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How to make quitting your addiction easier

242 points by vitabenes 5y ago

ultrablack 5y ago
Read Atomic Habits?
schwartzworld 5y ago
Stupid condescending article. Anybody who thinks quitting smoking is just a question of "realizing you don't want it anymore" has never tried to quit smoking.
- Nevermark 5y ago
  Obviously it isn't "just a question", but the article didn't say that. It simply points out that how we frame, and experience, our own motivations for quitting can be more or less helpful. I think anything mentally difficult is going to work better if we take into account our subconscious as a first class partner. Our subconscious responds very strongly to how we perceive tasks and challenges. It can carry us through tough situations, but is very hard to work against. Sometimes subtle, almost nonsensical things from a purely rational point of view, really help.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  It depends, the Allen Carr book everyone recommends tries to make you see that without directly telling you that smoking is disgusting etc. The thing for me that allowed me to give up was realising and convincing myself that it was possible for the cravings to go away, to feel normal in a pub without smoking etc. It seemed impossible at some point so I always went back to it before.
  - telxosser 5y ago
    Same for me. I quit for good ten years ago by basically convincing myself it would be easy after so many times trying to quit I lost count. Of course it really wasn't easy but that mindset let me not give in to the cravings. I do think when you internalize quitting as something that is super difficult it just gives ammunition for all those mind games to give in. I was also watching this Navy SEAL buds training at the time and the one guy Travis Lively was using that strategy. Convincing himself that Navy SEAL hell week was really not that bad. I love that guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVxhm7jkN0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVxhm7jkN0k
- barrystaes 5y ago
  There is only 3 ways that i can think of. Either forget/lose the routine without thought, or observe/choose to quit, or being deprived by others. Only the realisation and choice is definitive. Thats the quit. There is no try. I decided to quit once. If your quit failed, you just didnt fully realise yet.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  Anec data: i smoked for 4 years. For 3.5 of those i was trying to give up - somehow once i entered the consciously trying hard to give up stage, i went from 10 a day to 20-30 per day. Patches, gums, sprays (throat one, nasal one), cold turkey, herbal cigs, gamification, the little ball pellet things that were briefly on the market as a better gum alternative in the early 2000s, electric cig (not the modern e-cigs, the early 2000’s terrible ones), having a quit buddy, joining an nhs smoking cessation group… I was not playing at giving up. I was latching on to anything that I’d heard worked for someone. I was distraught mentally. To top it all off, i couldn’t actually afford smoking as a student, i was accruing debt. The only 2 things i refused to try were a “stupid” book (easyway by allen carr) - how dumb do you have to be to let a book reprogram your mind, I’m too smart for that. Also i avoided hypnotherapy for the same reason. I finally read that book. I quit smoking (easily) before the half way mark in the book. No will power, nothing. I was just a non smoker now. I don’t smoke, i don’t think about it ever, it doesn’t bother me to be near smokers, there’s no triggers i have to avoid etc etc im just a plain non smoker. That book uses the same approach laid out at the start of this article.
  - cyberpunk 5y ago
    If you enjoy a beer now and again I would avoid his quitting drinking one, it completely ruins that for you too. Why they don’t just give out copies of easyway on the health service I don’t know, sure worked for everyone I know who has used it.
  - justinator 5y ago
    Good for you! I hope you've allow yourself celebration for kicking the habit!
- lookalike74 5y ago
  You're being too kind, this article is woo bullshit. Addiction at its core is having lost the power of choice and recovery is finding a way to regain it. But to most people that sounds like just another choice to make - they completely don't get it.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  I’m smoke free for 8 days, and it was very much a question of realising I didn’t want it anymore. I wouldn’t generalise on such things though, everyone is different.
  - justinator 5y ago
    Heck yeah! KEEP GOING!
- dahart 5y ago
  > Stupid condescending article Don’t mistake a ‘here’s the trick’ with ‘it’s so easy’, the article wasn’t claiming it’s easy. And don’t take advice as a personal affront. The true and valid point this article is making is that changing a behavior is a mental game you play with your mind, not a physical one, and that “willpower” and “discipline” doesn’t work before fully convincing yourself of your goals. You have to figure out how to truly convince yourself the old behavior isn’t what you want, and the new behavior is your goal. Not in a contradicting yourself kind of way, but in a deep and true believe it with your whole body way. I think you’re actually making the exact same point underneath your disagreement, that focusing on quitting is too hard, and there’s more to it.
  - schwartzworld 5y ago
    Sure, if they are arguing to apply to things that are mostly psychologically addictive. It's smoking is a physical addiction and a really hard one to break.
    - dahart 5y ago
      I think something being physically addictive only increases the mental difficulty of overcoming the addiction, no? It’s not physically hard to go through withdrawal, it just sucks.
- pixelrevision 5y ago
  Lol yup. The advice here is about as practical as “just have 1 smoke a week so you can enjoy it”. A lot of people just don’t get the difference between an addiction and a bad habit.
- astura 5y ago
  I think everyone's experiences are different. I have a friend who left his toxic wife. Immediately after that he quit smoking cold turkey without even trying. He said that with his ex-wife out of his life he just didn't feel like he needed to smoke anymore. Myself - I don't find caffeine addictive in any way.
mbrock 5y ago
I like the book “The Biology of Desire” on addiction. It views addiction as an instance of the same kind of desire-driven habit-forming learning that’s the core of our motivational system. And so quitting an addiction is not exactly just quitting something bad. It’s more like a continuation of one’s general lifelong process of learning. This is a kinder framing and it’s thoroughly neuroscientific. And it reveals that addictions are actually very clever behaviors in some ways—so we can even learn from them as we try to develop healthier habits to replace the ones that harm us. It’s also a narrative perspective that respects the subject’s life story. The addiction was a part in my troubled human journey. And now my narrative needs to find a new charge, a new quest, a new act. Maybe I was drawn into addiction in part because my life story didn’t make sense, I felt disconnected from past and scared of the future, etc. Addictions also form around the need for connection: it’s not just the beer, it’s the pub. So I have to find other social contexts that center around something that doesn’t harm me.
- refurb 5y ago
  I like to draw a comparison to obsessive compulsive behavior. The compulsion (which is often what drives use and relapse) is a learned behavior and one that is reinforced by the reward. People with OCD often find the obsessive and repetitive behavior helps with anxiety, although the anxiety ends up reduced in the short-term, it worsens in the long term as the behaviors have negative consequences of their own (disruptive and time consuming, interfering with normal life activities, shame for lack of self-control). We wouldn’t tell someone with OCD to just “quit doing that” (and for the person it would just increase anxiety to stop doing what helps their anxiety), but provide an alternative that addresses the core cause of the behavior (anxiety) and “unlearns” the harmful behavior, replacing it with self-help tools to address the core problems (anxiety) in ways that are less harmful and likely more effective in the long term. That can be done through a number of approaches, none of which are surefire and often take a few attempts.
  - mbrock 5y ago
    Oh yeah, the book also describes the craving itself as an essential part of the addiction. It’s not just that the drug or whatever is so immensely pleasing when you take it, it’s also that the whole cycle of wanting, pursuing, and getting is addictive in itself. It’s a whole “dark liturgy.” Strong craving for a well-known thing might be preferable to vague indeterminate anxiety, or it might be a way to occupy one’s mind to avoid seeing something traumatic. Chasing a target is a thrill in itself.
max002 5y ago
I think article says its a matter of decission. Once you take hard stance/decission its a matter of time amd retries. Goos tip is to find replacemet, a healthy one. You can get addicted to gentle (not stupid) weight lifting, running (please, on grass, not on cement or next to road full of cars, not on asfalt, its not good for your knees and lungs) reading a book. Replace it with hobby that you like or put that time into something you wanted to do, but never had time.
