How to quit a video game addition

It’s been going on 6 years that I have been trying to quit video games. I imagine all the skills that I would have learned by this point and in my mind, I feels great to quit and to start honing my craft, and yet when times get low and all I want to do is huddle up in my blanket and play what I know I am good at is when I relapse back into the thing that I swore never to partake in again. This is a research paper mostly for myself but can help anyone that wants to also follow in these research footprints in order to quit video games all together.

At first I was pulled into the game because of what it allowed me to do. For a moment, I could command troops like a military general and fight in a war bigger than myself. The graphics and skill are what got me going but it was the escapism that kept me there. There have been times when I am out downtown and looking to meet other people. Sometimes I find it hard to talk with other people are that is when I have the urge to escape back into my room to find that familiar video game that I know I can perform without humiliation. It’s a place that I know I have the skill to play. It’s a place that allows me to forget about the problems of life and focus on the problems of the game.

What has happened over the years is that what challenges my mind is more fascinating in the game than it is in real life. If you remember what the key to flow chart looks like there is a sweet spot in a task when the task is challenging but not too challenging to be frustrating, but also easy but not too easy to be boring. Life has gotten frustrating and so the game solves this with new inventive challenges. The new challenge is to make life a flow sport like that game has been for so long. To do this will take time.

It would seem that I need to grow my life in order to make it easy to find flow activity in. After my life has grown a certain degree then I will be able to easily take it to the streets when I am feeling like a gamer. It’s in this first faze that would be the hardest. The best option that I can think of right off the bat would be to use as much willpower as possible. Willpower is only so strong though so the next step would be to uninstall the game. Past this point the only thing I can think of is to really get into my own head how disgusting video game playing really is.

I have missed out on so many opportunities because of gaming. If I had put my time into anything other than the game that I played I could have easily mastered it by now. If I would have played an instrument with this time I would have been able to travel to New Orleans with passions and then been able to make friends and even had sex with many more women that I did the last time that I went. If I would have spent all that time working or even looking for a job I would have had maybe 10 grand in the bank right now and probably be driving a car. If I would have spent that time reading I could have brought all my friend new information and been a much more interesting person than I am. If I would have spent all that time in the gym exercising I would be buff as shit right now. What has video gaming done for me. I was able to connect with a few friends through the game but nothing ever really came of it. Instead I zonk myself out in a chare somewhere and neglect the things that are really important in life.

Video games are a bunch of shit when played in excess. If you like them than good for you. If you like women or the outdoors or money or anything that good an important in this work then you will not play video games and instead work on bettering yourself because bettering yourself is what this is really about. Who wants to sit with the same skill set their entire lives? We all want to be good and then we all want to be great. Let’s make this life about becoming great, not about playing some bullshit until life catches up with us and we are forced to take action. Take action now. Become better at something.