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A journey through the past...

Wondering who has dealt with and what got you through it.

I guess that's it.

Not sure if you just mean us or people we know, or dealing with people we know.

Anything.

Addicted to Sex/WoW. Yes I'm being 100% serious.

I get very very angry/agitated when I don't get either when I want them. To the point of no real control over my anger.

Well, a guy in my eastern religions class said that he turned to Buddhism when he was dealing with some bad drug issues in his life. He seems to be doing alright now, though I don't really know him on a personal level. I don't know if he's had any relapses or is at risk for one.


A friend of mine once explained to us what it was like for him to give up pot for a month. He said that the substance itself wasn't addicting but the lifestyle was. It would be 4 in the afternoon and he didn't know what to do because he was usually smoking at that point. I found this to be somewhat true when I quit WoW, it was hard to find other things to do because I would normally have filled my down time chilling on WoW. This might be part of it with other addictions too. Part of it is just finding that productive thing to do so you can fill in your time that would normally be spent on the addiction.

phil said:

A friend of mine once explained to us what it was like for him to give up pot for a month. He said that the substance itself wasn't addicting but the lifestyle was. It would be 4 in the afternoon and he didn't know what to do because he was usually smoking at that point. I found this to be somewhat true when I quit WoW, it was hard to find other things to do because I would normally have filled my down time chilling on WoW. This might be part of it with other addictions too. Part of it is just finding that productive thing to do so you can fill in your time that would normally be spent on the addiction.

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That's what I'm taking about. What filled the space. Reading, games, magazines, whatever.

I think it's been covered on the boards before, but I'm a recovering alcoholic and I've done it pretty much all on my own. I have issues with 12 steps and the whole giving your will over to a higher power thing.

As for filling the void, I pretty much dove into work.

he picked up a game called Go and is actually pretty good at it now. He also continued to read a lot and started taking some classes.

When I gave up WoW I switched to other games, but much less stimulating ones to still give me something to do from time to time but ultimately start getting away from the computer.

Addicted to Coke. The normal kind, Coca-Cola Light tastes like ass.

Chocolate/sweets... i still get cranky when i don't have it... stupid sugar. (though the only reason i eat less is coz my parents buy it less often and buy more black chocolate, which i can't stand)

cigarettes, I'm actually trying to stop now but don't have much motivation except I'm doing it for the money, and I guess it's nice to have 20-30 euros more every week

i think i'm kinda addicted to sex. if i don't get some at least once a week, i'd hump anything.

Math242 said:

i think i'm kinda addicted to sex. if i don't get some at least once a week, i'd hump anything.

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That's a terminal condition called "being a guy"!

Used to be hooked on cigarettes, quit by using the patch and persistence. The hardest part was the steeringwheel reflex, get in car, fasten seatbelt, reach for shirt pocket. 11 years later still do it from time to time.

Cocaine-It wasn't me addicted. I loved her very much but we came to a point where it was me or that life. So I left it. Huh, 21 years ago, you'd think that sentence would be easier to write.

Math242 said:

i think i'm kinda addicted to sex. if i don't get some at least once a week, i'd hump anything.

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Sounds like a guy I knew back in the army. Three weeks without leave, with only us guys in an ass-smelling barracks, and it was a hot summer...

By the second week, someone coming up with a porn magazine had him so riled up he tried to schtoink a table.

North_Ranger said:

Addicted to Coke. The normal kind, Coca-Cola Light tastes like ass.

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Addicted to every kind of coca-cola or pepsi. I prefer Coke zero, Pepsi Max and Pepsi Light withput caffeine ("for those nightly times")

Biardo said:

cigarettes, I'm actually trying to stop now but don't have much motivation except I'm doing it for the money, and I guess it's nice to have 20-30 euros more every week

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well that didn't last very long

I used to smoke, then I was like "why am I doing this?" and threw them away.

I don't think I've ever been really addicted to anything that I couldn't give up at a moment's notice.

Can I WISH for an addiction? I wish I had an addiction for practicing trombone or writing lesson plans!

I have the most pointless addiction ever and it's not something I can even enjoy at times. I have this compulsion to complete sets of anything, if I buy something like a Radiohead album, I then feel the compulsion to buy every single one of their other albums for no reason whatsoever, even if I hate the album I will try my hardest to like it. It has seriously drained my wallet at times.

Comic books. I've spent way too much time and money on them in my life. And continue to do so, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be ($30-40+ per week a few years ago).

Caffeine. I have tried to stop drinking coffee. It lasts for a few months, but then I break and have just one cup. I replace coffee with soda or chocolate when I decide not to drink coffee anymore. It's not like I've given up any caffeine really. I just cannot kick it. It's not hurting my health. I don't drink more than 2-3 cups a day at the most (usually I'll have one big cup at breakfast and no more), so it's not like it's a big deal.