thom 5y ago
Something that has helped me kick some bad but undeniably comforting habits in the last year is keeping actual data. For a few months I logged simple stuff, like whether or not I’d imbibed alcohol, how much sleep I’d got, whatever. And on the other side I’d track simple subjective measures of my mood and energy. I put all this into some simple linear regressions and the evidence was so overwhelmingly clear that it became very hard to convince myself that staying up until 1am was the only way to have quality ‘me time’, or having a boozy night with my wife was the only way to fully relax. I don’t really go for quantified self stuff generally, I do quite like living intuitively as much as I can. But sometimes you do need to call yourself on your own bullshit.
- nefitty 5y ago
  I tracked every minute of my time several years ago, for about a year. The shock of how much time I was spending playing Battlefield is what helped me kick video games.
  - aenis 5y ago
    Ha! Had the exact same problem - and same solution. 650hrs on bf2 alone. One can learn a new language in less time.
    - nefitty 5y ago
      Thinking of BF2 still gets my blood pumping all these years later lol
- C19is20 5y ago
  I can recommend apps like kubios (my fav), hrv4 and elite hr (I use all three daily). Coupled with even a cheap heart rate monitor, you can see the effects of 'everything' on your body/ soul as well as track sleep etc. Oura rings do similar, but they're subscription based.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
aaron695 5y ago
TonyRobbins 5y ago
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Well, there’s “bad habits,” and “lack of discipline,” vs. true, hard-core “addiction,” like alcoholism, compulsive gambling, sexual addiction, and drug addiction. For the former, mindfulness, metrics, and discipline can be extremely effective (and can provide many benefits beyond simply quitting the habit). For the latter, they can be helpful, but we usually need a great deal more assistance.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  I would appreciate a trigger warning before people use the word "Addiction" to encompass everything from methamphetamine use to playing video games to frequently. As you indicate they are not comparable and require very different approaches to escaping. Adding to the challenge is that hardcore, true addictions tend to be layered on top of each other and quitting one is almost impossible while still having the others, yet quitting them all at the same time is also impossible.
  - dbrueck 5y ago
    > I would appreciate a trigger warning before people use the word Curious to know what you mean by this. Are you literally asking that people say/write "trigger warning" (or something to that effect) before a certain word is used in an upcoming sentence or do you mean something else?
  - _gshc 5y ago
    Far from me the idea to downplay the horror that must be quitting a long-formed addiction to methamphetamine or heroin, but I think downplaying non-chemical addictions as "bad habits" is an unfair characterization as well. YMMV, but in my own experience for what it is worth, I've seen little difference and much parallel between quitting cigarettes (after 10 years of ~15 cigs/day), weed (after 11 years of ~1-1.5g/day) and Internet time-wasters (.. a W.I.P., many-to-most hours a day). Haven't gamed in a while now, but the loop of self-hatred and coping where each day you tell yourself "tomorrow is a new dawn" has felt eerily similar to each day telling yourself you're done smoking after this pack - which you make sure to finish so you wake-up without any left - until you're walking right back to the convenience store begrudgingly before noon. Rinse and repeat for months and years until, eventually, it actually sticks for some reason and you get past the first few months without giving in to your triggers (failing which you're basically back to square one). The pull to grab a smoke never really goes away, although it actually stinks after a few months, you just learn to tell yourself "no". The same way going to the dispensary remains tempting, but you remind yourself how it actually makes you feel after you smoke beyond the habitual dopamine hit. The same way reinstalling LoL or whatever gets tempting when you don't want to do what you need to do, but you manage to control yourself knowing you won't get any satisfaction from it. I know it sounds dumb, I know none of these are comparable to an opioid addiction (despite what some say about nicotine, I refuse to believe it is harder to quit then opioids) and I don't think I'm able to properly word how I'm trying to say w.r.t. addiction, but I really think, for myself, that my addictions acted in a very similar way on my psyche. They're all self-destructive ways (for me and my usage) of coping with my negative emotions and anxieties, the "pull" to each when trying to quit and the hoops my brain'd go through to justify giving in to a trigger felt very similar, chemical or not. If anything, quitting cigarettes was the "easiest" and avoiding wasting hours a day on unfulfilling Internet activities remains the hardest.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
IDK, most addicts I've known and talked to have said that addiction is often a symptom. That is, (typically) the substance is used to mask the pain. Taking away the substance doesn't cure the root pain. Truly quitting addiction means addressing the room cause(s).
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  I think you're right when it comes to many addictions. When we add in bad, unhealthy and suboptimal habits this is probably less universal, which unfortunately get labelled as "addicitions" in a lot of cases.
daggersandscars 5y ago
Everyone's addiction is different. A question that may be useful for some: When you started, why was it enjoyable? Be specific. Many attempts at addressing addictive behavior focus on stopping the behavior. If there was something specific the behavior initially improved, that has to be addressed or you're unlikely to succeed. E.g.: if drinking initially improved anxiety issues, those will still be there while the person is trying to quit.
thenerdhead 5y ago
I felt addicted to the internet a year before the pandemic. I read the book “Don’t shoot the dog” and it had so many amazing training tips to kick that addiction. Am I a dog? No. But the training and reinforcement is pretty much universal. Having tools to deal with addiction is important. Mindfulness sadly isn’t the big aha! moment. I know I was addicted. I know I wanted to change. This is why they say “admitting you have a problem” is the first step. It’s not a matter of knowing you’re addicted and then suddenly stopping. That can happen, but more likely an incremental approach will happen. B.J. Fogg’s book about tiny habits talks about this epiphany moment being quite rare. Only a couple times in my life have I had this epiphany moment and went cold turkey overnight. Once when I was larger and struggling to hike with friends like I used to. Another when I was playing video games and felt deja vu that made me feel like I wasted years of my life. Now, I’m in the best shape of my life and work on things I’m passionate about in my free time.
Kaze404 5y ago
This is something I realized after trying to quit League of Legends, a game I played for over a decade, years ago. I could only truly stop playing it when I completely internalized the fact that the game didn't bring me anything except misery after every match, win or lose, and the short term satisfaction of the ding you hear when you kill a creep or make a fancy play were not worth it. Sometimes when I remember it exists I still feel a pull towards it, but now I know that if I play it, in 45 minutes I'll wish I did something else instead. This is more than enough to stop me, fortunately.
- anthk 5y ago
  I was like that on games. A half and a decade ago I switched over nes/snes/md/genesis/pce classics, roguelikes and text adventures. No bullshit mechanics, no addictions, no DLC. The 8/16 bit games are short enough to be enjoyed fully, roguelikes add random mechanics and calmness, and IF is like a good book but with far more interaction and rewarding puzzless.
  - barbs 5y ago
    Yeah, I find there are some games like CS:GO that feel a bit more like a brain-numbing, slightly soothing activity that chews up time. And then there are roguelikes like FTL that involve interesting decision making and feel far more satisfying. These days I play more of the latter than the former, but less often, and the decision to play them feels more intentional.
    - anthk 5y ago
      More than CS:GO I'd choose Assault Cube as it's free as in freedom. It's simplish, ok. But those matches are fast and you can be happy by just playing half an hour instead of a highly consuming MMORPG over a night. AC has more simplistic graphics and mechanics than CS, so it will "fill" you faster. You just play several matches (~10) against friends/bots and that's it. On roguelikes, as the actions are literal instant based, yoou can play and finish a gameplay under a week with just 20 minutes at every afternoon. FTL is not a roguelike to me, but Slashem is, and the dungeon rooms never exceed 80x24 chars except for some concrete areas I think. Thus, the gameplay can be paradoxically both fast paced at the beginning and slowish on the deepest rooms.
