How do you stop dota addiction?

Answer 1

First step: Realization

Realize you have a problem, just make a quick counting of how many hours you spent in it. It's easier with Dota2 now as it count how many time you spent in the game.

Divide this number for how many free hours you have in a day probably around 4~10 hours...

Thats how many days you lost on DOTA.

Second step: Uninstalling

Uninstall the game, delete the installers, delete the saved games, destroy the discs.

As it will be unavailable to quick time-flying matches you won't find yourself playing for hours without even noticing.

Third step: Not comming back

The hardest one. After a while, you will find the urge to install back the game, you'll probably lie to yourself that you will play just a little bit, or just now that your friends are playing.

A good strategy is finding out WHAT YOU ENJOY ABOUT DOTA

The game has so many rewards that sometimes is hard to figure out why you like it so much.

For me it was playing with a uncommon hero, and thinking of new strategy's that the average player wouldn't think off.

The synergy with the team was also something really rewarding for me in the game, helping a friend moments before he die, or stunning and enemy right wen he was going away...

After you find this, this COOL THING about Dota that makes you keep playing it, you replace it with something else, maybe other activity that generate the same feeling, maybe multiple activities, or even games...

I find my way out playing really hard games (for the challenging part) and cooperative multiplayer games like CallOfDuty, L4D cooperative, and D&D RPG sessions once in a while... Always with real life friends only, so their schedule helps preventing me from playing TOO MUCH

The key thing is that you can't change your needs, you just have to find activities that reward you without taking TOO MUCH of your time.

Another mindset trick that worked for me was the remembering not planning...

When I find myself thinking about Dota, and how many cool awesome strategys I could elaborate for the next match I tried to think about past cool awesome moments in the game.

The experiences in the past were somehow as satisfying as playing then, reminds me I was rewarded already and didn't gave me the urge to play and test the new strategy...

Yeah... it sounds like brainwash a little bit but it worked for me.

that was my 2 cents.