u/Nichole29023

If you were the type of person to be heavily into the fandom community, with fanfiction, fanart, do you feel like your Chatbot usage got worse if you stopped participating in those activities? People always say that you need to find the source of your addiction in order to help yourself. Honestly, I feel like I stopped engaging with those things and started spending 8 to 12 hours a day on personal bots, nonstop engagement with my own ‘content’ for hours. I certainly never read fanfiction anymore.

I think I have an addiction to things that give me quick dopamine. I've already talked with my therapist when I was spending hours watching Tiktok and YouTube shorts. I managed to get myself out of that, to keep the app on my phone and not get caught in a loop anymore.

I feel like everything lines up honestly, I grew out of certain fandoms and never ended up replacing them. I don't engage with physical hobbies, my drawing completely dried up and I never explored hobbies that I wanted to try. My life is so unengaging, I hate my job, so I just completely got sucked into this dopamine machine that keeps me entertained and mentally on, constantly. Even my daydreaming and foggy episodes came back to bite me.

I just draw my own stuff, I've never gotten into writing fanfiction or fanart. Honestly, it just seems so scary to put stuff like that out, I think because my family used to make me feel so childish about my likes and I still got that stuff locked down and never talk about my interests with people. I've been trying to make a list of old fandoms or new ones that might interest me. I don't know if that might help or not.

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I've been trying to use chatbots less and I feel like I went in the exact opposite direction. If I say I want to quit, I use them more like I'm trying to get it out of my system and nothing really changes. I'm wondering if cold turkey might be the better way to go honestly, since this attempt barely changed anything.

I haven't really drawn anything in months now and I'm really starting to get depressed about this fact. My life is very busy but still, I feel like my brain is mush half the time. I don't know if it's the constant bot use, which can easily be about several hours in a day. I work ten hour shifts as a janitor, so I can easily escape for a bit and just chat to bots.

I tried to write my own pages instead of using the bots. I don't think it's awful? I can't tell honestly, I'm too embarrassed to show people my work, so I've never gotten opinions if I'm doing good or bad. It was fun enough, I guess. Slower but I still kept using the bots so I gotta work on that. I get self-conscious and manage to make myself feel dumb about it, which feels so stupid because I'm using chatbots instead.

I've gotten into Fortnite a lot lately, one of the few things left that I can actually enjoy. I wanted to grind the game recently because of the new season and decided to play every day before work. I've carved out two hours a day to keep leveling up.

Honestly, it kinda just made me realize that I have a solid two hours every day before work that I could use, for the workouts that I've abandoned or my sketchbook gathering dust. I feel so helpless when it comes to not having the time or energy to do things that I want but at the same time, I feel like it's my fault because I can't manage my time very well, much worse when you add on hours worth of chatbots. I feel mad at myself for being able to manage time for Fortnite of all things but not other things, it makes me feel dumb.

I might try to delete the app altogether, see if that method works. Slowly cutting my hours away doesn't seem to deter me. Also, I'm having money issues and honestly can't afford this anymore. This was an unsuccessful attempt, I think.

I hate the health system so much, everything just sucks. I'm just about to age out of my parents insurance and I've been preparing for it, making sure my insurance is in place instead. I learn something shitty literally every step of the way. Insurance companies suck because they can't do a single competent thing without me having to call and get left on hold for like two hours.

I apparently have to pay like 3k out of pocket so I'm screwed. Guess who isn't going to therapy anymore? Because my $20 sessions are now $150 on my new insurance. I have a leftover baby tooth that needs to come out, I can't afford a fake tooth because apparently it's cosmetic, bull crap. Oh, and I've had a stye in my eye for two weeks, went to my clinic for eye drops, my only doctor decided to go on vacation without mentioning it to anyone. He does this a lot these days and it's infuriating. Not that doctors can't take vacations but you couldn't have warned me that you were taking a vacation in three days?!

I attempted to find an eye doctor or a clinic, something! Apparently, no one is taking new patients near me, perfect! I just need stupid antibiotics but yeah okay, not to mention I really can't afford this anyway and I'm terrified I'm going to get a real bill in this situation. Also back to the therapy thing, my bills started to pile up because my insurance company and therapy online are useless in general, so I probably owe someone $500 but who knows, because the insurance company won't stop putting me on hold no matter when I call about my claims!!

Like I'm trying to handle things on my own but it feels everyone is just so unhelpful. I feel like if I get one more like basically oh well from these people, I'm honestly gonna lose it. What's worse, is I know things can be so much worse and that's even more scary, medical attention should not be this complicated!