/psy/ - psychology and psychonautics

>>129
cigarette addiction will fuck you over

Sometimes I get concerned for the people around me who get worried about facebook 'likes' or drop a hundred hours into a mobile game that's barely fun. I avoid these at all costs personally, so it's hard for me to understand why people would want to get in on it. Even when I explain to these people (nicely, they're my friends usually) that they're being gamed they just don't care. I found a really relevant quote on this today:

“The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they're friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they're just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let's face it, checking your 'likes' is the new smoking." — Bill Maher

I think addiction becomes a problem when it messes with you financially. Otherwise go crazy

It becomes a problem as soon as it starts affecting your health (mental & phys), which is why it's important to have good friends that will tell you when that starts happening, cause when you're fucked up everything seems fine.

I'm addicted to cigarettes and alcohol. I'm what some people might call a "functional alcoholic" but I don't like it. I mean, I get everything I need to do done; I'm successful in my career, but I'm constantly broke from buying more alcohol and smokes despite making a decent amount of money.

Alcohol is one of those things that can creep up on you since it's so socially acceptable to use and before you know it you're downing 14-16 beers a night during the week and who knows how much on the weekends. You wake up feeling like there's an electric octopus inside your stomach and someone is hitting you in the head with a bat, but there's always coffee, the other socially acceptable substance. Let the dog out, go outside, have a few smokes, maybe weep quietly for a bit, and then get ready to go to work.

By the time work is done you're feeling somewhat human, and the liquor store is on the way home anyway, so you might as well stop. It's been a bad day and you really deserve this. Get beer, get smokes. Stand at the counter and hope your card goes through this time. They know you there and you don't want to get a bad name. Drive home and start again.

The dog is so happy to see you. You've been gone nine hours, which is like ten days in dog time. Put him out, go outside, crack a beer again, have another smoke. I refuse to smoke in my house, even in winter. Play around with the dog for a while, he's the only other interaction you might get today. Dogs don't judge. The dog gets tired, so you bring everyone in and keep going as well as you're able to.

Maybe it's time to go out and get some interaction. Don't do this every night. Pretend that you're a normal person. The bar is about two blocks away. Might as well walk, even though the cops would never come this far out of town. Blow $80 on bar beer talking to people you don't even really know. They're just acquaintances, people you talk to that really do the same thing you do. We're all putting on a good face.

Stumble home at the end of the night. Maybe you'll have something to eat, maybe you won't. It's irrelevant at this point. Sit on the couch and watch some TV. Or, fire up the laptop, go on the internet and see if anyone else feels like you do. Get tired, pass out. You might be in your bed, you might be on the couch. The alarm goes off either way so you can repeat the cycle.

Honestly, I've been trying to wean off alcohol with kratom, but that supposedly works on opiate receptors and that makes me even more nervous. I've got an addictive personality and I can't get going on that. Smokes I don't worry about just yet, they will kill me but much later than drinking constantly will.

>>291
Wow, Bill Maher actually said something intelligent lol

>>129
My poison of choice is definitely pornography. Even if I use only 3 or 4 times a week the fact that I lack the willpower to resist the urge leaves me feeling miserably powerless. been trying to quit for a while now.

Honestly more people are addicted to porn than you'd think, and I roll my eyes every time someone says they use it every day or even more than once each day but they're not addicted. Every addict tells themselves they could quit if they wanted to, but denial is a powerful and pervasive sentiment, that's for sure

>>361
Take care, talk bad about porn and you're going to get assaulted. This is how you spot an addiction.

I try to avoid looking at explicit porn (because I realize I take absolutely no pleasure to it and only curiosity and the impulse to do something stupid drives me to it) but to be honest life is so gray I feel miserable if I stay away from all form of eroticism. I just try to build a "tasteful" collection of images as a quality alternative.
Accessible porn is new, it wasn't here before the age of high-speed internet. Now it's everywhere as a free drug.

>>364
Believe me, I'm used to getting a lot of flack. People have developed such a knee-jerk reaction to hearing that pornography is bad because they hate conservative evangelists telling them what to do that they won't even listen to you when you make light of its very real consequences.

Like you said, readily accessible pornography is very new and it's all thanks to high-speed internet. The sheer novelty and variety is a sensory overload tapping into one of the most powerful and fundamental motivators in humanity's existence - sex. It's one hell of a drug, that's for sure.

As for what you do, that's actually a good idea. I might try that myself to at least start the weaning process. Keeping yourself from accessing the "full-package" so to speak is probably far healthier than indulging in the explicit and letting your psyche be convinced that you're satisfied.

The best thing I can do right now outside of that is work on my life in general. If I truly want to kick this addiction I need to do what I can to fix what's leading me to it in the first place.