To preface, this post isn’t a bash on gaming. I’ve been gaming since I was 3 years old on the NES. It was (and still is) a part of my life. That said, while I turned out ok in the end, I would play games every free moment I had. I’ve spent thousands of hours in World of Warcraft during the TBC-WotLK era. My pattern would be school-home-eat while playing wow-sleep thinking of wow-repeat. My whole social circle formed around WoW and LoL/dota2 later. I would often listen to music while playing. Of course, we grew up and we became distant over time. I more or less ended up with barely any friends.

I don’t play games much nowadays because it’s simply better for my own mental health. I still play but with a lot more moderation - occasionally booting my PS2 or playing a run or two of Binding of Isaac. Most of my free time goes towards creative hobbies.

15 years later, whenever I hear music from that time, I get jittery and think about the fun I had in wow. I’ve fallen into that trap. Private servers galore, I used to play in them back then too, they’ve gotten even better since then. I start playing, ditch all my other hobbies, go out only for work, and in the end not have fun at all, and spiral into depression. The itch barely gets scratched. This cycle has been repeating over and over. I don’t want it to happen again and I just got the jitters again.

I don’t want to stop listening to music I like just because monkey brain associates it with WoW.

  • NuPNuA@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Not to dismiss your issues mate, but I don’t know if a gaming sub is the best place to ask. Most of us in here probably put a few hours a day into games ourselves without considering it an issue.

    • Io Sapsai 🌱@lemm.eeOP
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      1 year ago

      I actually agree with you but the mental health communities on Lemmy haven’t caught up yet, and I figured one could find more people here that could relate.

    • bermuda@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yeah it’s like if they were asking for recovering alcoholism problems in the beer community