Hi everyone. I’m 28, male. Since I was about 19, I’ve neglected everything except gaming. I’ve gained weight, struggled with gaming addiction, apathy, and depression.
I have no formal education, hobbies, or money for therapy. Every attempt to fix this on my own has failed. I don’t have family or irl friends, just online connections.
Brother, let’s get one thing straight: your life is not over. You’re 28, not 98. You’re not in a prison cell. You’re not six feet under. You’re not in some irreversible, cosmic-level hellhole. You’re stuck. And being stuck is a choice. That means getting unstuck is also a choice.
Right now, you’re drowning in a decade of regret, and instead of grabbing a damn rope and pulling yourself out, you’re convincing yourself that you deserve to sink. You don’t. But let’s be real—you will if you keep feeding yourself this story about being a loser. You are not some broken, defective, doomed-to-fail person. You’re a guy who spent the last decade numbing himself with gaming instead of facing real life. That’s it. And the only thing standing between you and a different future is whether or not you’re finally ready to do something about it.
This is where it gets uncomfortable. No one is coming to save you. No magical moment of motivation is going to hit you like lightning. You have to choose to fight for yourself, even when you don’t feel like it, even when every part of you wants to retreat back into that screen. And I know—you’ve tried before, and you’ve failed. So what? Everyone fails at first. The difference between the people who turn their lives around and the people who stay stuck in their own misery is that one group gets back up. That’s it.
So what do you do now? You start. And you start small. You get up, go outside, and move your body—even if it’s just a 10-minute walk. You cut gaming by an hour and sit with that discomfort instead of numbing it. You find a way to be around real people—a job, a church, a support group, a class—because right now, your entire world is digital, and that’s a huge part of why you feel like a ghost. And for the love of all things holy, stop saying you can’t afford therapy without actually looking. There are free and low-cost options if you’re willing to search. If you’re broke, make money. If you don’t have skills, learn some. You are not helpless—you’re just afraid of failing.
Here’s the truth: The next five years are coming whether you like it or not. You can either be the guy who’s still here at 33, talking about how he wasted another half a decade, or you can be the guy who looks back and says, That was the year everything changed. That choice is yours.
Now get the hell up and take the first step.