From world expert in video game addiction,

Dr. Alok Kanojia.

Video
Game
Addiction
A Comprehensive Guide to Overcoming
Problematic Gaming.

Includes practical instructions on understanding and

overcoming video game addiction.
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Table of Contents
Introduction 1

What is Video Game Addiction? 2

How Much Gaming is Too Much? 3

Common Signs of Video Game Addiction 4

Am I Addicted to Video Games? 5

Stages of Video Game Addiction 7

Are Video Games Actually Addictive? 11

How Does Gaming Affect the Brain? 13

Does Gaming Make You Lazy? 17

Why Do Video Games Make You Angry? 21

Does Gaming Worsen Depression and Anxiety? 24

Strategies to Stop Playing Video Games 26

Making Meaningful Changes in Your Life 32

Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction
Welcome to the Video Game Addiction: The Comprehensive Guide to
Overcoming Problematic Gaming.

Healthy Gamer creates resources on video game addiction and mental health,
based on the knowledge and experience of Dr. Alok Kanojia aka Dr. K, a
Harvard-trained Psychiatrist who practices in Boston, Massachusetts.

A few years ago, when Dr. K was training to become a psychiatrist, he realized
that the psychiatric community did not know much about video game
addiction. Most of the leaders in the field of psychiatry are quite old. 55% of
psychiatrists are over the age of 55. Therefore, they probably don’t have much
experience playing videogames, which is why they struggle to help people with
video game addiction.

He eventually went on to do his psychiatry residency at Harvard Medical

School, and started to work on video game addiction. Using his training in
psychiatry, understanding of eastern medicine and philosophy, as well as old-
school addiction interventions, Dr. K developed the Healthy Gamer Coaching
Program to help gamers life healthy, fulfilling lives, while still making gaming a
part of it.

The Healthy Gamer Coaching Program has seen over 5,000 clients across 65
countries, and clients report significant improvements in feelings of anxiety,
depression, life purpose and reduction in problematic gaming habits.

Results from Healthy Gamer Coaching

1
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

What is Video Game

Addiction?
Video game addiction is different from other addictions such as alcoholism
and substance abuse addictions. While video games can affect your brain, they
do not have the same kind of effects as alcohol.

Some of the definitions of video game addiction are simply

the description of alcoholism with the word “alcohol”
substituted by “video games”. This is a disservice to people
who suffer from video game addictions, because their
experience of the addiction is much different than an
alcoholic’s.

Video game is a behavioral addiction, which means it has different triggers,

manifestations, and underlying causes.

The World Health Organization’s Definition

The World Health Organization defined “gaming disorder”, also referred to as
video game addiction, in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of
Diseases (ICD-11) as:

A pattern of gaming behavior characterized by a lack of control over

gaming.
Prioritizing gaming over other, more important activities.
Continuing to play games despite the occurrence of negative
consequences.

2
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

How Much Gaming

Is Too Much?
One of the most common questions we get is: how much gaming is too much?

The simple answer is that if it causes a problem, then it is a problem. If the

amount of time you spend gaming prevents you from doing the things that you
need to do in life, then it is a problem.

It really depends on which stage of life you are in, and how much time you can
afford to spend playing video games.

For example, a 12-year-old child needs to focus on school, but

if their grades are good, they are mentally and physically fit,
and they have healthy relationships with family and friends,
then they can afford to spend time playing video games.

Some people might prefer to play video games for only an hour every day, while
others might not play the entire week and then play a lot over the weekend.
Every individual gamer has different preferences.

3
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Common Signs of
Video Game Addiction
Five Signs of Video Game Addiction
1. Excessive preoccupation with video games.
2. Being unable to stop when needed.
3. Being unable to cut back on time spent playing games.
4. Prioritizing gaming over everything else.
5. Problems with daily functioning.

When Does a Habit Turn Into An Addiction?

