Haven’t kicked them. Stopped using nicotine and alcohol but man is the addiction still there. 🥲
Hey, stay strong. Shit gets easier, I promise. Six years sober, two years without nicotine here. I did it, and you can too.
Likewise! It’s been 8 years without nicotine and 2 years sober here.
Here’s a good one about the monkey on your back: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rUvzx73-cCY&pp=ygUSc3R5Z2dlbiBww6UgcnlnZ2Vu
But you gotts understand norwegian: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/styggen-på-ryggen-bastard-my-back.html
Alcohol addiction is a bitch, but nicotine is easy. I can recommend Alan Carr. Not to follow the programm religiously, but the general idea of it was very helpful to me. You just need to find your internal motivation, convince yourself that you need to stop. Whatever reason works for you. Maybe it's your health, your kids, the money or just because it's not cool anymore. For me it was the money, but money wasn't actually a problem. However, it did work to convince myself that I needed to stop. Haven't smoked in 4 years and it still brightens my day every day.
Benzodiazepine addiction. Was abusing etizolam at first then graduated to clonazolam and was getting fucked up and going to work. I have no idea how I didn’t get fired honestly. I have some videos of myself doing things and I’m clearly fucked, but I suppose I didn’t get that twisted for work. My memory went to shit and a bunch of other things did too, because who gives a shit when you’re constantly wrecked. Weight dropped from normal 185lbs to a skinny ass 165lbs. Mind you, I’m 6’3”. It wasn’t a good look.
It took me 2 years to slowly taper down and that still was a pretty shitty process. Now I’m 9 months clean and up to 205 lbs by lifting weights and actually eating.
What a nightmare. Fuck benzos and godspeed to anyone who’s been using them for longer than a few weeks. Even at clinical doses you’re going to be in some shit when you stop. You’ll be glad you did, though. I’m helping a friend quit etizolam after I told him of my problems and he told me of his addiction. He’s doing great and making a lot of progress on the taper. It helps so much to have someone you can talk to.
A less serious answer - Reddit. Fuck em for killing the apps. Lemmy has been pretty great except for a few rare encounters with tankies. I genuinely enjoy posting here, the smallness is great.
I haven't self harmed for a long time
Well done!
You rock, keep it up, sending love!
Biting my nails.
I started at about two years old and chewed them to the quick for over 35 years.
I quit biting my nails when COVID started. Now I keep them painted, so I'm even less inclined to bite.
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.
how?? i do that compulsively ever since i had it long and it got ripped off.
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.
Smoking. 7 months in, feeling great, not looking back!
Fuck yeah dude!
I smoked half a pack a day for a year or two, then one day I realized it just didn’t feel good anymore. This was RIGHT when 510 cigalike vapes were starting to come out, so I picked up a couple and a ton of cartridges and juice. I just stopped one day, vaped occasionally, then stopped that. I feel very lucky my body turned out that way.
Now to quit drinking…
I smoked for a decade and have been quit for 19 years.
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...)
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.
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
so you would still date Obama?
I would definitely wreck myself over anyone in that family.
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.
Video games. I used to play 4-6 hours per day (or often more), every day. It was kind of my default activity when I wasn't forced to do something else. If I ran out of steam trying to focus on work or family I would drift into playing a video game. The result was a MASSIVE sink of time into something that left me with little afterwards. I didn't learn new things, I drifted away from my kids, and I didn't take care of my home.
Video games are fine. They're entertaining, but they're also potentially life consuming. I watch people who want to do more with their lives, but instead they just put more time into some game or another.
I managed to kick the habit and it's been a great 10 years since then where I play very little and only in very short, controlled bursts when I can play with my kids for a bit (they usually destroy me these days). With all of that saved time, my career started flying, my home is in better shape, and I actually don't drift away from family events like I used to.
Same, I posted another long comment about if you want to read it.
It's scary how many games require more time and attention than full time jobs.
Respect. Games are my getaway. I have burnout on games, and I've had withdrawal from games. I could limit my game play, but honestly, I don't have a reason to.
I just bought a Steam deck primarily to fill the time in my work breaks. I feel like if I'm able to game during lunch time, then I'll be less antsy about getting home and playing something, and I'll be able to spend that extra time on house work or whatever.
Ruminating on fake emotionally charged social altercations in my head.
It just kept happening. I couldn’t stop. Just felt the absolute need to “prepare” myself for bad events/fights with people so that I’d be “better prepared for it”. What a load of shit.
