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I haven’t self harmed for a long time
You rock, keep it up, sending love!
Well done!
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…
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
so you would still date Obama?
I would definitely wreck myself over anyone in that family.
I quit smoking four times, IIRC. The first week was always the shitty part, and then it would get dramatically easier. Three of the times I started back up because my ex-wife would secretly start smoking, get tired of hiding it, and offer me cigarettes (‘just one, as a treat’). The last time I quit we were in the process of separating prior to divorce, and so that shit didn’t happen. That was a little over ten years ago now.
This last time I quit because I was waking up every morning coughing. I had that nasty dark-yellow smokers’ phlegm that I’d cough up, and I’d have that first cigarette along with my cup of coffee. When I realized the direction my health was going, and that no amount of cardio and weight training was going to fix it, that’s when I decided to quit.
Each time I quit was cold turkey, no aids. The times I tried cutting back, using gum, etc., all failed miserably. Vaping wasn’t a thing at the time.
I still love the smell of cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. That’s never going to stop. But it’s pretty easy to resist now.
Ruminating on fake emotionally charged social altercations in my head.
It just kept happening. I couldn’t stop. Just felt the absolute need to “prepare” myself for bad events/fights with people so that I’d be “better prepared for it”. What a load of shit.
The mind is its own worst enemy sometimes.
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.
Respect. Games are my getaway. I have burnout on games, and I’ve had withdrawal from games. I could limit my game play, but honestly, I don’t have a reason to.
I just bought a Steam deck primarily to fill the time in my work breaks. I feel like if I’m able to game during lunch time, then I’ll be less antsy about getting home and playing something, and I’ll be able to spend that extra time on house work or whatever.
Sobriety
Good for you! Horrible habit.
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!
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.
Facebook, I’ve been off it for 5ish years now. I miss some connections but I am much happier for it.
same.
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.
I quit meat. It’s been 15 years now and I feel so much healthier for it.
Hell yeah! Good for you dude.
Honestly I’ve been thinking about at least cutting beef and pork out but it’s tough. Any tips?
It’s mostly habit and having other good options available. Try to find 5 or more vegetarian meals you like and can cook easily. You don’t want to feel like you’re depriving yourself of something. More that you’re choosing other delicious options.
There’s lots of great vegetarian food out there. Once you find it, you might prefer it over meat anyway.
Thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully reply. That’s good advice I’ll put it to good use. Thanks again.☺️
sweats profusely in ADHD
- 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.
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.
I really like to have some variety in my daily liter of tea I drink. Puerh can be steeped very many times, but oolong is pretty good too. Green and white are a completely different ballgame, but I enjoy them as well.
If you keep your daily caffeine dose very low, you can actually get a noticeable boost when you need it. I used to be like that, and next week I’ll start reducing my caffeine intake in order to get to that state again.