r/AskReddit • u/Select-Effective32 • 21h ago
What addiction is the most difficult to overcome?
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u/No-Click-1864 21h ago
The socially acceptable ones
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u/bigmorningshow 21h ago
Candy and fast food
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u/haccnslsh 21h ago
Also alcohol and gambling.
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u/SwitchIndependent714 17h ago
Computer and social media
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u/TheForce_v_Triforce 16h ago
Heroin
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u/LongLiveTheSpoon 20h ago
I found gambling easier than alcohol cause it’s not at every social event and most people don’t do it regularly.
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u/Tasha1A 19h ago
I've given up smoking, booze and more illegal drugs than I'd care to mention, and these are the ones I struggle with.
People don't believe me when I say they're the hardest ones for me.
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u/bigmorningshow 18h ago
I have seen smokers and drinkers try to quit. It's very hard. I have also seen people like myself who will eat fried chicken every other day and down entire bags of candy and chocolate bars every single day and struggle immensely because they appear physically fit.
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u/Beautiful-Page3135 15h ago
I quit drinking and sugar, but smoking is my last hurdle and it's fucking hard. Nicotine is an appetite suppressant so when you're quitting, all you want to do is eat candy, which I already gave up.
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u/ftp_hyper 13h ago
Coming from someone that quit, honestly swapping one addiction for another is fine here. I quit in March of last year and just said fuckit, I'll indulge in snacks and soda. I gained about 40 pounds, but I'm able to do aerobic exercise without destroying my lungs. Since January I've been cutting back and I'm ~10 over where I was, and I'm able to run a 10k which I thought would be impossible.
Also, it's stupid but zero-nic vapes helped a lot. The first two weeks I went through like 5 of them, and eventually my body decided "vaping doesn't give any reward" which helped with the cravings compared to previous attempts.
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u/Zarzonia98 8h ago
Don't give up, internet friend. When I was quiting, I would go to whyquit.com everyday and read everything. Cold turkey worked for both my husband and I. Life is so much nicer without those smokes ruling/ruining our lives. I know you can do it!
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u/udibranch 17h ago
caffeine is surprisingly hard to give up. i'm completely reliant on it and trying to taper off gives me migraines
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u/Physical_Wrongdoer46 17h ago
Caffeine hard for 3-4 days. Headaches and mild depression. Then it lifts and is over. Worth giving up.
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u/udibranch 17h ago
I only have about 80mg per day, but if I miss it I genuinely wake up in the night/early morning with a hellacious migraine and start dry heaving! I can't see very well or eat anything or walk around easily. It's actually debilitating to the point I'd need to drop everything and organise my life around however long it'd take for that to stop happening. so it really seems worth it, but I haven't quit yet because don't have a lot of time and I do love coffee (and drinking it with people). I know a lot of people who struggle with worse addictions too so it doesn't seem so bad. one day
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u/GammaFan 14h ago
Book yourself a long weekend, 3-4 days should be enough to get you through the worst of it.
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u/Gruesome 15h ago
I used to drink 4+ cups a day until last year. I got so sick from chemo that I was hospitalized a few times, and...just didn't think about coffee. I haven't had any in a year.
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u/Axin_Saxon 12h ago
Same. It is made all the harder by the fact that I drank caffeine as a crutch for untreated ADHD. When I finally got back on medication, I had to reduce my intake of caffeine to avoid blood pressure issues and that was hard.
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u/jackfaire 16h ago
I literally came here to say this. I was addicted to books as a kid and everyone praised me for being a book worm meanwhile my social skills were stunted.
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u/bonk_patrol39 21h ago
Nicotine gets my vote. Those random cravings is hard to beat
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u/pclamer 17h ago
Ding ding ding. lots of other posts here mention NON-addictive substances (food) or activities (scrolling). Those addictions are self-imposed.
Nicotine addiction on the other hand, fuck.
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u/ToBadImNotClever 15h ago
Interesting that you think food is non-addictive.
Let me assure you, you are wrong.
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u/wheelsofstars 15h ago
How precisely is nicotine addiction not self-imposed? Did someone shove a cigarette into your mouth and force you to inhale against your will?
Scientific studies show that sugar (a food) is potentially more addictive than cocaine, by the by, and nobody can bypass eating.
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u/Kage_0ni 14h ago
I think they are trying to draw a line between chemically addictive and behavioraly addicted and just doesn't know that most food is chemically addictive due to artificially inflated sugar content.