erwincoumans 5y ago
For a curious person, reading interesting information on the internet and watching Youtube videos is not (necessarily) wasted time. So it helps if you keep in mind activities that are acceptable and ones that are not. A lot of the 'good habits', moved to screen time: I used to read more news papers, magazines and books, and most of that turned into screen time. Online discussion is also a useful way to spend time I think (with the right audience, such as some of HN). I wouldn't put screen time due to curiosity for information on the same level as bad addictions, such as smoking (hurting health) or gambling (hurting the wallet).
- david_allison 5y ago
  The YouTube front page/recommendations were a massive amount of wasted time for me. Removing them via uBlock Origin filters has significantly reduced my "wasted" time on YouTube: www.youtube.com###secondary www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"] #primary www.youtube.com##.ytp-show-tiles.ytp-endscreen-paginate.videowall-endscreen.ytp-player-content.html5-endscreen
  - lanstin 5y ago
    A good general rule of thumb is never look at anything recommended by an algorithm. Chronological feeds and media recommendations from other humans. Search results are a tricky middle ground. Seems they are trying to make that a source of low value, addictive content as well.
- danenania 5y ago
  I’ve been listening to Andrew Huberman’s podcast lately. He’s a neurologist and ophthalmologist at Stanford. Something that comes up a lot is how much artificial light, especially the blue light of screens, affects the eyes, brain, and circadian rhythm. Research has even shown a significant impact on hormone levels. Because of this, I don’t see reading a book on a phone as equivalent to a paper book, or reading news online as a equivalent to a newspaper. The content your brain is processing may be the same, but it has a very different impact on your body and mental state, especially at night. So I think it’s wise to differentiate screen vs. non-screen activities and be more careful about doing the former in moderation, or perhaps only early in the day.
short12 5y ago
This article is just flat out the dumbest thing I've ever read in regards to addiction
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  I’m genuinely curious, because of the other discussions happening here. Why is the article bad/wrong?
  - pixelrevision 5y ago
    It’s conflating bad habits and addiction. The advice may work for bad habits such as watching too much YouTube when you’d rather be more productive. An addiction twists the mind around where no amount of reason is going to stick without external systems in place to help. Anyone who’s had any serious struggles either internally or with a loved one is going to recognize this.
    - kayodelycaon 5y ago
      I happen to agree. I read it in the same way as many articles on depression. This is an article that discusses a “normal person” problem. Fortunately, most of the people discussing it here seem to recognize that. A few of them prefaced their comments as a result. And I don’t see anyone disagreeing that bad habits and serious addiction are different problems. As a result, the discussion has been helpful to me rather than aggravating.
    - golemiprague 5y ago
jimmyvalmer 5y ago
Problem: I'm a dipole preferring this orientation. Article's solution: Don't be a dipole. I believe Ben Affleck of all people nailed it on his recent Howard Stern appearance. The cure for addiction is suffering.
_huayra_ 5y ago
The best way to change your habits is to really understand and appreciate what they're doing for you. You're not running towards whatever your procrastination mechanism of choice may be; you're running _away_ from something else. This is why procrastinating has that tepid feeling of boredom, as you don't really want to click onto the next video / reddit / HN page, but you feel compelled to do so. I highly recommend How We Change [0]. It was the first book in my long journey of trying to "read my self out of my depression" that was really insightful. It lays out why people choose to not change (tethered by their procrastination or other habits they deem to be fruitless), and only by seeing and appreciating that _fear of hope_ can you start to approach the (at times) extremely difficult task of authoring your life. [0] https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-we-change-ross-ellenhorn https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-we-change-ross-el...
tcskeptic 5y ago
I have found it very useful to frame things in terms of my future self. This works for both things I want to do, and things I want to stop doing. For example — get home from work, tired, don’t want to go row. Instead of saying to myself “You really should go row, you said you wanted to do it 4 times a week.” I say “1 hour from now do I want to be a person who has sat on the couch for an hour or do I want to be the person who has worked out, taken a shower, and feels good”. Same thing for stopping mindless doom scrolling or making dinner vs ordering deliver or whatever. I know it’s just a mental trick — but reframing things in terms of my future self has been incredibly powerful for me.
- emerged 5y ago
  I sometimes explicitly create a log of the before and after state of mind. Before rowing: “I feel fine, but pretty lazy and stressed about XYZ” after rowing: “Struggled through and got a big endorphin rush toward the end, feeling good and much less stressed.” Seeing fitness progress graphs helps as well (heart rate vs power output etc). I know for me personally monitoring my resting heart rate made a strong argument against pretty much any alcohol consumption.
  - loeg 5y ago
    What effect have you observed on your resting heart rate from alcohol?
    - maccard 5y ago
      I've not been measuring my RHR for a while but when I was training daily my RHR would be up significantly for maybe 3 days after a night out even if I felt 100% the morning after.
    - emerged 5y ago
      It increases immediately and takes a few days to settle back down. After quitting my weekly average slowly continued to decrease. My RHH is a very consistent 46 bpm now and it was consistently in the low to mid 50s during the months/years I was routinely drinking on the weekends. Obviously there are other factors like fitness, sleep, general health, but I was monitoring the numbers on a daily basis and the trends became really clear.
aenis 5y ago
For those struggling with alcohol - I can recommend the Sinclair Method. The idea is to take an opioid antagonist, naltrexone, before drinking -- this helps reset the association between drinking and pleasure, since drinking on naltrexone is devoid of any pleasure, while the downsides of alcohol are still felt by the body. Do it a few times, and the desire to drink wanes. Also, when under the influence of naltrexone, it's hard to drink a lot, since it really is not enjoyable. It allowed me to basically stop drinking alcohol, but I can still go out with friends and have a drink if I want to, as long as I take naltexone before, there is zero risk of this ending up in a binge. Good stuff.
- birriel 5y ago
  Is there something similar to this for smoking, barring Chantix (I believe it was recalled last year for having carcinogenic compounds itself)?
- loeg 5y ago
  FWIW, it seems like you need a prescription to buy naltrexone in the US.
  - MissionInfl 5y ago
    I used telemedicine to get my first prescription. I had a few appointments and probably talked to the total for about 30 minutes in total. The Sinclair Method is pretty straightforward once you understand it and there is only one hard rule (always take Naltrexone at least 1 hour before consuming alcohol). But the doctor will want to do a liver enzyme test and ask some basic questions to make sure that it is safe for you to take Naltrexone. If your liver is damaged, you may have to take Nalmefrene instead. Or if you are using opiates, it can be unsafe to take Naltrexone (not sure of the details here). At some point I was able to get my PCP to refill my Naltrexone subscription. Naltrexone is pretty widely known for treatment for alcoholism but the prevailing wisdom in the medical community is that it must be taken every day to prevent cravings and alcohol should not be consumed when on Naltrexone. I've heard that this way of using Naltrexone isn't any better than placebo. The TSM book[1] does a good job of explaining why this is the case: the mechanism of action is that the Naltrexone blocks the endorphin rewards from consuming alcohol, so it doesn't work if you don't drink and there is no point in taking Naltrexone without drinking. tldr: you may be able to find a TSM specific doctor via telemedicine. Additionally, most PCP will probably prescribe Naltrexone, although you need to be mindful that they may recommend to take it every day and this is not TSM [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/60fs7gmvbyzs1kk/Cure%20for%20Alcoholism.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/60fs7gmvbyzs1kk/Cure%20for%20Alcoh...
300bps 5y ago