The mind is its own worst enemy sometimes.
I find that imagining stuff like that helps me. If I am ever in a situation similar to what I imagined I can always "rely on protocol" and it works out.
It's usually pretty simple stuff like what if it gets quiet during a conversation, or exiting one when i don't want to engage and stuff like that. It's also sometimes going over what I'd do in a car accident, or if someone suddenly collapsed on the street in front of me.
mine never really happened in real life. the rumination was pointless 9/10 times.
Oh mine were like “how do I explain my way out if this person I just walked past starts picking a fight with me”.
I have a big one rather than a small one. 11 years sober off all drugs and alcohol. Took going to rehab and sober living after but I made it.
That's amazing. How do you rate the improvement in how you feel?
Video games. It wasnt for long thankfully but it took all of my time.
When I was the most depressed and the addiction was at its worst I could sink more than 100 hours a week into destiny. I wanted to get to the "good part" of destiny, get the best guns, gear and stay competitive in PvP (its very meta heavy). After hundreds and hundreds of hours and sun setting, I realized I was still at square fucking one. Sun setting made many old weapons "unusable", to keep it brief, and I had grown sentimental for my favorite guns and the memories I made with them.
On top of that, the power level resets, increases further with every season and becomes exponentially harder to increase near the cap (which you need to experience end game content). Destiny is the definition of Sisyphean. Sunk 700 hours and got nowhere, not in real life or even the game.
I also played other games like Minecraft, terraria, don't starve and oxygen not included and whilst I harbor much more respect for them, I still despise their grind and slow progression.
I sunk like 168 hours into a terraria master death calamity run with friends and we only got 2/3 through until I quit and it disbanded.
What was the nail in the coffin for me was getting meaningful and useful hobbies. I was always under the assumption that skills were excruciatingly hard to learn and master. The whole "it takes 10 years and 20,000 hours to master something".
Once I started participating in some I realized you can learn as fast as you want, if you're passionate enough. I'm no master but I've gotten good at computer repair, soldering, cooking and woodworking.
If you're dedicated you can pound out a piece of furniture, in a day, with hand tools. You can cook lots of delicious food in an hour It could take DAYS to get a single weapon I wanted in destiny. .
I learned these skills in just a few years after kicking my habit. Now I'm going to start a business soon and begin teaching others. I still love the occasional game, but not the kind with hour long side quests of traveling to fetch some random shit. They're old, fast paced shooters that will leave you satisfied after a quick session.
Life is interesting, you just have to find it.
Reddit, but now I'm here, so...
Yeah same :(
Meth. Used to shoot up 2-3 times a day. Had 3 years sober, relapsed for about a year and a half and kicked the habit again about 2 months ago. Feels good man.
yeaaaahhhh ! good on you
nice man. mainlining uppers is some stressful shit
Facebook, I've been off it for 5ish years now. I miss some connections but I am much happier for it.
13 years no FB or Twitter. Don't miss em.
same.
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.
Nicotine, and I really think I've totally kicked it this time.
I made the mistake the first time I quit of thinking that cigars and pipes wouldn't be addictive because there's no inhaling. Yeah, I was a moron.
But I know that it's a zero use thing now, and while I miss the ritual of smoking, neither tobacco or more modern nicotine delivery tempt me at all.
I'm sure as hell not paying for some herbal cigarette crap, because those were never worth a damn to begin with. And I can't smoke weed because it fucks with me. So, I won't be dragged back to it that way, even if I wanted to find alternative rituals to do.
It also helps that I can't handle the smell of cigarettes now. It hits my nose, and I'm sneezing for an hour.
I quit right as covid was hitting the news, and after six months, I didn't even have the urge to engage in the ritual after meals or sex.
Also, no smoking = better sex. Kinda difficult to do it right when you can't breathe right and get winded fast.
Caffeine
I lowered the daily dose very gradually, and eventually I was drinking only one cup of tea every day. After that, I could just quit caffeine entirely.
After about a month, started drinking coffee again, but at that point I was more aware of the quantities I was drinking and what the effects were. Currently I’m drinking only two cups a day, and that seems to be pretty good dose for me. However, I’m planning to switch to tea once I run out of coffee. Maybe I’ll keep tea in my life in the future… we’ll see.
With tea, if you resteep the tea multiple times, only the first cup contains significant amounts of caffiene, some teas resteep better than others (if memory serves oolongs are the best, and green teas the worst to resteep). My mum used to drink ~15 cups a day, now it's more like 3 resteeped 5 times.
