Managing Go Addiction - (serious)

Get your I.T. to block the site at work.

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Somewhat related

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Thereā€™s a doctor of psychology whose special area of interest is video game addiction. He covers other topics related to mental health, relationships, etc. but his primary audience is gamers. Check out the topics of his videos and playlists on YouTube:

I found a few of his discussions pretty interesting. Like, I think I might have some amount of executive disfunction, which involves difficulties with carrying out plans of action.

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This ^^ is a very important thing to keep in mind so you donā€™t get discouraged. One approach Iā€™ve found super effective (with non-Go addictions) is progressive reduction. Suggest: set a realistic target, no matter how small (e.g. play just 1% fewer games than the week prior) - but be certain to stick to it. Youā€™ll likely feel great just for knowing that youā€™re making an effortā€¦youā€™re taking Sente against the addiction as it were. As you feel comfortable, consider further reduction - rinse and repeat.


Iā€™m somewhat Buddhist-friendly, they suggest 5 techniques for dealing with problematic thoughts; progressive reduction is the 4th most effective according to them. #1 is to think of something else, might be worth a try.

Good luck mate :sunflower:

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Thanks! I agree with you, of course, but at the same time I think that thinking it will take long leads me to take it easy and think that starting another game is not that bad.
Now Iā€™m concentrating on trying to reduce the number of correspondence games, Iā€™m down to less than 1000 and Iā€™m aiming to go even lower, I donā€™t know how much yet.
I think thatā€™s the most important thing right now, but Iā€™m still playing a lot of live games (for example 35 today, mostly 9x9 rengos).
I am not trying hard enough, I have to admit it :grimacing: .

Thank you for your advice @Jade_9000 (and also @Aumpa , belatedly). In particular, I think counting the number of games I play and trying to force myself not to exceed a certain number is a good idea. I donā€™t know if I can put it into practice, though.
I can do it, I just have to try harder and stop postponing.

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35 live rengo games?! In a day. How do you do that?

Not 35 live rengo, 35 includes all (and excludes correspondence).
The live rengos are a bit less:

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Blitz 9x9 rengo. Could become trendy! Innovative between the go servers offers at least.

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Good tip. l am finding this works with smoking cigarettes!

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plan for Live time setting 19x19 player:
play the game
if you lost against equal or lower ranked opponent, donā€™t play another game until end of the day

only on the next day you may try again to play more games that time
(even-ranked opponents are always included when creating game, higher-ranked included after win, lower-ranked included after lose)


or if more free from Go time is needed:
set 2 games/day as maximum
but play 2nd game only if you win 1st game, against any rank

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I think this is great advice.

In general I think it helps if you can identify your addiction more precisely. Are you really addicted to go? Or are you addicted to correspondence games on an online server?

I once read an interview of someone who has been addicted to masturbation. They explained that they had tried various methods to stop but nothing seemed to work, the addiction was too strong and they didnā€™t really ā€œwantā€ to stop. Until they figured out that they werenā€™t addicted to masturbation, but to watching porn on the computer. Disassociating the two activities, masturbation and porn, made it much easier to break the addiction. They forced themselves a hard stop on porn, while not putting any restrictions on masturbation. The conclusion was that this way they had been able to completely stop watching porn; and that as first they were masturbating as often as before (as a way to compensate for the lack of porn), but that as the porn addiction disappeared, they began masturbating less, too.

Perhaps this can apply to playing go on the internet, too. Play as much go as you can, on a physical goban; go to the go club as much as you can; invite friends over to play go as much as you can. Read as many go books as you can.

Play as many live games as you want, even on internet go servers. But put a hard stop to correspondence games.

Since I threw away my account, I havenā€™t played in half a year. In fact thinking about go kinda causes physical aversion. Great success.

Considering that someone wrote ā€œkeep us postedā€ and that this thread has been revived I give you some updates.
I played a lot for the Western Server Challenge in March, but this was just crazy. Half of what I did was enough to win.
Now however I still have a lot of correspondence games, Iā€™ve been stuck around 500 for a while. I play live games almost only for tournaments (and I donā€™t mean OGS tournaments, but I allow myself to join the live 9x9 ones sometimes) or to rank up. A lot of people have accused me of sandbagging and I feel like I have to catch up every time my rank goes down because of correspondence games. I have never intentionally tried to lower my rank.
I tried not playing (maximum one game a day, no correspondence) for 7-10 days twice and it was fine, especially after the first few days. So Iā€™m starting to think my problem is OGS, or maybe online life in general. That is if I actually have an addiction problem, Iā€™m not sure.
In any case, right now I donā€™t feel ready to change. Itā€™s a bit of a difficult period (nothing too serious or worrying, but it has to be said) and this makes me feel good. To change I will probably have to wait until I want to. I hope it will not be too late.
I have not started a therapy, although rationally I know I would need it (for other things too).

I donā€™t know, maybe I gave up. Maybe I should never have written here. Iā€™m sorry Iā€™m disappointing.

If these questions were addressed to me, I think I have answered them :slight_smile:

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Thank you for the update. We are happy to listen and to support you - please donā€™t feel that there are any expectations.

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At least, 500 is an improvement compared to the 1500 you had a few months ago.

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