A habit turns into an addiction when it starts to affect your:
Academics
Professional success
Relationships
Physical health
Mental health

Aside from these aspects, if there is something specific that you want to
achieve in life, and your gaming habit is preventing you from doing that, then it
is a problem.

4
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Am I Addicted to Video
Games?
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to look for some signs of
video game addiction:

1. Is gaming getting in the way of your academic performance?

2. Are you not doing as well in school because you spend too much time
playing video games?
3. Is gaming getting in the way of your professional success?
4. Are you not moving forward in your life because your time is taken up by
gaming?
5. Are video games interfering with your physical or mental health?
6. Are you gaining too much weight? Should you be losing weight?
7. Is gaming getting in the way of your sleep?
8. Does gaming create problems in your relationships?
9. Are you not able to find a romantic partner because you spend so much
time gaming?
10. Is gaming creating stress between you and your parents? Is there a
disconnect between your idea and their idea of an appropriate amount of
time spent playing video games?

5
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then your gaming habit is
probably a problem.

The most dangerous and insidious part of a video game addiction is that it
prevents you from becoming the person that you want to be.

Video games might be fun and enjoyable while you are playing them, but five
years down the road, will you be happy with where you are? Would you have
instead spent some of that time doing something else?

6
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Stages of Video Game

Addiction

1
The First Stage
The first phase of video game addiction is quite benign. It is the
phase in which video games are actively fun. You can play them for
long periods and have fun throughout the gaming session.

Video games are fun because when you play them, your game releases a
neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine controls the amount of pleasure
we feel.

However, over months or years, as you continue to play games, your brain
starts to adapt to that steady degree of dopamine release. That is due to a
mechanism in our brain called homeostasis. This mechanism maintains a
balanced state in our brains.

One of the ways homeostasis manifests is a biological principle called

tolerance. We can understand this using the example of coffee and alcohol.

The first cup of caffeine you ever have in your life will make you wired.
However, if you keep consuming caffeine every morning, your body will
eventually develop a tolerance to it.

As a result, if you skip it on a particular morning, you will feel tired and
exhausted. Consequently, when you do end up consuming caffeine, it won’t
have the same effect; it won’t hype you up, it will only make you feel normal.

Similarly, if a person drinks alcohol for the first time, they will get drunk very
quickly. But if they start to drink regularly, their body will develop a tolerance to
that amount of alcohol. It will take more and more alcohol to feel its effects, as
their body will be less sensitive to it.

7
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Gaming does not have exactly the same effect as other

biological addictions. In the first phase of video game
addiction, your brain has not yet acclimatized to dopamine.
As a result, games still feel fun, but over time, the amount of
fun you have will decrease.

2
The Second Stage
In the second stage of video game addiction, video games don’t
feel as fun. That is because you have developed a tolerance to
that constant stream of dopamine.

You can often find gamers saying, “There are no fun video games out right now.
I have played hundreds of hours of this one game, and I keep coming back to it
because there is nothing else to play.”

Since gaming does not feel fun anymore, it does not give you a high. However,
it can still help you when you’re feeling low.

Video games suppress negative emotions. The amygdala is the part of our
brain that governs negative emotions. fMRI studies have shown that if we start
playing games when our amygdala shows activity, it calms down. However,
constant suppression can lead to the development of a condition called
Alexithymia.

An alexithymic person has difficulty or is unable to determine their inner

emotional state. For example, when people say that they are “in control” of their
emotions, one of the examples they give is that they can watch a sad movie
without crying. That is not controlling your emotions. It is suppression. When
people suppress one emotion, they suppress all emotions.

If you’re experiencing any negative emotion; stress, frustration, anger, worry, or

sadness; if you play a video game, those feelings probably fade into the
background.

Therefore, in the second phase of video game addiction, even though video
games aren’t fun, they can still remove negative emotions.

8
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

3
The Third Stage
In the second stage of video game addiction, video games don’t
feel as fun. That is because you have developed a tolerance to
that constant stream of dopamine.

