![game quitter game quitter](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IR2nMVO8PL0/maxresdefault.jpg)
My life was improving, but I also faced many challenges. I read personal development books, attended workshops and started a business helping others. I learned social skills and made new friends. I took the 16 hours a day I used to spend gaming and invested them in my goals and dreams instead. In order to do this, I knew I would have to quit gaming.įor two years I didn’t play at all. Now I had the opportunity to turn things around. I was withdrawn and unhappy, and I gamed to escape. Up until this point, my life had been a mess. I had a schedule to follow, and accountability. The new job-in retail-gave me structure and stability. I got another job-but this time, I was committed to keeping it. The counsellor made me a deal: I had to either get (and keep) a job, or I had to go on antidepressants. I came home that night and asked my father if he would help me find a counsellor.
#Game quitter professional#
This shift in my mood made me realize that my mental health was in serious trouble, and I needed professional support. During the movie, I found myself laughing and smiling and having a great time. After I wrote the note, my phone buzzed with a text message from a friend, inviting me to go see a movie-and luckily, I said yes. One night, I was so depressed that I wrote a suicide note. I would pretend to work a few weeks, and then I would tell my parents that I had “quit” or “got fired.” I was always making excuses.
![game quitter game quitter](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mUULCf91bjg/maxresdefault.jpg)
I would get another job and the pattern would resume. When my parents wondered where my pay cheque was, I made up some excuse. I would sneak in through my window and go back to bed-because I had been up all night playing video games. But as soon as he drove off, I would walk across the street and catch the bus back home. Every morning for the first few weeks, my dad would drop me off at work. My parents told me that if I wasn’t going to school, I had to get a job, so I got a job as a prep cook in a restaurant. I played video games for up to 16 hours a day. I moved back home, and for the next year and a half, I was depressed, living in my parents’ basement. Unfortunately, when hockey ended midway through Grade 12, I dropped out of school. Although I still gamed a lot, I passed Grade 11. The ploy was simple: if I wanted to play hockey, I had to go to school. When I was in Grade 11, my parents sent me from our Calgary home to Penticton, BC, to play hockey for the Okanagan Hockey Academy. Video games became my escape, a place where I had more control over my experience. The less frequently I went to school and hockey practice, the more I played video games. That all changed in Grade 8, when I began to experience intense bullying, both at school and on my hockey team.
![game quitter game quitter](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/oaW3E-o3j8c/maxresdefault.jpg)
I was happy, I felt smart, and I had friends. I went to school, I played hockey, and then I would go home and play video games. Growing up, I was a fairly normal Canadian kid.
![game quitter game quitter](https://interfaceingame.com/wp-content/uploads/alan-wake/alan-wake-quit-the-game-1920x1080.png)
Choosing to set gaming aside and move on to other things has taught me more about living a meaningful life than anything I’ve done before. I was addicted to playing video games for over 10 years. Cam Adair From "Problem Gambling and Video Gaming" issue of Visions Journal, 2018, 14 (2), p.