How I got free:
I loved gaming. I loved how I could escape my reality instead of having to live in it. I loved all the fun I could have at the click of a button. I loved how I could with a few clicks and some button mashing I could create friends and form relationships that felt like they were real. When I was stuck in real life I would fantasize and dream about new ways to play my games, and new games that were coming out soon. I would completely immerse myself in my computer generated world and I never wanted to leave. Sleep was an inconvenience for me. In order to keep food from being the same way I also made food as addictive and nearly as much an escape from my feelings as the games were. When I tried being social I needed some form of addiction to cope. Games on my smartphone. Gameboy, Gameboy advanced. PSP anything to stay connected to my imaginary world as much as possible so I did not have to participate in life. Well as the years went by and I got older and older I began to fall behind developmentally. Coping with the outside world and with reality became more and more difficult. I ran, and I ran, and I ran from my life until it caught up with me like a cheetah and tackled me like a gazelle. I was staring at a cliff of my own making. I could not blame responsibility on anyone else any more. I could not avoid my feelings anymore with games, meds, food. Girls and boys had left me long ago by the unmanageability that I created from my abuse of games. The unmanageability spilled into my gaming at this point too and I could no longer form enjoyable relationships in games. My only relationships disappeared the millisecond I hit the power button. I was no longer able to draw on their comfort anymore. When I was outside it was much worse. I felt alien and alone. I felt a victim of society and unable to focus on anything or anyone else but on my own perceived pain and suffering caused by my addiction. The worst part was, I didn't even know that's what the problem was. Until one day it became hard to even want to live when I played video games. I could not stop and knew I could not stop and nothing I tried said or did worked. My world became smaller and smaller And SMALLER. I no voice anymore to cry for help. Until the fateful day came when my body had had enough. My mind had had enough. My emotions had had enough. One more sleepless night and all I wanted to do was to leave this all behind and stay in my game forever! I was about to lose my Job and I knew it. I was about to lose my home and I knew it. I was about to lose my money and my freedom and I knew it. I was about to lose a bachelors degree I had worked so hard on, struggled so long on to maintain and I didn't care... At that moment I didn't care I knew if I continued I would lose it and I didn't care. I kept playing and I couldn't stop! Then a voice inside me the one shred of sanity I had left reached out through the blackness of my diseased mind and said "NOOO!!!!", and in my terror I fled. I fled the game as I hit the power button. I fled my living room and ran to my bedroom upstairs in my single one bedroom apartment all alone. All alone and no one but myself and the evil thing down stairs I blamed for wanting my soul. Little did I know it was all me. I was kicking away from the cliff that was getting closer and video games and my addictions were pushing me over it as I kicked and resisted. The cliff to losing everything. The cliff to ending my life once and for all. Exiting by a slash of my wrist as I often joked about in my games. But this time I was for the first time seriously considering a slash wrists in real life. I fled. I ran upstairs to my bed- a pad on the floor extended from the tiny Ikea couch I called my bed. A blanket with no sheets. No furniture. No pictures. No kitchen utensils. Nothing to show but a table, piles of trash, and pizza boxes soda cans and clothes that were the only thing I recycled. 3 grand in my bank and just this nothing but a 2k computer and a 125 dollar razor mouse and a 21 inch by 14 inch screen I am typing on now. Reality came crashing in. My devastation came crashing in there was no hiding it anymore. This was the life I really had. I had an impulse to get the knife and end the game once and for all but I didn't. I went to bed. In my one last bit of desperation I said in my panic "I can handle this!" I woke up tossing and turning as I always do. Fat. Tired, feeling ugly. Looking in the mirror and seeing ugly. Yet I never went to the mirror that day. I had a galaxy S2 and I played it often. In my desperation I said "I got this. I will get a tasking app and I will get my life back together!" like I once said so many times before. It was 8am when I started searching the Google store for that tasking app. I was still in my bed. Then when I looked at the phone clock at the top right of my screen and saw that it was 6 o'clock in the evening, that I had still not found a tasking app, still not left my bed, still playing this app game I downloaded at 8am in the morning and it was now 6 at night the sun was going down and I was still playing and could not stop it I screamed!!!! I fled again!! I ran away. I ran away from it all I ran out the door and I ran to some friends I had made. I met these friends 2 weeks earlier when one of them knocked on my door and proceeded to yell and scream at me about all the yelling and screaming I would do at my games and how violent I was with my table that would echo through the apartments beside