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I quit heroin and other heavy opioids just before fentanyl really hit the streets. Quit cold turkey after losing a few friends and realizing that I could get a bag cut with fent and die, and I couldn’t do that to my siblings; they’re a lot younger than me and really idolized me at the time.
When I was well enough to get to a store without shitting myself or throwing up bile everywhere, I went and bought a handle(1.75l) of the cheapest vodka I could. I continued that every day until 4 years ago.
I have cirrhosis, and my liver could shit the bed at any time, but I’m alive and I’m clean (for the most part) and sober. I work in recovery and am working to become a Drug and Alcohol Counselor now.
I quit smoking about 6 months ago. I went to the store, didn’t have quite enough for a pack, and just haven’t bought another. Tobacco has been the hardest for me by far. Alcohol withdrawal almost killed me - I had to be hospitalized for near a month - but I was on high doses of benzodiazepines so I don’t remember much of it. The cravings for a cigarette are intense. They’ve gotten better zand they will continue to do so, but damn, it’s rough.
Ozzy Osbourne called it the hardest drug to quit and that man has done many drugs
Excessive amounts of food. I have to eat, but cutting back to the amount I should be eating for my age and physical activity is so tough.
The cause is binge eating in my youth when I was extremely active but didn’t eat three meals a day due to adhd absentmindedness. Frequently I would only have one or two meals a day, but eat two or more meals worth of calories at a time and burn it off in short order.
Now with family and a desk job with a scheduled lunchtime it is basically impossible to eat when I’m hungry instead of when it is ‘time to eat’ and portion control is a struggle. Quitting smoking required buying a house and quitting together with the wife, at least that had a cutoff date that I could say “I haven’t smoked since moving in”. Eating less is something I need to do every day!
Since covid, there’s been a lot of food in the house. Something about not being able to get it when we wanted made us buy more, more often and stockpile. Of course, food expires and throwing it away means that it was a bad decision to buy so much, so eating it is the only financially responsible thing to do, right?
Not to claim equivalence or anything, but smartphone and the internet (ironic saying so here I know).
I’m a xennial … old enough to remember living without all this and the middle time where computers were either games or just useful tools.
For me, and I’m pretty sure many others, I’m pretty convinced it’s better that way.
I’d really like to get away from these things, at least just to relearn older habits.
I am confronting the fact that I have lost the ability to just be bored. I need to get that back.
Yep! Embracing boredom is likely the path back. Because it’s not a dead space. It’s a canvas.
I’m slightly younger (born in 86) but went through a similar thought process a couple of years back. I remembered being an avid reader as a kid but could barely make it through a book or two a year, and struggled to maintain any form of attention span. I forced myself to read more for about the first month, then I got addicted to it again and ended up reading 42 books that year. I’m very conscious now about pretty much always having my devices in some form of focus mode/app time limits and prioritizing focus/reading time. I feel much better.
I’ve been starting to think that it’s something us older millennials can actually do for our younger friends … remind, demo and teach what a less tech ruled life can look like, how tech can be treated as more humane and not a necessity.
Phone
Porn I’m afraid. Starting as a way to combat boredom and loneliness and anxiety as a preteen has turned in to a fifteen year long struggle and descent in to various medications and treatments that only impede my ability to develop healthy intimate relationships. Nofap, yorubrainonporn, abstaining, none of it has been effective for more than three weeks of it. Even being a pen tester when the compulsivity hits, it’s me versus my skills. And it’s always a losing demoralizing battle.
What is a pen tester? I’m sorry to hear your problems and hope you get better soon
I do red team cybersecurity. Basically I try and break in to systems. Putting blockers up in my place is always a challenge as I break through the, by sheer skill.
Being too damn nice.
Fiction. Written. Scifi almost exclusively.
When I can’t get the good stuff I use the bad stuff. But I’m always using.
Weed was easy. Don’t even think I was addicted. For me, I’ve been struggling for with sleeping pills lately. Might go back to the weed but just do oils before bed for sleep. I’m a shift worker in a high stress job so I need something at night to calm the nerves sometimes.
Old school rune scape
New things. I simply can’t stay with anything. Makes it basically impossible to have any decent job, because people want and expect you to be an expert at what you do.
Adhd?
Nicotine. No cigs anymore but never got off the vape.
I can beat the addiction of playing around on my phone very often throughout the day.
Alcohol. Nicotine was a walk in the park.
Gonna have to go with alcohol and benzodiazepine abuse for this one, basically because it’s the only one that I have beaten (citation needed). Only one relapse in the past 10-ish years or so! Though it took a few relationships with it, and I’ve gone through multiple hospitalizations (some even voluntarily), and because of that combo and all the other shit that was going on in my head (not to mention the cocktail of SSRIs and eventual SNRIs like Effexor at max dosage combined with stuff like Seroquel at max dosage for literal years, of which Effexor is still the bane of my existence; and stuff like ECT) there’s like this hazy quality in my own past for me. As if I’m talking about someone else. I can’t even remember most of my life from around 2013-2018 or so.
I’d say the worst part about abusing benzos with alcohol is how good it feels. I still have the cravings. Like even now I’d be up for it. That combined with the fact that it only brings out the worst in me, every narcissistic and sosiopathic tendency is not only brought forth but amplified also. And it’s unhealthy in general.
So if you don’t happen to die in your sleep; once you wake up and realize just how many people you’ve hurt, when the full weight of your own actions and the coming consequences descend upon you, you just might hope that you did. Vice, thy name is me
Caffeine I have quit a few times and that has the worst physical withdrawal of anything I have quit (hard drugs & alcohol I have never used enough to become physically habituated). Speed probably the most difficult emotionally/psychologically.
I don’t worry about caffeine anymore, just maintain the habit.
