Video Games are great! They entertain us, challenge our minds, and test our skills. However, some people take this to the extreme and end up living and breathing video games; I was one of those people. I would wake up after a short 4-6 hour sleep and hop on my games until I went to bed. Although it took me a lot to get over my addiction, I succeeded and have never been happier. I will share with you my life story and addiction, followed by the steps that helped me get rid of my video game addiction. If you’re just interested in the steps, click here.
The Beginning
When I was a kid, I spent much of my time indoors. I hardly played outside as I didn’t have friends at that young of an age. This led to cartoons and video games being my entertainment of choice. Cartoons were my favorite; perhaps that’s why I enjoy animated films and shows above all else. Video games were very similar: a style of cartoon that could be played. This was the start of the addiction.
I briefly remembered playing an Atari 2600 because my parents owned one. However, my first console was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). The only games I remember playing on the SNES were Super Mario World and Super Mario Kart. Occasionally, I played Madden, or whatever the football game was called back then, with my father because he enjoyed beating me in games.
My parents were split, and the SNES was at my father’s house, so I rarely got to play it. However, when I was there, I stuck to the Mario games. On my mother’s side, we didn’t really have consoles because we would arrive home late. My mother was a single mother of two who worked full-time to support the family. That meant that a lot of our time was spent with the grandparents. At our grandparents’ house, we had a gaming machine that changed my life: the Nintendo 64.
Nintendo 64
To me, this was truly the beginning of my addiction. Being able to move my character in a 3D space was out of this world. All I wanted to do was explore the Mario worlds, race go-karts, and live out my fantasies in these games.
After school, we would get picked up by my grandparents and taken to their house, where I would immediately jump on the N64. I would grab the spaceship-looking controller and game my way until my mom came home to pick us up. I hated leaving my grandparent’s house because it took me away from my escape and back to reality.
Whenever we got to our house, it was time to do all the chores: eat, shower, do homework, clean up stuff, etc. It was never fun. Therefore, I associated the house with negativity, while being with my grandparents was positive. I never understood why it had to be that way, and I disliked my mother for it. It felt like I was being punished, forcing me always to want to be in an alternate universe.
We eventually got a PlayStation One, but I was never really attached to that console like I was with the Nintendo 64. Something about it wasn’t captivating; maybe it was the lack of Mario-like games.
The Next Generation
The PlayStation 2 has been released. I’m now a teenager and going through puberty. My competitive side is starting to come out, and this new console has great first-person shooters (FPS), a genre of game I’m not used to playing.
The first FPS I remember captivating me was Call of Duty 2:Big Red One. I spent many hours on this game because I was good at it. I was so good that I went back to my mom, begging and pleading, to get the LAN connection for the console. Many people don’t even know that the PS2 had online connectivity, but I did. It required an adapter that connected to the back and an ethernet cable that connected to your internet. You also had to install special software for the console to have online capabilities.
The Online Revolution
The PlayStation 2 was online. The addiction was beginning. My anger was rolling in. Playing against others was the closest thing I had to socialization. I was fairly quiet at school and didn’t talk to people. During this period of my life, I would still play the now-outdated Nintendo 64 at my grandparent’s house, and whenever I got home, I jumped straight to the PlayStation for Call of Duty.
This was also the dial-up time. For those of you too young to know what “dial-up” is, imagine your Wi-Fi going down anytime someone calls your phone, or in this case, our house phone. It was angering to lose connection in the middle of a game. I continued this lifestyle until I visited my cousin’s house one day, and he showed me something that changed my life.
The Switch to PC
We didn’t visit my cousin’s house often, but this particular day was ingrained into my head as it changed my life again. My cousin showed me and let me try this wonderful game called Counter-Strike Source. Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter game for PC. The controls were different than anything I ever played because I was used to a controller, not a mouse and keyboard. I played for the short amount of time that we were there and left with nothing on my mind but Counter-Strike.
I asked my mother for the game when we were at the store. However, we had a problem. The problem was that I didn’t have a PC to run that game. All of our PCs were slow. We had a PC that could run Warcraft III, but nothing powerful enough for this, except one, my brother’s laptop for school.
I nagged my brother daily for his laptop when he was home so that I could play. He was nice enough to let me install it on his computer because he, too, enjoyed the game.
Counter-Strike was extremely competitive. It’s terrorist vs counter-terrorist, 30 rounds with a switch of sides after 15 rounds, first to 16 wins. There were also time and finance management aspects to the game. This was the first game where I learned management skills to gain an advantage; it couldn’t be won on skills alone.