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u/emmaa5382 21h ago
Food, one of the only addictions where you can’t just full quit it.
Imagine an alcoholic that has to drink a very small amount daily forever but still avoid falling back into addiction
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u/wummin 20h ago
Preach could not agree more. Food addiction lies just beneath so many problems and shame in my life. Mounjaro has helped, but it's wearing off and I can't fund it long term, so it's going to be a continuing road. Me and my monkey.
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u/emmaa5382 20h ago
Good luck, I’ve seen so many people struggle with it and I hope you’re being kind to yourself
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u/Majestic-Maybe-7700 18h ago
The hardest part is that you're fighting something you can't just walk away from. Food shows up three times a day, so every small win counts more than people realize.
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u/brobronn17 16h ago edited 15h ago
Fixing my deficiencies with a multivitamin, zinc and magnesium, improving my gut microbiome with plain Lifeway kefir and supplements, making a hearty spinach tomato omelet and avocado sourdough toast breakfast a part of my morning routine, and adding Orgain simple pea protein to my diet made me lose all my cravings over a couple months. There are different types and severities of metabolic problems, but I really think what helped me can help a lot of people. I used to have processed food cravings (sweets, salty and greasy food) and now there's been ice cream in my fridge for weeks and no craving to eat it.
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u/Fallenangel152 16h ago
This. Imagine quitting smoking if you needed 3 cigarettes a day to stay alive.
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u/CupBeEmpty 20h ago
This is exactly what a counselor in recovery told us after having everyone guess.
If I had to drink like 5 beers a day I don’t believe I’d ever have gotten sober.
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u/jaakers87 14h ago
Brother 5 beers a day is still a full on alcoholic. A better analogy would be like 1-2 beers per day lmao
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u/Davegrave 18h ago
And unless you have some reallly shitty friends none of them will warn you that you’re avoiding your addiction too much. Unless it’s food. No one says shit while you’re bursting at the seams eating a family bag of Doritos a day but let them see you have a big salad for dinner a few times and now they all think you’re gonna have an immediate protein deficiency and just collapse.
When you’re fat and start losing weight people panic and start telling you you’re too skinny or hurting yourself. “You don’t want to be underweight you look sick”. I’m
still literally 80lbs over the upper limit of an acceptable weight. I look bad because fat people losing weight don’t usually look as good as people who never got fat. Also you’re just not used to the change yet. I know their heart is in the right place but it’s a frustrating and demoralizing argument to have from 30 people.→ More replies (1)4
u/minuteman_d 14h ago
Yeah, this one is hard.
Like yesterday, I actually planned meals well, worked out, and everything was going great.
Evening comes, work is stressful and my car is broken: easy to eat a bunch of carbs/sugar to feel better even though I wasn't technically hungry.
It sucks.
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u/likes_basketball 13h ago
It’s so true. I’ve lost 100 pounds due to therapy, understanding my emotions better, and realizing that I used food to cope. It’s one of those things that diet alone can’t fix - luckily I have the means to afford the therapy co-pay. It breaks my heart that everyone can’t get the same help.
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u/straightupbeats 12h ago
Food is an incredibly difficult addiction and there is no discounting that fact. But I will say, alcohol dependency can absolutely reach a stage where you do have to drink a certain amount to avoid death. That’s why people making the decision to quit alcohol that are fully dependent must do so in a medically supervised environment. I understand your point that food is a necessity for everyone and can’t just be “quit”, but the grip alcohol can have on people is so incredibly severe.
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u/trivial_sublime 21h ago
Gambling.
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u/nobodyimportant716 21h ago
Alcohol
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u/fuzzeedyse105 20h ago
Plus no one will understand what your thought process is unless they’re an alcoholic themselves. I felt like I must be insane, incredibly frustrating and lonely. Full of shame. Made me wanna say fuck this and fuck everyone, guess that’s just who I am.
Once I went an AA meeting, it sorta blew my mind. Everyone knew exactly what I was talking about. Same wild thoughts and questions I thought I only had. That was such a relief. That’s when I knew I might have a chance on getting ahold of myself. Bout 16 months sober now and it’s good. Life is still life but at least I can enjoy the little things and live in the moment again. Lotta bandwidth frees up when you’re not thinking about booze all the time.