Spot on. In 2013 after a highish triglyceride test result I quit obvious refined sugar. (Have to specify exactly what I mean or I get a lot of questions like “what about bread?!!? You know there’s sugar in bread right!?!?”) I framed it as, “I just don’t want to eat that garbage anymore.” Two weeks of cravings and then I just stopped missing it. Fruit started to taste amazing. Triglycerides went from 263 to 113 in one year.
mythrwy 5y ago
I liked this and will be the first to admit I have an information ingestion problem that the internet has made many times worse. In grade school I nearly failed a semester because I read books all day. It was obsessive. I didn't do my school work but knew all kinds of random facts. And even though my parents caught it and pulled me out I never did as well as I could have because at some level the issue persisted, even now and I'm 50 years old. It really has been a problem my entire life. I suspect it's kind of like the evolutionary desire for sugar. Useful when sugar was rare, deadly when sugar is cheap, refined and readily available. Same with the desire for information. We can only healthily process so much and we only need so much and it needs to be in the proper form. It's so bad sometimes I'll have multiple tabs open at a time paging back and forth at light speed, or listening to informational audio and trying to read at the same time. Or surf the net for 14 hours straight. Like a wino greedily slurping a bottle as fast as he can with another ready to go in the other hand. I never got into video games which always seemed like complete boring waste of time. The ironic thing is I never would have found the article if I weren't frantically scrolling HN looking for the keys to the universe.
- anthk 5y ago
  Just open http://68k.news http://68k.news and https://text.npr.org https://text.npr.org, ditch anything else. Read them just daily, for 20 minutes. Enough for news. On books, get adult mistery gamebooks, they are random enough to force yourself on your previous choices (and your character's skills) and having to improvise to win instead of being a static reader. EDIT: 68k URL.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    LOL, top headline right now on text.npr.org is classic clickbait style: "Congress may change this arcane law to avoid another Jan. 6"
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      Right? That's a puzzling comment. Low level sweater wearing soft voiced .gov propaganda isn't usually high on my interest list. Although come to think of it, he might have a point. Maybe if I stuck with that I wouldn't be tempted to keep going back.
boppo1 5y ago
I have the problem that my addiction (scrolling 4chan* and HN for hours) has materially added value to my life. I've been introduced to books and resources and technical advice that I've found nowhere else. But I have trouble controlling the amount of time I spend browsing. *4chan is full of hate, but if you grew up with it and have a sort of auto-filter, there are surprising things there. I would not have read (and deeply enjoyed) Moby Dick if not for 4chan. Weird. This is not a recommendation though, generally speaking, avoid the place at all costs.
- reidjs 5y ago
  I feel the same way about HN. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about technology, software, entrepreneurship from this site. But it would far more valuable to have spent the majority of those hours reading books, learning new skills, networking, or even just being more focused at work. It’s tough to find balance.
  - ip26 5y ago
    An aggregator like Feedly is really good in this regard; you can set up sources of interest, add filters, and then- critically- when you reach the end of your feeds for the day, you're done. Something like hackernews or reddit is more endless, without a neatly defined "stop". (Of course, I'm still here)
- _gshc 5y ago
  Consider something like Cold Turkey, the paid version (one-time fee) has an included scheduler if you can't trust yourself to turn it on when you'd need to. If you don't want to pay for it, the free version includes CLI operations, you can make your own scheduler script without too much trouble. HN has an included time limiter in the options.. but nothing stops you from launching it in incognito so it's only useful as far as you have willpower.
  - boppo1 5y ago
    Linux user, so no on the cold turkey. I'd just circumvent it anyway, I don't believe it could prevent me from uninstalling. I've done the hosts file thing and other efforts. It is clear the only thing that will work is looking right at the bottle and realizing I don't want it anymore, much like the article in question suggests.
anthk 5y ago
Switch to https://68k.news https://68k.news for 10 minutes a day. Enough to stay informed. On tech, usenet has good newsgroups, such as comp.misc. By pulling articles once a web, you'll get sorted.
- b3morales 5y ago
  Tangent, but if this is your site you should fix the certificate.
  - anthk 5y ago
    That's because I posted the wrong URL. It's http://68k.news http://68k.news, it doesn't use TLS at all.
papito 5y ago
The Power of Habit really taught me to be on the lookout for negative and positive habit loops. It's an incredibly powerful concept, and how pretty much all addictions work, from food to cocaine. You are bored, so you automatically get up and walk like a zombie to the fridge to inspect it, for example.
l5870uoo9y 5y ago
I have found the replacement tactic useful. If you want to stop drinking coffee, replace it with tea.
- dbrueck 5y ago
  Can confirm. I successfully got off cocaine by replacing it with heroin and it was as easy as pie.
vcarrico 5y ago
> Most people try quitting their addiction by banning themselves from doing it. After some failed attempts I quit smoking 7 months a go and this change in the way of thinking made the difference for me. During the failed attempts I used to repeat to myself "I can't smoke", this last time my thought was more like "I don't want to smoke", I didn't even tell to my wife that I was trying to quit so that I would fell less the pressure of being forbidden to smoke. Somehow it worked better for me and whenever I had cravings my thoughts were usually something like "I could smoke if I wanted to, I'm 5 minutes away from a pack of cigarets, but I don't want." I'm not saying that this was the only factor that made me stop or this is the "secret to quit smoking" or that's easy, it just worked better for me.
- _dark_matter_ 5y ago
  This is the basics of Carr's "easy way", right? It basically convinces you that you don't want to smoke. On top of that it specifically doesn't let you stop smoking until you finish the book. So you feel horrible reading this book and smoking until the end when you're like FINALLY I'm allowed to stop!
ndynan 5y ago
This essentially the same argument that Judson Brewer makes using insights from behavioral + buddhist psychology – https://drjud.com/book/ https://drjud.com/book/ The insight is also to use mindfulness to understand the "true" experience of the addictive behavior and come to internalize that it is no longer valuable. Ezra Klein has a nice interview on the subject: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/that-anxiety-youre-feeling-its-a-habit-you-can-unlearn/id1548604447?i=1000517873238 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/that-anxiety-youre-fee...
molhillmountain 5y ago
Alternative to thinking in the future about rewards is focusing on immediate costs. My consumption and enjoyment of junk food has plummeted ever since I went from 'this is bad for me but delicious' to 'this in fact tastes awful and my stomach hurts.' Obviously, this doesn't work as well with my favorite desserts, but if you improve your taste and your favorite desserts become super expensive/rare you rapidly decrease the amount of temptation you face.
dillondoyle 5y ago
This type of CBT is great. But I think there is a big distinction between chemical dependency and other compulsions or addictive behaviors. And I think the word addiction itself has been kind of coopted by self diagnosing people on the internet for karma and some odd type of self gratitude, if that makes sense; kind of a weird bragging about your supposed addiction to ____ or OCD or ADHD etc. The author writes "It’s about seeing through the illusion of satisfaction. It’s about realizing you don’t want to be doing it anymore." Most users don't want to be addicts. Almost no one wants to be dependent on opiates or to have the shakes every morning. Anyone that does hasn't been using long enough yet or probably has other mental health issues that they are trying to patch over themselves with drugs. We know the satisfaction or other benefits one initially gets from using eventually gets buried deep by all the negatives. With drugs and alcohol the satisfaction becomes less and less, even when you use more and more. Drugs are fun & feel good after all. they can 'fix' a huge array of problems in your life. Until they don't. Props to anyone who can overcome a chemical dependency on willpower alone and through this type of CBT mental reframing the author talks about. But for almost all users, especially many of those with untreated underlying issues, it's basically impossible without science based, often medicine supported treatment. Another book I think is worth reading for a dumbed down summary of addiction is Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

