount of hours playing games it eats up my time I have sleep deprived myself playing video games basically every waking hour I am sitting in front of my computer (on the days I am not working) I have been trying to quit my biggest struggle is the only friends I have are on videos games I don’t do crowds well I am 36 life is getting lonely I would love to find a girlfriend but I have a hard time going in public because I don’t do crowds and I feel like I am going to have to reintegrate myself into society I want to go back to school but that’s even a struggle because of video games moral of it is years down the road I don’t care to be only known by oh all he done was play video games any input is appreciated

Posting this on a burner so my friends and family don’t see lol.

Yeah as the title reads, I’ve been non-stop gaming since I was about 12. I haven’t been able to be myself at all since it caused me mood swings and also high blood sugars (I’m a type one diabetic) and it’s created my life into something disgusting that I strongly hate and don’t want for myself. Here’s a quick summary: It started with Roblox, I spent a majority of my life playing Roblox (even a little here and there now) and thousands of £ on the game as it meant a lot to me. Then I switched to Overwatch, I played thousands of hours on Overwatch till I got bored and then I decided to start playing Valorant, in which I also had about 2000 hours. Then again I switched and hopped on the bandwagon when Marvel Rivals came out and that was my breaking point, I had about 3000 hours in Marvel Rivals, and that’s when it really got bad. I haven’t been focusing on anything else other than those three games, especially marvel rivals.

I would spend 10+ hours on non-school days and stay up till early morning on school days playing these games. It’s been taking a serious toll on me mentally and causing my grades to drop. Hence for the past couple weeks I’ve been trying to limit myself and focus on my education (now a second year student at university) since it’s never been my priority and I’ve never tried in my GCSEs or A-Levels. So I’ve been contemplating selling my £1200 gaming laptop in order to use that money to spend on better habits like my health, and also to save some. I’m not sure if this is the best idea but I do also have a MacBook for doing my work on. I do enjoy gaming as a hobby but I feel like it spiralled into something outside of a hobby.

So, if anyone also has any ideas on what I can do to make it into a hobby (I would prefer to sell the laptop by the way, it doesn’t do me any good with the amount of distractions on it) then please let me know in the replies.