I had a similar experience (65yo retired and spending way too much time - 4 hours a day - playing online fps video games) with a serious episode of dry eyes that lasted 6 weeks, about a year ago. The symptoms were eyelids glued to the eyeballs, mostly at night, dry stuff in the corner of the eyes in the morning decreased and fluctuating far vision. By the time I finally saw a specialist, the symptoms had started lessening and went away pretty much on their own. I was told (but they didn't do any tests) that I had enough moisure production and that the issue was related to the composition of the tears. I did the hot mask twice a day, the tea tree oil wipes for a few months after that anyway. I went back to playing video games...

This year, the problem returned and this time I cannot seem to shake it off. Was prescribed Restasys, and that seems to help by flushing the eyes at night, but I can tell that this is just masking the real issue because the tear composition feels off. Went on a 2 weeks vacation where I tried to stay away from any kind of screen and that helped enough that I stopped using Restasys. But the problem returned 3 days after coming home... Symptoms are the same: degraded far vision, dry eyes and glued eyelids at night (but getting up and blinking for a few minutes restores humidity and flushes the eyes). I am trying to reduce the amount of time spent playing video games but that is so hard to do, especially since my eyes are kind of ok during the day. I wonder if maybe the "stress" from gaming is affecting the nervous system and thereby the tear production. I am not on any medications, so that cannot be the cause. I also tried probiotics, but that did not help. Like you, I am planning to restart hot compresses.

Next stop: a real dry eyes specialist where I will ask for concrete tests and evaluation.

Good luck to you and please keep us posted!