Personally I have pretty bad reaction to caffiene so I only have coffee occasionally when I need a productivity boost or go without sleep, but I do the tea stuff too.
I really like to have some variety in my daily liter of tea I drink. Puerh can be steeped very many times, but oolong is pretty good too. Green and white are a completely different ballgame, but I enjoy them as well.
If you keep your daily caffeine dose very low, you can actually get a noticeable boost when you need it. I used to be like that, and next week I’ll start reducing my caffeine intake in order to get to that state again.
Smoking and drinking. Drinking was hard
I feel that. Quitting alcohol is big suck territory
Drinking, finally for good I hope! I'm 3.8 years in. I first blacked out at 12 and was drinking liquor regularly by 14 so booze was my way of life. I can't socialize very well as I am naturally super awkward then never honed my "don't be super weird" skills, but I'm finally free to live my life how I want!
3.8 years is great, you've really gotten through the hardest part
Please do continue, you're doing good. We just lost a buddy to alcohol, yet he was years free (don't know how many). His younger brother took the hint and went into rehab. You don't need it to be with other people
Thank you, I feel very good about my chances this go around. I'm sober because I'm a better person when I don't drink. Up until now, I also very purposefully surrounded myself with high risk drinkers, so I knew I would not have any friends going on this journey with me.
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
Smoking, drinking, weed and sugary drinks. All happened between 2013-2018. All took effort, but smoking was definitely the most difficult. Switched to a vape first and then slowly lowered my nicotine level, once every 2-3 weeks until I get to 0mg nicotine. Going from 1.4mg to 0mg was the hardest, but about 3 weeks after, I forgot to use the vape for a whole day. Never picked it up again.
Nicotine.
I stopped counting when my last nicotine hit was, which I think might be the key here. A couple of years at least.
No urges, never even think about it.
My first wife
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.
- Quit nicotine several years ago and never went back (shisha, cigarettes and cigars).
- Quit porn because it had become a bad coping mechanism (still struggling with it a bit tho).
- Slowly trying to quit my bad eating habit (I see them as addictions). I don’t gain weigh, so bad eating habits happens.
- Slowly trying to quit my soda addiction.
Sobriety
Good for you! Horrible habit.
Sugar. Ok, that's a slight exaggeration. I don't eat anything with added sweeteners. (Like, if it has sugar, honey, HFCS, corn syrup solids, cane juice, apertame, sucralose, agave nector, dates, maple syrup, etc, that's just a deal breaker for me.) And I don't eat anything that has natural sugar any sweeter than a tomato, red bell pepper, or carrot.
I've been doing that for the last 15 years at least and made very very infrequent exceptions. (Like, I can literally count the times I remember making exceptions to this rule in the last 15 years on one hand.)
...because any time I do make an exception, I have severe gastrointestinal symptoms.
I quit meat. It's been 15 years now and I feel so much healthier for it.
Hell yeah! Good for you dude.
Honestly I've been thinking about at least cutting beef and pork out but it's tough. Any tips?
It's mostly habit and having other good options available. Try to find 5 or more vegetarian meals you like and can cook easily. You don't want to feel like you're depriving yourself of something. More that you're choosing other delicious options.
There's lots of great vegetarian food out there. Once you find it, you might prefer it over meat anyway.
When I was three years old I was complaining to my parents about how much my thumb hurt in the winter. They told me it was because I sucked on it and so it became chapped. So I just stopped. Apparently never sucked my thumb again.
I wish I had the willpower now that I did when I was three.
oh man. that unlocked a similar memory for me. my mother showed me the calluses I was getting from sucking my thumb so I switched thumbs. as I kept getting calluses I kept switching fingers before I finally gave it up
Used to drink like, 4 redbulls a day it was bad. Now since February 27th I've had, maybe 2 or 3. (in total)
Caffeine never really affected me. I still drink a coffee when I need to focus or stay up but it's mostly symbolic, to tell my brain "time to wake up". In the same manner pajamas help you sleep, the mental correlation of wearing pajamas and sleeping helps your brain realize it's time for bed. If that makes any sense.
Smoking cigarrettes. I was up to two packs a day. Quit coldturkey fourteen years ago and haven't picked it up since.
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.
Reddit
🫣 But...
Zoloft and caffeine. Both are very hard, in different ways.
Happy cake day, fellow Lemmy user.