242 points by vitabenes 5y ago

Read Atomic Habits?

Stupid condescending article. Anybody who thinks quitting smoking is just a question of "realizing you don't want it anymore" has never tried to quit smoking.

Nevermark 5y ago
Obviously it isn't "just a question", but the article didn't say that. It simply points out that how we frame, and experience, our own motivations for quitting can be more or less helpful. I think anything mentally difficult is going to work better if we take into account our subconscious as a first class partner. Our subconscious responds very strongly to how we perceive tasks and challenges. It can carry us through tough situations, but is very hard to work against. Sometimes subtle, almost nonsensical things from a purely rational point of view, really help.
andy_ppp 5y ago
It depends, the Allen Carr book everyone recommends tries to make you see that without directly telling you that smoking is disgusting etc. The thing for me that allowed me to give up was realising and convincing myself that it was possible for the cravings to go away, to feel normal in a pub without smoking etc. It seemed impossible at some point so I always went back to it before.
- telxosser 5y ago
  Same for me. I quit for good ten years ago by basically convincing myself it would be easy after so many times trying to quit I lost count. Of course it really wasn't easy but that mindset let me not give in to the cravings. I do think when you internalize quitting as something that is super difficult it just gives ammunition for all those mind games to give in. I was also watching this Navy SEAL buds training at the time and the one guy Travis Lively was using that strategy. Convincing himself that Navy SEAL hell week was really not that bad. I love that guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVxhm7jkN0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVxhm7jkN0k
barrystaes 5y ago
There is only 3 ways that i can think of. Either forget/lose the routine without thought, or observe/choose to quit, or being deprived by others. Only the realisation and choice is definitive. Thats the quit. There is no try. I decided to quit once. If your quit failed, you just didnt fully realise yet.
CraigJPerry 5y ago
Anec data: i smoked for 4 years. For 3.5 of those i was trying to give up - somehow once i entered the consciously trying hard to give up stage, i went from 10 a day to 20-30 per day. Patches, gums, sprays (throat one, nasal one), cold turkey, herbal cigs, gamification, the little ball pellet things that were briefly on the market as a better gum alternative in the early 2000s, electric cig (not the modern e-cigs, the early 2000’s terrible ones), having a quit buddy, joining an nhs smoking cessation group… I was not playing at giving up. I was latching on to anything that I’d heard worked for someone. I was distraught mentally. To top it all off, i couldn’t actually afford smoking as a student, i was accruing debt. The only 2 things i refused to try were a “stupid” book (easyway by allen carr) - how dumb do you have to be to let a book reprogram your mind, I’m too smart for that. Also i avoided hypnotherapy for the same reason. I finally read that book. I quit smoking (easily) before the half way mark in the book. No will power, nothing. I was just a non smoker now. I don’t smoke, i don’t think about it ever, it doesn’t bother me to be near smokers, there’s no triggers i have to avoid etc etc im just a plain non smoker. That book uses the same approach laid out at the start of this article.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  If you enjoy a beer now and again I would avoid his quitting drinking one, it completely ruins that for you too. Why they don’t just give out copies of easyway on the health service I don’t know, sure worked for everyone I know who has used it.
- justinator 5y ago
  Good for you! I hope you've allow yourself celebration for kicking the habit!
lookalike74 5y ago
You're being too kind, this article is woo bullshit. Addiction at its core is having lost the power of choice and recovery is finding a way to regain it. But to most people that sounds like just another choice to make - they completely don't get it.
cyberpunk 5y ago
I’m smoke free for 8 days, and it was very much a question of realising I didn’t want it anymore. I wouldn’t generalise on such things though, everyone is different.
- justinator 5y ago
  Heck yeah! KEEP GOING!
dahart 5y ago
> Stupid condescending article Don’t mistake a ‘here’s the trick’ with ‘it’s so easy’, the article wasn’t claiming it’s easy. And don’t take advice as a personal affront. The true and valid point this article is making is that changing a behavior is a mental game you play with your mind, not a physical one, and that “willpower” and “discipline” doesn’t work before fully convincing yourself of your goals. You have to figure out how to truly convince yourself the old behavior isn’t what you want, and the new behavior is your goal. Not in a contradicting yourself kind of way, but in a deep and true believe it with your whole body way. I think you’re actually making the exact same point underneath your disagreement, that focusing on quitting is too hard, and there’s more to it.
- schwartzworld 5y ago
  Sure, if they are arguing to apply to things that are mostly psychologically addictive. It's smoking is a physical addiction and a really hard one to break.
  - dahart 5y ago
    I think something being physically addictive only increases the mental difficulty of overcoming the addiction, no? It’s not physically hard to go through withdrawal, it just sucks.
pixelrevision 5y ago
Lol yup. The advice here is about as practical as “just have 1 smoke a week so you can enjoy it”. A lot of people just don’t get the difference between an addiction and a bad habit.
astura 5y ago
I think everyone's experiences are different. I have a friend who left his toxic wife. Immediately after that he quit smoking cold turkey without even trying. He said that with his ex-wife out of his life he just didn't feel like he needed to smoke anymore. Myself - I don't find caffeine addictive in any way.

mbrock 5y ago

I like the book “The Biology of Desire” on addiction. It views addiction as an instance of the same kind of desire-driven habit-forming learning that’s the core of our motivational system. And so quitting an addiction is not exactly just quitting something bad. It’s more like a continuation of one’s general lifelong process of learning. This is a kinder framing and it’s thoroughly neuroscientific. And it reveals that addictions are actually very clever behaviors in some ways—so we can even learn from them as we try to develop healthier habits to replace the ones that harm us. It’s also a narrative perspective that respects the subject’s life story. The addiction was a part in my troubled human journey. And now my narrative needs to find a new charge, a new quest, a new act. Maybe I was drawn into addiction in part because my life story didn’t make sense, I felt disconnected from past and scared of the future, etc. Addictions also form around the need for connection: it’s not just the beer, it’s the pub. So I have to find other social contexts that center around something that doesn’t harm me.

refurb 5y ago
I like to draw a comparison to obsessive compulsive behavior. The compulsion (which is often what drives use and relapse) is a learned behavior and one that is reinforced by the reward. People with OCD often find the obsessive and repetitive behavior helps with anxiety, although the anxiety ends up reduced in the short-term, it worsens in the long term as the behaviors have negative consequences of their own (disruptive and time consuming, interfering with normal life activities, shame for lack of self-control). We wouldn’t tell someone with OCD to just “quit doing that” (and for the person it would just increase anxiety to stop doing what helps their anxiety), but provide an alternative that addresses the core cause of the behavior (anxiety) and “unlearns” the harmful behavior, replacing it with self-help tools to address the core problems (anxiety) in ways that are less harmful and likely more effective in the long term. That can be done through a number of approaches, none of which are surefire and often take a few attempts.
- mbrock 5y ago
  Oh yeah, the book also describes the craving itself as an essential part of the addiction. It’s not just that the drug or whatever is so immensely pleasing when you take it, it’s also that the whole cycle of wanting, pursuing, and getting is addictive in itself. It’s a whole “dark liturgy.” Strong craving for a well-known thing might be preferable to vague indeterminate anxiety, or it might be a way to occupy one’s mind to avoid seeing something traumatic. Chasing a target is a thrill in itself.

max002 5y ago

I think article says its a matter of decission. Once you take hard stance/decission its a matter of time amd retries. Goos tip is to find replacemet, a healthy one. You can get addicted to gentle (not stupid) weight lifting, running (please, on grass, not on cement or next to road full of cars, not on asfalt, its not good for your knees and lungs) reading a book. Replace it with hobby that you like or put that time into something you wanted to do, but never had time.

