Hey all.

**Wall of text warning**

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I'm 39 years old and was a lifelong gamer with big chunks taken out in many places, mostly due to manic episodes that had me doing things like traveling to other countries and running for political office and trying comedy. Basically during my manic highs, I was socially active and productive. When I leveled off, I'd go back to gaming and become useless.

During the times when I gamed I was miserable. I never wanted to admit it. The wall of denial was 10 feet thick and solid steel.

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After graduating high school at age 17, I alternated between binge gaming and getting into crazy unrealistic relationships. Both were unproductive, and I wasn't going to college like I should have been (I was voted Class Bookworm - it was my destiny).

Finally, after having a blowup with my then-stepfather because I was a leech living at home, I applied to colleges and got accepted. I finally moved out at age 19.

In college, I moved into an-all male dorm where everyone gamed all the time. Halo and Smash Brothers at all hours. It was 2003 and a dorm fully connected through LAN was both a gift and a curse.

I saw guys never go to class who just sat in their rooms playing video games, not showering or going outside. That type of guy would disappear after one or two semesters and never return. That always hit me right in the gut. They just washed down the gutter without even waving goodbye.

If you want a great sense of how that is, read the Hearts in Atlantis section of Stephen King's book of the same name. It's about a bunch of college kids who become addicted to a stupid card game and piss their lives down the toilet.

I actually worked hard in college, despite way too much gaming (my GPA should have been much higher), graduated in 2007, and moved away with girlfriend at the time.

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2007 to 2011 was a really dark time for me because I lived with her. All we did was play games and hate the world. We were always on the computer doomscrolling, shouting about politics, or playing a game. Our lives had no real direction. We loved to hate life. And I think we kind of hated ourselves. Our only common bond was this dark cloud over our heads.

Sometime in 2011, I had a manic episode and broke up with her. I took the back vacation pay from my job at a bookstore and moved to an entirely new city with no plan or backup. Something in my soul just needed a brand new start.

I didn't have a computer or console. So I wasn't gaming.

The "sink or swim" situation forced me to find real work with real grinding. I also studied Mandarin Chinese for about six months and decided to go visit China. After that I came back to the United States and moved in with some friends in their house and then began the best years of my life up to that point: 2013 - 2018 (my early to mid 30s).

During that time I:

• Got in shape. Went from a scrawny 125 lbs to 170 lbs through lifting weights and rowing. I'd wake up at 5 AM, go the gym, go row on the lake, go to work, then go back to the gym after work.
• Entered into a relationship with someone who actually had goals. We lived life - going to events, getting a huge friends circle, becoming a power couple. Had seriously mind-blowing sex regularly for a long time which honestly made a hell of a lot of difference. It leveled me out in ways I couldn't have imagined.
• Obtained an amazing job that paid a great salary.
• Went into local politics and won a municipal election.
• Got into therapy.
• But also started drinking and partying way too much.

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Gaming and drinking up to that point had been so ingrained in my family, friends, and social circles that I never ever questioned it.

It was normal for people in my life to own hundreds of games or spend hundreds or thousands on entertainment setups. It was normal for me to have friends who drank hard liquor all the time but somehow also lived these weird Stepford/Keeping Up With the Joneses lifestyles.

It was normal for me to listen to my little brother who only talked about gaming.

It was normal for me to watch people binge game or binge drink or basically just watch people live in addiction and not care. It feels bad typing that but I watched people pissing their lives away and I didn't care.

It never seemed off or abnormal to me until I started getting into Stop Gaming type forums and literature, started watching Andrew Huberman videos about neurophysiology and how games act like hard drugs on the brain. And also when I had to acknowledge that the stress of my own life had driven me into a drinking addiction. I was becoming a shitty person who just wanted to use others and get mine.

I was working a full time job, holding down relationships, working an elected position, and drinking myself into oblivion every night. Then I'd numb myself with some game or another, usually really complicated games that had crazy mechanics which were regularly patched or updated to keep them too complicated for anyone to ever truly master (think Paradox games like EU4). I'd spend months just playing these games in the back of my head, talking about them, debating them, arguing about their updates and patches, just really useless stuff.

And I'd also go out and party all night and try to have sex with random people just to do it. I didn't care how it hurt them or me. It was ridiculously cliché. I know there's the idea that gamers are sexless losers. Some of them are also losers who have sex.

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When I eventually started acknowledging and fixing the drinking problem, I also started learning about the mania and how my wild impulses were leading me to all kinds of addiction. I finally got medicated for the mania and started getting real clarity on my life situation and my issues that need fixing. The medication gave me space to think for the first time in years.

