Alcohol. Last drink was 42 days ago. I was getting very drunk every day for years. I feel pretty good right now, getting therapy to work through the issues that I was self-medicating. Also making some big positive changes.
I guess it’s too early to say with confidence that I “kicked” it, but I haven’t gone this long without a drink for a very long time and I’m determined to never touch alcohol again.
- Xanax
- Codeine
- Tramadol
- Marijuana
- Cigarettes
- Going out to friends houses all the time
Still depressed and can’t face the fact I have another 30 years of work left and it’s killing me slowly everyday.
Smoking. First nicotine and then weed.
Currently working on my addiction to junkfood, sugar and general overeating.
Still highly addicted to caffeine and possibly in denial about a sex addiction. But I think I’ll keep those two.
Sobriety
Good for you! Horrible habit.
Smoking and drinking. Drinking was hard
I feel that. Quitting alcohol is big suck territory
Facebook, I’ve been off it for 5ish years now. I miss some connections but I am much happier for it.
same.
13 years no FB or Twitter. Don’t miss em.
I don’t know if this counts as an addiction, but I used to have a particular liking for anything fire related.
lol me too. I stopped making certain devices when I turned 18
Quit smoking a few years back, that was an absolute bitch to do.
Still get the feeling every now and then, only ‘relapsed’ once at a funeral.
I used to drink heavily daily. Turns out it had more to do with anxiety/stress/depression than biology. I used to be afraid to be sober in a night. Now it’s not even on my mind and my tolerance has dropped to nil. Two light beers on friday hits me like a sixer of 8% used to, and i can enjoy it instead of it just being an escape.
You make it sound easy (no disrespect on my part, I’m sure it wasn’t easy at all).
But what worked for you?
Again no disrespect, feel free to dm me if you want.
Don’t take my experience as a generality. It was not meant as such. As far as anxiety and stress: financial stability, moving to a new country, and therapy did it. I’m extremely priveleged to be able to have done those things.
But if i could have realized back when that i really needed therapy i could have faired a lot better. Societal concepts around masculinity and “manhood” played a big role too. You can’t deal with your emotions if you can’t interact with them. Which is what drove me to drink. I wouldn’t need to deal with emotions if they had an off switch. I needed to remove a lot of the sources of pain before i could handle leaving the switch on even for a little bit.
It took two years since changing my situation before i was able to get a hold on my drinking.
For lots of people including myself bilogy plays a big role in alcoholism. I think for me, combating that is hard enough but manageable and easier the linger you maintain good habits. But for others that might not be the case and abstinence might make more sense. No shame in that.
In any case, try to find a therapist if you can afford it, and don’t settle. Find someone who challenges you but you click well with. For lack of that find some volunteer or community org and dive in 100%. Any non-drinking social activity that gets you out of the house. (D&D, hiking trail work, food not bombs, etc…)
Yeah, sorry, my post came off much more confrontational than I wanted. Not my intention.
But yeah, I know I have to do therapy. Thankfully I’m in a country that it’s at least one somewhat covered. As you said, I just need to find the right one (tried one a while ago and couldn’t open up to her).
We definitely have some different reasons for drinking, but I think it all comes down to what you’re saying. You need to find something that works for you.
Thank you very much for your reply, I sincerely mean it. I’ve sort of been trying to taper off (slowly) and think I’m ready to reach out to someone (a therapist or psychologist).
Your post definitely helped with that. Thank you.
Wow, I’m honored. I sincerely wish you the best in finding the right fit as well as getting to where you want to be with it!
I am one of the rare people who managed to taper from actual addiction to social drinking. For me it was because I got fat, and then got serious about diet and exercise and then got in shape, and then mostly quit drinking.
You’re always an addict, you’re just stronger and know yourself better.
that’s some AA nonsense
i mean i do think its true in a sense. ill always have to stay away from strong opioids.
then say “I’m always an addict”.
its a disease. ill always be an addict
Strongly disagree, I think it’s very useful to accept your own addictive tendencies so you can stay mindful of the risks, but as with most of these things it’s probably personal. Use what works for you.
