Video game addiction has been one of my most persistent addictions. If you're struggling with this, or on the path to recovery with any behavioral addiction, I'm going to share my story with video game addiction here. I hope it will be very helpful for you, and I hope it keeps me accountable, because today is at least the fourth, maybe the fifth, sixth, or seventh time that I've publicly stated I'm quitting playing video games.
The first time was in 2016, after a lifetime of playing video games for at least 20, maybe close to 30 years before that. I was able to quit gaming the first time because I was really curious to see what my life would look like if I wasn't sinking a ton of time and energy into playing video games. What happened was amazing. I got into crypto, I started making music, and my YouTube channel blew up once I wasn't taking so much of my creative energy and pouring it into gaming. I had a ton of growth, and I wrote a book called Speaker Meeting 2017, where I did an entire chapter on video game addiction.
Going Back to Gaming
Then in 2018, I hit a challenging point with my work. All the crypto that I'd been working on had blown up, and I was in a miserable place about that. At the same time, my music was just getting into a position where it was going to take off. I'd laid a strong foundation. I had a following that was building on Twitch. TikTok was just coming around; it was still called Musically. All the pieces were in place for me to take off as a musician. So what did I do? I quit. In facing the uncertainty, in feeling lost and confused during a time when I was struggling, I went back to gaming.
I rationalized it. Facebook was just launching Facebook Gaming at the time, which I since ended up becoming a partner on, making lots of money on, and then getting demonetized, but we'll get into that in a minute. I played games for a year, and I came back because I had these dreams of being a professional gamer, of being able to do gaming for my job. I got a great taste of that in 2018 and 2019, but it wasn't making hardly any money, although there were 36 people who were paying $5 a month to support my gaming, and there were thousands of people consistently showing up to watch. I quit gaming again at another low where I could see clearly: this is wasting my time, I'm struggling financially, and I'm pulling myself in too many different directions.
Then, another year later, I hit another bottom in my work as a creative entrepreneur and in my business online, and I again had no idea what to do with myself. I went live on Facebook, and people said, "Why don't you come back to gaming?" So I started gaming again. My dreams of being a professional gamer came back to life, and I actually achieved it. I made over $100,000 gaming on Facebook in 2021. It seemed the world conspired to give me a chance to play video games full time, and I was surprised at how unhappy I was. Surprised at how annoying it was to show up and play video games every day. It felt very much like an addiction.
When the Dream Felt Like an Addiction
On a daily basis, I would get high playing the video games, and then I would suffer and struggle most of the time. I tried. I looked at it like I could play games and carry this inspirational message while I played. The challenge was that the games always got in the way of the message. Imagine if Tony Robbins or Wayne Dyer or Eckhart Tolle were playing video games, but you could hardly hear them talk most of the time, or you were so distracted by the game that you could barely hang around for their message.
Then my Facebook page was demonetized in 2022 after I changed my race, and that was just one thing in a series of provocative stuff I had done. I had done really far-out, dark comedy. I had been putting all these conspiracy videos and live streams up on my channels. On some level, I was asking for Facebook to demonetize me, and they finally obliged when I changed my race. Whatever you think of that, whether right or wrong, whether they should or shouldn't have, on some level I got what I wanted.
Then I tried to quit. I tried to double down on the gaming instead, to do it on Twitch, to do it on YouTube, but at this point it had just turned into mostly an addiction. There were better things to do with my time, and I wasn't even having fun gaming a lot of the time. I remember playing Fallout on Twitch just feeling like I was wasting my time. I kept feeling like I was wasting my time, and it blocked me from being able to do a lot of other things I wanted to do, like make music and do crypto videos. I went back and forth. I started a new crypto channel after trying so many different ways to make the gaming work off of Facebook, and even trying to make it work on Facebook. All I experienced was suffering and frustration.
Recognizing It for What It Was
Finally, it became clear to me: this has now become an addiction, and it always has been an addiction. Me playing video games isn't as outwardly destructive as something like drinking or gambling. But the core of an addiction, in my experience, is recognizing that what you're doing is blocking you from doing something else that might benefit other people more, that might result in more happiness and energy and joy for your life. With gaming, I've been trying to have that realization all of 2023. I quit gaming earlier in 2023 and almost immediately went right back to it, because sometimes it's just hard to let things go. We're scared. We don't know what we're going to do without it.