If people continue to game past the second phase, they enter the third stage of
video game addiction. This stage shares a characteristic with other biological
addictions — it stops taking away negative emotions.

If you used to use gaming to escape emotional pain, then you will find that it
will not work anymore. You will feel trapped in your gaming. It won’t feel fun,
but you will not be able to stop doing it either. That is because of the way our
learning circuitry is tied to our emotions.

For example, when a five-year-old kid touches a hot stove

and gets burned, a signal travels up his arm into his brain,
which has pain receptors. These pain receptors activate in his
somatosensory cortex. Since he is a child, he starts crying.
When he starts to cry, his amygdala, which is the part of the
brain that governs fear and negative emotion, lights up.

The amygdala then makes connections to his hippocampus,

which is responsible for learning and memory. All it takes is
one try, and the kid learns never to touch a hot stove again.
Pain is the best teacher. While we need regular reinforcement
to learn something, learning through punishment is much
quicker.

In the third stage of video game addiction, the learning circuitry is

compromised. That is one of the main reasons gamers stay stuck in their
gaming habit. They cannot cut back on gaming even though they logically
realize that it causes problems in their lives.

9
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Moreover, in this phase of video game addiction, dopamine exhaustion gets so

bad that nothing feels fun. Dopamine exhaustion occurs when your body
becomes chronically used to having a high level of dopamine from gaming. It
causes problems for gamers because the activities that they would otherwise
enjoy don’t seem fun anymore.

Their dopamine tolerance has become so high that it has reached the point of
dopamine exhaustion. Gamers attribute this to them losing interest in a
particular video game, but if they try other things, those don’t seem fun either.

Gamers need to realize that they don’t find anything fun because their
neurochemistry has changed. Every other activity will feel boring because of the
way video games have exhausted their dopamine circuitry.

Understanding the stages of video game addiction is a crucial step to identify

which stage you are on. You can use this guide to gauge the severity of your
addiction and create an action plan to overcome your gaming habit.

You have to give yourself time away from gaming to allow your brain to reset. It
needs to achieve homeostasis at a low level of dopamine. That can take
somewhere between three weeks to two months. However, you will start to see
some changes in about a week. By three weeks, you will see noticeable
changes, and by two months, you should be fully back to normal.

You have to understand that before your brain resets, anything you do will be
less fun. That is due to how your neurocircuitry has changed as a result of
gaming.

10
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Are Video Games

Actually Addictive?
Video games are designed to be addictive. However, even though the problems
that video games create are getting worse, they do NOT create a biological
dependence. Therefore, they are fundamentally different from other addictions.

Video games are addictive because:

They stimulate our brain’s pleasure centers and cause the secretion of
dopamine.
Games engage the Triumph Circuit in our brain and allow us to feel
challenged and victorious.
Video games suppress negative emotions, and they become an excellent
way to cope with negative emotions and therefore result in dependency.

We will go more over these effects in the next section.

Why do people start playing video games?

Many gamers start playing video games at a young age. This is not a
coincidence, a fair number of gamers start playing video games to escape from
problems that they face in real life. Some of these problems are:

Being bullied at school

Not being challenged enough at school
Low self-esteem and self-worth
Living in an abusive household
Lack of guidance around coping with negative emotions
Having special needs

For example, when a child gets bullied at school, they have to

go back the next day and face the bully again. They do not
have any control over that. However, in the online world, if
someone is mean to you, you can simply choose to not talk
to them.

11
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

In online gaming, nobody knows how you look, whether you are rich or poor,
what you wear, etc. You are judged on the basis of your skill at the game. Quite
often, these can lead to authentic relationships that are not superficial.

Moreover, on the internet, you get to pick friends that share your interests. You
can find these people in online groups much more easily than in real life. There
are many fifteen-year-olds who play games online and talk about philosophy.
They talk about their hopes and dreams. The connections that we form online
are authentic.

