Reddit, but now I’m here, so…
Yeah same :(
- 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.
I googled and checked seltzers, but unfortunately, I can’t try them because they contain alcohol (unless I found the wrong ones?)
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
Smoking and drinking. Drinking was hard
I feel that. Quitting alcohol is big suck territory
Zoloft and caffeine. Both are very hard, in different ways.
Happy cake day, fellow Lemmy user.
:3 why thank you
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
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 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
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.
You’re always an addict, you’re just stronger and know yourself better.
that’s some AA nonsense
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.
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
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.
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.
playing stupid mobas
Biting my cheeks, now I bite my lips. Mmmmmm skin
Not the only one apparently.
Also what about finger tips?
Biting my nails.
I started at about two years old and chewed them to the quick for over 35 years.
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 quit biting my nails when COVID started. Now I keep them painted, so I’m even less inclined to bite.
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.
