To preface, this post isn’t a bash on gaming. I’ve been gaming since I was 3 years old on the NES. It was (and still is) a part of my life. That said, while I turned out ok in the end, I would play games every free moment I had. I’ve spent thousands of hours in World of Warcraft during the TBC-WotLK era. My pattern would be school-home-eat while playing wow-sleep thinking of wow-repeat. My whole social circle formed around WoW and LoL/dota2 later. I would often listen to music while playing. Of course, we grew up and we became distant over time. I more or less ended up with barely any friends.
I don’t play games much nowadays because it’s simply better for my own mental health. I still play but with a lot more moderation - occasionally booting my PS2 or playing a run or two of Binding of Isaac. Most of my free time goes towards creative hobbies.
15 years later, whenever I hear music from that time, I get jittery and think about the fun I had in wow. I’ve fallen into that trap. Private servers galore, I used to play in them back then too, they’ve gotten even better since then. I start playing, ditch all my other hobbies, go out only for work, and in the end not have fun at all, and spiral into depression. The itch barely gets scratched. This cycle has been repeating over and over. I don’t want it to happen again and I just got the jitters again.
I don’t want to stop listening to music I like just because monkey brain associates it with WoW.
It sounds like you know the best solution for it… but it’s painful to implement.
You either have it be able to listen to the music without it triggering you, or avoid that trigger. I don’t really know if there’s a third option.
That said it sounds like you might benefit from actual professional consultation on this issue. Therapy is quite common when overcoming strong addictions. Maybe a councilor can give you some additional insight into other solutions.