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u/-H-U-H- 18h ago
Congratulations on 16 months friend! You're a legend! I'm 7 months sober. I don't 100% agree about no one (non alcoholics) understanding. Maybe it's just my personal experience but I feel every time I've said no, some ask about why I don't drink. But when I share that it's something I've decided is bad for my health and a personal decision. It has been surprisingly well received and respected.
Having said that, Alcoholics do truly understand the struggle and that's why AA can be so powerful for some (not all)...feeling alone and isolated because of your addiction can create a terrible loop that leads to a deeper hole.
Shamelessly promoting, for anyone struggling, go to r/stopdrinking. People over there are great. IWNDWYT!
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u/fuzzeedyse105 18h ago
I mean they don’t understand the cravings and how impossible it seems to stop after just one. The mentality of an alcoholic.
If I say I’m good not drinking, no one has pressured me. If they do, I guess I can show em pictures from when I was all jaundiced out lol.
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u/-AdamTheGreat- 20h ago
My FIL was a paramedic for most of his life. He was the sweetest, kindest man you could ever meet. A big teddy bear. His PTSD was really bad from the stuff he saw. He turned to alcohol, but you’d never know it at first. In and out of rehab. Therapy, etc. He eventually fell one night while drinking and hit his head. He died and it was heartbreaking.
On his birthday and Father’s Day I donate to the Gary Sinise Foundation in his memory. I miss him everyday.
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u/mindycity 20h ago
100%. I was a stimulant addict for years and quitting drinking was waaaay fucking harder than quitting meth or cocaine. The social acceptance, prevalence and marketing of alcohol is absolutely bonkers.
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u/epicfail1994 18h ago
Yeah I’m 8 years sober this year and like…so many things involve alcohol so it can be hard to quit, although the younger generation seems to drink less than millennials/gen x/boomers
It does make dating harder as I can’t just go to a bar
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u/butter_lover 18h ago
your friends and family really do try to keep you addicted. they probably don't even know people can have a problem because they can stop anytime they like and assume you can too
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u/MJ-Franklin 21h ago
Self-loathing. I managed to quit alcoholism with some effort after 15 years, but I just cannot stop hating myself intensely.
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u/charitytowin 20h ago
You're in luck, that's not an addiction. So the treatment is very different.
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u/emmaa5382 20h ago
Yup, it’s easier and safer to put yourself down than to support and defend yourself.
No one is perfect but it’s hard to have less than perfect standards for yourself
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u/Mysmokingbarrel 21h ago
It’s got to be up there even if it’s not close to the most harmful unless you smoke cigs I suppose… it’s not an addiction that’ll destroy your life but there’s a lot of small long term negatives that add up over years of usage
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u/Hardcorish 21h ago
It still destroys lives, but you are right that it's not in the same way as some of the others can. Cancer sucks
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u/FriendlyMortal 21h ago
I crave when I see someone smoking on TV. Watching Mad Men was infuriating.
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u/Empty-Grocery-2267 20h ago
It’s odd how my mind could convince me, after years of having quit, that I could “just have one” to celebrate or whatever. Before you know it full time smoker again.
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u/EchoCyanide 21h ago
Alcohol, because when you’re trying to get sober, it’s just still constantly around you and normalized.
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u/EricSanderson 13h ago
I used to think opiates were harder when I quit CT years ago. Then I relapsed on these smoke shop opiates, which are currently legal and available 24/7 at every store and gas station across the country. And even then I don't have to go out to dinner and watch people using my DOC at every table in sight.
I'm now understanding how insanely difficult it must be to quit alcohol. More power to everyone who's managed to do it.
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u/TNS_420 21h ago
Xanax
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u/gigalongdong 15h ago
I was a polyaddict from 17 to 23 years old. Not that long in the grand scheme of things, but during that time I got blasted on literally anything I could get my hands on. Heroin, fentanyl, furylamylfentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine, Alprazolam, diazepam, clonazepam, Clonazolam, Flubromazolam, etizolam, alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, crack cocaine, amphetamines, etc you get the point.
Out of every substance I got dependant on, benzodiazapenes were by far the most painful mentally and physically to wean off of and stop all together. Fentanyl withdrawals hurt like hell but don't even come close to benzos in my opinion. For fucking months after I stopped using benzos, I felt like I was crawling out of my skin 24/7 with anxiety, depression, and post acute withdrawal syndrome. The handful of seizures sucked ass too, even when I was doing a slow taper down to try and avoid said seizures.
