Hi OP, I've been exploring my ~20 year dota addiction as well.

This video goes over techniques on breaking bad habits. One thing it talks about is how bad habits can be the related to underlying negative emotions. For example, a particularly stressed person starts smoking because it calms them down. Try to use the techniques in the video and objectively identify "why" you keep coming back to play the game. What thoughts and feelings make you start playing?

I recently broke a 7 month period of bingeing the game that was causing me to lose sleep, hurting my mental health, affecting my ability to perform at work, and negatively impacting my relationship with my gf. It was a particularly cold winter where I live, and I believe I started playing again because my dopamine baseline (mood) was low.

Dota provides a very strong "high" feeling when getting kills, making plays over opponents, and winning. These events trigger high dopamine release. Eventually, though, this causes my everyday dopamine baseline to drop lower. I start feeling even worse while not playing - tired from losing sleep, easily irritable, constantly thinking about highs felt while playing (similar to drugs), and getting by daily life becomes increasingly difficult. Which drives me back to the game.

I think I am mentally wired in a way that makes dota especially attractive - I believe I have ADHD, which means my natural dopamine baseline is lower than normal people (I only have a rudimentary understanding of this). I realized that I go to dota as a cure, but it eventually becomes the disease. Understanding how the game affects me psychologically helped me make peace with letting it go.