About 15 or 16 years ago, some friends of mine got into cocaine, and I gave it a try at a party.

I didn't think it was that big of a deal, really. Perked me up a bit. I thought "Wow, this'd be better than coffee in the morning." So I bought a 'sixteenth' (nearly 2 grams) for $40.

I'd get up for work..tired, like most people. Do a little 'bump' (that's cocaine slang) and by the time I got out of the shower, I was wide awake, perky, and ready for the world. I didn't seem to have any crash. I didn't have any cravings to do it more often. I just used it as a morning pick-me-up. $40 worth would last me nearly a month...it was even cheaper than starbucks!

That didn't last, of course. After a while. I'd find myself doing a bump after work because I was tired. After a few weeks of that, I got brave enough to take it with me to work, and I was doing it on my lunch break, too. Then, I was doing it on my smoke breaks--I smoked cigs back then. I even started sneaking bumps at my desk.

If you've ever been around the cocaine culture, you'll be familiar with the 'bullet'..it's a little bullet shaped plastic cocaine delivery system.
http://www.elephantos.com/images/colored cocaine sniff bullet.gif
You put a little cocaine in the glass bottle..maybe a gram or two will fit. It has a tiny knob..you can turn it, get about a line's worth of coke in a little internal cup, and sniff it. Makes portable coke use easy.

I lost the bullet under a co-worker's desk once, while fixing her computer. Totally freaked me out. Luckily, i found it later. You'd think that might have been a wake-up call, but it wasn't, really.

I eventually got to where I was buying an 8-ball (3.5 grams. 1/8 ounce) every 2-3 days. That was at $60 a pop. So, let's say nearly $180 a week, or nearly $10,000 a year. I was only sleeping a couple of hours a night. I lost a job opportunity for failing a drug test. I once woke up with my face lying in a huge pool of blood that had come from my nose. My cocaine using friends were getting into more and more drug culture drama: stealing, kiting checks, etc. I luckily never got into that crowd, and didn't get sucked into that kind of thing. A female friend of mine once told me how awful it was to find herself in the back alley behind a dance club, giving some total stranger a blowjob. But then she brightened and said "Score! Free coke!" Uh, that wasn't free, hon.

I recognized that many of my friend's lives were self destructing faster than mine was, but I saw that I was headed down that same path. So I quit....cold turkey.

It wasn't easy. I would occasionally find white cigarette ash flakes on my desk or around my room, and think "I wonder if that's coke", and snort it. It was pretty pathetic. It took a long time for the cravings to go away. I didn't replace my coke usage with anything else. I stared it down, for a long, long time, until it went away. It was tough as hell.

A few years later, I quit smoking cigs, using the Nicoderm CQ patch. It was a fuckton easier than quitting coke.

Well, let's see if I can up Tin and make myself look like a lunatic at the same time.

Heroin/Opium.

I started using end of high-school, first year of college with my then GF Sofie. Started out as just doing a bead of opium on a bed of pot and eventually went from there. Sofie's the one who actually got me into the horse, as it was. We'd shoot up and pretty much go to insane dream-land for a bit, and the sex was fantastic. Eventually I'd spend all of my extra cash (beer/smokes) on H and be the annoying "can I bum a smoke dude?" guy on campus, lost weight till I hit about 119 lbs at 5'8 of height due to not eating and sheer inactivity, or panicking if I couldn't get a hit within a decent amount of time or a dealer got busted. I always had money coming though, so that wasn't a problem till it'd be gone in a day.

What helped me quit? Sofie's first OD and the sheer insane grief and panic that came with wondering if she'd live or die. She lived, and something in me just kinda...broke in the good way.

Detoxing was a fucking NIGHTMARE. I didn't sleep for a few days, I'd get violently angry at the drop of a hat and at night it felt like I had live eels in my skin instead of muscles. It took the better part of a year and a half to finally be done with it, and part of that entailed leaving Sofie, because she continued using and I simply couldn't be around that anymore.

my addiction?

Fun. I like having fun. I hate not having fun. I try to make everything I do fun to do or I won't do it.

Yes. I make my job fun.

My godfather was an alcoholic. It was really sad seeing him kind of waste away physically and mentally. He felt guilty because of my godmother's suicide and just kind of went self-destructive. He was a sweet man, but he had a lot of problems. Finally, a couple of years back, he got pneumonia. Hid body was so weak and destroyed from all the alcohol that he just passed away.