:3 why thank you
Cigarettes. Went cold turkey every time. 3 time's the charm! It's been 13 years now, but I still occasionally get cravings, and sometimes I dream about having one and then wake up feeling super guilty and horrible about myself even though it wasn't real.
Nicotine and I guess drinking (the second one is mostly due to getting old though haha).
I used to be an acidic goblin but now I've limited my caffeine intake to 1 soda per day at lunch (for the boost in energy). Proud of that one. Throwing out the vapes next but thats hard. At least it got me off cigs.
I had a teacher who drank so much Coca-Cola and strong tea that his dentist used his mouth in a medical journal
sweats profusely in ADHD
Smoking. Vaped off of cigarettes and then gradually decreased the nicotine levels until I had vaped 0 nicotine for two months, then stopped vaping.
Biting my cheeks, now I bite my lips. Mmmmmm skin
Not the only one apparently.
Also what about finger tips?
I don't bite my nails but after I cut my nails I usually bite the skin under em, it's also a bad habit lol haven't gotten over that one either
I've stopped smoking 3 times
4th time the charm? I have up 4 or 5 times for 6 months to a year before it stuck.
Not long after my mother recovered from chemotherapy, my grandmother passed away. I was tasked with disposing of my mother's morphine, however I decided to take it for relief.
I was addicted not to the feeling of being numb so much, but the initial euphoria. I would snort the morphine in powder form. I know I did some rudimentary conversion, however after kicking it I forgot every single step and cannot remember a lot of that time.
Over a year had passed, yet my knowledge of it is very little. It feels as though I have lost parts of my life... Like I mean, literally lost.The euphoric kick got less and less prevalent, and I felt as though I needed more in order to gain that initial kick - however I wasn't even aware of this effect happening, despite all manners of media being rife with this step of opiate addictions. The act of increasing dosages came so naturally I don't even think I made a conscious decision to, yet my tolerance rose to points where I was taking multiple times the lethal dose (for someone with base tolerance levels).
I saw what it was doing to me at one point, just by happenstance of looking into the mirror for a moment longer than usual.
I went cold turkey, and it was... Well, hell doesn't even describe how this felt. It took about a couple of weeks, with the first being the worst.
I had locked myself up in my room, telling some folks to check up on me periodically, online friends mainly, and what to do if I don't respond within a given time. I recall a moment where one of my friends was about to call an ambulance, because I was one minute late to answer (I was probably vomiting profusely).The very last time I did that was in the second or third week of November, 2012.
I understand that going cold turkey could be very dangerous, especially with a built up tolerance, however at that point I would not have been able to wean myself off of the stuff. I was too far in, and without going extremely hard into it I probably would have died not too long after.
If you have a friend going through opiate addiction, please be there for them. That's all I can say.
Alcohol, though I swapped it for a THC addiction instead.
Both alcohol and nicotine. Corona probably saved me with its lockdowns (though I did go back to hard drinking to some degree after). I still have the odd drink and odd cigarette, but neither are everyday things for me anymore and I can go weeks without either (though on days I do drink, it certainly makes me want to smoke).
Currently battling coke zero. I will dehydrate rather than just drinking plain water (carbonated makes little difference) as I just don't want to drink it and forget about it. As a kid, the place I lived had well water that didn't taste great, so that's probably something to do with it. I've managed to somewhat replace it with a zero-calorie sports drink powder that I put in water. Still, it lacks the mouthfeel and satisfaction.
The other current battle is gluten and thus wheat and everything containing it. This is more-or-less impossible here in Japan if eating out (most soy sauce has gluten). The background is that I likely have Celiac's (dad has it with very rough symptoms starting in his 60s, I'm in my 40s and a DNA test already told me I had inherited markers for it was likely to develop it). I was called "the bread kid" as a child because of how much I liked to eat (particularly homemade) bread. Until very recently, I baked bread and stuff a lot. It really sucks because I really miss the texture and taste of good bread. It's also difficult when thinking about what to eat. "Oh, I've got some pasta that will just take a few minutes to cook" is not a thing anymore. I have to make rice or potatoes ahead or have nothing but meat and veg.
playing stupid mobas
Switched to smart mobas, I assume?
@tilefan That's weird, it's not that I'm purposefully get rid of addictions, I just kinda... lose interest.
I used to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. I also used to drink a lot. I don't mind a cigarette or a beer or a shot every now and then, if the mood is right and the company is fine, but doing it every single day? Nah.
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.
- 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.
Biting my nails. By cutting them short. If they grow long I eventually bite them off.
