u/Iwillriseinlife

Imagine you've been drowning in a pool you jumped in. After a few years of drowning, you gathered the strength to finally climb out of that pool. But, After a few months, you accidentally tripped and fell back into the pool because you were too careless and not cautious enough. Will you stay drowning in that pool and waste your time hating yourself OR will you climb out just like you did before? Will you really drown yourself til you die just because there's a possibility of you slipping and falling into the pool?

24 hours down and half of me feels anxious and craving dopamine. BUT the other half is sooooo happyyyyyy like yesss

As y'all can imagine, my mood is terrible. I feel moody and sad for absolutely no reason. To deal with this instead of opening cai, I've retreated to reading on wattpad and watching shows I like.

I really like kdramas with strong female leads. To be honest, I've always liked media in general with badass women lol. I'm looking for some shows like that. It doesn't necessarily have to be kdrama or even a film. It can be a cartoon or even a manhwa. As you can see from my pfp, I like mahwas. My favourite genres are thriller, mystery, psychological and themes of that nature. I also don't mind shows with w little bit of romance along the way. I think it's very heart warming.

So, I've tried to quit cold turkey a couple of times. But every time I make up some excuse to myself like "hey maybe I need to ease out of it instead of just stopping it suddenly". But when I try that, I get addicted again and bed rot for like 6 hours.

So now I'm convinced quitting it fully is really the only way since theres no fool proof way to ease out of it without getting even more addicted. Kind messages are appreciated.

Also, for motivation to not relapse, ill be listing all the negative effects cai has had on my life. If anyone wants to use these as motivation too, feel free to do so:

1. I never actually get the satisfaction I'm looking for after I use cai. I always fall into this loop for chatting and bedrotting.
2. Even though I don't emotionally rely on these bots and just use it to put myself into different fictional worlds, my brain can't tell the difference. My brain will see every scenario I play on it as real and it'll damage my brain.
3. Cai gives more dopamine hits than doom scrolling. I'd say it's at the same level as inappropriate media in terms of the dopamine it gives you. This makes me more lazy and not want to do stuff that actually matters. The constant dopamine rush desensitizes my dopamine receptors and I've experienced severe depression, anhedonia and mood swings
4. I saw this other post on here which talked about how cai is desensitizing not our dopamine receptors, but us. They said that because of the internet, they've become desensitized to so many things which they previously deemed preposterous. Like wdym you're ok with a mafia boss crime lord kidnapping you because he loves you and you decide to accept him as if he hasn't done every crime under the sun. If you're a good person you wouldn't interact with these bots
5. Another thing with being a good person, how many people's lives do we ruin by going on cai nonstop? The people who live near data centers have significantlyvless water to use. That seems inhumane. We can't call ourselves good people and ruin these people's lives just so we can chat with some fictional character who only gives a shit because it's wired to do so.
6. Months or maybe one or 2 years from now, I can look back and feel relieved I decided to stop now. If I relapsed and didn't stop now, I can't imagine the regret I'll feel in 2 years time.