As a result, gaming is not just an activity that people engage in to have fun. It is
also about the communities that we participate in, online.

12
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

How Does Gaming

Affect the Brain?

1
Dopamine Exhaustion
Dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter that regulates pleasure
in the brain. When dopamine activity happens in the part of the
brain called the nucleus accumbens, we feel pleasure — it is the
pleasure center of our brain.

If you have never had caffeine before, the first cup of caffeine that you ever
have in your life is going to make you completely wired. However, over time
your body develops a tolerance to that caffeine. As a result, if you don’t have
caffeine, you feel really tired. Moreover, if you have caffeine, it will not actually
hype you up — it will just make you feel normal.

Similarly, video games release a constant stream of dopamine, and in response,

the brain down-regulates that dopamine response.

People who play video games a lot tend to not have fun when they’re playing
video games. However, if they stop playing games, they just don’t feel normal.

13
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

This process also makes gamers have difficulty finding pleasure from other
activities. If a gamer is unable to enjoy books, it might be because their
dopamine circuits have been so down-regulated because of the consistency
and intensity of dopamine release from gaming. As a result, gamers find it
difficult to enjoy things that other people enjoy.

2
Triumph Circuit
The Triumph Circuit is different from the dopamine circuit. It is not
as easily mappable since it does not localize to one part of the
brain.

The Triumph Circuit is a general pattern of psychology and cognition that is

important to all human beings. The triumph circuit is the part of our brain that
makes us feel good when we overcome a challenge.

Games are addictive because we experience a challenge that is followed by

achievement. When a gamer beats a difficult boss in a video game, they feel
amazing. Where does that rush come from? Why do human beings relish a
challenge followed by success?

The answer lies in evolutionary biology. There is a strong narrative of going out
into the unknown, overcoming an obstacle,and coming back with a reward. This
pattern is wired in our circuitry — that is why, as a society, we value people who
accomplish difficult things.

14
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Video games have done a great job of hacking into this circuit. In fact, they
strive to strike the balance between being challenging enough to feel like you
accomplished something and being easy enough to not create frustration. That
is the sweet spot where games are the most engaging, and it is because of the
Triumph circuit.

However, the Triumph circuit was originally designed to motivate us to achieve

difficult things in life. It was not meant to be exploited in the way video games
have. Video games give gamers the feeling of achieving something and feeling
triumphant by activating the triumph circuit. The downside of this is that
gamers who are addicted to video games no longer need to solve real-world
problems to feel triumphant. As a result, they get stuck — it robs them of their
motivation to move forward in life.

3
Negative Emotion
Suppression
Video games suppress negative
emotions.

The amygdala is the part of the brain that

governs our feeling of negative emotions. fMRI
studies have shown that if we start to play video
games when our amygdala is active and we’re
experiencing fear, anger, frustration, sadness, or
any other negative emotion, then our amygdala
starts to calm down. Our emotions get
suppressed. That is why gaming is such a good
coping mechanism.

Video games suppress negative emotions. The

amygdala is the part of the brain that governs
our feeling of negative emotions.

However, fMRI studies have shown that if we start to play video games when
our amygdala is active and we’re experiencing fear, anger, frustration, sadness,
or any other negative emotion, then our amygdala starts to calm down. Our
emotions get suppressed. That is why gaming is such a good coping
mechanism.

15
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

The learning circuitry of the brain (located in the hippocampus) is closely

related to the negative emotion circuitry. In fact, that is why pain is such a good
teacher. If a five-year-old touches a hot stove, they get burned and learn to
never touch it again. We learn from pain and try to avoid it in the future.

Since video games suppress the amygdala, they also suppress the amygdala’s
capability to access the hippocampus. As a result, gamers have a hard time
learning from their mistakes.

That is one of the main reasons why they cannot stop playing video games.

