Guys, ESPECIALLY GAMERS, you need to see this.

Yeah, I thought so already that its probably not just porn that floods your brain with dopamines but rather just about anything that is just that tiny bit too exciting.
The problem I see with this is that we are getting into a zone of blurred lines. Do we call someone who relentlessly plays football with his club also an addict? Or a marathon runner who also gets the same dopamine rush from his running? Arent those guys also addicted to their thing, while gamers are just addicted to another?

I know that gaming is probably a more dangerous place to be an addict because the repeated isolation hurts your intersocial behavior with real personsd and you probably wont emotionally progress as someone who is constantly confronted with other people, like the football player. But strictly speaking, I do not really see a difference between the fanatic football player who nearly kills himself for his dopamine rush and the gamer, who succumbs to isolation and loneliness. How I see it, it is very much about what a society sees as "good" and what as "bad" and here we could start arguing what brings forth such social norms.

Not going over all of them, I will argue that things like excessive sports are rather accepted by a society because they are "sexy". Sports and the intersocial aspect of it are somewhat attractive to the other sex because of nice bodies, good communication etc. (here speaking especially for men). This sexiness factor can be, I claim, be seen everywhere in society. Everything that is sexy seems to equal "coolness", and thats why gaming and also e-sports dont really get the respect it would actually deserve.

In a nutshell, I dont think that gaming is bad and should be constrained fully, but just like with porn, it would be good to take a step back, refrain from gaming until your dopamine receptors have recovered and your rational decision making circuits are stronger. Then you can play again, just not so much that you are sacrificing other equally important things in life for gaming. But the same also goes for ppl addicted to sports in my opinion, since the only difference between addicts in sports and addicts to gaming is that gaming isnt as socially accepted (here in Western societies, not speaking of dem Koreans) and sexy as sports are.

Addiction stays addiction stays addtiction.

 

thats why i quit gaming too

 

Talking about gaming and sports addiction, I have a couple of thoughts.

Gaming can really fuck you up. Think about it.
A human being is not wired to be attached into false reality. It's a cowards way. You have to live your life and not a life that's not real. I know many gaming addicts and that's what they are, cowards. They are like whiny little bitches, who really don't care about the real reality.

I've seen what gaming does to people and it's pretty much the same what porn does to us too. They are depressed, socially anxious and awkward and have usually couple of different medications, that don't work.

My good friend used to masturbate to porn all the time. Then he stopped and I wondered why it was so easy for him. After 3 months he didn't feel any different. He was still depressed, feminine and anxious. Then I got it. He started playing more and more of those MMORPG-games after stopping PMO. I've tried to help him with all my strength, but all my efforts have been in vain, because he is a pussy who doesn't give a fuck about anything. He is basically plugged into the computer. I feel bad to say this, but I have started to feel resentment and hate towards him and this not because of any social norms. It's about seeing such ignorance killing someone I used to like.

Gaming also turns your body into something horrible. You don't move, so your body is weak and your posture probably sucks. I used to play when I was very young, about 10-years-old, and I got that ugly forward head posture. I'm still actually working on getting my posture straight together with my physiotherapist. I'm making progress fortunately.

Then about sports. When you do sports, you move. Moving is exactly what our bodies is supposed to do. You stay in good shape. Also, sports like football are competitive and that's really good thing for us males. Our testosterone rises, when we are challenged and when we win a competition.

If you are too addicted to sports, then you might get injuries like wearing your joints out, but that's pretty small comparing to what porn and gaming addictions might and will do to you.

You have to move to keep your mind and body healthy. Gaming is not productive, sports is. Gaming is not healthy, sports is.

So I suggest, that you stop giving a fuck about social acceptance and think about your own acceptance. Do you want to become a weak geek or would you rather be a healthy man?

 

I've found it helpful to develop my own standard if an activity is addictive for me:
1. Do I feel good or regret a day later?
2. Is it frequently interfering with other things I want or need to do?
3. Do I feel any negative health or life affects from doing it?
4. Do I use it compulsively to avoid emotions or challenges?
5. Can I stop? (I actually try and see)
For me, it doesn't matter what society classifies. If I'm overusing or misusing then it's candidate for addiction. I still have porn. spending, internet overuse, mobile phone, and people pleasing addictions. Some exercises became addicting when I kept pushing myself while injured just to meet a goal. So for me, anything that I can't easily self limit and has negative consequences, I have to consider might be an addiction

 

Thanks for advice.

