"Am I alive? Is this real? I feel like I'm not really-

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I have had a growing need for mostly intentional dissociation from reality as a coping mechanism for stress through mainly video games, but also having intense versions of "zoning out," ever since I was in 3rd or 4th grade, and I am now a freshman in high school. The video game way is intentional, and they are extremely important to me to keep myself alive, but the zoning out one isn't always actively intentional, and even though I zone out a lot from ADHD, there are times that I zone out in these other, intense ways. Although I have sporadic tactile hallucinations and less auditory ones and more visual than auditory, I often become aware that they're not real from investigating what the source in my area may be and the visual ones disappear into thin air, even though they seem very real as I experience them, so I know that I haven't lost touch with reality, even though I believe the hallucinations at first for a little while; I just strongly wish to get reality away from me, because I hate it, and would rather die than to have to constantly face it. Anyway, I mentioned that stuff, because there are these weird times that I experience when it actually feels like what is happening isn't real. It's like a different way of loss of touch from reality, because I feel like I'm not... within reality. I feel like I died a long time ago, and that I'm just watching what is happening. The way that I see and hear things when this happens feels.... just, odd. That part is too difficult to describe. I feel like I'm not actually there, but I know I am, because as I'm questioning the situation out loud to people around me, they respond. It's just the strangest thing, and it's happened to me several times. Is this some other kind of hallucination? What is this?

I've often zoned out and dissociated, and this ^ is very familiar to me. Sometimes I'll look at my surroundings and it will feel almost as if I'm watching a movie; what I'm seeing in front of me is most certainly happening, but it feels unreal. I'll tell myself over and over that it is reality and that I'm living it, but for a few moments it feels as if what's happening around me is not connected to my existence at all.

At times I find it strange and unreal to be looking out from these two peep holes. Why am I so limited to this bodily form, why would I be destroyed eventually, what will happen to the viewing when I am destroyed, and in some way am I just the whole universe, flitting from one perspective to another, just forgetting it when I keep coming into this perspective?

School in addition to long durations spent near TVs or homework on a laptop for me was a trigger for sleep paralysis - it's not really as serious as it sounds, very common on the autism spectrum, during the several years I exhibited the symptoms (a lot like insomnia, yet perceptible after waking up), I frequently noticed much the same dissociations; the importance of my surroundings and my connection therein faded with my concentration on the task at hand.

Autism spectrum is largely associated with your visual cortex, and a big issue for me as a programmer is ocular headaches, everyone's had one, it's the fatigue of the maxiofacial muscles around your eyes when you look up from a long read. Thing is, this doesn't just affect the eyes - nothing in the body is %100 biochemically isolated, for me, staring at screens induced insomnia, something I might liken to such dissociations, albeit on a 24 hour scale.

Luckily a friend showed me this [LINK]; Controlling the brightness, contrast and gamma of the screens you look at during the night can limit the intensity of the light hitting your corneas. The cornea is actually quite important here - in psycho-pharmacology, many hallucinogenic compounds directly affect the eyes; much the same way visual spectrum radiation actually singes the old epithelial cells away from your eyes when you wake up. Over the course of your day, stimulating your optic nerves and visual cortex less will likely leave more room in your short-term memory for your social life and work.

Oh I hate sleep paralysis! I've had that a few times, and one of the times was when I was a little kid. It's terrifying. I spend a lot of time staring at my computer screen, and even though I hate insomnia and sleep paralysis, I don't think I'd ever decrease it in order to prevent them. I might adjust screen things.

Well then, I'm glad physical side effects are so uncommon! Videogames of course never quite killed anyone, but they did make a few dudes forget to which species they belonged. I say you must simply be careful not to identify too greatly with any one character, as tempting as that idea might be; the real benefit of videogaming is in maintaining your reflexes no matter the task.