16
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Does Gaming Make You

Lazy?
Gamers are very good problem-solvers. However, there are two types of
problem-solving: open-ended and close-ended. Video games give us particular
objectives and certain tools or assets to achieve them.

For example, in an RPG, a character has certain abilities. In a

sports game, we are given a team of players. The game
forces you to figure out how to use those abilities or that
team of people to accomplish a certain objective. The game
also enforces some rules, and you have to use that set of
rules to achieve those objectives.

So when gamers are given the task of getting

from point ‘A’ to point ‘Z’, they can do it very
easily. If they have a problem, an objective,
and a set of tools, then they can reach their
goal.

However, when our brain spends a lot of time

playing video games, it starts to optimize for
working within that close-ended framework.
That is why gamers have trouble with abstract
ideas, such as “becoming healthy” or “gaining
financial independence” or “losing weight”
because those abstractions do not exist in
video games.

The solution to that is to operationalize those problems. For example, if you

wanted to operationalize the task of gaining financial independence, you would
break it down into creating a bank account, earning enough money to pay rent,
and finding a place to live.

17
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Gamers have trouble operationalizing tasks because games tend to do that for
them. They are good at putting the pieces together, but they struggle with
figuring out what the pieces are. As a result, gamers often come to the
conclusion that they are lazy.

Moreover, when gaming suppresses the amygdala’s function, it becomes

harder to create connections to our hippocampus. Thus, our learning capability
becomes somewhat impaired because we aren’t able to learn lessons from
painful or unpleasant situations.

That is one of the biggest reasons that gamers get stuck in life. Even though
they logically realize that their gaming habit is preventing them from moving
forward, they feel powerless to create change. Their drive to stop gaming and
work on other parts of their life becomes diminished, and they get branded as
“lazy” by the people around them.

Effect of Gaming on Motivation

We already know how gaming affects
learning circuitry. However, the impact of
video game addiction goes beyond it.

Every gamer wants to change, but it is a

dauntingly difficult task. The urge to create
change isn’t strong enough because there
isn’t a reason to create it.

Video games suppress their negative

emotions, engage their triumph circuit, and
provide them with bursts of dopamine. It
meets their need for a challenge, albeit in a
superficial way. Therefore, despite gaming
seemingly fulfilling their needs, they feel
hollow.

Paradoxically, human beings are designed to be lazy. We don’t do things until

we need to. This mechanism prevents us from spending energy (which is
extremely valuable due to evolution) on activities that are considered
unnecessary.

18
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Video games present us with intricate puzzles, and we have to solve them
efficiently. As a result, gamers’ minds become hyper-efficient — they will only
do the things that think is necessary. That is why gamers complain about
having a bad habit of procrastination.

Procrastination is the result of our brain being too efficient. It will only want to
complete a task when necessary. That gets mistaken for laziness since, in
practice, it looks like gamers are too lazy to complete their work until the last
minute.

As a result, people think that video games make you lazy.

If we think about it, procrastination is not a problem; it is a

solution. It means that gamers can finish something that
takes three months and complete it within 24 hours. That is
why gamers start to excel when they take on multiple tasks
and try to complete it within the same three months.

Their mind realizes that it is too much to do at once, and

that forces it into action. They end up completing five
different assignments instead of barely finishing one.

Being labeled “lazy” is the worst thing that can happen to a gamer. It is a
personality trait, not an issue that has a solution. Therefore, when people tell
gamers to “just do it,” that leads to frustration on the gamers’ part.

Moreover, their self-esteem also takes a hit. They feel like a failure for not being
a functional member of society, which lowers their self-confidence. Their
gaming habit gets worse because gaming is the only way they know to
suppress feelings of insufficiency.

The antidote to this problem lies in cultivating motivation. Motivation is

different from willpower — you don’t have to force yourself to do something
that you don’t want to. The drive to do starts to come naturally.

Most gamers have an issue with motivation. That is because we don’t

understand the origins of motivation.