That led me to wondering what life experiences that addictive gaming was taking from me, and honestly wondering what it had been taking from me since I was a child. I started to see this pervasive cycle where I'd get wild on mania and do crazy stuff, then numb out the world with binge gaming to avoid the eventual "lows" associated with bipolar swings. I'd just become a lump until my next manic episode.

Over the course of some weeks back in 2021 I finally realized this about gaming and addiction in general:

"I can keep fighting this battle for years, or I can just win this now and never have to worry about it again."

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So I deleted my Steam account (I only did PC gaming - had about 300 games on that account) and left myself with one emulated game on my PC which I played on and off at the beginning of the year and finally deleted back at the end of January, beginning of February.

By the time I deleted that game, it wasn't some horrible willpower-testing situation. It was just like turning off the last light in an abandoned building. Just a natural thing to do. I was glad to have it gone.

After a lifetime of fighting addictions and psychological messes of one way or another, I was ready to be done. I was sick of it all and just wanted to be free in my own mind.

Since I got serious about quitting games in 2021, I've:

• Gotten back in shape and finally got a flat stomach for the first time since I was a teenager.
• Taken up boxing.
• Learned to paint portraits and discovered I love painting. This morning I was at the local art supply store and bought some boards to do my first large scale portraits.
• Learned Italian (technically I started in 2019 but finally got serious last year). I can now read books in Italian without any trouble, listen to YouTube videos with minimal trouble. Right now I'm working on conversation. I went to a language meetup a few weeks ago and was invited to an Italian meetup in the future.
• Got three bonuses at work and three raises. I'm up for another raise this month.
• Taken up meditation which I do every morning for 20 minutes.
• Learned to forgive myself and practice compassion for others. It may sound corny but this could possibly be the best thing that has happened to me overall. It's a gift I've given myself and makes me feel connected to others again.
• Stopped getting into stupid relationships. Bad relationships are just games and can be just as addictive as gaming. I focus now on friends.
• Bought all new furniture.
• Completely redecorated my space and bought new clothes.
• Made amends with some people I hurt during my darker times.
• Changed my diet completely. This had the side effect of easing a bad case of joint inflammation that had cursed me. Eliminating fried foods, processed sugar, while focusing on protein and healthy carbs and unsaturated fats really just made me lighter on my feet.
• Found my father's side of the family through a DNA search. I had put this off for a long time. But I finally wanted to find him. Unfortunately I learned he died in 2014 but I did find a brother I never knew I had. Now we talk almost every day.
• Fixed my damn credit score.
• Became very active in the recovery community, volunteering to help other people who have ended up in the same situation.
• Bought a new car.
• Gave up caffeine. I'm caffeine-sensitive, so it makes me unbelievably anxious. I had used caffeine to try to jet fuel my way through recovery, which backfired.
• Started taking cold showers regularly. Been doing this for about a year. Weirdly it's now one of the best parts of my day.
• Stopped putting so much pressure on myself - which probably sounds really ironic considering all the items on this list. But I stand by this. The moment you stop saying: "I have to do all this shit" and you allow yourself to relax and just be, you'll start to actually WANT to do some things. And you will begin to do necessary life-changing things without forcing yourself, without using precious willpower.
• Allowed myself to feel again. I had become seriously two-dimensional through addiction. In my relationships, job performance, creative endeavors, all of it. I had wanted to live to make money or look cool. Lots of people go through that phase. It's not a huge deal, but it feels like I'm a different creature now that I allow myself to give a shit about other people and things.
• Cried for the first time in years ("Speak Like a Child" episode of Cowboy Bebop - grab a Kleenex if you're going to watch it).
• Found my place in the world. I truly believe all the work I put in with other people, all the skills I accomplish, all the things I learn, are helping the world. And that over the course of my life all the things I achieve will become useful, will become the keys to the locks of opportunities waiting for me in the future. I like holding up my little piece of the world. I hold it up proudly.

Now my list of clichés - but they're still true:

Take heart.

The work becomes fun.

When life comes into focus, every moment takes on meaning. It feels like every moment is valuable. And when that happens, you naturally want to fill each moment with something that will advance your goals, help others, or just in some way open up space to grow. Difficult things become fun and desirable. Pain becomes a type of fuel.

No one is perfect or ever will be. You're not here to be perfect. You're here to be you.

You're here to be the you that you've always wanted to be. The work of life is this:

Moving enough pieces around the board until that version of yourself has a chance to finally step out on the stage and present themselves to the world.

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I have said this before and will keep saying it:

If gaming is in your way, get it out of the way.

If alcohol is in your way, get it out of the way.

If a bad diet is in your way, get it out of the way.

If negative hateful thoughts are in your way, get them out of the way.

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The power inside you is raw. It's scary. It's crazy. It's unpredictable. It's you.

Give it space. Give it time. Let it grow.

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Thanks for reading and being a part of this community. I wish the best for you all.