u/Motor_Reaction_3519

yall i quit not even 3 hours ago and i got the urge like five times. strong ones. it feels like im a drug addict and u took away my drugs. idk how much longer i can stay like this

consider this an accountability post but i'm sick of myself. every time i burn out, i hit a brick wall, something horrible happens, my maladaptive daydreaming intensifies. i spend hours every day doing it to feel better, but all i'm doing is numbing my emotions. Matter of fact it's gotten so bad my memory has gotten horrible these days. it's related to numbing.

i tell myself this isn't my fault, that there are also other parties responsible which hurt me to get me to reach this point, but what good does that give me? I can drown in my sorrows until I'm 80 and still haven't achieved the life that i wanted all along. quitting is hard, but the life i'm going to live if i dont stop will be a lot harder.

therefore i'm quitting this time and for good. i set a plan, if i pass a month from now, i'll share it.

So honestly this is not pure willpower. This is me using a bunch of apps and previous experience from quitting. My longest record I've not maladaptively daydreaming was around 21 days, and ever since then I haven't had much luck. What I started doing recently was using this app called I am sober and I customized two addictions that I have, one of them being maladaptively daydreaming and the other is binge watching. I'm not going to sit here and lie because I don't have a perfect streak but I have significantly decreased how much I daydream in the past three days. I went a day without maladaptively daydreaming at all and then the next day it was 10 minutes and then the next it was 30 minutes. both times happened at a specific times so I knew that I needed to use Opal which blocks the apps that you choose and the apps that I choose to have blocked were the ones that I could use to put on music. It's not just apps it's also websites. I think what I did all the time was that if I broke the streak I just really hated myself and I would stop trying for a while but I don't know how but the app "I am sober" actually made me feel good about it like even though I reset it after that 30 minute relapse I didn't feel bad about myself I was like OK I can start again. And it's kind of like trial and error because I know the times that I need Opal to block everything.

Opal -- app blocker

I Am Sober -- tracks by the second how long it's been since u quit something and how much time u saved even if you reset.

the scary thing about this is I feel very good about myself these days but I'm genuinely worried that I relapse. Like someone talked about how quitting an addiction is like having a void. That addiction used to numb that void for you but now that you're no longer practicing this addiction you now have to address the void. The problem is when you don't really know what the void is or when you don't know how to address it.

for me, it is a few stuff which are binge eating, binge watching shows, maladaptive daydreaming and nail biting(i quit nail biting). the most consistent one is maladaptive daydreaming, but ultimately all those addictions are a form of escapism.