19
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Most people’s approach to gain motivation is by seeking the satisfaction of

desires. However, this strategy inevitably fails. For example, if you feel
motivated to eat a burger, that urge will go away once you satisfy it.

When you sate a desire, it no longer drives you to engage in a behavior.

Therefore, desire satisfaction is a bad strategy because desires eventually
fizzle out.

The solution to this is to draw motivation from your values. Values are what
push us to do hard things in life. They are our guiding compass — they enable
us to move forward despite the difficulties involved. That is Dharma, the
Sanskrit word for duty or responsibility.

Check out this video in which Dr. K goes over the nature of motivation, and
how you can cultivate it.

20
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Why Do Video Games

Make You Angry?
Gamer rage is not a new phenomenon. A gamer angrily throwing down their
controller after losing is a classic image that comes to mind. Since the gaming
community has become quite toxic over the last few years, it begs the question:
why do video games make people angry?

Here are a few reasons video games

make you angry:

Suppressed emotions that get vented

during games
Alexithymia (a prevalent issue with
gamers)
Frustration from problems in real life
Overall toxicity in the gaming community
Conflict of interest with other gamers in
the game

Emotional Suppression
One of the main reasons that video games can make you angry is that video
games suppress emotions. That may sound paradoxical, and you might ask, “if
video games suppress my emotions, then shouldn’t anger be suppressed as
well?” That is a valid question, so let’s try to answer that in this section.

Gamers often play video games to suppress emotions that they experience
going through daily life events. However, constant suppression prevents the
our emotional circuitry from making connections to our learning circuitry.

That prevents gamers from learning lessons, which makes their progress at the
game slower. That leads to more frustration, which gets vented out at the
game or their teammates.

21
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

However, these emotions don’t dissipate. They stay suppressed and swimming
under the surface. When we experience an adverse event in a game that causes
frustration, those emotions find an outlet. Due to reasons that we will get into in
the next section, these suppressed emotions manifest as anger.

Emotional suppression is a massive problem in the male population. In our

culture, boys are taught that anger is the only acceptable emotion for them to
express. As a result, many men grow up without having the emotional
vocabulary to express their feelings.

Video games can make this issue worse. As a result of emotional suppression,
people start to lose the ability to know their emotions.

This condition is called Alexithymia — the inability to determine your inner

emotional state. Most gamers are alexithymic.

If you find yourself watching a sad movie, and everyone

except you is crying at a tragic scene, that does not mean
that you control your emotions. It could mean that you have
suppressed your emotions to such an extent that you have
a hard time feeling the sadness.

However, that does not mean that your emotions no longer

control you. It just means that when they impact your
behavior, it is harder for you to be aware of it.

Frustration from Real Life Leaks Over into the Game

Often, people start to play video games to escape their problems in real life.
Some kids begin to play video games because they get bullied at school. Others
begin to play games because they need to escape their professional or
academic failures.

A combination of all of these reasons creates toxic environments in the video

game community. When gamers cannot escape their issues by playing games
and vent out their frustration in the form of anger, it exacerbates toxic
environments.

22
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

People raging at each other in games is a common sight. When a new player
enters these communities, they quickly learn that they have to be equally toxic
to survive. As a result, toxicity and rude behavior get normalized.

Many gamers think that their speech does not cause any real harm. They
believe that “its just words.” Everyone reinforces everyone else’s toxic
behaviors, which makes the environment worse, especially for new players.

23
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Does Gaming Worsen

Depression and Anxiety?
Depression
Video games are correlated with increased depression and anxiety. However,
correlation does not necessarily imply causation — people who are unhappy or
depressed are drawn to video games because they help to suppress negative
emotions. They develop a gaming habit that causes them to get stuck in life.
Naturally, they end up being unhappy.

There is a difference between clinical depression and feeling unhappy.

Someone can be content in life, but still have underlying feelings of sadness —
that is clinical depression.

