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  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I don't know if this counts as an addiction, but I used to have a particular liking for anything fire related.

  • 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.

    • 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.

    • Have you tried seltzer at all? Throw some fresh citrus in and it's really good. Might even scratch the same soda itch.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Quit smoking a few years back, that was an absolute removed to do.

    Still get the feeling every now and then, only 'relapsed' once at a funeral.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

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