I hope he didn't die with regrets. He loved him children and grandchildren, but out of shame, and probably for other reasons, he rarely saw them. My cousins tell me that he smiled at everyone in the room seconds before he died--a big smile that reminded him of the old Greg. Part of me wishes he could have pulled through it. The other part of me is a little happy. I think that he and Aunt Karen are happier now than they were in life. What I mean is... I think he's at least at peace now. I still miss him, and I wish my cousins had a parent left.

---------- Post added at 07:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:13 PM ----------

Tin, Odin, Bowie... damn... well done. That sounds frighteningly difficult. I'd glad you both pulled through.

Cajungal said:

My godfather was an alcoholic. It was really sad seeing him kind of waste away physically and mentally. He felt guilty because of my godmother's suicide and just kind of went self-destructive. He was a sweet man, but he had a lot of problems. Finally, a couple of years back, he got pneumonia. Hid body was so weak and destroyed from all the alcohol that he just passed away.

I hope he didn't die with regrets. He loved him children and grandchildren, but out of shame, and probably for other reasons, he rarely saw them. My cousins tell me that he smiled at everyone in the room seconds before he died--a big smile that reminded him of the old Greg. Part of me wishes he could have pulled through it. The other part of me is a little happy. I think that he and Aunt Karen are happier now than they were in life. What I mean is... I think he's at least at peace now. I still miss him, and I wish my cousins had a parent left.

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*is suddenly reminded of his godmother, who suffers from cancer*

Cajun... Hug?

:hug:

Thanks. I think I talk about those two too much around here. I just think about them all the time, and it's hard to talk about with family... weird as that sounds.

I don't think I'm addicted to pot, but I might be.

I don't smoke everyday, or spend a whole lot of money on it.
Maybe 60$ every 2-3 weeks.

I'll smoke a bowl or two every 2-3 days, but nothing serious. I have been noticing that I've been getting addicted to not going to class though. I've skipped a class for two and a half weeks straight. Still making A's, and not skipping to smoke pot.

I'm addicted to love. There's been nothing I can do about it but face it.

Also, bad jokes. I'd use a patch, but then I couldn't breathe.

The Pumes said:

I have the most pointless addiction ever and it's not something I can even enjoy at times. I have this compulsion to complete sets of anything, if I buy something like a Radiohead album, I then feel the compulsion to buy every single one of their other albums for no reason whatsoever, even if I hate the album I will try my hardest to like it. It has seriously drained my wallet at times.

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I don't think a compulsion is the same as an addiction...

Cola. Of any sorts.

Me and a friend once did a noda to soda month as we called it because we both recognized that we were putting back cola at an insane pace, between 6-12 cans a day. I don't know what actual withdrawals are like, but that month was one of the worst of my entire life. Food tasted like shit without washing it back with an ice cold coke so I pretty much stopped eating. I was misreable, had massive headaches, was so irritable no one wanted to be around me.

I'm better now then I was then, but I still drink far too much fizzy shit.

You know, i've always wondered, did the actually take out all the heroin in coke, or just got it low enough so there'd be no more complaints... (fun fact, in the beginning Coca-Cola actually had heroin in it, and it's still made from coca leaves - no wonder the recipe was a secret).

Coca leaves produces cocaine. Heroin is an opiate.

Oh, right... stupid morning.

They took it all out, that's why they use High Fructose Corn Syrup now, cause the addiction was wearing off.

Cajungal said:

Tin, Odin, Bowie... damn... well done. That sounds frighteningly difficult. I'd glad you both pulled through.

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Which of the 3 of us do you secretly hate, then?

on a less smart-assed note, I'm truly sorry to hear about your godparents. Without going into a ton of detail, I can really empathize with your situation there.

ALL, damnit, all! But sincerely, I'm glad you all seem to be well.

And thank you. I can actually think of them now without getting freaked out about how mental illness and addiction run kind of deep on that side of my family.

Le Quack said:

I don't think I'm addicted to pot, but I might be.

I don't smoke everyday, or spend a whole lot of money on it.
Maybe 60$ every 2-3 weeks.

I'll smoke a bowl or two every 2-3 days, but nothing serious. I have been noticing that I've been getting addicted to not going to class though. I've skipped a class for two and a half weeks straight. Still making A's, and not skipping to smoke pot.

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I know a girl who is a raging alcoholic and is truely addicted to pot, and she managed to get her doctorate with a 4.0 GPA.

Addiction and poor job/school performance are not always tied.

MJ has not been shown to really be physically addictive, but it is psychologically addictive. If you're really worried you may be, go a month without it. If you can't... congratulations, you're an addict!

I don't think I have ever been addicted to anything. The only things I can thing of that may count as an addiction is playing games, and having a room/place I can go where it is quiet and I can just shut the door and have peace.