However, if you are stuck in life and are not moving towards your goals, then
you will most likely be unhappy. Sometimes, you can have both, and it becomes
hard to distinguish one from the other.

Anxiety
Our mind has the ability to predict potential problems in the future. If this ability
gets out of control, then that is what we call anxiety.

24
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Being addicted to video games causes us anxiety because when we are playing
games, we are not doing the things that we know we should do. However, we
are not anxious about neglecting them in the present or not having done them
in the past. We are actually anxious about the consequences of not addressing
those things. Those consequences lie in the future.

Every anxious thought has its root in the future. Video games do not
necessarily cause anxiety, but when they take over your life and you start to
neglect other important things, then that creates anxious thoughts.

25
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Strategies to Stop
Playing Video Games
One of the biggest mistakes we make when we realize we have an addiction is
to try to drop the vice entirely. However, that does not go very well.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, up to 90%

of alcoholics will have at least one relapse during the first four years after they
get sober.

Unlike video games, alcohol creates a biological addiction. However, video

game addiction statistics are somewhat similar. More research needs to be
done to estimate how often gamers relapse.

Simply putting an end to your gaming habit will not necessarily fix your life.

However, you have a better chance of having a healthy relationship with video
games if you figure out why you play video games. If you understand what
needs video games fulfill, you will be able to find other ways to satisfy those
needs.

1
Quitting Cold Turkey
You can try to quit gaming without any steps leading up to it. This
is the least effective strategy to overcome video game addiction,
but it does work for some people.

Instead of trying to quit gaming altogether, try to do a dopamine detox. A

dopamine detox is an exercise to deprive yourself of activities that are too
stimulating and fun.

Delete all social media applications from your phone, uninstall all your games,
and disconnect your computer and keep it somewhere that is not easily
accessible.

26
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Try to spend more time in nature – go for a

hike or a run. You can even try to start
meditating and cultivating more internal
awareness. If you can come to terms with
the reason you play video games in the first
place, it will be easier to find ways to avoid
gaming.

Before starting the dopamine fast, try to find

other activities to do. Try picking up a skill
that involves creating something physical.
Try learning a new instrument. Pick up a
sport, or start a new exercise routine.

Try to spend more time in nature – go for a hike or a run. You can even try to
start meditating and cultivating more internal awareness. If you can come to
terms with the reason you play video games in the first place, it will be easier to
find ways to avoid gaming.

Dr. K discusses dopamine fasting and how to execute it effortlessly in this

video:

Dopamine detoxes are the most effective when done with someone. Have a
friend do it with you. You can check in with each other for fifteen minutes a day
and hold each other accountable.

It typically takes the brain about two weeks to reset itself to normal dopamine
levels. If you successfully abstain for two weeks, congratulations! After this, not
only will video games feel more fun, but you might also have found other
activities to enjoy.

27
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

However, be careful. Gaming might have served as a coping mechanism for

you, and if you have not found a way to address the cause of these urges, then
it is likely that you will relapse.

2
Slowly Reduce the Time Spent Gaming
Nobody will blame you if you feel you cannot quit gaming in one
go. Many people rely on gaming as a coping mechanism for
negative emotions, a sense of community, and a way to de-stress.

It is easier to reduce the time spent gaming than to try to quit gaming in one go.
Here is an example plan that you can follow. However, feel free to modify this
to suit your pace and needs.

Let’s assume that you spend 10 hours a day gaming.

You can start by spending 15 minutes cleaning as much of your room as
you can. You don’t have to clean the whole thing, only as much as you can
in fifteen minutes. Don’t worry about being efficient with your time. Even if
you pick up one shirt from the ground and put it in the laundry basket, that
is good enough.
After doing this for 3-4 days, try increasing this time to 30 minutes, and
cleaning up more of your room. Over time, you can increase the duration
spent on activities other than gaming and incorporate more things to do.
These could be going for a short walk, learning a new instrument, picking
up a new hobby, or meditating.
Over six months, you could try increasing the time you don’t spend gaming
from 10 hours a day to 5 hours a day. That is a significant improvement.
Those are 5 hours in the day spent on productive activities. If you spent
those hours learning new skills or pursuing your goals, that would
significantly improve your confidence and quality of life.