thom 5y ago

Something that has helped me kick some bad but undeniably comforting habits in the last year is keeping actual data. For a few months I logged simple stuff, like whether or not I’d imbibed alcohol, how much sleep I’d got, whatever. And on the other side I’d track simple subjective measures of my mood and energy. I put all this into some simple linear regressions and the evidence was so overwhelmingly clear that it became very hard to convince myself that staying up until 1am was the only way to have quality ‘me time’, or having a boozy night with my wife was the only way to fully relax. I don’t really go for quantified self stuff generally, I do quite like living intuitively as much as I can. But sometimes you do need to call yourself on your own bullshit.

nefitty 5y ago
I tracked every minute of my time several years ago, for about a year. The shock of how much time I was spending playing Battlefield is what helped me kick video games.
- aenis 5y ago
  Ha! Had the exact same problem - and same solution. 650hrs on bf2 alone. One can learn a new language in less time.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Thinking of BF2 still gets my blood pumping all these years later lol
C19is20 5y ago
I can recommend apps like kubios (my fav), hrv4 and elite hr (I use all three daily). Coupled with even a cheap heart rate monitor, you can see the effects of 'everything' on your body/ soul as well as track sleep etc. Oura rings do similar, but they're subscription based.
- netizen-936824 5y ago

aaron695 5y ago

TonyRobbins 5y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Well, there’s “bad habits,” and “lack of discipline,” vs. true, hard-core “addiction,” like alcoholism, compulsive gambling, sexual addiction, and drug addiction. For the former, mindfulness, metrics, and discipline can be extremely effective (and can provide many benefits beyond simply quitting the habit). For the latter, they can be helpful, but we usually need a great deal more assistance.

skeeter2020 5y ago
I would appreciate a trigger warning before people use the word "Addiction" to encompass everything from methamphetamine use to playing video games to frequently. As you indicate they are not comparable and require very different approaches to escaping. Adding to the challenge is that hardcore, true addictions tend to be layered on top of each other and quitting one is almost impossible while still having the others, yet quitting them all at the same time is also impossible.
- dbrueck 5y ago
  > I would appreciate a trigger warning before people use the word Curious to know what you mean by this. Are you literally asking that people say/write "trigger warning" (or something to that effect) before a certain word is used in an upcoming sentence or do you mean something else?
- _gshc 5y ago
  Far from me the idea to downplay the horror that must be quitting a long-formed addiction to methamphetamine or heroin, but I think downplaying non-chemical addictions as "bad habits" is an unfair characterization as well. YMMV, but in my own experience for what it is worth, I've seen little difference and much parallel between quitting cigarettes (after 10 years of ~15 cigs/day), weed (after 11 years of ~1-1.5g/day) and Internet time-wasters (.. a W.I.P., many-to-most hours a day). Haven't gamed in a while now, but the loop of self-hatred and coping where each day you tell yourself "tomorrow is a new dawn" has felt eerily similar to each day telling yourself you're done smoking after this pack - which you make sure to finish so you wake-up without any left - until you're walking right back to the convenience store begrudgingly before noon. Rinse and repeat for months and years until, eventually, it actually sticks for some reason and you get past the first few months without giving in to your triggers (failing which you're basically back to square one). The pull to grab a smoke never really goes away, although it actually stinks after a few months, you just learn to tell yourself "no". The same way going to the dispensary remains tempting, but you remind yourself how it actually makes you feel after you smoke beyond the habitual dopamine hit. The same way reinstalling LoL or whatever gets tempting when you don't want to do what you need to do, but you manage to control yourself knowing you won't get any satisfaction from it. I know it sounds dumb, I know none of these are comparable to an opioid addiction (despite what some say about nicotine, I refuse to believe it is harder to quit then opioids) and I don't think I'm able to properly word how I'm trying to say w.r.t. addiction, but I really think, for myself, that my addictions acted in a very similar way on my psyche. They're all self-destructive ways (for me and my usage) of coping with my negative emotions and anxieties, the "pull" to each when trying to quit and the hoops my brain'd go through to justify giving in to a trigger felt very similar, chemical or not. If anything, quitting cigarettes was the "easiest" and avoiding wasting hours a day on unfulfilling Internet activities remains the hardest.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

IDK, most addicts I've known and talked to have said that addiction is often a symptom. That is, (typically) the substance is used to mask the pain. Taking away the substance doesn't cure the root pain. Truly quitting addiction means addressing the room cause(s).

skeeter2020 5y ago
I think you're right when it comes to many addictions. When we add in bad, unhealthy and suboptimal habits this is probably less universal, which unfortunately get labelled as "addicitions" in a lot of cases.

daggersandscars 5y ago

Everyone's addiction is different. A question that may be useful for some: When you started, why was it enjoyable? Be specific. Many attempts at addressing addictive behavior focus on stopping the behavior. If there was something specific the behavior initially improved, that has to be addressed or you're unlikely to succeed. E.g.: if drinking initially improved anxiety issues, those will still be there while the person is trying to quit.

thenerdhead 5y ago

I felt addicted to the internet a year before the pandemic. I read the book “Don’t shoot the dog” and it had so many amazing training tips to kick that addiction. Am I a dog? No. But the training and reinforcement is pretty much universal. Having tools to deal with addiction is important. Mindfulness sadly isn’t the big aha! moment. I know I was addicted. I know I wanted to change. This is why they say “admitting you have a problem” is the first step. It’s not a matter of knowing you’re addicted and then suddenly stopping. That can happen, but more likely an incremental approach will happen. B.J. Fogg’s book about tiny habits talks about this epiphany moment being quite rare. Only a couple times in my life have I had this epiphany moment and went cold turkey overnight. Once when I was larger and struggling to hike with friends like I used to. Another when I was playing video games and felt deja vu that made me feel like I wasted years of my life. Now, I’m in the best shape of my life and work on things I’m passionate about in my free time.

Kaze404 5y ago

This is something I realized after trying to quit League of Legends, a game I played for over a decade, years ago. I could only truly stop playing it when I completely internalized the fact that the game didn't bring me anything except misery after every match, win or lose, and the short term satisfaction of the ding you hear when you kill a creep or make a fancy play were not worth it. Sometimes when I remember it exists I still feel a pull towards it, but now I know that if I play it, in 45 minutes I'll wish I did something else instead. This is more than enough to stop me, fortunately.

anthk 5y ago
I was like that on games. A half and a decade ago I switched over nes/snes/md/genesis/pce classics, roguelikes and text adventures. No bullshit mechanics, no addictions, no DLC. The 8/16 bit games are short enough to be enjoyed fully, roguelikes add random mechanics and calmness, and IF is like a good book but with far more interaction and rewarding puzzless.
- barbs 5y ago
  Yeah, I find there are some games like CS:GO that feel a bit more like a brain-numbing, slightly soothing activity that chews up time. And then there are roguelikes like FTL that involve interesting decision making and feel far more satisfying. These days I play more of the latter than the former, but less often, and the decision to play them feels more intentional.
  - anthk 5y ago
    More than CS:GO I'd choose Assault Cube as it's free as in freedom. It's simplish, ok. But those matches are fast and you can be happy by just playing half an hour instead of a highly consuming MMORPG over a night. AC has more simplistic graphics and mechanics than CS, so it will "fill" you faster. You just play several matches (~10) against friends/bots and that's it. On roguelikes, as the actions are literal instant based, yoou can play and finish a gameplay under a week with just 20 minutes at every afternoon. FTL is not a roguelike to me, but Slashem is, and the dungeon rooms never exceed 80x24 chars except for some concrete areas I think. Thus, the gameplay can be paradoxically both fast paced at the beginning and slowish on the deepest rooms.

