Game Quitters – video addiction and COVID
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How to Quit Playing Video Games
This week on Talk Recovery Radio, we speak with Cam from Game Quitters noon to 1 pm, on 100.5 fm Vancouver.
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Step by step guide on how to quit gaming and get your life back on track
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How is COVID effecting Video Game Addiction?
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How do you know if you have a gaming addiction?
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I’m not here to say that gaming is bad.
Meet Cam
I’m Cam
My life used to be a complete mess. I was addicted to gaming for 10 years. It caused me to drop out of high school, and while my friends were off to college, I was living in my parent’s basement playing video games up to 16 hours a day. Depressed, I pretended to have jobs and deceived my family. It got so bad I eventually wrote a suicide note. That’s the night I knew I needed to make a change. Today my life is much better and I haven’t played a game in over seven years. Once I overcame my own addiction, I wanted to help others with theirs, and Game Quitters now supports over 50,000 people in 94 countries. I regularly speak around the world to students, parents, and mental health professionals on how to overcome video game addiction.
Cam has a personal story of being in recovery from gaming addiction. Cam mentioned that he is a normal kid who grew up in Canada who played hockey, went to school, and played video games. He says that what happened is that he was 13 years old and began to experience a lot of bullying at school and at hockey and Cam said that bullying really hurt his self esteem and self confidence. Cam also says that the bullying he experienced made him feel like he was not safe in the environments that he was required to go to and be in every day. Cam said that caused him to want to escape and gaming helped him with that escape. Cam says that it was not just that he could play for many hours but that he had that sense of competition and accomplishment. Cam explains it as going into the virtual world and be something else where people did not know who we was and there was no chance of him being bullied constantly because he was behind a screen where he could leave, but at school Cam was being chased around school and was not able to escape the bullying.
The more he played games the more addiction was prevalent in his life, the less he wanted to go to school and do things that he was required to do. Cam said his life go so unmanageable because of video game addiction he dropped out of high school and stayed at home all day to play video games and when he was told to go get a job he would lie to his parents that he is working overnight shifts at Walmart and would sneak back home and play video games all night. Cam explains it as his whole strategy was to wear down his parents, to manipulate them, confuse them and eventually his goal was to get his parents to allow him to do whatever he wanted. Which is a very common theme when it comes to any kind of addiction not just alcohol or drug addiction. Cam mentions that eventually it got to a point where he left a suicide note and that was the night when he realized he needed to make a change.
Cam explains that recovery from video game addiction can look very different for individuals who struggle with it. Addiction treatment is definitely an option for people who are looking to stop gaming indefinitely and are looking for a support group to hold them accountable and professional help.
Game Quitters is a peer support community, with any people online who support each other, there is a form for people to journal and there is more than 45,000 journal entries of people sharing their experiences with video game addiction and recovery.
Cam also has YouTube videos regarding topics to do when you struggle with video game addiction, common questions people have and Cam has answers.
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Talk Recovery airs live every Thursday at noon on 100.5 FM, Vancouver Coop Radio. The Last Door produces this weekly radio show discussing the many pathways to addiction recovery. To end stigma we must continue to talk about recovery. Talk Recovery is in its 7th Season, Hundreds of guests, thousands of listeners, thank you. Show ideas? Email community@lastdoor.org
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