Asmongold opens up on mental health issues that led to “degenerate” lifestyle

Asmongold released a video on October 1 about his lifestyle, detailing his reasons for “living like an animal for 13 years,” opening up on his upbringing and mental health struggles.

YouTuber and Twitch streamer, Asmongold, who originally gained prominence as a World of Warcraft content creator, has branched out over the years into reaction-style content covering various topics, from politics and streamer culture to games industry drama.

“People always wonder ‘why would a person live like this and why am I like this?'” Asmon began in the 35-minute-long upload. “I actually have not always been like this. It’s a relatively new thing for me. It started in high school and later on, it entered phase two. Around 21 or 23 is when the degeneracy ramped up.”

While he has never shied away from discussing his dirty bedroom, even admitting previously that he needed to clean his house after revealing his living conditions, the content creator has also drawn comments from outside parties, including his father. Likewise, even game developers have taken jabs at his lifestyle in the past.

“I’ve always had a big problem being able to understand how you should act, how you should treat people, what you should do, how you should say things, etc,” he continued.

Recalling an instance from his childhood, in which another child was making him “mad” while playing baseball, Asmon detailed how he hit the ball with the “explicit intention” of hitting “him in the face with the ball.”

He further described how he could “see that other people were made very uncomfortable” after the event, attributing the incident to when he “started trying to mask my emotions.”

The discussion then turned to high school, in which Asmon recalled that he “never really had a girlfriend in high school” and was “never really treated well by girls.”

“Big surprise,” he continued, admitting that “Being a level 60 warrior isn’t as attractive to women as it is to other 16-year-old guys.”

“I eventually got to the point where I was more comfortable with that and I stopped really caring as much about what people would think about me and people’s perception of me. This kind of got worse as time went on, and I think that I spent my teenage years trying to remove myself from the obligation to be a certain kind of person to the public.

“I never chose to be here. This was not up for discussion. I just spawned in here.”

Talking about how he spent much of his childhood living on the “poverty line,” Asmon recounted this period for viewers. “At the peak of my degeneracy, I was probably one of the highest-rated warriors in WoW at the time. It was great, but not necessarily in real life.”

“I pretty much gave up on being a normal person,” he said, adding, “I felt like I was not capable of that based on the experiences I had.”

The conversation then turned to his mother, who he lived with and cared for until she died in 2021, a period which the streamer described as “very upsetting.”

Stating that he didn’t “give a f*ck” about sympathy and wasn’t seeking attention, Asmon said he hoped that by sharing his story, others could “see where [he’s] coming from as a person.” While he added that presently, he’s happy, he always assumed, earlier in life, “that [he] would kill [himself] after high school” but that he “forgot” about the idea after WoW’s Wrath of the Lich King was released in 2008.

World of Warcraft became a recurring talking point in the video, with the streamer crediting Blizzard’s MMO for teaching him more about business than he learned from business school. “I thought that I would have a shitty job, play video games for my whole life, and then die.”

After a job at Sam’s Club, which he hated so much it encouraged him to be a “better person,” Asmon detailed his first foray into YouTube. “I did want to kill myself but I decided instead of killing myself, I’d do something even worse, I’d start streaming. I started streaming for money. I needed some f**king money.”

In concluding the video, he explained that he aims to “let go of himself and be content with his existence” rather than dwell on criticism that, he admitted, “used to affect him a lot more”.

“Will I ever change? Maybe. Maybe not. At the end of the day, I have complete and absolute agency over my own life. That’s been a very comforting fact. In the future I might change my mind, I just don’t know yet. I just try to live life and enjoy it.”

If you or somebody you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can reach out to the Samaritans (116 123) in the United Kingdom, or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) in the USA. For a list of worldwide hotlines, click here.