erwincoumans 5y ago

For a curious person, reading interesting information on the internet and watching Youtube videos is not (necessarily) wasted time. So it helps if you keep in mind activities that are acceptable and ones that are not. A lot of the 'good habits', moved to screen time: I used to read more news papers, magazines and books, and most of that turned into screen time. Online discussion is also a useful way to spend time I think (with the right audience, such as some of HN). I wouldn't put screen time due to curiosity for information on the same level as bad addictions, such as smoking (hurting health) or gambling (hurting the wallet).

david_allison 5y ago
The YouTube front page/recommendations were a massive amount of wasted time for me. Removing them via uBlock Origin filters has significantly reduced my "wasted" time on YouTube: www.youtube.com###secondary www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"] #primary www.youtube.com##.ytp-show-tiles.ytp-endscreen-paginate.videowall-endscreen.ytp-player-content.html5-endscreen
- lanstin 5y ago
  A good general rule of thumb is never look at anything recommended by an algorithm. Chronological feeds and media recommendations from other humans. Search results are a tricky middle ground. Seems they are trying to make that a source of low value, addictive content as well.
danenania 5y ago
I’ve been listening to Andrew Huberman’s podcast lately. He’s a neurologist and ophthalmologist at Stanford. Something that comes up a lot is how much artificial light, especially the blue light of screens, affects the eyes, brain, and circadian rhythm. Research has even shown a significant impact on hormone levels. Because of this, I don’t see reading a book on a phone as equivalent to a paper book, or reading news online as a equivalent to a newspaper. The content your brain is processing may be the same, but it has a very different impact on your body and mental state, especially at night. So I think it’s wise to differentiate screen vs. non-screen activities and be more careful about doing the former in moderation, or perhaps only early in the day.

short12 5y ago

This article is just flat out the dumbest thing I've ever read in regards to addiction

kayodelycaon 5y ago
I’m genuinely curious, because of the other discussions happening here. Why is the article bad/wrong?
- pixelrevision 5y ago
  It’s conflating bad habits and addiction. The advice may work for bad habits such as watching too much YouTube when you’d rather be more productive. An addiction twists the mind around where no amount of reason is going to stick without external systems in place to help. Anyone who’s had any serious struggles either internally or with a loved one is going to recognize this.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    I happen to agree. I read it in the same way as many articles on depression. This is an article that discusses a “normal person” problem. Fortunately, most of the people discussing it here seem to recognize that. A few of them prefaced their comments as a result. And I don’t see anyone disagreeing that bad habits and serious addiction are different problems. As a result, the discussion has been helpful to me rather than aggravating.
  - golemiprague 5y ago

jimmyvalmer 5y ago

Problem: I'm a dipole preferring this orientation. Article's solution: Don't be a dipole. I believe Ben Affleck of all people nailed it on his recent Howard Stern appearance. The cure for addiction is suffering.

_huayra_ 5y ago

The best way to change your habits is to really understand and appreciate what they're doing for you. You're not running towards whatever your procrastination mechanism of choice may be; you're running _away_ from something else. This is why procrastinating has that tepid feeling of boredom, as you don't really want to click onto the next video / reddit / HN page, but you feel compelled to do so. I highly recommend How We Change [0]. It was the first book in my long journey of trying to "read my self out of my depression" that was really insightful. It lays out why people choose to not change (tethered by their procrastination or other habits they deem to be fruitless), and only by seeing and appreciating that _fear of hope_ can you start to approach the (at times) extremely difficult task of authoring your life. [0] https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-we-change-ross-ellenhorn https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-we-change-ross-el...

tcskeptic 5y ago

I have found it very useful to frame things in terms of my future self. This works for both things I want to do, and things I want to stop doing. For example — get home from work, tired, don’t want to go row. Instead of saying to myself “You really should go row, you said you wanted to do it 4 times a week.” I say “1 hour from now do I want to be a person who has sat on the couch for an hour or do I want to be the person who has worked out, taken a shower, and feels good”. Same thing for stopping mindless doom scrolling or making dinner vs ordering deliver or whatever. I know it’s just a mental trick — but reframing things in terms of my future self has been incredibly powerful for me.

emerged 5y ago
I sometimes explicitly create a log of the before and after state of mind. Before rowing: “I feel fine, but pretty lazy and stressed about XYZ” after rowing: “Struggled through and got a big endorphin rush toward the end, feeling good and much less stressed.” Seeing fitness progress graphs helps as well (heart rate vs power output etc). I know for me personally monitoring my resting heart rate made a strong argument against pretty much any alcohol consumption.
- loeg 5y ago
  What effect have you observed on your resting heart rate from alcohol?
  - maccard 5y ago
    I've not been measuring my RHR for a while but when I was training daily my RHR would be up significantly for maybe 3 days after a night out even if I felt 100% the morning after.
  - emerged 5y ago
    It increases immediately and takes a few days to settle back down. After quitting my weekly average slowly continued to decrease. My RHH is a very consistent 46 bpm now and it was consistently in the low to mid 50s during the months/years I was routinely drinking on the weekends. Obviously there are other factors like fitness, sleep, general health, but I was monitoring the numbers on a daily basis and the trends became really clear.

aenis 5y ago

For those struggling with alcohol - I can recommend the Sinclair Method. The idea is to take an opioid antagonist, naltrexone, before drinking -- this helps reset the association between drinking and pleasure, since drinking on naltrexone is devoid of any pleasure, while the downsides of alcohol are still felt by the body. Do it a few times, and the desire to drink wanes. Also, when under the influence of naltrexone, it's hard to drink a lot, since it really is not enjoyable. It allowed me to basically stop drinking alcohol, but I can still go out with friends and have a drink if I want to, as long as I take naltexone before, there is zero risk of this ending up in a binge. Good stuff.

birriel 5y ago
Is there something similar to this for smoking, barring Chantix (I believe it was recalled last year for having carcinogenic compounds itself)?
loeg 5y ago
FWIW, it seems like you need a prescription to buy naltrexone in the US.
- MissionInfl 5y ago
  I used telemedicine to get my first prescription. I had a few appointments and probably talked to the total for about 30 minutes in total. The Sinclair Method is pretty straightforward once you understand it and there is only one hard rule (always take Naltrexone at least 1 hour before consuming alcohol). But the doctor will want to do a liver enzyme test and ask some basic questions to make sure that it is safe for you to take Naltrexone. If your liver is damaged, you may have to take Nalmefrene instead. Or if you are using opiates, it can be unsafe to take Naltrexone (not sure of the details here). At some point I was able to get my PCP to refill my Naltrexone subscription. Naltrexone is pretty widely known for treatment for alcoholism but the prevailing wisdom in the medical community is that it must be taken every day to prevent cravings and alcohol should not be consumed when on Naltrexone. I've heard that this way of using Naltrexone isn't any better than placebo. The TSM book[1] does a good job of explaining why this is the case: the mechanism of action is that the Naltrexone blocks the endorphin rewards from consuming alcohol, so it doesn't work if you don't drink and there is no point in taking Naltrexone without drinking. tldr: you may be able to find a TSM specific doctor via telemedicine. Additionally, most PCP will probably prescribe Naltrexone, although you need to be mindful that they may recommend to take it every day and this is not TSM [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/60fs7gmvbyzs1kk/Cure%20for%20Alcoholism.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/60fs7gmvbyzs1kk/Cure%20for%20Alcoh...