me. They threatened me with the cops and in my desperation before I fled a few weeks earlier I asked them for friends ship and help. I did not stop though and 2 weeks later I was running out of my house and I ran to them. I burst in their door crying and begged them to help me stay away from my computer. Help me stay away from gaming. I cried and was shaking. After 29 years of trying this was what my life had been reduced too. Then my new friends told me they were members of narcotics anonymous and invited me to a meeting. I sat down in that meeting because I didn't want to leave their side because I knew if I was left alone for one sec I would game. I stay the whole meeting. I heard people who talked about the disease of addiction and how even though I thought these were a bunch of junkies and dope fiends somehow they were going through the exact same issues and pains I was. Like me they could not stop. Like me they continued to want to go back to their addiction even though they did not want to. I started attending meetings in this fellowship and read their literature and when I read it I was blown away! These dope addicts used completely different things than I did yet our unmanageability was the same. I was shocked and blown away. As I read, more and more I Identified, because the books did not address drugs what they really addressed was addiction regardless of its form. I found more in common with people that had shot up dope, went to jail, and did things I never did or ever thought I would do. Things I told myself inside I never would do because that was beneath me. As much as I hated normal people I wanted to be judged as normal more than anything. So I kept reading and everything I mean everything applied to me with the exception of jails and institutions. However I can completely relate with death. That night I nearly opted out. A large part of me wanted to. Instead I found the 12 steps. Somehow a group of drug addicts helped me find a way out from my own addiction even though quite a bit of them had never even played a video game much less get hooked on them. Yet my addiction had the same symptoms as they did with their drugs. That's when I knew I was an addict. That's when I knew no matter what I could not load up another game, not Sudoku, not face book apps, not android apps, no hand helds, no consoles, no computer games of any kind. I quit them all and in just 3 weeks I had furniture, I was working again, I still had money, I had tons of energy, I was making friends and I actually even had a plant in my house. All the trash was cleaned up papers that scattered the floor were in neat stacks ready to be sorted and my place was spotless and fully furnished. That was just 3 weeks and I had not worked steps yet. Once I did my journey took off and I have been doing the steps ever since.
Live Without Limits
-Jacob S.
How YOU can get free:
Phase 1: Separation.
Print these phases out , then get outside as soon as you can. Get away from your gaming room for at least 24 hours. Try not to enter it for any reason. Delete any phone apps immediately. Stay away from any video screens as much as possible. You may even want to consider turning your phone off. If you make it this far, once you get to a safe, somewhat comfortable, game-free place you will need to sit and think for a while with little distraction. You need to decide if you are ready to stop now before this 24 hours is up. Do not go back home or enter your gaming room until you have made a decision. Making a decision to stop means stopping forever. Not just for a few weeks or whatever dream we like to conjure up to think were not addicts and we got this. You need to think long and hard as to what brought you to this moment and write these things down and do not lose them. This is very important and will come into play later. One things certain, if you're reading this, there is definitely a problem. It is time to sort this confusion out away from all the stress and games. Once you've thought long and hard and have finally decided that your doing this for the rest of your life, and that only death and misery await you if you play again you can go to phase two, make sure you keep anything you wrote down about why you had to do this in the first place make them no longer than one sentence for each reason. This helps keep it clear for later reading.
Phase 2: Take a photo of you and your unmanageability.
If you have family or any friends I am going to assume you have been hanging out with them and have asked them for support. If you are alone ask for your neighbor to support you during this critical transition. No matter what the situation, you need to have someone with you during this phase. Take someone with you and drop your pride today. Get a camera of any kind and enter your gaming room with that person. Have that person take a picture of you in your unmanageability. Do not game. Make sure you are not in there alone and ask them to support you while you're in that room. Drop your pride and let this person see your mess. This darkness hides in the dark and grows until destroyed by the light of exposure. Then have your support take a picture of you in all of your unmanageability. The longer they can stay with you for the rest of that day the better. When you are finally in your home by yourself or back in your gaming area and not gaming you are ready for phase 3. If you game start back to phase 1 and do these in order over again.
Phase 3: Surviving the first week.
