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…
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.
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
Biting my nails.
I started at about two years old and chewed them to the quick for over 35 years.
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!
Facebook (when that was still a platform young people used). I would obsessively scroll through it for hours each day, basically trying to look at and comment on EVERYTHING. On a whim, I decided to take a break from it for a month. By the time the month was up, I realized I didn't miss it at all, and that was that. One of the big takeaways was that I thought that I was forming relationships with the people I'd comment back and forth with, but in reality these were people who I would never hang out with outside of school and barely even talk with in school (if at all); it was all just superficial, and I was better off spending time talking to my actual friends.
It wasn't that bad, but in high school I mindlessly got into the habit of drinking a few cups of Coke each day (I think it started because I would get a 2 liter whenever I'd order pizza). I quit it pretty much cold turkey, and not only did I stop drinking it at home, I no longer order it at restaurants either, which is something I did ever since I was a little kid. The idea of just buying a bottle of soda and drinking it is straight honestly grosses me out now even though getting a can or bottle from a vending machine was something I'd do without thinking. The one exception is when I'm pigging out at the movies with a bucket of popcorn, but that's pretty rare.
- 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.
Recently quit being a man after a couple of conditioned behaviour
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.
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.
i mean i do think its true in a sense. ill always have to stay away from strong opioids.
Smoking cigarrettes. I was up to two packs a day. Quit coldturkey fourteen years ago and haven't picked it up since.
I did that for 7 years. fortunately got out just before fentanyl started being a thing
SOO glad you made it out!! I would 100% be dead had fent been around
I got clean in May of that year, and by December, the overdose rate in our town had quadrupled. missed it by the skin of my teeth
Used to drink like, 4 redbulls a day it was bad. Now since February 27th I've had, maybe 2 or 3. (in total)