Introduction to World of Warcraft
It has now been several years, and I have a ton of FPS experience under my belt. But I wanted to expand my horizons. Enter World of Warcraft (WoW).
Before WoW, I had a game called Guild Wars. This was my first massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). I played Guild Wars because I didn’t have a credit card for WoW. World of Warcraft was the first game I had seen to have a monthly subscription. It’s the only game I wanted to get into, but I settled for Guild Wars. That was until I met a friend who let me play on his WoW account.
I was finally able to play the behemoth of a game through a friend. I did that for about a year until I could open my own credit card and work my first job at AMC theaters. World of Warcraft expanded on my video game addiction. It decreased my sleep even more, made me anti-social at family gatherings in my own house, and even caused me to decline hang-out invites with the small group of friends I had made. I was on another level. I ate at my desk and only got up to use the bathroom or grab more food. My health was starting to decline, both physically and mentally.
Going Solo
With the introduction to DOTA 2, World of Warcraft, which was the only game I played with friends, became a bit stale for me. I essentially stopped playing it. I mostly played alone, not talking to many people, for hours upon hours. Being alone and isolated from the world brought some major depression into my life.
Life just felt rough. I thought everything was against me: friends, family, lovers. It felt like no one understood me. And since I didn’t like that feeling or anything that was going on in my life, I kept escaping to my video games.
On DOTA alone, I put over 1200 hours in a year. Just consider that a regular, full-time job averages between 1800-2000 hours per year. I was high up there. I did eventually find some significant others, but they had to suffer through a lot because of the addiction.
Relationship Issues
I had dated some people here and there during my video game addiction. All of them ended up breaking up with me because of communication issues. Even though I was a great communicator in a game, I didn’t know how to express my feelings.
After the third person I had dated broke up with me, I vowed to change, and we ended up getting back together 2 more times. A total of 3 breakups with no change on my part. I didn’t seem interested in others; I just wanted to escape and have someone be a part of that. No one wants that. A relationship is a two-way street.
Finally, after the third breakup, that was it. I got tired of my lifestyle and cut games cold turkey. I uninstalled everything and deleted all saved games. Cleared out all my consoles and put everything away. I changed my mindset to do something productive instead.
The Change
One of the first steps to getting rid of my video game addiction was cutting the games out of my life. Even though I know that’s extremely hard for most, cutting cold turkey worked for me, but maybe you need to ease your way out of it.
After I had done that, I focused my mind on a new hobby or career. At the time, I was into brewing beer and filmmaking. So, my second step to eliminating your video game addiction would be to find something new you’re passionate about and work on it. Start a blog, make art, work on a business idea, go outside, just keep your mind busy on something else so you don’t revert to your games for an escape.
One of the greatest hobbies that helped me was hiking and running. Being outside and getting that much-needed vitamin D to help balance out the chemicals in my body was essential. When you sit around all day in the dark, you lose out on some nutrients that you need.
Keeping It Up
The most important thing is staying consistent. I wrote a blog post about how to achieve your goals without giving up; I highly suggest you try it out if you’re trying to break your addiction because it can be easy to fall off a goal that isn’t set up properly.
Today, I occasionally play games here and there. However, my main focus is getting this blog up and running and working on my side businesses along with school.
It wasn’t easy giving up video games. To this day, I still miss those good old days of not having a care in the world. My gamertag that I still use today is a reference to the game that started it all; my gamertag is KingMario. Although I’m not playing as much, I will say that I’m doing way better both physically and mentally. You will learn more about that as I continue to write. But that’s it. I know this post is long, so I’ll wrap it up with my steps to getting rid of a video game addiction.
Steps to Getting Rid of a Video Game Addiction
To wrap it all up, here are the steps that worked for me in getting rid of my video game addiction:
- Cut cold turkey or severely put a limit on yourself
- Keep your mind busy, try a new hobby
- Exercise
- Go outside and take in the sun
- Get help from others, be social
- Step out of your comfort zone
- Create some new goals, achieve something without giving up!
All these things helped me achieve my goals and get out of that addiction as well as depression. I’ve never been happier in my life, and a huge thanks goes out to Alex, who has changed my life.
If you want to read a bit more about my life, check out my synopsis page here. I encourage everyone to break bad habits. Write in the comments what addictions or bad habits you had and what you did to conquer them. Something that may not work for one person might work for another.