Entry #10: Addiction.
Recently I have noticed that I have been playing video games more and more every day. I used to play video games for like maybe 1-2 hours every other day, but for the past 6 months, I have been playing video games for about 3-5 hours a day every day. Since I play for so long and so often, I would classify myself as addicted to video games. It was even getting to the point where I would completely mess up my sleep schedule for weeks on end, and I was also starting to neglect some of my homework. I looked something like this:
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I know a gaming addiction might not be as life-threatening as a drug addiction, or smoking addiction, but I still believe that addiction is addiction and I had a serious problem with my gaming addiction. Even though I was addicted to gaming I was able to come up with 2 solutions for myself that helped me beat my gaming addiction. The first solution involved utilizing my phone's clock app and setting a timer of 2 hours. I would only allow myself to play for 2 hours at a time for the first week of me trying to lessen my gaming sessions. After that week was up I would set the timer to 1 hour and 45 minutes, and I would keep going down by 15 minutes each week until I was only playing for 1 hour a day and did not feel the need to play more than that. Although this did take about a month, this method helped me subtly lessen my gaming time, if I would have simply brought my gaming time down to 1 hour right away, I would have definitely failed and started playing for excessive hours again. My second method involved splitting my gaming time in half and utilizing the other half of my gaming time towards something else that I found fun, which in this case, involved lifting weights. The reason I was so addicted to gaming was the dopamine and joy of winning games, since you are constantly having fun and it's an easy way to have that fun it's easy to get addicted. However, while trying to cut down my time gaming, utilizing that extra time I get from playing less towards something useful and fun like lifting weights simply ensures that I won't cave and go back to playing video games for excessive hours.
I know a gaming addiction might not be as life-threatening as a drug addiction, or smoking addiction, but I still believe that addiction is addiction and I had a serious problem with my gaming addiction. Even though I was addicted to gaming I was able to come up with 2 solutions for myself that helped me beat my gaming addiction. The first solution involved utilizing my phone's clock app and setting a timer of 2 hours. I would only allow myself to play for 2 hours at a time for the first week of me trying to lessen my gaming sessions. After that week was up I would set the timer to 1 hour and 45 minutes, and I would keep going down by 15 minutes each week until I was only playing for 1 hour a day and did not feel the need to play more than that. Although this did take about a month, this method helped me subtly lessen my gaming time, if I would have simply brought my gaming time down to 1 hour right away, I would have definitely failed and started playing for excessive hours again. My second method involved splitting my gaming time in half and utilizing the other half of my gaming time towards something else that I found fun, which in this case, involved lifting weights. The reason I was so addicted to gaming was the dopamine and joy of winning games, since you are constantly having fun and it's an easy way to have that fun it's easy to get addicted. However, while trying to cut down my time gaming, utilizing that extra time I get from playing less towards something useful and fun like lifting weights simply ensures that I won't cave and go back to playing video games for excessive hours.
Overall, I think these 2 methods work extremely well when dealing with a video game addiction, like I mentioned a video game addiction is not as severe as a drug addiction however these are simply the methods I took to help myself, and maybe they can help you too!
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