Important Note: Don’t try to add new activities and increase the time spent on
another hobby at the same time. Biting off more than you can chew will only
lead to another failed attempt. Change is not a sprint; it is a marathon, and it
requires patience.

It could also be valuable to see a mental health professional. Think of it as a

buff — it would increase the rate at which you could overcome your video game
addiction. A therapist could help you identify and work on the underlying issues
that drive your gaming habit.

28
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

3
Find a Competing Interest
In addiction psychiatry, it is not sufficient to simply stop using the
substance in question. The urges will be too strong, and the
likelihood of relapse is too high.

One of the most effective ways to get

someone to quit a substance is to help
them develop a competing interest.

A competing interest is an activity,

hobby, or goal that makes you less
reliant on your vice. The drive to engage
in the activity or achieve a goal is so
strong that it overcomes the urge to
indulge in the addiction. Even though this
concept originated out of substance
abuse addictions, it works well for video
game addiction.

Gamers get stuck in life because they

feel powerless and directionless. They
think that they don’t have control over
their lives. They want to become
accomplished individuals, but they end
up being pulled back into video games,
and cannot find the motivation to move
forward in life.

Moreover, they don’t even know which direction to move in. That can be
paralyzing.

Video games give you a false sense of direction and growth. Due to our
evolutionary history, progress is attractive to our brains. Video games fulfill that
need, and as a result, it is difficult for gamers to engage that internal drive to
achieve outside video games.

However, sometimes you try to set your heart on something and accomplish it.
You give it your all, and then you encounter a roadblock. The initial motivation
that drove you to achieve your goal disappears suddenly. You try to push
through, but eventually, you give up and stop.

29
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

It is important not to treat these tries as failures. Instead, it is essential to

understand why you failed.

Often, we pick arbitrary goals for ourselves. For example, a lot of gamers
choose financial independence as a goal. However, that goal comes out of a
desire, not a value. Desires don’t motivate you to make long-term changes in
your life; values do. Desires are things that would be nice to have, but you
wouldn’t have that drive to achieve them.

On the other hand, values motivate you to get out of your chair and achieve
something, despite its difficulty and the suffering it may bring. That is
essentially what a competing interest is — it arises out of your values, not your
desires. Values make you feel fulfilled when you move in their prescribed
direction.

The problem is that many gamers don’t know what their values are, which
leaves them directionless. Luckily, there are some exercises that you can do to
figure out what you value.

30
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Exercise to Figure Out Your Values

Grab a piece of paper and write 500 words about a time when you felt
fulfilled. Write about it in as much detail as you can. It is vital to sit down
and do this exercise with a pen and a piece of paper. While gamers are
good at analytical thinking, they don’t have much practice reflecting on their
thought process. Putting your thoughts down on paper will help you look at
them critically. It will also prevent you from falling into the trap of editing
them as you write.

Again, grab a piece of paper and write about ten things that are wrong with
the world. Write about them in as much detail as you can — this will help
you clarify your values, and figure out what you care about. It is essential to
do this exercise on a piece of paper because the first five things you write
down will probably be things that you already know. However, the last five
might be new, and you will be surprised at what you learn about yourself.

31
Video Game Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide

Making Meaningful
Changes in Your Life
When people spend years of their life mostly on the internet, it can start to take
a toll. What was once been a fun, engaging and exploratory experience now
feels like something you can’t separate from and develop outside of.

Healthy Gamer Coaching helps people move from being passive observers to
active participants in their own lives. It helps people build a purposeful life while
balancing being on the internet.

BEAT VIDEO GAME ADDICTION

32