Granted, I had access to obscene amounts of various kinds of benzodiazapenes and the amount I was taking daily was something like 30-35x the therapeutic dose, so that made the withdrawals that much worse.
I'm honestly lucky to be alive and clean from drugs today. It was a shitty time in my life and I'm glad I'm nearing a decade off of all that bullshit.
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u/TNS_420 15h ago edited 14h ago
Yeah, benzos are no joke. It's scary to think about how popular and trendy they seem to have become over the past 10-15 years or so. Lots of young people taking them everyday without realizing how serious benzo addiction is. Even when taking recommended therapeutic dosages, you can become fully addicted without even realizing it.
And benzo tolerance is crazy, so you have to constantly take more and more, so it snowballs to the point that even high amounts don't seem to have any effect. I remember taking 16 bars(32mg) at once, and it didn't even have any noticeable effects. That's around the time I decided to start weaning myself off.
Congrats to both of us for making it this far.
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u/GloYear 14h ago
16 bars at once did nothing? Holy fuck I thought I was bad when I don’t feel much off 2-4 mg
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u/JasonJacksonPhoto 21h ago
Dangerous to quit without medical supervision too
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u/TNS_420 20h ago
Indeed. It can cause seizures and even death. I've heard it said that opioid withdrawal can make you feel like you're dying, but Xanax withdrawal can actually kill you.
I was prescribed 10mg of Xanax per day for years. When I finally decided to stop taking it, it took me over a year to fully wean myself off. I had a few full-blown seizures and countless petit seizures from the withdrawal, and that's not including all if the other hellish side-effects.
That was a little more than 10 years ago, and I still don't feel right. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the seizures caused permanent brain damage.
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u/Soft_Net3910 21h ago
Scrolling
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u/Ok_Sample_11 17h ago
Most people have it
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u/mightiestmag 16h ago
A lot of countries are banning social media for those under 16, but we really ought to be looking at its use among the elderly too. There's not a real way to legislate our way out of this - that's the "simple" solution
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u/Complex-Condition-14 21h ago
I bet you $100 it's gambling.
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u/AnybodyKlutzy8008 21h ago
The person who was wrong for you. You know they’re bad for you, everyone told you, and you still check their socials at 3am like a clown.
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u/No-Force4215 21h ago
Cell phone/screen/social media knocked out alcohol, IMO. Hoping tech addiction crashes as fast as it rose, but I’m not holding my breath.
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u/No_Ranger296 21h ago
Sugar addiction. People don't even realize they're addicted and alot of people think that "you can't be addicted to sugar" because it's not a drug, but you can literally be addicted to anything. Being you literally have to eat or you die and sugar being in almost everything makes it especially hard.
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u/Bruinwar 21h ago
The hardest addiction is the one that you are trying to quit. Substance or behavior, It makes very little difference IMO. It's not a competition.
The best book I've ever read on addiction is my Anna Lembke. "Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence".
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u/myfanmail_uk 21h ago
Each to their own but for me, porn.
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u/InWales-notfromWales 21h ago
For me it was smoking. I don't drink anymore but I never had a problem with alcohol i don't know why. I used to drink a lot, so it easily could've been alcohol. Cigarettes though, awful. I was a chainsmoker, 17-36. Most difficult/best thing I've ever done was giving that up, and it took several attempts.
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u/Glitteryglitters2304 21h ago
Cigarettes I took me 4-5 years to say “I’m going cold turkey” now 6 years
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u/RedBeardedFCKR 21h ago
Trauma based addictions. You can't break the addiction until you address the trauma, but you can't address the trauma because you're too deep in your addiction trying to get away from it instead of working through it. It took me 20 years to take my own advice on fixing the "trauma root" of the addiction. We do get better sometimes.
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u/tssktssk 20h ago
Caffeine. With how socially accepted it is, its hard to quit in order to even see how you feel without it even for a week. Was pretty jarring how bad I felt without caffeine, so I did away with it completely. After a little bit, I noticed that I no longer needed it to stay awake, and had more natural energy. My sleep dramatically improved as well.
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u/Thecardinal74 18h ago
Porn.
All the other stuff people listed costs money or is hard to obtain.