I finally have been able to take some real action today by getting rid of all my gaming stuff, deleting all my games off my PC that I bought for gaming and is now for music production. I sold my Xbox Series X and my PlayStation 5, and I put away all the old Nintendo games because my brother said he'd like me to keep them. I feel full of energy and enthusiasm and hope. I've been playing video games for a lot of the last year thinking that there's got to be something better I could do with my time. And I know what I want to do with my time. I want to make music. I want to hang out with my family, exercise, go to yoga and AA meetings, do crypto videos, and do recovery videos. I'm glad I have been sober for nine years and haven't had a relapse in drinking.
This has been the most persistent of my addictions, because it came in this form that was rationalized. My wife felt helpless about experiencing the gaming addiction again when I said I was going to go back to playing games, after quitting twice and coming back the third time. If you're walking through a behavioral addiction too, having people around you who understand it makes all the difference, which is a big part of why I put so much energy into the Jerry Banfield Family community.
Focusing on What You Gain
Today I am sharing this with the hope that if you're in the middle of a behavioral addiction, or you're trying to let go of something, what has helped me a lot is to see what you can get. When we're quitting something, we often focus so much on what we're losing. But the question is: what am I gaining? I finally got the courage to say, look, I'm going to quit gaming for real. I'm done with this. I'm getting rid of all my stuff. We're not going back to this. I was able to do that because I started thinking about what I could get and what I could give.
There's very few people anymore who even care about my gaming videos. I actually got a bunch of people to play video games by doing my gaming streams on Facebook who didn't even play before. When I think about that, I think, I want to be doing stuff that inspires people to do things that I'd actually like them to do. I was just playing games, in my mind, as a means to an end, a means to deliver my teaching. By giving up gaming, I get access to do teaching in a more effective way.
I've been asking, what's the most effective way I can do my teaching? I've been listening to MrBeast's videos, and he said he just obsesses over making the best videos for people. So I've been asking, what are the best videos I'm capable of making? It's clear to me that my music videos are the best videos I'm capable of making. You might not see a lot of evidence for that yet, but I have this knowing inside that I can make music videos that will teach, that'll help people get programmed with some affirmations you'd actually want to get programmed with, like "I am strong, I am a source, I am powerful." Music that helps people laugh, helps people feel their feelings and relate and know they're not alone. These talking videos are certainly useful, but this is not the best of what I can do. This is what I need to do today to be accountable. I see that the more people follow me for music, the more they will also appreciate my talking videos. But the world is filled with talking videos. What I'm amazed to see is what I can offer to music collectively, and I can't do that if I'm playing games.
What I'm Choosing Instead
I hope that if you're trying to quit a behavior, you can start imagining: if you get rid of that behavior, if you quit playing video games, what are you going to do with all that time? I know that can look scary, and then it can make it difficult to quit. But I finally am able to say, look, I'm done playing video games, I'm clearing it all out, and I'm being accountable. So that if the idea comes into my head in the future that I should play video games, I made this to say, look, there's better things I can do with my time.
Sure, maybe it's reasonable to play a little bit of a video game here and there with my son when he's playing on the Switch, but I don't generally enjoy that. The tough thing with behavioral addictions like eating and gaming is that, at least with substances, there's a very clear boundary. So I'm setting the intention that, for me, as a creator, as a job, playing video games is not something that's worth my time or worth your time. There's too many people who create gaming content, and there's not enough people who make great, inspiring music. If there were as many people creating music as there were creating gaming stuff, I'd be inundated with all this inspiring, amazing music. So I'm really excited to see what happens. And yes, sometimes behavioral addictions are real sloppy, and that's life though.
Life to me is: if you're not growing, you're going. If you're not constantly learning and evolving, then you're getting rigid and stiff and close to morbid and dying. So today, I'm grateful I took the steps to clear out the gaming stuff out of my studio, redo some decorations, make an entirely different vibe in the studio, clear out the past, and get excited for the future. You can follow that journey and the rest of what I'm building in my Life playlist.
I really appreciate you being here. I'll be making my music live on Twitch and on TikTok, and then uploading that on all the major music platforms, along with shorts everywhere too. I appreciate your love and support. When I came back to gaming before, I re-watched my old videos where I said why I quit gaming. So if, God forbid, I consider going back to gaming again, I hope this one changes my mind.