I denied the bad side effects this addiction had on my life a long time. But it got more obvious day to day.

Every weekend after extensive gaming sessions I got panic attacks, knowing that this behavior leads to nothing and that it did not bring me any step closer to my dreams… to a life fulfilled with happiness and things which I really want to do.

I decided to quit 111 days ago and for the first time in over 10 years, I really feel I have my life back. I feel that I am in charge of my own fate.

I had casually tried to quit a bunch of times, and then ‘seriously’ some more times, but I never made the cut and I’d always go back. I would unplug my PC from my room, move it to another room with my monitors, and then put a laptop in its place. Then within two weeks, I would replug-in my PC and all of my monitors, and then proceed to binge on gaming for the next 10 days.

I finally had enough, and quit for good. Today I’m over 90 days without playing video games. How has my life improved?

I’m Adam and I’m 26 years old. For a long time I saw no harm in playing, even until five or six in the morning. There seemed to be many more upsides than downsides to gaming, until one day my girlfriend left me. I was devastated and completely blindsided, which happened because I was blind to her and everything and everyone else around me.

Magic The Gathering is more than just animations in a video game, it’s a board game that has given me more benefits to my mental health. Such things include critical thinking, decision making, strategy, the appreciation of art, logic, contingency plan (sideboarding) and the use of math.

Magic did not just gave me these things, it made me a better person and it was the board game that killed video gaming in my life.

I set a goal to make it 90 days without gaming, and I also included not watching Twitch for a detox. Today marks the 90th day. Here are ten lessons I learned along my journey that I hope inspire you on yours.

I’m a 23 year old skinny bloke hailing from the tropical island of England. My main pull to gaming was the escapism, I didn’t feel like I had to escape from anyone or anything, but myself and my own thoughts. I would play immersive and heavily story driven semi-believable fantasy rpg’s and mmo’s which I could set goals in, for e.g: “to obtain a level up before coming off” for about 12-16 hours a day. Often pulling all nighters.

On the 5th of January I realized that actually as ironic as it is, what had helped me to stay sane and somewhat functional for all these years was now actually my big problem.

Gaming is a shameful addiction. That is what I felt for a long time, and I know that many do as well. Like so many addicts I hid my problems from even my close friends, loved ones, and of course the weak justifications to myself. I termed myself as having an addictive personality. That was my excuse for a while, but then I looked further back at the origins of where my gaming addiction came from, and diagnosing it’s pathology allowed me to understand it. To put a name to it.

I came to Japan with big dreams. Three years later I was stuck at home, with no friends, no job, playing 30 to 40 hours a week. I was depressed.

On Saturday October the 15th, I completed three months without putting my hands in a single video game (console game, computer game, smartphone game, you name it). In the last three months, a lot has changed. Here is my story.

It all started at around 11 years old, when I fell in love with some medieval strategy games staying at a friend’s house for a weekend. I convinced my dad to buy me one and I started playing on his computer.

Today marks day ninety since I last played a video game. I don’t wanna bore you with the whole story. Don’t wanna bore myself either. Let’s just say that I had gamed a lot before this point–MMOs and RPGs being my games of choice–but it was still pretty casual and mostly a way to avoid boredom. Then League of Legends came into the picture.

I realized that I’m just wasting my time. As a good League of Legends gamer, my confidence is pretty high. That allows me to understand that I’d better stop playing games, and do something more interesting.

I decided to quit. It wasn’t easy to do, and I had a lot of problems. I’m still living with my parents who ar doing their best to drag me down, and argue over foolish things.

I was quite young when I first held the controller of a PS1 in my hand, before then, it was the handheld gameboy. I played games for the action, the quick pace, and competing against others in the game lobby.

There was a distinctive feeling of pride, and some sort of power, perhaps social, or mental through winning. Losing however was a different matter, it could send me raging, and vandalizing my walls.

I hit 90 days of no video games. This marked a period of 3 months into my self development that kicked off around November 2016.

It’s been one bumpy ride, but it’s also been the most significant portion of my life as a person. Why quit gaming for 90 days, though? Why turn my life in a completely new direction?

So, the day has come. Day 90 of 90 days of a personal gaming detox. What do I have to say? Well for starters, it has been a tough ride. I grew up with a computer in my room, which turned into my best friend. Where real people were complicated, my computer would always be there to serve me. But in the long run, I began to serve it.

My parents are the greatest people I could wish for. But instead of spending quality time with them I did spend my time behind a screen leveling up my character in a MMORPG game and obtaining the best gear that was available in the game.

I was also a socially awkward person when it came to communicating. I was a terrible communicator. Really bad. Like extremely-nervously-terribly bad. Isolating myself gave me no opportunity to improve it.

At the beginning of the year 2016 I decided it was a good time to quit playing games and focusing on my goals. Here’s how my journey has been.

This is the core of my experiences during my 90 day detox. It opened my eyes and helped me to quit what destroyed me. Gaming was something that distracted me from my life, but the detox did more than just help me quit playing video games: it helped me to let go of everything that pulled me down these past few years.

Here are 5 tips that will help you successfully complete yours:

I was always an active kid, involved in sports, music, scouting, and spent a lot of time outside. But as I got older, I started spending more of my time upstairs in front of a screen. My daily routine was usually along the lines of waking up, going to school, come home and meet everyone online, eat dinner, and then go back online to play away the rest of the evening.

Like everyone else, however, I never really viewed it as a problem. It was what everyone did. I managed to stay on top of my studies, doing decently well at school and college. It wasn’t until I went on to study Physics at university that I noticed a problem.

Since I started gaming at 7 years old, I noticed something within myself. A sense of dissatisfaction, a hole that needed to be filled.

It got to a point where I stopped seeing myself as a good student so I neglected school work. I stopped seeing myself as a social person so I neglected my social life. I stopped seeing myself as a nice and caring son so I neglected family. Most importantly, I stopped seeing my authentic self.

I was tired of all this non-sense and I made a bold decision: to quit playing video games.

At the beginning of July I went back home to Slovakia. I had no real plans for summer, and I found myself with a lot of spare time.

Overwatch came out and I started playing a lot as it gave me a sense of progress, which replaced the progress I got from the gym and my studies. I was in a negative spiral where playing games sapped my motivation to do anything else. I felt stuck and powerless in the cycle.

Thankfully, I had a couple of things help me crawl my way out of it. Here’s how I overcame my summer relapse.