I might always have the potential to become an addict again, that doesn’t mean that I’m always an addict.
jerking off 40+ times a day. cant move time backward I only do 15 max now
how do you rehydrate?
My doctor told me there is diminishing returns for your prostate after 18 orgasms, just thought you should know.
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Like half the thread, I quit smoking and legitimately feel like it was easy in hindsight. Once I really made up my mind to quit it was not hard. The most difficult part was breaking out of the rituals - smoking in the car, after meals, coffee and a cig…
Honestly I still end up having one every few years when I’m drinking and it’s kind of nice, but I will never go back to being a smoker. Unless I ended up dating a smoker, which I would avoid. Unless they were like really hot. Or rich. I could totally fix them either way
I quit smoking four times, IIRC. The first week was always the shitty part, and then it would get dramatically easier. Three of the times I started back up because my ex-wife would secretly start smoking, get tired of hiding it, and offer me cigarettes (‘just one, as a treat’). The last time I quit we were in the process of separating prior to divorce, and so that shit didn’t happen. That was a little over ten years ago now.
This last time I quit because I was waking up every morning coughing. I had that nasty dark-yellow smokers’ phlegm that I’d cough up, and I’d have that first cigarette along with my cup of coffee. When I realized the direction my health was going, and that no amount of cardio and weight training was going to fix it, that’s when I decided to quit.
Each time I quit was cold turkey, no aids. The times I tried cutting back, using gum, etc., all failed miserably. Vaping wasn’t a thing at the time.
I still love the smell of cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. That’s never going to stop. But it’s pretty easy to resist now.
so you would still date Obama?
I would definitely wreck myself over anyone in that family.
Smoking. Accidentally through vaping? Switched to vaping never intending to quit, but ran into issues with my vape, couldn’t use it, and one day I just sort of realized I was fine.
I had one of those early Kangertech models and i kept having issues with coils (even new ones) and then later with the battery. I guess I could have gone to the disposable kind but yeah. It just sort of happened.
I remember the fear i used to get thinking a certain cig was my last one ever. I think taking that out of the equation is critical. Either by lowering your dose or just cutting back in number, working down slowly, and keeping the process open ended is best.
Biting my nails.
I started at about two years old and chewed them to the quick for over 35 years.
.
I’ve tried so many things throughout my life. Getting yourself to stop is going to be a personal thing. The last thing I tried that succeeded was taking a job out of town where I worked 12-16 hour days. It was manual skilled labor. I was working with my hands, they were often dirty, and frankly, there wasn’t much downtime to find myself chewing my nails. This attempt to stop just happened to finally work for me. It’s been almost four years. Keep at it, you can do it!
I don’t bite them, but use clippers to cut them down to quick. Am kind of obsessive on doing this. Working as an engineer I hate the sight of oil/grease/muck under nails, so they gotta go.
Can I quit? Call it a work in progress.
I bite my nails, have as long as I can remember, and honestly don’t care particularly whether I continue or stop.
That said, I once accidentally kicked the habit for a couple weeks in probably the strangest way possible
I’ve heard of people getting small magnets implanted under their skin in order to sense electrical/magnetic fields. This idea was always interesting to me but I’m not ready to commit to implants.
But curiosity got the best of me at one point and I got some tiny neodymium magnets and super glued them to my fingernails.
It worked, probably not as well as implants since the magnets couldn’t react as well since they were glued down and couldn’t wiggle around under my skin, but I could definitely feel some things (strongest reactions I got were probably the forklift charger at my job and an electric pencil sharpener)
I didn’t do the neatest job of gluing them on, so there was a bit of super glue covering a good bit of my nails.
And that bit of weird texture from the glue was kind of off-putting and every time my hand absentmindedly went to my mouth it gave me a reminder not to do that.
So for a couple weeks until the magnets fell off and the glue wore away and I got sick of reapplying them, I had nails for the first time I can remember.
Slipped back into my old habits pretty quickly though.
I didn’t feel like my life was in any particular way better by having nails, though to be fair I don’t have the worst or most-extreme nail biting habit out there, and I didn’t particularly appreciate having to trim and file my nails and the crud that managed to accumulate under them.
I quit biting my nails when COVID started. Now I keep them painted, so I’m even less inclined to bite.