Of course nothing ever means that you should hate anybody, but that's the feeling I get and feel inside, so it's real and I can't deny it. I'm trying to let these feelings out in a way, that I don't hurt anybody.

You got a good point about stopping helping friends and how it's also my failure, but I also think that you have to face the facts and jump out of the sinking ship at some point. I just don't have energy to invest in his bottomless pit. He is so close-minded, that he is never going to change and I care about my own being too, so I won't let "sick" people be around me for too long.

I guess all I can do is to let go of him and wish him good luck with all my heart.

Thanks for the book suggestion too. I'll look into it, when I have time(I'm really trying to keep myself busy to stay away from PMO)

 

This is what I am trying to get to. I dont see much sense in generalising whole groups of people, as example gamers, and condeming their practices. I think there are behaviours that need to be recognized as harmful but I dont think that there are subjects that should be rejected as a whole. There are gamers that can play without getting addicted and still have a blast with their respective CoD or whatever. Furthermore I think that gaming has developed a rich culture of fan art, fan music etc. that are wonderful expressions of indivduals encouraged by games.

And actually, I think it is the same with porn. I know on this forum it is probably not wise to suggest that porn may also have its merits, but thats exactely what I am saying. Porn can educate you in some ways. It opens your view to what is and what is not possible in the bedroom and how one goes about sex in general. It educates you partly about condoms and other safety measures etc.
Now of course porn also got a lot of downsides, like the much discussed addictions, to it and the
objectication of women(men?) that most likely follows from it.
But against the supposedly general view on here I will argue that its again not the subject itself that is harmful to YOU (not talking about more broad things like the whole porn biz, or where the girls in those movies will probably end up, etc.) but that it is the way YOU handle pornography that is harmful, by which I mean excessive and relentless use, leading to the reasons of why we are all here. But again, I simply cannot condemn a whole field or subject by saying it in itself is generally bad and that no good or constructive thoughts will ever come out of it.

As for me this probably means: I will watch porn again, if I ever see any use in it again, but as long as my brain is still too damaged by the harmful sides of porn and I still feel its harmful to me, I will not.
For example I can imagine myself very well watching a movie with my girlfriend about Kamasutra or whatever.

Now to wrap this up, maybe to reflect the wrath thats probably now coming at me: I still think that porn has very bad influences and at the moment outweighs the positves by far, for me and I also think for the general public. But Again: We can not judge a whole subject or field as completely bad or good since everything has a dark and a light side about it, even if it is just a lesson we learn out of it.

 

There are so many things our body is not supposed to do. Excessive masturbation, watching things on a screen, sitting for the most of the time, playing video games, drinking coffee, eating fast food or sweets, driving a car, drinking alcohol and so on...

You can't erase everything these days. And I'm not sure if it makes you a better person when you don't play video games.

I can relate to the article and your post. I am kind of addicted to games and the internet as well. I wish it would be easy to quit everything, PMO and all the other addictions that are linked to my bad social life. But there is this one problem: The anxiety.
For me, the internet is only way to actually be accepted somewhere. When I'm at a party, I have a hard time speaking to anyone new. When I do sports, I do them alone because I don't dare doing them together with friends (They are way better than I am). I also play the piano, but I do it alone and hardly dare to play in front of someone else.

It would be easy if I knew how to do all these things together with others. Or how to meet new people with similar interest. But I simply don't.

 

Note that the Reddit guy was playing games for eight to ten hours a day. Doing almost anything that much is obviously bad.

It's a serious topic but there's a difference between playing an offline, old-school game for half an hour a day and playing an MMORPG for ten hours a day.

 

As a gamer,I did use that to escape reality now I am played for fun and excitement.

 

If your unable to get a relationship and friends, then gaming is okay as a substitute, but only if done in moderation and sports as a side hobby.

 

Social media fires off the dopamine as well always chasing that feed.

Logout, I did it's great.

 

I used to escape to games, but a little more than two years ago something inside of me said enough. I quit cold turkey. Much easier to quit then PMO.