Any advice on how to deal with DBDASS Syndrome (Dead By Daylight Addiction, Seriously Suffering)?

Hello fog lovers and sniffers,

I think I may be playing a bit too much Dead by Daylight. I don't even particularly enjoy it. On the fun/enjoyment/self fulfillment/enlightment scale it's only scoring about a 2 and a half. And yet I keep playing. I've uninstalled over and over and yet keep reinstalling, and while the hour and a half download time is slowly ticking down I am just waiting, with barely restrained glee, to play. I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait. I watch DBD streamers while I wait. I go down into the basement, draw a circle on the floor in chalk and start praying, knees buckled into the cold stone while I wait. I go onto the DBD Forums and post a self-absorbed, very unfunny rant on why I am unable to wait, why booting up Dead by Daylight feels like the second coming of Laurie getting a cosmetic.

And then, a notification. Your download has finished, it says. Has it really been an hour and thirty minutes already?

No matter. The controller is an extension of my inner self. I flick to the game's start icon in seconds, an action I have rehearsed and performed thousands of times. It pulsates like the Entity itself.

Then, I pause, like the bots do in solo queue whenever I actually need them to heal me.

Is this what I really want?

Am I actually happy playing this game?

Will Diversion ever take the top spot in the meta as it deserves to?

These thoughts come and go everytime. They are a part of the routine and they never change. It is fundamental, after all, that when booting up a asymmetrical psychological horror game you yourself feel on the brink of a psychological breakdown. That's what I call brilliant game design.

Somehow, without me even realising, the game has started. I lock in and skip the opening cinematic. I don't need to be sold on this game, lured in with fancy visuals and the horror that is Claudette's death. I have already been taken, hook (hahahahahahahahahahaha!) line and sinker. Loading visuals. Configuring databases. Loading consent. Checking Friends List. Laughing at you behind your back. Buying Auric Cells. Killing you. Watching you.

Done.

I play and I die. I play and I die. I play and I die. I play and I die. I play and I die. I play and I die. I play and I die. I die, and I play. I throw a pebble and it hits the ceiling, indicating to the killer that the loud noise notification was not, in fact, made by a survivor, and that they can pay it no mind. I get stuck on a random barrel running a loop and die.

Go next. There's two of us dead already. I run at the killer so the other poor soul who has loaded their consent gets a chance at hatch. I bleed out in a pool of my own spite.

I run circles around logic as I load into Azarov's Wrecking Yard for the third time tonight. I tell myself this time I'll understand why I play, and yet, as per usual, I am unaware that I am the one about to get wrecked.

Has it really been six hours and fourty seven minutes already? Why has the sun come up? Why am I playing this? What is solo queue but an in-depth examination of the human psyche and how it relishes in destroying itself?

I uninstall. For good, I tell myself. There's a feeling of contentment that comes with watching the game disappear from my dashboard. But it feels hollow. I'm just exhausted, I say to myself. I'm in control, I persuade myself.

There's a phantom pain somewhere in my chest. Have I felt this way before?

(help)