The first week was and is not easy at all. You may feel shakes. You may feel panic. You may feel so tired and yet so restless at the same time. You may feel a black pit of boredom. Everyone is different when they quit gaming. You need to stay out of the house as much as possible even when you hate it. Especially when you hate it! You need to be with people at all times even when you don't want to be. Especially when you don't want to be! If you become bored, sleep. If you cannot sleep, lay in your bed. If you cannot lay in your bed, clean. If you cannot clean, knock on your neighbors door and talk their ear off, if you can get them involved do it. If not it doesn't matter. Keep moving keep doing things around your house if you cannot leave. The more you are not at your house for any reason the better. No matter what, do not visit or look at any video screens for any reason or as much as humanly possible. No facebook, no youtube, no craigslist no nothing! No movies! Stay off the screen! Your just trading one addiction for another and in your volatile state you could easily go back to gaming from anything else you do on a video screen without some time to recover. You may be able to moderate other things you do on the video screen later but right now you need to get as far away from video screens and gaming on them as possible and you tubing or whatever for hours and hours is about as close to excessive gaming as you can get to true gaming addiction. This withdrawal period is very similar to the detox period that drug addicts go through when they get clean in how difficult it is and how miserable it can get before the smoke clears. Just stay away from the screens. One day at a time. One minute at a time. One second if need be. You have to find ways to live that don't involve video screens in order to break free, there is no shortcut here. If you can find a way to leave the house for a week on a vacation or a trip of some kind that's even better. The more time with friends and away from the house and the more time in bed the easier it will be for you. After a week move to phase 4. If you still have not played anything with a screen, Congratulations you made it! The hardest parts almost over. This is all about retraining your brain out of the damage caused by all the gaming and screen time.
Phase 4: Trusting yourself and your home.
Now it's time to for perhaps the first time to face your true enemy: Yourself and the environment you created. At this point if you did not follow my instructions and stayed glued to a screen even though you still did not game, now is the time were you must stop being glued to all and any video screens. Set a timer and do not check email or do anything on your screens for more than 20 minutes and no more than what is constructive and necessary for you to meet your daily obligations such as, pay bills, send emails, attend olganon meetings. Order literature or shop for an important relevant item that is going to help you stay unplugged. Sign up for yoga class or martial arts. Those are just some examples. If you have a console it is time to move that thing into the closet or storage unit. Buy a movie player to replace it if you are not ready to give up movies or do not wish to. Or you just want one for show and to entertain guests like I do. Do not game for any reason! If you do you have to start all over! Try your best to severely limit your time on face book. More than 20 minutes is not ok and just feeds the addiction. I personally check face book and then I immediately log off the second I am idle for more than a few seconds or I catch myself looking other people up. Other people do not matter right now. We are here to save our lives. Be very careful with chatting online in this early stage of recovery as many games also have chatting and this can trigger us. Ok now that we have set some ground rules it is time to face your wreckage. Time to clean this up. Get up and get outside as much as you can during this time as well. However when you are home or once you feel comfortable being alone again, it's time to clean house. First clean everything you possibly can. Throw away nything that reminds you of your old gaming life. Tear it all down. Get 55 gallon trash bags and throw it out. If you cannot then put them in storage away from your place. This is all about how you feel so easy does it. It took me 60 days to throw the last remnants of my gaming reckage away, just get rid of what you can. Consolidate everything you own and put it in a new place that makes more sense to you. You might be amazed at what you had never thought of before while you wre glued to a screen. Once you have organized your place to how you see fit. The trash is gone, the soda cans are gone, any pizza boxes or food trash is gone. Stray papers are gone and any other types of clutter are gone. You have beautified your place of living and it looks different this is very important. Your hanging out with others and if you are not you talk to the neighbor now and then and some family members if your able. Your away from screens and you've got several weeks unplugged. Good job! Others and yourself may have already started noticing diffrences in your behavior. The world may start to look different. Feel this and take it all in and enjoy the taste of whats to come for you. Then get ready to move to the next phase...
Phase 5: The final showdown
Play music get motivated get pumped do whatever you want to and get yourself psyched up. Its time we get these games out of our life once and for all! Do a war cry, cheer, dance, or pump yourfist, do whatever you need to do to get charged. Its time to kick your addiction out of your house. Whether you do this the following week or 3 months down the road, you knew this reckoning was coming. Some day you knew that it was either you or the games and there was going to be no way around this. So lets go! Now we are on the attack. We have got ourselves to aplace were we can handle not gaming for a length of time and have been able to withstand the temptation and withdrawal symptoms of unplugging. We have accomplished a miracle. Now its time to work another miracle. It is time to remove our games from our lives. Take any cd keys you have and toss them delete them whatever you need to do to destroy them. Throw away all your games in or out of storage. All the disks all the cartridges if you have any. Don't give them away throw them away. We don't want to feed other peoples addiction by giving our games to them. If you are borrowing games return or mail them. No excuses get the games out of your house the day you decide to and do not stop until they are all gone by any means necessary. You are the terminator. Delete all games. Be searching and fearless. If you have reservations about throwing away your console or games because of the price then sell them. There are no reasons for you to keep any games in your house any more. Once complete removal and destruction of your games and game paraphrenelia is complete including t-shirts, posters, books, or any other objects you held sacred because of gaming. Once this is done you can move to phase 6.
