So I've been on almost a 3 year journey to stop gaming and reduce stimulation in general from my life. I've already done a couple times and keep coming back. It's worth to mention that the breaks from gaming are bigger and seasons of gaming are also smaller. Last break lasted 300 days, gaming season was 40 days and I'm 10 days into quitting.
I would say I'm addicted to gaming but it's not as bad as other posts I see in here. It started at highschool, when I got a laptop and a phone and had a lot of free time after school. It got worse after Covid.
In my gaming seasons I can still have a relatively normal life. The thing is, that it eats a lot of my time and energy, it slowly starts to damage my sleep, health and makes life less enjoyable outside of gaming. These tend to compound over time. Less sleep leads to more screen time, worse mood, which leads to not wanting to be social...
My biggest problems when I quit are that I don't know what to do with so much free time. Until now I would replace my time gaming watching youtube. I've prohibited my time doing that and now I spend many hours a day on reddit. If I limit this, I would probably replace it with something else.
And before you say that I need a new hobby, I do have a life outside of gaming. I play basketball 5 times a week (1'5 hours). I also play guitar (about 15/30 minutes a day and have a 1 hour guitar lesson every week). I meet with friends once a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. I also go to saunas 1/2 per week and relax there.
Still, with all of this, I have a lot of free time and I don't know what to do with it. I want to expand my social life but it takes time and it won't fix everything. I still have some ideas of what more I can do like voluntering. Lastly the thing I think I struggle the most is going outside, besides hobbies, obligations and social stuff I don't really do that. But what should I do, 2 hours walks? Idk
I feel like I'm almost at the finish line but don't know where the last step is. Any advice (short/long term) is greatly appreciated.