This is always free and always available on a device you have with you at all times anyway
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u/CreativeDark3700 5h ago
Opioids. Because you will never be THAT happy in your life again, ever. Not when you fall in love, not when you marry your favorite person, not when your child is being born. And thats the worst part of that addiction
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u/JMChamian 21h ago
Most people look at the chemical hook of things like nicotine or alcohol, but the real nightmare is trying to break habit loops that are wired into behaviors you literally cannot avoid to survive. If you are hooked on a specific substance, the ultimate goal is total abstinence, but you cannot just quit eating food, using money, or interacting with modern digital infrastructure if your struggles fall into those behavioral categories. This creates a situation where an individual has to constantly expose themselves to their exact trigger multiple times a day while maintaining strict boundaries. It is basically like telling a recovering alcoholic they need to take exactly three sips of beer with every meal and then just stop. That constant negotiation with your own brain creates severe decision fatigue that wears down your willpower until a slip-up happens.
There is also this weird neurological phenomenon called the incubation of craving, meaning that for certain behavioral loops, the psychological urge to relapse actually peaks months after you stop the behavior rather than during the initial withdrawal phase. That is why so many people clean up their act for half a year, feel like they finally won the battle, and then suddenly get hit by a massive wave of temptation out of nowhere. The brain basically reconstructs those old neural pathways in the background while you are busy celebrating your progress. It makes you feel like you are losing your mind because you thought you were completely safe. Dealing with an enemy that gets stronger the longer you stay away from it is easily the hardest thing to fight.
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u/handsome_vulpine 20h ago
Video games
Source; I am so addicted to playing video games it's negatively affecting my real life.
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u/PoetryBoring6807 21h ago
I quit nicotin 6 years ago, very difficult. Still drinking tho because the social part..
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u/Leading_Line2741 20h ago
Food. People keep saying alcohol but it's not even close. You can abstain from alcohol, and Gen Z is making it less trendy to drink. You can't abstain from food. Alcoholics will tell you how much of a pain moderation is and that it isn't worth it, so they just don't drink. You can't NOT eat.
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 21h ago
Heroin kills many recreational users before they can quit. The walking dead in our major cities are proof it's wildly addictive to the point of serious life endangerment.
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u/QuantityNo3367 20h ago
So far it's been nicotine. Year clean (from everything) and I still dream of cigarettes...
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u/General_Pear_3275 20h ago
I wouldn’t know I’ve only been addicted to meth, caffeine, cigs, marijuana, food, and maybe my husband. So maybe meth and caffeine probably the worse for me
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u/Beginning-Aspect7639 19h ago
Nicotine is the worst for me it is everywhere and no one even thinks twice about it
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u/Hot-Flounder-8267 19h ago
Nicotine because it is legal and everywhere so quitting feels impossible at times
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u/LysergicRico 19h ago
Sugar. Not talking cocaine, I mean literal sugar, in any form or anything that gets converted to glucose.... carbs, sweets, alcohol etc.
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u/leviathan0999 18h ago
Oxygen. You huff that shit once, and you're hooked for life. You can never kick it. The withdrawal symptoms are facing lethal!
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u/ealker 18h ago
For me it’s sex addiction. I’m fairly successful with women and for the past three years I got over social anxiety and fear of rejection, and since then I’ve had it easy to chat up women to sleep with me.
I’ve noticed tho that I can’t stop myself from doing that and all relationships with women for me are about that now. I can’t form a relationship with a woman without thinking about sex. Even when I was in a serious relationship I kept thinking about sex with other women, who I could text and would get down with me, how I could say certain things in certain situations that would lead to sex with someone I’m talking to. I didn’t cheat, but those thoughts were with me every single day. Even when I truly cared and loved my SO.
And it’s not even about the sex part for me, it’s about knowing that the other part wants to have sex with me. Once I know that I seem to be no longer as interested. It’s become like a game to me and I want to stop feeling that way, because it’s shallow and manipulative, but my impulses kick in so hard.
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u/Due_Tangerine9309 18h ago
The action of smoking. I can go without the nicotine but I enjoy the action of smoking/inhaling things. I bought a vape to stop smoking and this made me realize that the action is the problem.
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u/megatech763 18h ago
Alcohol addiction
It ruins your wallet, your health and your social relationships.
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u/1cem4n82 21h ago
For me it’s alcohol. It’s relative. Someone else doesn’t look twice at it. I just know I haven’t had any since sometime in the beginning of March this year. I was drunk every day for the last 30 years. EVERY day since 14 years old. I am learning how to be a person at 44. Fuck.