Phase 6: Get a sponsor
You have by your actions made a conscious decision to get free by completing the first 5 phases. Now we move on to maintenance and the reasons why we wanted to keep playing in the first place. First thing you need to do is find a sponsor. You do not have to get one from olganon though it is recommended. If you have experience with other addictions such as alcohol addiction (alcoholism) Narcotic addiction, Gambling addiction, or codependency you can always get a sponsor from that group as an alternative. I prefer narcotics anonymous to work my steps. This is because I do not have any face to face olganon meetings in my area. Also narcotics anonymous has been around longer and has far more relevant literature regarding our disease than any other fellowship including Olga and AA. NA's Sponsors in my area generally have a lot of time away from their addiction and have helped me heal from mine. No matter what you need to get a sponsor from a 12 step program and start working steps with that sponsor. Make sure that right away you let that sponsor know before you invest to much or work steps that you are a video gamer and must work your steps and a program with consideration of your video game addiction and any other addictions you may have. If that sponsor is not comfortable, dump that sponsor and ask another. My sponsor has never been hooked on video games and has been clean for 21 years in Narcotics anonymous. He takes my addiction very seriously and does not even need to know about video games for me to work my steps with him thoroughly and effectively because we are both addicts. This is not about saving your face, you're here to save your ass. Dump your sponsor and move on if they cannot accept your addiction as it is and guide you through the steps on it. Find a sponsor that is right for you. Do not try to be right for your sponsor. Once you have a sponsor and have started working on step 1 your sponsor can help you decide what is best for you in your recovery. Or you can send me a private message and I can help you. I pray that this helps make the process a little clearer for at least some people. Btw make sure your not using drugs or drinking alcahol either. If you dont listen your disease will transfer into drug and alcahol addiction which is just as dangerous if not more immediately so to all addicts. So we must abstain from all addictions in order to recover. I may post more as I progress in my own recovery. Feel free to post and write me. I love you all and only wish for your freedom from active video screen addiction. Peace to all!
Sincerally,
Jacob Stewart
Addict
Live Without Limits
-Jacob S.
Hi Jacob,
Thank you for your powerful message. Yes it is true that dope addicts and alcoholics can help us recover from gaming addiction. They know what addiction is all about and how to recover.
I used to suffer from terminal uniqueness. I believed only gamer could understand my problems (in fact only those who played my own game). I realize now that an addict is an addict.
I am going to my NA meeting tonight. There I can share about my powerlessness and my addiction. And everyone there will understand.
I have long advocated here that in the absence of face-to-face Olganon meetings that we should attend NA. I am happy to find another who shares this view.
Blessings,
Olga/non member since Dec. 2008 Check out my latest video on Gaming Addiction and public awareness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-6JZLnQ29o
Yup, thanks for this, Jacob. Important share.
Acceptance. When I am disturbed, it is because a person, place, thing, or situation is unacceptable to me. I find no serenity until I accept my life as being exactly the way it is meant to be. Nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. Acknowledge the problem, but live the solution!
I'm still in a family and as young as a teen so I have few questions.
-Are there any exeptions as in when the family needs to call/text to you?
-Are there any exeptions as in when the family needs you to look up something on the screen (educational purposes, new, articles, etc.)?
This is only for the 3rd Phase. Please let me know as soon as possible so I can make the best decisions in life.
Jacob shared what worked for him. What worked for other people is different in some ways.
I never avoided computerized devices. I work on computers for a living. I use them for a lot of things. I use a cell phone. It hasn't been a problem for me.
What I avoided completely was all interactive electronic entertainment. In other words, computer games. I did not play any type of game, even the non-addictive ones, because they all lead me back down into gaming hell. I also avoided videos of video game play. That's all I avoided. Worked for me.
Just as important as what to move away from is what to move toward. Social connection is one of the biggest. I highly recommend going to meetings, making new acquaintences, reconnecting with friends and family, and socializing with people to whatever extent you're capable at the moment.
Congrats on your new path of making the best decisions in life. It ain't easy but it's worth every spec of effort and pays off ten-fold.