Tinwhistler said:

Which of the 3 of us do you secretly hate, then?

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Cajungal said:

ALL, damnit, all!

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Harsh lady. :juggle:

Frankie said:

Cola. Of any sorts.

Me and a friend once did a noda to soda month as we called it because we both recognized that we were putting back cola at an insane pace, between 6-12 cans a day. I don't know what actual withdrawals are like, but that month was one of the worst of my entire life. Food tasted like shit without washing it back with an ice cold coke so I pretty much stopped eating. I was misreable, had massive headaches, was so irritable no one wanted to be around me.

I'm better now then I was then, but I still drink far too much fizzy shit.

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Sounds like caffeine withdrawal. I would get a headache starting 2 days after I quit drinking coffee and it would last for days. Breakfast was meh, so I wouldn't eat anything. Then I'd just start drinking soda and my headache was gone. I used to smoke cigarettes and I swear I never went through anything like this when I quit smoking. I just threw the pack in the trash and gave it up. The closest I've come to replicating withdrawals I've had from caffeine is when I was put on oral steroids for my eczema. My head hurt so bad I just wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.

Yes, caffine IS a drug and most of us are addicted to it. The withdrawals from it are a bitch and a half.

Le Quack said:

I don't think I'm addicted to pot, but I might be.

I don't smoke everyday, or spend a whole lot of money on it.
Maybe 60$ every 2-3 weeks.

I'll smoke a bowl or two every 2-3 days, but nothing serious. I have been noticing that I've been getting addicted to not going to class though. I've skipped a class for two and a half weeks straight. Still making A's, and not skipping to smoke pot.

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I spend about exactly the same, but currently on a one month break.
Feeling no addiction withdrawls.

Frau VildSoul;274115][quote=Frankie said:

Cola. Of any sorts.

Me and a friend once did a noda to soda month as we called it because we both recognized that we were putting back cola at an insane pace, between 6-12 cans a day. I don't know what actual withdrawals are like, but that month was one of the worst of my entire life. Food tasted like shit without washing it back with an ice cold coke so I pretty much stopped eating. I was misreable, had massive headaches, was so irritable no one wanted to be around me.

I'm better now then I was then, but I still drink far too much fizzy shit.

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Sounds like caffeine withdrawal. I would get a headache starting 2 days after I quit drinking coffee and it would last for days. Breakfast was meh, so I wouldn't eat anything. Then I'd just start drinking soda and my headache was gone. I used to smoke cigarettes and I swear I never went through anything like this when I quit smoking. I just threw the pack in the trash and gave it up. The closest I've come to replicating withdrawals I've had from caffeine is when I was put on oral steroids for my eczema. My head hurt so bad I just wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.[/QUOTE]

I think it was that magical combination of caffeine and sugar. Nothing gives me a euphoric rush like an ice cold cola. True story. I'm still bitterly addicted.

Sleep and, to an extent, Magic.

Left to my own devices, my sleep schedule will shift forward until I'm going to bed at five in the morning and waking up at two or three. I'm almost always on autopilot, so I'll wake up, shut my alarm off, and just fall back asleep. This quarter SUCKS because of that (have to wake up at 7 AM for a biochemistry class...NOT a morning person).

As for Magic, I think I'm going to just give up playing. I'll get into it once every couple years, spend a lot of money on it for a couple weeks, try to come up with new decks, think almost constantly about it...and then stop playing a couple weeks later. I can do lots better things with my time.

Enresshou said:

Sleep and, to an extent, Magic.

Left to my own devices, my sleep schedule will shift forward until I'm going to bed at five in the morning and waking up at two or three. I'm almost always on autopilot, so I'll wake up, shut my alarm off, and just fall back asleep. This quarter SUCKS because of that (have to wake up at 7 AM for a biochemistry class...NOT a morning person).

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Heh, I'm the same way, went to sleep at 3 pm yesterday and woke up at half past midnight.
Regular 7:30-11:30 school mon-fri

I'm addicted to not having addictions. That, along with all the other evidence, makes me better than everyone.




Seriously, I'm glad sleep was brought up because it has to be that. 10 hours minimum necessary. If I gotta be up early, I just go to bed early because I have to have that lingering period where I wake up but fall back asleep and just lounge there in bed.

But then, being addicted to sleep is possibly a good thing as I have an anti-addiction to caffeine. Yes, you heard me right. I can't stand caffeinated products, with some pop exceptions. But I'm not a regular caffeine drinker at all. The few times I've had Mountain Dew, it's just put me to sleep. Also coffee tastes like pure ass. Pure ass!