300bps 5y ago

Spot on. In 2013 after a highish triglyceride test result I quit obvious refined sugar. (Have to specify exactly what I mean or I get a lot of questions like “what about bread?!!? You know there’s sugar in bread right!?!?”) I framed it as, “I just don’t want to eat that garbage anymore.” Two weeks of cravings and then I just stopped missing it. Fruit started to taste amazing. Triglycerides went from 263 to 113 in one year.

mythrwy 5y ago

I liked this and will be the first to admit I have an information ingestion problem that the internet has made many times worse. In grade school I nearly failed a semester because I read books all day. It was obsessive. I didn't do my school work but knew all kinds of random facts. And even though my parents caught it and pulled me out I never did as well as I could have because at some level the issue persisted, even now and I'm 50 years old. It really has been a problem my entire life. I suspect it's kind of like the evolutionary desire for sugar. Useful when sugar was rare, deadly when sugar is cheap, refined and readily available. Same with the desire for information. We can only healthily process so much and we only need so much and it needs to be in the proper form. It's so bad sometimes I'll have multiple tabs open at a time paging back and forth at light speed, or listening to informational audio and trying to read at the same time. Or surf the net for 14 hours straight. Like a wino greedily slurping a bottle as fast as he can with another ready to go in the other hand. I never got into video games which always seemed like complete boring waste of time. The ironic thing is I never would have found the article if I weren't frantically scrolling HN looking for the keys to the universe.

anthk 5y ago
Just open http://68k.news http://68k.news and https://text.npr.org https://text.npr.org, ditch anything else. Read them just daily, for 20 minutes. Enough for news. On books, get adult mistery gamebooks, they are random enough to force yourself on your previous choices (and your character's skills) and having to improvise to win instead of being a static reader. EDIT: 68k URL.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  LOL, top headline right now on text.npr.org is classic clickbait style: "Congress may change this arcane law to avoid another Jan. 6"
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    Right? That's a puzzling comment. Low level sweater wearing soft voiced .gov propaganda isn't usually high on my interest list. Although come to think of it, he might have a point. Maybe if I stuck with that I wouldn't be tempted to keep going back.

boppo1 5y ago

I have the problem that my addiction (scrolling 4chan* and HN for hours) has materially added value to my life. I've been introduced to books and resources and technical advice that I've found nowhere else. But I have trouble controlling the amount of time I spend browsing. *4chan is full of hate, but if you grew up with it and have a sort of auto-filter, there are surprising things there. I would not have read (and deeply enjoyed) Moby Dick if not for 4chan. Weird. This is not a recommendation though, generally speaking, avoid the place at all costs.

reidjs 5y ago
I feel the same way about HN. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about technology, software, entrepreneurship from this site. But it would far more valuable to have spent the majority of those hours reading books, learning new skills, networking, or even just being more focused at work. It’s tough to find balance.
- ip26 5y ago
  An aggregator like Feedly is really good in this regard; you can set up sources of interest, add filters, and then- critically- when you reach the end of your feeds for the day, you're done. Something like hackernews or reddit is more endless, without a neatly defined "stop". (Of course, I'm still here)
_gshc 5y ago
Consider something like Cold Turkey, the paid version (one-time fee) has an included scheduler if you can't trust yourself to turn it on when you'd need to. If you don't want to pay for it, the free version includes CLI operations, you can make your own scheduler script without too much trouble. HN has an included time limiter in the options.. but nothing stops you from launching it in incognito so it's only useful as far as you have willpower.
- boppo1 5y ago
  Linux user, so no on the cold turkey. I'd just circumvent it anyway, I don't believe it could prevent me from uninstalling. I've done the hosts file thing and other efforts. It is clear the only thing that will work is looking right at the bottle and realizing I don't want it anymore, much like the article in question suggests.

anthk 5y ago

Switch to https://68k.news https://68k.news for 10 minutes a day. Enough to stay informed. On tech, usenet has good newsgroups, such as comp.misc. By pulling articles once a web, you'll get sorted.

b3morales 5y ago
Tangent, but if this is your site you should fix the certificate.
- anthk 5y ago
  That's because I posted the wrong URL. It's http://68k.news http://68k.news, it doesn't use TLS at all.

papito 5y ago

The Power of Habit really taught me to be on the lookout for negative and positive habit loops. It's an incredibly powerful concept, and how pretty much all addictions work, from food to cocaine. You are bored, so you automatically get up and walk like a zombie to the fridge to inspect it, for example.

l5870uoo9y 5y ago

I have found the replacement tactic useful. If you want to stop drinking coffee, replace it with tea.

dbrueck 5y ago
Can confirm. I successfully got off cocaine by replacing it with heroin and it was as easy as pie.

vcarrico 5y ago

> Most people try quitting their addiction by banning themselves from doing it. After some failed attempts I quit smoking 7 months a go and this change in the way of thinking made the difference for me. During the failed attempts I used to repeat to myself "I can't smoke", this last time my thought was more like "I don't want to smoke", I didn't even tell to my wife that I was trying to quit so that I would fell less the pressure of being forbidden to smoke. Somehow it worked better for me and whenever I had cravings my thoughts were usually something like "I could smoke if I wanted to, I'm 5 minutes away from a pack of cigarets, but I don't want." I'm not saying that this was the only factor that made me stop or this is the "secret to quit smoking" or that's easy, it just worked better for me.

_dark_matter_ 5y ago
This is the basics of Carr's "easy way", right? It basically convinces you that you don't want to smoke. On top of that it specifically doesn't let you stop smoking until you finish the book. So you feel horrible reading this book and smoking until the end when you're like FINALLY I'm allowed to stop!

ndynan 5y ago

This essentially the same argument that Judson Brewer makes using insights from behavioral + buddhist psychology – https://drjud.com/book/ https://drjud.com/book/ The insight is also to use mindfulness to understand the "true" experience of the addictive behavior and come to internalize that it is no longer valuable. Ezra Klein has a nice interview on the subject: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/that-anxiety-youre-feeling-its-a-habit-you-can-unlearn/id1548604447?i=1000517873238 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/that-anxiety-youre-fee...

molhillmountain 5y ago

Alternative to thinking in the future about rewards is focusing on immediate costs. My consumption and enjoyment of junk food has plummeted ever since I went from 'this is bad for me but delicious' to 'this in fact tastes awful and my stomach hurts.' Obviously, this doesn't work as well with my favorite desserts, but if you improve your taste and your favorite desserts become super expensive/rare you rapidly decrease the amount of temptation you face.

dillondoyle 5y ago

This type of CBT is great. But I think there is a big distinction between chemical dependency and other compulsions or addictive behaviors. And I think the word addiction itself has been kind of coopted by self diagnosing people on the internet for karma and some odd type of self gratitude, if that makes sense; kind of a weird bragging about your supposed addiction to ____ or OCD or ADHD etc. The author writes "It’s about seeing through the illusion of satisfaction. It’s about realizing you don’t want to be doing it anymore." Most users don't want to be addicts. Almost no one wants to be dependent on opiates or to have the shakes every morning. Anyone that does hasn't been using long enough yet or probably has other mental health issues that they are trying to patch over themselves with drugs. We know the satisfaction or other benefits one initially gets from using eventually gets buried deep by all the negatives. With drugs and alcohol the satisfaction becomes less and less, even when you use more and more. Drugs are fun & feel good after all. they can 'fix' a huge array of problems in your life. Until they don't. Props to anyone who can overcome a chemical dependency on willpower alone and through this type of CBT mental reframing the author talks about. But for almost all users, especially many of those with untreated underlying issues, it's basically impossible without science based, often medicine supported treatment. Another book I think is worth reading for a dumbed down summary of addiction is Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction