This game has a chokehold on me and it has for around 11 years, I’m a 22 year old man now. I need to start by saying that I love this game with my whole heart. The extremely high level mechanics, the feeling of getting an ace solo holding a site. Hitting an awp flick. Ranking up higher and higher. Optimising your settings based around your setup and style of play. Team play. Learning smokes. Being called a cheater. Pro play. Content creation.
Point is I enjoy the game so much.
I am the best player in my gaming group by a country mile mainly cus I’ve been playing it the longest and put the most hours into it. I’ve probably put 6000 hours into cs alone and am a 0.1% high elo player but the point is I feel like I’ve put so much of my time into this. Even time not in the game watching pro games, YouTube videos, Instagram reels about the game.
This has cost me my gf, who was so patient, kind and even put time in to sit next to me and try understand the game I love along with me, money into the cases system, time with my family, neglecting my health, mental bandwidth at work and even friends because I’d rather had grind for that 3.5k faceit elo which in retrospect is worthless because I can’t even be a pro anymore like my actual childhood dream when I was 12. It’s got its claws deep in my childhood.
I’ve somehow managed to pull off an engineering degree in this time and have a perfect job for myself. But I don’t know how to stop playing AT ALL. For some reason my brain thinks that by not playing the game in the evenings I am letting my friends down. These guys aren’t even my close friends they’re just guys I play the game with.
My issue is I adore the game, but it is an addiction. This was cathartic to put into text. I have Stockholm syndrome for this game, even tell myself that I’ve played it for so long that I need to make content creation to make it worthwhile.
Sorry for the wall of text, I’ve thought about doing this before but drastic measures like uninstalling the game or getting rid of my pc felt like too much. Thanks